My Beauty Best Teacher

Grant Brooke writing in the Huffington Post:

...in Nairobi I sat down for curbside soda with a local street vendor to chat politics and theology. Because of his liberal politics, I expected to hear a liberation theology, so I was surprised when he offered a simple prosperity Gospel message asserting, to paraphrase him, that God does not desire poverty for anyone, and that those who have faith can lift themselves from poverty. At its core, these beliefs are a statement of autonomy and upward mobility placed into theologized language.
This is a discovery I am not alone in. Peter Berger, father of American Sociology of Religion, went to South Africa and found the same core message as the Kenyan street vendor driving prosperity teaching there, leading him to pen a scathing sociological piece against the prosperity Gospel's opponents in The Wall Street Journal. And the late David Martin, of the London School of Economics, demonstrated in his comprehensive studies of Pentecostalism in Latin America that church-goers who believe in God-given prosperity are more autonomous, economically responsible, self-confident, and optimistic about life outcomes than their Mainline Protestant and Catholic counterparts. He called this belief "betterment" and argued that it bore itself out in greater chances for upward mobility into the emergent Latin American middle class. A belief in one's own prosperity, Martin suggests, is often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

More here

The world may be giving Obama prizes for hope and togetherness and stuff, but here is the states we have to live with his domestic polices, which recently includes Obama's decision to block the development of energy production and the jobs and prosperity that this development would have provided.

There are still businesses out there that wish to grow and invest in our nation and its bounty, but Obama and his policies are increasingly blocking that hope and changing the course of our nation from one of prosperity to one of poverty. As unemployment grows and our nation sends cash to energy-rich nations, Obama orders that 60 oil and natural gas wells that were in development be shut down.

After businesses expanded great effort and money to win contracts to drill for oil and make America more energy self-sufficient, provide jobs and money for our nation, and restore hope in our future as a great power, Obama and the Democrats swooped in after the contracts were awarded and arbitrarily shut these drills down, claiming the process was flawed. These actions are the arbitrary actions of a tyrannical government, not the law-abiding and rule-of-law actions of a government that is fair and honest towards all.

77 government-owned parcels, covering some 100,000 acres in eastern and southern Utah, were leased by the government last year by private companies that went through the correct processes and channels of government to win these leases. Then, after Obama took office, he broke those agreements and ordered development by those companies to immediately be shut down on the pretense that the agreements were 'rushed'.

Never before in the history of our nation has a President separated the history of our country into a pre- and after- era- and then determined that whatever happened before him- whether it was legal and proper or not- is no longer valid and everything that happens after him is now valid. Our country is bigger than one man, our laws are higher than one man, and our policies stretch from President to President without regard to who holds the office- until Democrat President Barack Obama took office and began to exercise his authority in an arbitrarily and tyrannical manner.

Perhaps the leases were given in a rushed manner- but no more so than the stimulus bill or the healthcare bill is being rushed through Congress. Being 'rushed' does not make the agreements any less valid and lawful, unless there were laws broken or improper actions taken, and the Obama Interior Department has not even suggested that. The whole basis for the US government breaking agreements and promises made was that 'Bush rushed'- and that line of logic is not an argument that should hold up in a court of law.

Our nation is slipping into tyranny and arbitrary actions by an increasingly unlawful and unbalanced government, all under the support and guidance of the Democratic Party of the United States, and you need to exert every action at every election to do what you can do to stop it and return our nation to the greatness to which it was once the envy of the world.

Frank Beckman (heard locally on 760 am) gave me this idea. He noticed the differences in the speech Michelle Obama gave on Monday with the speech Condoleezza Rice gave at the RNC convention in 2000. It's a fair comparison- both are black women, well educated, and in positions of power where they could advise potential Presidents.

I've gone through both speeches, quoting from them, comparing them, and hopefully making intelligent comparisons when it occurred to do so. I hope you enjoy, and see how these major advisers could be shaping the worldview of their presidential preferences.

Michelle Obama begins her speech by talking about herself- she jumps right how she was raised, and gives thanks to her father. She then states her main message of the speech- "And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them." To repeat- the values that she represents are hard work, honesty, and respect.

Condoleezza Rice begins her speech by thanking all those who have gone before her- great Presidents like Ford, Reagan, and HW Bush. She then states her main message of the speech- "The future belongs to liberty, fueled by markets in trade, protected by the rule of law and propelled by the fundamental rights of the individual. Information and knowledge can no longer be bottled up by the state. Prosperity flows to those who can tap the genius of their people." To repeat- the values she represents are liberty, free trade, and individual rights.

We'll stop here- both are great messages. But one sounds better on the streets of Chicago, trying to organize a community and help people, and the other sounds better in the White House, trying to lead a nation and defend America.

Obama goes on to speak about how her "piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me... All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do -- that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be."

Rice goes on to speak about something similar- that "Democracy in America is a work in progress, not a finished masterpiece. But even with its flaws, this unique American experience provides a shining beacon to people..."

Obama sees the failures of America, while Rice sees the triumph. That's a major difference in looking at America.

Obama says "I believe that each of us -- no matter what our age or background or walk of life -- each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation."

Rice says "In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going."

Compare those two statements- they both talk about background, but Obama's conclusion is that people most go to work for the state now, and be a slave to its desires, while Rice believes that people can do whatever they want in life, and don't owe anybody anything- including owing the state some sort of service.

Obama goes on to say that Obama will make a great President, because he will be "bringing us together and reminding us how much we share and how alike we really are."

Rice says that Bush will be a great President because he "challenges us to call upon our better selves, to be compassionate toward those who are less fortunate, to cherish and educate every child, descendants of slaves and immigrants alike, and to thereby affirm the American dream for us all."

So Obama brings us together and reminds us how alike we are, and Bush challenges us to be greater, more compassionate, and better than we are. Obama wants us all to wallow in the mud, saying- hey, we're all pigs together, while Bush wants us to rise above, be more, and be greater. Our country was built by people more like Bush, who challenged us to be more than we are, and not by people like Obama, who demands we all be alike.

Michelle Obama ends her speech by saying "So tonight... let us devote ourselves to finishing their work; let us work together to fulfill their hopes; and let us stand together to elect Barack Obama president of the United States of America."

