Black Conservatives Warn of Threat to Continued Freedom on “Juneteenth” Civil Rights Holiday

For Release: June 19, 2009
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 or e-mail dalmasi@nationalcenter.org

Expanding Government Poses a Danger to Individual Rights, Liberties Celebrated on Emancipation Holiday

On the occasion of “Juneteenth,” the oldest and most recognized annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, members of the Project 21 black leadership network suggest the civil rights-themed holiday be used to celebrate freedoms that have been won and as a warning of how easily freedom can be threatened by an overbearing government.

Project 21 members have called attention to the Juneteenth since 1999, urging black Americans to use Juneteenth to embrace their inherent talents and strengthen their ties with family and community.

Now, when the Obama Administration and Congress are increasing government intervention into the lives of all Americans, Project 21 members suggest that people reflect upon how this expansion of power can reduce the threaten individual freedom.

“The liberties we enjoy today came at a tremendous cost and after a lot of suffering,” said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. “Today historically marks the day of the opening of the door to opportunity for blacks to seek ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ We should take advantage of this liberty to strive to improve our lives and build upon the sacrifices of those who fought for freedom.”

“It’s important to remember that Juneteenth is rooted in our achieving our freedom. It is the growth of an activist government intent on regulating most – if not all – aspects of our lives that is now threatening that freedom,” said Project 21 member Bishop Council Nedd II. “There’s a lot at risk should politics be allowed to take precedence over the protection of individual rights. Environmental regulations, for instance, already substantially affect private property rights and the ability for many to conduct legitimate business. Just think of what might happen to our independence if we are forced to rely on a partisan government for health care, to determine if we can buy a car or how we can worship without offending perceived sensibilities? This is something we need to consider as we mark Juneteenth this year.”

Project 21 member Ak’bar Shabazz added: “As our nation advances rapidly away from embracing personal responsibility towards government protection and oversight, we should keep in mind that these freed slaves wanted only the opportunity to be free and control their own destinies. Their attitudes towards freedom contrasts greatly from today, as many people look for more government control over their lives.”

Juneteenth commemorates the anniversary of the June 19, 1865 arrival of Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas. The soldiers carried the news that the Civil War was over and that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had abolished slavery two-and-a-half years earlier.

The annual commemoration became known as Juneteenth and quickly became a stabilizing as well as motivating presence in the lives of black Americans in Texas, who faced many uncertainties associated with newly-acquired freedom. The observance quickly spread from Texas to be recognized across the United States.

Juneteenth is celebrated in many ways, but education and self-improvement have been consistent themes at commemorative community gatherings and picnics in recent years. In 1980, Juneteenth was made an official holiday in Texas. According to the National Juneteenth Holiday Campaign, 25 states currently recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday.

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization supported by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or Project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21’s website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html.

We Can’t Let the GOP Lose Brand Identity In Sotomayor Confirmation Fight

By Deneen Borelli
Fellow, Project 21,The National Center for Public Policy

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama seems to be playing identity politics by making her heritage more important than her experience.  So far, most of the news coverage has focused on her ethnic background and that has  trumped reports about her experience.

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Sotomayor’s nomination should be an opportunity to highlight the contrast between the beliefs of liberals and conservatives.

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Unfortunately, this is distracting the public from the most important consideration — whether or not she is the best person for the job.

Conservative Republicans are feeling challenged by the nomination of Sotomayor, fearing a political backlash from the Hispanic vote, an important and growing demographic group, if they aggressively dispute her nomination.  Moreover, it seems that she has the filibuster proof majority.

 Given the political risk and poor likelihood of having any impact, some believe it would be a waste of political capital to oppose her nomination.  While there is some validity to these concerns, we need to recognize that the left will take advantage of any opportunity to politicize opposing views regardless of their merit.

In today’s politically charged environment even a Miss America beauty pageant becomes a battleground for political ideas.  For instance Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA 2009, became a target of liberal attacks because she openly expressed her opposition to gay marriage.

Fear of controversy and political retribution should not dictate the decision of our elected representatives.  These are the risks that come with the political territory.

With this in mind, conservative Republicans should approach Sotomayor’s nomination like any other nominee –- from a position of principle.  Race, age or sex should not interfere with their responsibility to their office and party.

Consequently, during the nomination process, they should question Sotomayor about her experience, judicial philosophy and past rulings.  Importantly, conservative Republicans should not shy away from asking her to explain her positions on the Second Amendment, abortion and judicial activism.

Senators should take into consideration the Ricci case, in which civil service test scores of New Haven, CT firefighters were discarded because the scores did not follow quota requirements.  This racial preference case will be coming up in the Supreme Court and by all speculation, Sotomayor could find herself being repudiated by her prospective colleagues.