Condoleezza Rice ends her speech by saying "We will go forth--to extend peace, prosperity and liberty beyond our blessed shores. Thank you. Let's go out and elect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Good night. God bless you and God bless America."

I'm not editing these comments- I'm just quoting and comparing. So what do we get out of the closing statements by these two advisers with similar messages but different conclusions. First, I notice that Rice ended by saying God Bless, and God bless America, and Michelle didn't end that way. That might mean something, or might mean nothing- you decide. I see that Obama says that by electing Obama we will finish the work of our ancestors and fulfill their dreams- in other words, Obama is the savior. Whereas Rice simply says that Bush will extend peace, prosperity, and liberty- stuff that a person can do, although maybe not as impressive as a savior. Lastly, and this might just be semantics, but Obama asks everyone to 'stand together', where Rice asks people to 'go out.' You stand together when you are weak, and your biggest threat is separating from the herd. You go out when you are strong, and your biggest threat is not getting up and getting out.

Comparing these two speeches is relevent and useful, and gives me some further insights into the type of candidates that Obama is and Bush was. Bush was moralistic and willing to fight to bring liberty to other countries, for better or worse. Obama believes you're all the same, although he is better than you, and you should serve him.

By comparing Condoleezza Rice's speech and Michelle Obama's speech, it becomes more clear that you should vote against Obama in this coming election.

A a recent article that Charles Moore wrote, I think he put his finger on exactly what is going on today- the success and advance of the twin threats of fear and doubt. Moore, who is a British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, in an article about Margaret Thatcher, wrote that after the long boom and success of capitalism and free market economics that "the worm of doubt entered the system":

You borrowed all the money needed for the price of a house. This made you, in your mind, though not in full fact, an owner. Because the value of the house was rising, it also made you, again in your mind, richer. The bank, which actually owned the house, found clever ways of mixing and selling on the loans it had granted so that it, too, felt richer. Governments, happy at rising revenues, thought it was their business to make sure that when the symptoms of high risk began to present themselves, they were suppressed.... (then) the roof fell in... (and now) when people now hear words like globalization or capitalism... they feel slightly sick.

Free market economics and capitalism did not lead our nation to failure- rather, during its wild success at making millions around the world more prosperous over the past centuries, communism and socialism and fascism latched on to it, sucking from its prosperity to feed its sick aims like parasites, and over time, many smart people began to become confused and unable to see the parasites from the concepts that they latched on.

Where free markets and capitalism created wealth and encouraged personal responsibility, governments and elites put in place rules and regulations which weakened the foundations of the system, subsidized risky behavior such as sub-prime mortgages and leveraging investments, and gave out handouts to favored industries and distorted the market by doing so. When banks, businesses, and corporations operated in a free market of capitalism, they could succeed or fail based on their own efforts and innovation; but in the new markets, which were no longer capitalistic or free, government subsidies and spending and lobbying and regulation and rules determined whether or not a business, corporation, or bank was successful or failed. And although this was no longer capitalism or free markets, but rather markets once free now twisted to the aims of elites and socialists and communists and fascists, many smart people became critical of the markets or capitalism because of the failures of the government bureaucrats who were twisting and corrupting the system.

And then the parasites of leftism began to weaken and kill the free market and capitalism, and the people cried out 'capitalism and free markets are failing us'- when it wasn't the free markets and capitalism that failed, but rather the people who failed the system.

They were led to this failure by fear and doubt- they did not believe in the hand of the God and the freedom of individuals and life, liberty, and the protection of private property.

The people (or The People, as leftists call them) feared that although they were becoming prosperous and their lives were rapidly improving, they were somehow falling behind others who were advancing more rapidly. Rather than looking at why they were successful in the free market capitalism- because of their hard work, innovation, and yes, luck- they instead demanded government policies to hold back others and help out themselves, corrupting the very system that had brought them so far. They doubted that if people were free and made free decisions, they would make 'the right decisions'- that is, the decisions that they would make if they controlled the other people and had power over them (their definition of 'right decisions').

Rather than just letting go and trusting that the unseen hand of God, trusting to the thousands and millions of individual decisions, and working to ensure that private property rights are strengthened and respected, they doubted that this giant experiment of capitalism and a free market would work, and feared that they would somehow fall behind others in material wealth if they didn't vote for and support people who promised to corrupt the system and abuse the system and circumvent the system. Many people trusted and believed in the power of men to control other men and redistribute property to other men, and in so doing rejected free markets and capitalism.

Fear and doubt came to the people's mind every time there was a recession, or even during periods when great wealth was created but wasn't immediately distributed evenly. The people reacted to the Great Depression by doubting that the free market would correct (as it had done in the 1920's and dozens of times before in the 1800's) and feared that he return to prosperity wouldn't come fast enough- and so they worked to destroy the system, corrupt the system, and make the market less free- and the results were a slight recession during into a decade long destruction of wealth.

And today, government policies and regulations and taxes and laws which corrupted the free market and corroded private property rights have let the worm of doubt creep once more into the people's minds, and in their fear that maybe they won't get to loot the dying Republic of its wealth they vote for Democrats who promise to manage the downfall and distribute the ever-decreasing wealth in the system to their supporters and voters and friends.

To return to success and advance again as a nation in wealth and happiness, we must reject doubt of the free market system and capitalism and trust the people- we need to trust and believe again that the thousands of decisions of free people will create more wealth and make more people happy, and reject those who suggest that having a smaller number of elites make those decisions for us is better. We need to let go of our fear that if we don't control the market and the system that you'll lose out, and instead work hard, innovate, save your money, and invest wisely.

UPDATE 12/7/11: President Obama delivered a major speech today on the economy, in which he expressed his doubt that the capitalist system could continue to provide wealth and prosperity for many and work to make society more equal, and from this place of fear he instead wants to trust himself and his fellow men to run a better system that will somehow do a better job of creating wealth and distributing it than having free people make free decisions.

Via memeorandum, in his Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, we read the following fear and doubt from US President Barack Obama, one-term Democrat. These are selections from the speech- (you can read the whole thing yourself here if you want):

My grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton’s Army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.

And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known. It was here in America that the most productive workers, the most innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth. And you know what? Every American shared in that pride and in that success -- from those in the executive suites to those in middle management to those on the factory floor.

In this passage, Obama communicates to us that his parents believed in capitalism and free markets and personal responsibility and liberty and protection of property. And furthermore, Obama knows that this system worked. But yet, he has this nagging doubt and fear...

But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments -- wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He doesn't BELIEVE in capitalism. He has no faith in people, freedom, liberty, and rights. It's clear he doesn't have any hope that people will make the 'right decisions' (the decisions he would make) and he wants to therefore control other people. He continues:

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t.

We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.

And it is around here that we get to the heart of the matter- in the last quarter of his speech, after ripping on capitalism and freedom for 3/4's of the speech, that we finally here what he wants to do...

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who’s best at busting unions, who’s best at letting companies pollute as much as they want.

We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools. Of course, those productive investments cost money. They’re not free. And so we’ve also paid for these investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices.

So, in summary, here is Obama's alternative to free markets and capitalism- give him more power. Give him the power and authority to tell employers what to pay their employees, give him the power and authority to combine big government with big business and big labor (ie, fascism), give him and his cronies the power to give money to favored constituent groups to fund pet projects of vanity (palaces, statues, etc), and the power to demand that all of these decisions are paid for by someone else who does not want to pay for it- to use the power of guns to the head to make people give up cash to Obama and his people to feed their wrong ideas about the power of men to control others for their benefit.

Obama is wrong. He needs to be defeated- not just politically, but his ideas and beliefs need to be rejected by all good people and good citizens and patriots and he and his policies need to be forever rejected in decent society. We must instead look to capitalism and freedom and liberty and property protection to our future, and not look backward to the sort of tyranny that Obama is proposing.

President Obama's State of the Union Address was the best ever. Not the actual address- that was the usual bunch of lies, rhetoric, and deception- but I watched the address with a crowd of over 150 people at a local event that was hosted by the Americans for Prosperity.

Americans for Prosperity, Rocky Raczkowski (Republican-candidate for the MI-9th), and the Core Principles-Center Right Coalition sponsored a State of the Union speech watch party at the Sheraton in Novi. Organized only a few days in advance, it drew anywhere from 150-200 people, who packed in the crowded room to watch Obama's speech on the big screen. A couple speakers spoke beforehand, and then the crowd watched his speech, hooting and hollering and making comments as he went.

With a crowd of Tea Partiers, of course they were critical of Obama's speech, especially his talk about the budget and the debt. People around me were engaging in conversations about economic theory and principles, history, and political theory and thought while we watched his speech. This crowd was not politicians and rich people, but rather good decent citizens who care about our nation and just want to see it prosperous and happy. The words that this group was using the most often in conversation by this group were 'liberty,' 'freedom,' 'citizen,' 'republic,' or 'responsibility.' It contrasted with President Obama's speech, which instead highlighted regulation, taxes, partisanship, and blame.

And this group wasn't a 'Republican' group either- every speaker spent time bashing the Republicans for their failures in office when they were in charge. We expect Democrats to raise taxes, put in place more regulations on our lives, and be corrupt, but we don't expect Republicans too, and so this group ripped into them as well.

As to what I thought about Obama's speech... I thought it was one of the most divisive, partisan speeches ever uttered to a joint session of Congress. Maybe Obama's teleprompter was to his left or maybe he just always looks left all the time, but if it not, it seemed to me he spent most of his speech staring down at the Republicans, brow-beating them and lecturing them. His little chin started drifting up, his shoulders got all narrow, and in this pose, he stared to the left for most of the speech, directly at the Republicans, lecturing them about subjects of which he has little to no knowledge or experience in. He pushed his agenda, spoke about everything in 'us vs' them tones, and spent little time laying out his vision or goals for the nation. I don't think he has any visions or goals, other than power and control, and he didn't disprove my theory in his SOTU address tonight.

There were parts that made me angry- when he took credit for the isolating of Iran when he wants to meet with them without precondition, or when he began to cite the Declaration of Independence and simply stopped with equality and fraternity, or when he said that every generation has fought for change but failed to mention that every generation that fought was fighting for freedom and liberty and not what he wants, or when he blamed Bush for the debt- but mostly I shook my head and thought to myself 'who actually believes this guy anymore.'

As I drove home from the AFP event, I listened to the radio, and heard a much better vision of America from the Republican response. If you haven't listened to their response yet, look it up and do so- the GOP's vision of America is a lot more hopeful, a lot more change for the better, a lot more free, and a lot more prosperous than the stuff Obama uttered tonight.

The picture is from the AFP event- I hope for you it was also the best State of the Union Address ever.

UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press covered this event- read their article on it by clicking here.

As a side note, one way that bias is introduced by the media is through misleading crowd counts. By my count, there were closer to 200 people at this event then there were (as the Freep notes) "about 150 people". The Freep is right about this though- "The catcalls, boos and ridicule from the crowd were frequent" and deserved.

via Indian Economy Blog

[C]reative human insights are the driving force of our prosperity. By allowing xenophobia and protectionist rent-seekers to restrict the number of people who contribute their ideas to the market process, we inevitably reduce — and perhaps even reverse — the rate of economic growth. Our prosperity will be lower and lower than it would otherwise be.
And this lower rate of economic growth and the correspondingly lower standard of living might well never be revealed by the data.

Benard Wasow writes"...It was not access to foreign aid or special access to Northern markets that gave Asia its advantage over Africa...The external conditions facing these two great regions were similar. The North looked out for its own interests in its dealings with Thailand as much as with Kenya...Asian success was not made in Washington — nor in G8 summits. It was made in Asia. Likewise, we have to recognize that African success ultimately will be made in Africa...the burden of stimulating economic development, the burden of allowing economic development to happen without draining it away through corruption and authoritarian regulation, does not lie in Europe or the United States...The leaders of the G8 cannot bring democracy to the Middle East, nor can they bring prosperity to Africa..."

The graph demonstrates that Obama's economic policies, notably his massive stimulus spending bill and his other spending programs, have made our economy worse than even his worse-case projection said it would be. Let's buy the argument that Bush left Obama with a train-wreck of an economy- in that case, not only did Obama not 'fix' Bush's flaws (bottom graph), not only did he simply hold status quo from the 'awful' economy that Bush left him (the middle graph), but rather, Obama messed up our economy even worse (the more accurate top graph, which I still think understates how bad the economy is).