In my opinion, the bigger risk is the loss of the Republican conservative brand identity that has served them well in the past.  Sotomayor’s nomination should be an opportunity to highlight the contrast between the beliefs of liberals and conservatives.  If the public can’t distinguish between the beliefs of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)  and the Senate Republicans at the end of Sotomayor’s nomination process, then conservative Republicans have lost significantly more than a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Obama Gets Tax Policy Backwards

 

By Steven Malanga

Few subjects offer more grist for populists and more opportunity for demagoguery than that of U.S. companies, their foreign earnings and their taxes.

Posturing by politicians on this subject revolves around the fact that American companies have increased their foreign investments over a period of time when domestic jobs have disappeared in certain industries, creating a facile (and misleading) correlation in the minds of many between overseas investments and U.S. job losses. President Obama drew on that popular misconception when he announced he would seek changes in our corporate tax code last week which he claimed were designed to ensure that the government doesn’t “reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores.”

But academic research on firms doing business overseas suggests that President Obama has it backwards. Overseas investments rarely cost jobs in a corporation’s home country. Instead, firms that expand overseas are generally businesses that are also growing in their home countries. They are businesses that make a country’s economy competitive worldwide. This is not only recognized by researchers who’ve studied the issue, but also by policy makers in other countries, which is why few other countries now try to tax their multinational corporations’ foreign profits in the manner that President Obama is proposing. The result, most experts concur, is likely to raise the risks of foreign expansion and discourage some firms from going abroad. That doesn’t increase jobs at home.

The notion that U.S. corporate expansions overseas drain jobs here is a vestige of the 1950s and the early 1960s, when American corporations dominated a global economy consisting mostly of European countries recovering from World War II, communist countries whose industries weren’t competitive internationally, and the developing world. In those days, economists believed, the most likely reason a firm would open operations overseas was to take advantage of lower costs in other countries, most especially lower labor costs.

But as global competition intensified, economists noticed something unusual: For the most part, corporations in richer countries, such as the U.S., or a recovering Europe and Japan, weren’t investing in poorer countries where costs were low. Instead, they were investing mostly in each other’s markets, where costs were comparable. This became known as the Lucas Paradox, the notion that overseas investment didn’t happen the way we would predict it should.

As the world economy has advanced in the last 35 years, this tendency of corporations based in wealthy countries to invest primarily in other wealthy countries has only grown: Despite the popular perception in the media that our global firms spend most of their effort opening up sweatshops in poor countries, in the latest period studied, between 1995 and 2000, multinationals in rich countries were five times more likely to invest in operations in other countries where labor costs were comparable, according to a 2005 study by economists from Harvard and the University of Houston.

What we’ve learned is that companies don’t expand overseas primarily to eliminate local jobs, but to tap into other appealing markets where, if they succeed, they only become stronger. And lots of research has confirmed this idea, not just about U.S. firms, but about multinationals in other countries too. Studies of the Italian, French and German economies have found that when a business in one of these countries makes a decision to expand overseas the move rarely results in a net loss in domestic jobs, according to research summarized by Harvard’s Mihir A. Desai in a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Securing Jobs or the New Protectionism?” In fact, a company’s successful overseas expansion brings advantages to a home country, according to a study of Japanese multinationals which found that firms that increased their overseas investments also increased their domestic employment at a growth rate from three-to-eight times quicker than job growth among purely domestic firms.

The same holds true for the United States and its shrinking manufacturing industry. Desai looked at who was responsible for the decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. from 1986 to 2003 and found that it wasn’t multinationals. In fact, they have been expanding their manufacturing jobs in the U.S. even as they have been investing overseas. Instead, “the rapid decline of manufacturing employment in the late 1990s and early 2000s might well best be understood as marking the exit of purely domestic, low-productivity players rather than the displacement of domestic activity abroad by multinational firms,” Desai writes.

This shouldn’t be surprising. It’s a difficult and risky leap to go from a domestic company to an international one, and for the most part companies that succeed at it are our strongest firms. In a global marketplace, they are the firms most likely to face down new foreign competitors entering the country. Short of high tariffs to punish foreign products and make them uncompetitive here, it is our multinationals that give us our biggest edge.

But for many politicians, the Lucas Paradox doesn’t exist. To them, the world is simple: Jobs that U.S. firms create overseas are jobs that they are not creating here. We shouldn’t reward firms for doing that with tax breaks.