In fact, look at the data more closely- under Bush, the unemployment rate was in the mid 7's and projected to go as high as 9. But the introduction of the variable of 'President Barack Obama' pushed those numbers as high as the mid 10's- and locked in a 'new normal' of 9% unemployment.

Is that what all you Democrat and liberal voters voted for in 2008? A new normal of 9% unemployment??? Or is it 'Bush's fault' that the new normal of 9% unemployment is locked in in 2011, even though Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008? Both Reagan and W Bush were able to shorten the recessions that Democrats left them and return our nation back to prosperity quicker than Obama- perhaps Obama isn't the right guy for the job.

Look, Obama is a bad President, and likely will go down as one of the worst in our nation's history because of the damage that is doing to our nation in many ways. I suspect that Hillary Clinton would have been a lot better, and I know John McCain would have been better too- of course we would have had a recession, but it would have likely just been the middle line, and our nation would be on the road to a recovery now instead of on its way to a 'new normal', or worse, a double-dip recession bordering on a great depression due to Obama and the Democrats policies, which attack human freedom, liberty, dignity, and prosperity.

One thing that I do know- it does not matter who the Republicans nominate in 2012, they will be better for everyone in our nation than Obama is, even if they do nothing (the middle line, which is better than Obama's 'doing something). Romney, Perry, Palin, or Pawlenty- all are much better, and I'm surprised that the Democrats are sticking with Obama since he has been such an obvious failure.

The reason why you probably shouldn't go to the mainstream media for anything but sports editorials and the comics is because whenever it writes about anything else its amazing liberal bias shines through. Take for example a recent 'article' (not editorial) appearing in the Detroit News called Death a sure thing, taxes less so: Uncle Sam's share at 60-year low:

Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.

And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

From the way this is written, you would imagine that it is Obama and the Democrats in Congress that are to thank for lower taxes and that because of all those low taxes the Democrats provided us with taxes are now at a 60 year low. In reality, tax cuts were pushed for by Republicans over Democrats objections, and it is the Democrats that we can thank for the job-killing regulations and taxes and uncertainty that has destroyed our national economy leading to few with jobs and few companies earning money, thus lower overall revenue to the national government, thus all that 'lower share' nonsense.

Democrats still don't get the Laffer Curve- that when taxes are too high, they choke off investment and economic growth, leading to less tax revenue to the national government, leading to less revenue to spend on national defense, welfare for the truly needy, money for speculative science, and a secure social security system. It is liberals and Democrats who are pushing higher taxes and thus are creating lower revenues for the national government- under Bush and Reagan and Kennedy when they cut taxes revenue to the national government went up and this could allow the federal government to do all those wonderful things liberals want them to do.

The truth is though that liberals don't really want a government that provides for the poor, the needy, the sick, and everyone else if that means that they control your behavior less with lower taxes. Nope, liberals would trade higher taxes and the control this gives them even if the revenues that the federal government are lower as a consequence. That is the only conclusion to reach, if experience demonstrates time after time the truth behind the Laffer Curve.

The author of the article in the Detroit News demonstrates that lack of knowledge of the Laffer Curve must be pervasive in the liberal community- rather than think 'taxes and regulation and government control are higher and tax revenue is down; I want tax revenue up; perhaps we should have less taxes and regulation and government control' the author of the article pushes for more taxes and regulation and government control, and then will have to cast around for someone to blame when this shortsighted and uneducated policy doesn't work (I've been in Michigan for a while and seen Democrats desperately go through a laundry list of people to blame for the failures of their policies).
For more information on the Laffer Curve, check out Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status or The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen.

A recent report underscores the need for economic freedom, it states that it "... is the key to peace as well as to prosperity: "When measures of both economic freedom and democracy are included in a statistical study, economic freedom is about 50 times more effective than democracy in diminishing violent conflict. The impact of economic freedom on whether states fight or have a military dispute is highly significant, while democracy is not a statistically significant predictor of conflict."..."
Via Globalization Institute

Mutumwa Mawere recently addressed the Nigerian diaspora he stated:

...There are countless examples of African entrepreneurs and professionals who have substantial amounts of money in Africa but it is evident that the prosperity has not been democratized to the extent of creating an African ownership class able to take the continent’s majority into a new and dynamically positive direction underpinned by new values of work, combined with saving, investment and an ownership mentality. It is also important to underscore that there is a distinction between being “rich” and being “wealthy”.
Yes, some Africans have made money but because financial literacy and “platinum rights” was not stressed as much as a sense of public justice and civil rights were by our founding fathers and we did not keep it (the money) and we certainly we did not grow it.
Many have made money but no one has really taught us how to keep it in our communities.
Imagine, after 13 years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, we still do not have a new mutual for blacks? No one taught us about financial literacy and the basic tenets of a free enterprise system that appears universally to capture the imagination of many progressive and successful nations.
The challenge of understanding the free-enterprise system and making it work for the majority of Africans has to become a core part of any conversation among Africans concerned about wealth creation and creating sustainable wealth addresses for Africans. Most of our wealth addresses are not assignable and transferable let alone from one African generation to the next.
Any successful nation building enterprise must necessarily be sustained by a healthy, robust and growing tax base and not foreign aid. Africa’s post colonial budgets still remain principally funded by bilateral and multilateral sources of finance.
Africa must create its own dominant class of very successful entrepreneurs, at all levels. We should have our own wealth builders and not become a continent specialized in distributing other people’s wealth.
As we approach the 47th birthday of Nigeria, we must focus on converting ourselves from cash economy customers into banking (our own banks), tenants into homeowners, small business dreamers into small, medium and large scale business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, economically illiterate into economically empowered citizens.
Many of us are consumed with directionless conversations that are primarily focused on what governments can do for us and not what we can go for ourselves. We tend to be good at being against something and not for something.
Literacy can be a sustainable instrument for poverty eradication. They often say that when you know better, you tend to do better.
Any when Africans know better, I have no doubt that we can transform ourselves from islands of affluence to oceans of hope and prosperity. We have not invested much in literacy and integrated the literacy challenge in our post colonial agendas.

Any nation is as good as the interests that inform it. The only power we have as Africans in any field on endeavor whether it is in politics or the wealth game is the power to organize ourselves. One hand cannot clap but two hands can surely make a noise.
Why then is it the case that we have not been able to use our collective spent to our advantage? Many of our African governments have benefited from the financial illiteracy of Africa’s intellectuals. Africa has invested in human capital and yet such investment has not been able to provide any leadership on the bread and butter issues.
Surely, it is evident to all of us that any consolidation of our pain and opportunities can create a critical mass that is missing in action. Imagine if all Nigerians resident in South Africa could consolidate their mobile phone expenses into one pool, how much impact would they have in the South African economy.
Equally, if all Zimbabweans resident in South Africa chose to use one bank, how much would that bank be worth? Even the obvious things that Africa needs to do are not so obvious to our leaders.
I think it is self evident that the poor need the rich in as much as the rich need the poor. Can you imagine a nation of only poor people with the same means and possibilities? On the key ideological questions, we have heard many people argue that a free enterprise system is not suited for Africa and many of our governments in Africa have perfected the skill of creating ideological and theoretical entrepreneurs/bureaucrats without asking the question whether in fact if all the rich people were eliminated, Africa would be any better.
The post colonial experience has confused many of us to the extent that we are now looking for intelligent leaders to govern us when leadership may have little to do with intelligence. Even in a family, it would not be normal for all the children to be the same. Those who do well in one generation inspire the next generation to do better.

Is Africa’s future safe with a system where the state thinks for its citizens or where the citizens think for themselves and act in their own self interest? Many believe that governments (created by the same citizens) can and should be expected to lead the anti-poverty crusade and yet human history has not given us any good examples of governments acting in the interests of citizens who are not in government.

We must take ownership of our destinies and we must be the change that we want to see in the continent. No one else is going to do it for us. We must sell ourselves as worthy of investment and we must change our attitudes because in the final analysis, our attitude to wealth determines our altitude.

Anyone can make money in a growing economy than can be stolen in a decaying and dysfunctional system. If we look at Africa’s unmet needs, then we can appreciate the possibilities that exist in the continent and yet we think and act in a fragmented and confused manner. Those who should ordinarily lead appear to be visionless preferring to focus on yesterday (which is gone) and not on actions that create a better Africa.
Before we can think of creating an African pool of wealth, we need to understand the meaning of wealth. Wealth has come to mean an abundance of items of economic vale or the state of controlling or possessing such items and encompasses money, real estate and any personal property.
In many countries wealth is also measured by reference to access to essential services such as health care or the possession of crops or livestock. Accordingly, an individual who has accumulated wealth relative to others is often described as wealthy.
Therefore, wealth refers to some accumulation of resources. In light of the above, Africa is not recognized as a wealthy continent because of the inferior relationship between the majority of us and items of economic value. We are generally challenged in the resource accumulation enterprise...

photo courtesy of ZimDaily

Eliza Griswold at the Atlantic writes about Religion in Nigeria:

Prosperity Gospel is more a symptom than the disease,” Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Roman Catholic author of Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria, told me in his office above a Catholic church in the city of Kaduna, at the northern edge of the Middle Belt. To his mind, Nigerians’ resort to religion to achieve prosperity was a natural response to their corrupt political landscape and the absence of any civil government. “You can buy a car and insure it,” he continued. “You don’t need a priest to pray over the car, to bless your house to keep robbers away … Here, there’s no guarantee. God is being called upon to police a lot of areas of our lives.” This need for God’s protection isn’t only individual, but collective and political, given the collapse of the state...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of the Atlantic

When putting together a list of the best Presidents in the history of our nation, that list would likely include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Ronald Reagan. To that list I would like to also include Calvin Coolidge.

Most polls rank Coolidge somewhere in the middle, but this is because most people rank greatness by the number of actions that Presidents make and the number of policies that they as executives force on the nation that are usually contrary to our Constitution. For example, most lists put FDR at the top of the list, but he pushed through unconstitutional policies, dropped our nation into another Great Depression, didn't respond early enough to the rising fascism in the world, and then did the only thing I'll give him great credit for and won WWII. Oh, some great Presidents had to respond to crisis forced on them by others (like Lincoln), but most other so-called 'great' Presidents simply used the office of the President to jam policies on people that moved power and freedom away from them to the government and supervised a nation in crisis.

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

Here are some of the reasons that Calvin Coolidge should make the list of one of our greatest Presidents:

1. Coolidge was (for the most part) an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address. During his time in office, he attempted to allow private development of Muscle Shoals, made conservative appointments to federal offices over the objections of liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans, was opposed to a veterans' bonus, and blocked and to the proposed McNary-Haugen farm legislation.
2. Coolidge criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.” His policies led to a booming economy and increased tax revenues, but Coolidge knew that these additional 'revenues' wasn't the government's money- it was the peoples. So instead of bowing to progressives and liberals and using the surplus funds to create new programs, he put in place tax cuts. His tax cuts targeted largely the wealthy (he believed that the rich would invest their extra funds in ways that would increase production and therefore jobs and wealth at home, and also that American trade would expand abroad which would benefit the domestic economy and help stabilize the world economically and politically), but taxes were also cut on all taxpayers as well, the gift tax was repealed, and the death tax cut in half. These tax cuts led to increasing economic growth in America (and more tax revenues).
3. Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. But unlike many Republicans and almost all liberals, he did not believe the business of government was to control and direct and subsidize business- he believed in the free market and that removing regulations would encourage business more so than subsidies and targeted tax code help.

Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover. Coolidge said after leaving the White House, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"- but this is the very thing that I love about Coolidge, that as President he minded his own business, operated the machinery of the White House with cool and competent handling, and minded his own business as President. No crisis, no television appearances, no major policy changes, no crazy plans, no wild new ideas- simply doing his job, doing it well, and leaving when he was done with the nation in a better place than it was before.

President Calvin Coolidge may be the first U.S. president appeared to also appear in a "talkie" -- a movie with sound.In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to

"cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

Before we go to the polls in 2012 to pick nominees for political parties and for President, I just want everyone to re-examine Calvin Coolidge and his Presidency and decide for themselves what exactly makes a President great.