And so, instead of cutting our corporate tax rate, the second highest among developed countries, to bring it in line with the rest of the world, or treating overseas profits in the same manner as most other developed nations which generally don’t tax overseas earnings, the Obama administration will make our corporate tax code more onerous. One result, the research suggests, will be less job growth here as some U.S. firms contemplating going international decline to do so because we’ve further reduced the returns from setting up foreign operations and increased the risks.

What the research tells us is that patterns of international investment by big companies defy easy characterization because firms behave in ways that surprise us. That’s not the kind of stuff that can be explained easily in a sound bite at a press conference or on the campaign trail.

For a president confronting a world that doesn’t conform to popular opinion, the options are clear. He can attempt to set the country on the policy path that makes the most sense and do his best to explain why. Or he can simply give people a policy that corresponds to their misconceptions. On corporate taxes, we know what course Obama is taking.

Steven Malanga is an editor for RealClearMarkets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

An Educational Revolution Will Build Ownership

by Akindele Akinyemi

May 19, 2009

Last night I attended the Black Enterprise Conference here in Detroit, MI. While I was at the Town Hall Meeting on President Obama’s Economic Agenda (the panel included Warren Ballentine who is a CNN Commentator, Joe Watkins from MSNBC, Washington Times editor Tara Wall and the Independent Women’s Forum President Michelle Bernard) I heard great ideas and great solutions to the issues facing urban America economically.

Today, Urban America are at a crossroads when it comes to leadership, policy and education. In an environment where we cannot seem to agree on anything, from religious differences to differences of culture and forms of government, or even forms and definitions of free enterprise as well as the definition of capitalism itself one thing we need is to regain our self-dignity as a community.
As we are pushing for eradicate poverty in our community one must be mindful of the fact that for each impoverished community is an emerging market waiting to be born. For example, there are areas of Detroit that is waiting to emerge from poverty.

If we continue to develop the emergence of an urban stakeholder class in Detroit we will no longer see homeowners not renters. We will see our urban, inner city communities not as wastelands, but emerging markets in Michigan, vastly under-served, and the last bastion of lost capitalism.

Part of eliminating poverty from our hearts is being in tune with God and understanding the importance of global education. Detroit is not an island. It is part of the greater regional Southeastern Michigan area. We have to move away from the spirit of fear and poverty to the spirit of success.

Part of creating a new reality and new focus is reshaping public policy in urban areas. Traditionally, public policy in America is principally designed around America’s first priority; economics and ownership. Individual property rights. From tax breaks and other protections for homeowners, to incentives for the working class, to incentives for small businesses and major corporations alike it’s all about owners and producers.

In general, urban communities do not care about tax break or tax cuts unless we have a job. If urban people do not own a home or business in the community that we serve do we really care about a bond issuance for infrastructure repairs or investment in our local community?

Frankly, those who are not owners or tax payers may not even know what others are talking about. Therefore, it’s Greek or Mandarin to those who are not owners or producers. And so, as a result we have effectively tied one hand behind the collective back of our political leadership; forcing them to pursue bad public policy and strategies that are not proactively protecting, enhancing and growing our own individual property rights, but rather a reactive, defensive “strategy” of trying to protect and preserve an ever decreasing pool of mostly entitlements and public subsidies.

This is why I propose and support the revamping of public education here in urban communities. If we move education to a global reality then we will be prepared to build a legacy for our grandchildren and beyond.

We need to open the doors of educational options as well as teaching (not indoctrinating) our children to become global citizens. Part of that global initiative is financial literacy to create future entrepreneurs. Teaching our children that they are scholars, not thieves, and giving them a sense of ownership of their education will move our community in the right direction. We must be in the business of giving our children a hand up not a hand out.

When we utilize the power of financial literacy it then should practically link itself to viable strategies for true economic empowerment and ownership in urban communities.

Education is paramount to the development of our community. There are MANY candidates who are running for office (both this year and next year) who will walk up to me and say, “I support charter schools.” My next question to them is why? 95% of the time I cannot get a serious answer from them. When I talk about educational reform I am not just talking about lifting the cap off charter schools or supporting the efforts of the Emergency Financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb but creating an actual revolution in the educational movement.

You cannot create a silver rights movement in Detroit without revolution. It does not matter how much reform we do in education if you are not about changing the culture in our community then we are doing nothing but wasting time.

The culture must change in a silver rights framework. 1 out of 3 Black men in the City of Detroit has been incarcerated. These young men are bringing that prison culture into the streets of Detroit. This is why you see our young men sag their pants, all tattooed up and cannot speak English. You ever wondered why our women are doing the same thing? It’s not because women are coming out of prison at high alarming rates but because women are a reflection of men. When you break down the man in the culture you also breakdown the family unit.