UPDATE: The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation contacted and reminded me of another reason why Coolidge is possibly one of the better Presidents that we've ever had- his views on education. Coolidge believed strongly in education and he often commented on the subject throughout the course of his political career, believing in the importance of having an educated citizenry and impressing on young people the importance of lifelong learning. Here is one of his quotes from a newspaper column in 1930:

"While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think… The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.”

For your next vacation, take a trip to Plymouth Notch, VT to see the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site for yourself and experience the world in which President Coolidge was born and raised.

For good books about President Calvin Coolidge, check out Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, or Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, The.

Agwu Amogu writes

"...When men are free to develop their self-interest, when they are free to use their minds in pursuit of what will make them happy, better their lives the wonderful creativity of the mind glows...the mind is the incubator of prosperity it is a costly ignorance to subject it to any form of coercion, as such coercion will paralyse productivity. The system of free minds, freemen and free market is a system of prosperity, growth and wealth creation...Wealth is actually created when enterprising individuals discover new ways to use existing resources. Since the possibilities of human creativity is infinite, then wealth too must be limitless. One idea leads to the next so one invention leads to the other.
The amount of wealth a nation has or produces does not depend mainly on the availability of natural resources, instead it is dependent upon human resources, the self-determined thoughts and creativity of its populace. The realization that natural resources does not limit creation of wealth is a very liberating one. For instance Switzerland and Japan have little or no mineral resources, while Nigeria and Mexico are greatly endowed with mineral resources, yet people in Switzerland and Japan are more comfortable that those in Nigeria and Mexico..."

via IPPA
photo courtesy freemarket.net

Often on Facebook and in comment sections of news articles and through conversations with friends I hear people say "What could President Obama done differently?" To answer that question, we would need some sort of insider view on what options Obama was presented with and to hear exactly what his decision making process was. We'd need some memo's or something that would detail all the paths not taken by President Obama, paths that might have led our nation back to prosperity or prevented the massive deficits that will destroy our children's futures or would have helped encourage businesses to grow and invest.

Such memo's, showing all the options that were there, together with some insider analysis, would be invaluable to answering the question "What could President Obama done differently?" Thankfully for us, that information exists, and has been looked at by The New Yorker's Ryan Issa. Americans for Prosperity sums up what just exactly goes down in the Obama White House and the decision-making of soon-to-be-one-termer President Obama:

Recently, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza released White House memos showing President Obama’s advisers contemplated multiple options for the original so-called stimulus package. The President’s advisers, including economists Larry Summers and Christina Romer, argued that multiple areas of the economy needed federal stimulus. Despite the advisers’ agreement that the President should engage in some type of big government intervention, the economists and the President differed greatly in their approach to dealing with the economic crisis. The memos reveal that the centralized planning inherent in big government stimulus is not quite the rational process that the Left would like us to believe, but rather a messy amalgam of competing political interests from individual planners.

Decision makers in Washington DC, like President Obama and his advisors, believe government planners can spend money more wisely than the private sector by finding specific areas in the economy where injecting federal funds can presumably improve economic prospects. They draw this so-called “targeted, temporary, and timely stimulus” from the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes. Instead of waiting for the free market to sort out economic problems, Keynesians believe that the government must intervene.

However, as economist F.A. Hayek observed, the knowledge required to direct the economy is too vast for any individual (or collection of individuals) to acquire. Hayek diagnosed presumptuous bureaucrats as suffering from “The Fatal Conceit”: they implement programs on the assumption that they know just what they were doing and exactly how the economy would respond. This self-deception is clearly observed in the White House’s plan for the stimulus.

During the planning and negotiations in 2009, President Obama proposed building a national so-called “smart grid” which would allow energy to flow more efficiently. It was, as Ryan Lizza puts it, Obama’s version of the Hoover Dam. But Obama’s advisers disagreed with the President’s “moon-shot initiative,” which they felt would only look good in headlines but lacked economic sense.

Lizza explained that advisers like Christina Romer had to have a “frank” conversation with the President: the smart grid was too expensive and not likely to produce short term economic benefits. Besides, Romer and Summers had plans of their own. Both proposed granting billions of stimulus dollars to states who were dealing with their own budget crises. Even these advisers, however, differed on how they thought the remaining stimulus funds should be spent. Summers preferred a more limited package with targeted spending in different areas of government. Romer, on the other hand, requested an even larger package with a different vision for the stimulus.

And yet, President Obama persisted with his politically-popular moon-shots. The President proposed a project for high-speed trains; a plan favored by Congressional Democrats. But the President’s advisers pushed back with the same argument: bailouts for struggling states were a better alternative for the economy. The President also differed with his advisers over the stimulus package’s price tag. In as attempt to control the costs of the runaway package, the President had to make a choice: give Congress high-speed trains and add in about $40 billion in Congressional “pork-barrel” spending, or cut $60 billion in stimulus that his advisers said would be more effective (the aid to states). The President showed how politics destroys the so-called virtue of government planning by choosing to give Congress its requested $60 billion in pet projects, including the high-speed trains – a direct example of how the stimulus package wasted (at least) $60 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Lizza’s stimulus memos expose the inherent flaws in any centralized planning effort. Hayek’s argument against centralized planning was not simply that it was an unfavorable method of governing, but that it was logically unworkable. Even though brilliant people worked on the stimulus package, people like Christina Romer who has a Ph.D. from MIT, none of them could possibly complete the impossible task gathering the necessary information to direct the economy. The economy is just too complex for government to direct. Their plans were pitched to the American people as objective solutions, but they really represented the individual (and in the President’s case, politicized) interests of the planners at the table.

The result? A stimulus package that failed to achieve the goals that even its own creators set out for it.

The President made bad decisions. He's on the ballot in 2012. Michigan and many other swing states will decide his fate. Vote the right way.

The President of the United States should be clerk, and nothing more. Conservatives and Tea Party people should not be looking for the President to be a 'king' who commands us to go forth and do his bidding, they should not be looking for the President to be the source of ideas about how government should run, and they should not be looking for the President to be an outsider who will shake up Washington.

The office, as designed by our Founding Fathers and illustrated in Article II of the Constitution, is an office that empowers the President of the United States to execute the laws passed by Congress in the most efficient manner, act as Commander-in-Chief of our military, act as the dignified ceremonial chief of state, handle foreign policy with other nations, and discharge effectively the various other duties of the office. A true conservative or someone who wants our nation to return to its Founding Principles should be pushing for the person who is best able to act as a clerk, a manager, and a CEO for America Inc.

You see, in reality the presidency is essentially a glorified clerk in our system, and is not actually a game-changing all-powerful King. The power of the President stems from his ability to use his office to trade favors or the promise of favors to accomplish the goal of efficiently managing the affairs of the state; his power does not (nor should it) from his ability to order others to do his bidding and his ability to issue executive orders and put in place policies. The legislative branch is better and more powerfully designed for those purposes, and so all decisions about the laws and policies of our nation should be generated from that branch, and then the President implements them in an efficient and able manner.

The President is able to implement these policies in an able and efficient manner because he has lots of little pieces of power spread through out nation's political system- he is able to send troops abroad, deliver the state of the union address, control various executive departments, play a vital role in the budgeting process, issues pardons and grant reprieves, etc, and he can also use his informal power and influence to invite policy leaders to the White House, go on national TV, lobby for legislation, etc. His power- both real and perceived- gets others to re-appraise what is in their best interest, and they are then persuaded that it is better to get along with the President and what he wants to do rather than fight against his able and methodical and efficient powers.

Look, I know this isn't exciting to you guys- you all want a President who will blow your socks off, light up the system, ride in on a horse of hope and change and remake the world. You want a king to rule you and control other people who you disagree with. You wish that someone who will go into the White House and then start just shutting down executive departments, slashing spending on programs, and ignoring the Judicial and Legislative Branches to bring you closer to our Founding Fathers. The problem is, that isn't how our Founding Fathers designed the office of the President and it is not how our Founding Fathers would have wanted the system to work, and once you go down the path to making our President a King, he can be a liberal King too in a short 4 to 8 years.

As I wrote in Calvin Coolidge, One of the Best Presidents?:

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

The President is a powerful person in our political system- but he has grown too powerful, and I don't want him to become even more powerful and active and arbitrary, even if for a while he would be doing so in a conservative or libertarian manner. Rather, our President should be good at working with the Congress to effect significant changes to our laws and policies, he should be good at closing doors and coming out of them with policy-leaders minds changed, he should know our political system inside and out and understand how to move various levers to get stuff done, and he should be able to judiciously use his public prestige to pressure leaders to voluntarily arrive at policy decisions that he supports. He should be a competent manager and efficient steward of taxpayer resources. At the end of his Presidency, we should not say that he brought hope and change to the American system, but rather we should say that when he left after eight quiet years as President, peoples lives had been protected from domestic and international threats, that the nation had remained prosperous and free of debts, and that private property had been well protected and preserved.

The description of a 'great' President that I have outlined above is most definitely not a description of our current President. President Barack Obama went into the White House without the skills needed to be an effective or even good President, and he has shown no desire to put in the hard work, the humility, and the intelligence to acquire these skills. Yes, I know that during his first two years much legislation was passed (which he now claims makes him the fourth best President ever)- but that was during a time period when one element of society- liberal Democrats- controlled almost all the national levers of policy-making (House, Senate, President, and bureaucracy)- and since that time, more elements of society are represented in our political system, and he has demonstrated that in these more pluralistic and typical circumstances that he is completely ineffective. You see, the earlier 'success' he had in driving the policy-agenda was really because it was being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who pushed their legislation and priorities in spite of what Obama desired or wanted- those who have been part of this legislation have written several times that the White House was remarkably passive during that time period and just went along with whatever Congress wanted (which in itself is not a bad thing, but in the context of demonstrating leadership it is). But once Obama's party lost control of the House, we were able to see truly just how bad a President he is and how bad he as at filling this office.

President Obama is poor at working with Congress, bad at working with others of different opinions than his own, too quick to attack in public those who he disagrees with (probably because he is so awful at convincing them to change policies behind closed doors), he does not know how to use all the various levers in policy-making that he has, and overuses the prestige of his office such that it the prestige has been watered down (I'm imaging him promoting Monday Night Football right now). He is an incompetent manager and a poor steward of taxpayer resources (his family is spending millions in taxpayer money on a vacation to Hawaii as I write this). At the end of his Presidency (hopefully next year), we'll look back at the last four years as being some of the most chaotic and partisan and rough years, and look at his record as our President- a nation that is less prosperous, less free, burdened with debts, with horribly destroyed foundations (crumbling roads, bridges, schools, and Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that have been bankrupted and unreformed), and with private property under attack (Occupy Wall Street, Dodd-Frank, the bankruptcy of GM, etc). President Obama is a bad President.

Could any of the Republican candidates for President be a 'great' President? I don't know- I'll let you make your own decisions on that for now. But much of what I wrote here I pulled from an earlier post I wrote called Ron Paul- Drop Out of the Race where I considered Congressman Paul's candidacy in light of these ideas. But do Romney, Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann, or Santorum meet the qualifications I laid out above better than Obama? They likely do- for example, look at Romney's experience as Governor of at blue-state or saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, or Perry's able Governorship of successful Texas, or Gingrich's record of balancing the budget with a Democratic President, but I surely must  revisit this concept and evaluate the GOP candidates accordingly in a later post- be sure to check back often on my blog for this post.

Oh, and in reply to the liberals and progressives and fascists who are emailing me trying to personally attack me- I do have several degrees from good universities in public policy, I teach government for a living, and my argument is based in part on professor Richard Neustadt's book Presidential Power (purchase the book today- Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan). My arguments are sound and hopefully well-reasoned, and as always, I'd love to defend them in print or on the radio, and I would love it if you would email this post or link to it on your blog so that our Presidential election in 2012 is that much more informed.

A couple weeks ago I read an interesting article in the Telegraph- in it, longtime journalist Janet Daley suggests that the best thing that the British government can do to improve the economy and make people more wealthy and happy and free is to work really hard and be very productive in DOING LESS. The truth of the matter is that politicians have to have real guts and strength to simply say 'no, I will not spend taxpayer money trying to control people and the market,' but that may be exactly the kind of strength and guts we need today- politicians who promise to do more of less. From her article A daring idea to fix the economy: try doing less:

...the myth of government activism – the idea that intervention by the state is the answer to every economic and social problem – had been definitively routed. Apparently not: Mr Osborne and, we must assume, his boss still seem to believe that any unacceptable national situation must require direct action from them.