This educational fight is fought on three levels in the silver rights movement. The first level is establishing the culture. We fight and eliminate this ghetto culture in poverty-stricken areas by creating a COUNTERCULTURE. Social conservatives MUST take the lead on this creation. We have to make education “cool” and “sexy” to retain our student population.

The second level is raising the bar on education. We are global citizens not just American citizens. We belong to the world community. Therefore, we must teach our children that they too are global students. When we teach our students to (1) believe in God, (2) believe in yourself so you can believe in your goals and ambitions and (3) believe in people they will go far. We do not do business with companies, governments, or organizations; we do business with people.

The third level is developing stakeholders. Our students and parents must support an institution of change that helps to create a community of stakeholders. When you develop a community of stakeholders you create an atmosphere of ownership. I often tell my candidates running for office that if the home ownership rate in a particular area is 35 percent, what do you think the voter turnout rate will be? We do not need a voter turnout drive per se (unless it is for a specific cause). We need more homeowners. When we have a homeowner, we have enlightened self-interest. They care because they have invested.

When you have a homeowner, you have got a policeman on the block. When you have a homeowner, you have a taxpayer. It is not a miracle; it is common sense. It is enlightened self-interest.

When you have a homeowner, you have a potential venture capitalist. Why? Because when you have a home, you build equity. If you want to start a business, and the bank turns you down, you approve yourself and get a home equity loan, and invest in your own business. You become your own scholarship and send your own child to whatever four-year college you want. You become a stakeholder. Our children are stakeholders in the very school they attend. We have to teach this message from K-16 education. Our job is to eradicate poverty.

So if we want to make a change, we have to do something really difficult. We have to work together to find common ground in urban communities. Our communities are fundamentally underserved. What I mean is places like Inkster, Michigan and Benton Harbor, Michigan do not have a grocery store within the city limits. Some areas like Muskegon Heights do not have a Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid. Some urban communities lack gas stations, entertainment, basic things that are hard to find in lower-income communities. Serving them will make them community stakeholders.

We have to view Michigan’s inner-cities as opportunities, as communities of promise. The Democratic Party exploits the urban community with entitlements and the GOP NEVER campaign or fully understand the importance of utilizing urban communities. I have never understood the strategy of trying to win a statewide election in Michigan without the inclusion of the urban communities.

Because of the lack of education we pass down bad habits from generation to generation. When will we stop blaming poverty on the poor? Poverty has nothing to do with the lack of money. It is the spirit of hopelessness. When will we stop blaming people with good intentions? Of course, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. But to suggest that Democrats or Republicans are devils, the rhetoric might be winning the battle, but it is losing the war. This is why I push for political balance in Detroit and other urban areas in Michigan. We need representation on both sides of the aisle representing urban issues.

I have had on occasion to advise certain city, county and state legislators who are my friends that calling the Mayor, County Executive, Governor or even President names is probably not the best way to get him or her to sign your legislation. Better to assume that people have the best intentions, but may not know the right way to go about achieving the desired outcome. That is the most practical way to get somebody to work with you.

We must understand that the inner cities of Michigan are tomorrow’s new markets. The new frontiers of capitalism are Michigan’s underserved communities. In the urban communities where people are making less than $25,000 a year are not dumb, and they are not stupid. They are uninformed or misinformed. It’s what they don’t’ know, that they don’t know, that is killing them. These communities are today’s slums and tomorrow’s gold mines. Right below our feet is the next frontier of new markets. These are green communities that have been underserved for a long time. These are communities that people can create with a vision.

You cannot discuss entrepreneurship without discussing education from a global perspective. Ethnic diversity is not a goody-two-shoes issue. Diversity is a business issue. Therefore, we need to be diverse in our approach to creating solutions.

Obama’s Real Religion: Politics

By Deneen Borelli

Judging by his actions, it seems President Obama’s true spiritual devotion lies more with to politics than religion.  Religious institutions apparently only present a prominent forum for him to enhance his reputation.  
 
Under the tutelage of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama must have learned how even a professed servant of the Lord can put politics over Christianity.  Wright’s sermons were not limited to God, love and mercy.  Instead, “black liberation theology,” a concoction that mixed faith with radical hatred, political rhetoric and victimization, spewed from the pulpit masquerading as religion.
 
When Wright became an issue during the presidential campaign, Obama quickly distanced himself from the controversial minister.  Obama claimed he didn’t know the extent of Wright’s radicalism despite being a member of the church for 20 years.  
 
In an instant, Obama’s religious bedrock was split, crushed and swept away.
 