Or maybe they don’t believe that at all. Perhaps they just lack the political courage to admit that, in our present crisis, the best thing that the Government can do is to get out of the business of running (or subsidising, or initiating, or incentivising) things altogether – not just in the interests of saving money, but because the effects of such interference are counter-productive. What the economy is suffering from is not an insufficiency of overweening, fussy, bureaucratic initiatives that inevitably unleash an avalanche of unintended consequences, but a lack of cash in the hands of people who might spend it in ways that would actually create wealth and stimulate (in the proper sense of the word) economic growth.

If ever there was a time for radical proposals by a governing party, this is it. Rather than the imitative, mealy-mouthed shuffling of dollops of money from one departmental scheme to another, in what will inevitably look like panic in the face of rising youth unemployment and disappointing growth figures, what we need is a display of real insight and nerve...

...There is an urgent need now to rethink the whole relationship between government and populace while there is still the possibility of discussion. In Britain, Europe and America, the questions are remarkably similar. Can a free-market economy support an infinitely growing state? We will have to choose, quite soon, between liberty and the “security” of a society in which government controls the levers of economic life. Washington politicians are getting a terrible drubbing for failing to resolve their implacable differences over the size of the state (to the extent that they are unable to agree a federal budget). The US national debate may seem rough and ready to European ears – but at least they are engaging in the real argument.

She is right- the argument has been joined, and today via memeorandum I read in the Wall Street Journal an article that echo's the very ideas of Ms. Daley. From former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's article Capitalism and the Right to Rise:

...Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise....

....We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

What Governor Bush is talking about is the same kind of thing that I personally observed during my time as a policy adviser in the state's capital. I remember distinctly one time when a young Republican 'conservative' staffer came in to work one day, upset that the car that she had recently bought turned out to have been a bad purchase. She set about writing a law that would force the state to regulate and control all sellers of automobiles in the state and then tried to convince legislators to sponsor this piece of legislation- she wanted the state to immediately do something, to step in and spend lots of money and time and effort controlling thousands of people's individual decisions just to protect several people from their own stupidity. She proposal was met with great hostility towards me, and I countered her proposal by suggesting that rather than the state doing something about used car dealers, it instead loosen regulations and fees and taxes on all car dealers, making the market more free, so that more fools like her could be separated from their money, as the hand of God in its infinite wisdom is wont to do. I wasn't joking though.

The real courage and intelligent thing to do to create a more vibrant, free market by cutting back government regulations and fees and enabling people to be people, in all their glorious faults and warts, because only by doing so can we also unleash the amazing potential for great and good things that humans contain in them. The safe, stately downward path of state control is not the path for me and is not the path that successful, free, and prosperous people- no, we choose the jagged and uneven and unpredictable path that is the path of less government regulation, taxes, fees, and supervision- that is the only true path for better protection and encouragement of life, liberty, and property.

Not that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but I always love it when statistics generally bear out my crazy theories that the way to create a prosperous free economy is to have low government regulation and low taxes. For my unit on state and local government, I found this article on Variations in Government Aid Across the Nation that was put together by the New York Times. This report looks at welfare, unemployment, housing assistance, food stamps, health insurance for poor adults, and health insurance for poor children, and measures them from state to state.

The top states in terms of providing generous benefits to their citizens- in other words, those that take money from taxpayers and re-distribute that wealth to those who did not earn it are (in descending order): Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, DC, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Iowa, and Michigan.

Out of curiosity, I decided to pull up some information on GDP growth, and provided by the Department of Commerce. The results are interesting. Here are the GDP growth rates for those states, with numbers from 2006 and 2007: Vermont (2.8, 1.5) , Maine (1.9, 1.3), Massachusetts (2.9, 2.5), DC (4.1, 4.3), Pennsylvania (1.7, 1.6), West Virginia (0.6, 0.1), Iowa (2.6, 1.7), and Michigan (-0.5, -1.2).

Those states that let citizens keep their wealth and freely make their own decisions are: Colorado, Texas, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Virginia.

Here are their GDP growth rates (2006, 2007): Colorado (4.3, 2.0), Texas (4.3, 4.1), Utah (7.2, 5.3), Florida (4.2, 0.0), Nevada (4.1, 0.6), Arizona (6.8, 1.8), Oklahoma (6.7, 4.0), and Virginia (3.2, 1.9).

As you can see, the results are pretty conclusive. States that redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, divert money from taxpayers to nonworkers, subsidize poor quality housing, give people food, and provide government-paid healthcare are less prosperous, less successful, and less free.

Those states that follow these unsuccessful public polices have GDP growth rates significantly and consistently lower, and over several generations destroy the wealth and productivity of their citizens. If our whole nation were to adopt those same policies, our children and children's children- our posterity- would grow up less free, less happy, and less prosperous than we are today.

The conclusion, as demonstrated with this limited amount of research, is clear- our public policies should emphasize self-sufficiency, less public welfare, and lower unemployment benefits, and should keep the state out of building structures for people just because of their income status, and should teach a man to fish instead of giving him fish, and should not provide as a right of birth state-supported healthcare.

UPDATE: Today I saw a report from the Mercatus Center at Georgetown called Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom. Earlier I pointed out that many of the states that provided the most social welfare services to its citizens also are less prosperous. Looking over this report, I notice that those states that provide healthcare to poor, housing subsidies, and food stamps also are less free. I guessed this fact (see above), but it's nice that my guess is now backed up in numbers that show that.

According to the rankings in the report (1 is most free, 50 is least), the least free states- the states with the most tyrrany and oppression by government- compare favorably with my list of states that had the highest social welfare.

Here are the states that provide the most social services and their rankings on freedom- Vermont (40), Maine (39), Massachusetts (43), DC (NR), Pennsylvania (20), West Virginia (33), Iowa (16), and Michigan (14). Here are the states that provide the least social services and their rankings on freedom- Colorado (2), Texas (5), Utah (11), Florida (22), Nevada (24), Arizona (8), Oklahoma (18), and Virginia (9).

There you go- states that encourage conservative values are more prosperous and more free. The data doesn't lie.