Wright’s church, with its huge congregation, presented Obama with a weekly opportunity to meet, greet and campaign.
 
The Obama’s still have yet to find a new congregation.
 
More recently, Obama’s speech at Georgetown University raised controversy about the President and religion.  Prior to Obama’s arrival, the Catholic university honored a White House request to cover up prominently displayed Christian symbols.  A Georgetown official told CNSNews that “The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches…”   
 
This week, Obama is supposed to give the commencement address at Notre Dame — another Catholic institution.  The invitation is controversial because Obama is an ardent supporter of abortion and embryonic stem cell research — positions that are in direct conflict with Catholic theology.  Outrage over the invite generated an online petition that gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures opposing Obama’s invitation, an award recipient declining an honor scheduled to be made at the same ceremony and the potential loss of future charitable donations to the school.
 
Just last week, Obama’s decision to skip National Day of Prayer activities caused yet another stir. Obama issued an official proclamation, but he skipped all public observances of the annual prayer and breakfast celebrations — the first president in 18 years to do so.
 
By avoiding a religious theme at the White House, perhaps Obama is demonstrating a literal separation of church and state.  
 
Since his election, Obama has only attended church services on his Inauguration Day and Easter Sunday.  The former was part of the official Inauguration ceremony and the latter was a major religious holiday that some believe was done more to save face than observe faith.
 
Theses observations illustrate Obama’s apparent devotion to the piety of political opportunity. Religious institutions and occasions seem to offer only a colorful stage for media attention.
 
Given Obama’s track record it’s not surprising that possibly his most direct religious statement as president has been his declaration that “we are not a nation of Christians.”

Deneen Borelli is a fellow for the Project 21 black leadership network.  Comments may be sent to DBorelli@nationalcenter.org.

Obama’s Energy Policy

Driven by Ideology, not Reason

by Tom Borelli

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Recent news stories asserting that President Obama’s interest in pursuing cap-and-trade legislation is dwindling are premature. These media accounts make too much of rumors that Obama is backing away from auctioning 100 percent of carbon emissions credits and the Administration’s only tepid support of proposed global warming legislation authored by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

In reality, sketchy plans and letting Congress take the lead is classic Obama.

Recall that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote the stimulus bill and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s initial bank bailout plan was panned for lacking details.

What Obama lacks in leadership, substance and management skills, he more than makes up for with rhetoric and ideological zeal. Time and again Obama shows he will use his power to drive the left-wing agenda without regard to economic consequences or loss of liberty. Moreover, with the liberal holy grail of penalizing fossil fuel use in his grasp, it’s doubtful Obama will shy away.

Obama’s dealings with General Motors provide ample evidence that his strident left-wing beliefs supersede sound economic judgment. With GM, Obama is leveraging bailout money to shape the automobile industry according to the designs of the environmental lobby.

Soon after Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagner, the Administration announced it was overriding the recommendation of the president’s own auto task force by deciding to move forward with the Chevy Volt – the company’s electric car.

But it’s no secret that the Volt is going to be a financial loser.

In its March 30 report on the viability of GM, the auto task force said “…while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term.”

GM’s new CEO Fritz Henderson acknowledges that vehicles based on first generation technology such as the Volt will not be profitable. In an interview with Automotive News, Henderson commented on the Volt saying, “…the cost is high. And that means, it doesn’t necessarily pay the rent. It actually consumes rent when it’s launched.”

The political agenda behind the decision to sell the Volt was highlighted by an analyst at the Center for Automotive Research, who said, “But the Obama administration has put such a high priority on the electrification of the vehicle that it would be a very difficult policy decision to drop the Volt.”

With politics driving decisions, it was not surprising to see Obama use $285 million of the $787 billion stimulus package to order over 17,000 fuel-efficient vehicles from GM, Ford, and Chrysler, including 2,500 hybrids.

The White House, keeping to its global warming theme, hyped that the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions will “… prevent 26 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.”

Similarly, Obama is ignoring market reality in his quest to significantly increase use of renewable energy. Recent decisions by oil giants British Petroleum (BP) and Shell makes it clear that carbon-based fossil fuels are the most efficient way to power our economy.

Not long ago both companies sought to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility by touting their commitments to renewable energy. BP’s high profile “Beyond Petroleum” advertising campaign was designed to emphasize its pledge to alternative fuels.

Shell is now refusing to invest additional resources in wind and solar power and BP – going back to its petroleum roots – cut its investments in renewable energy.

In fact, these companies are now looking to meet future energy needs by investing in Canadian oil sands – a carbon-rich source of energy that emits more carbon dioxide than does conventional oil.

After dabbling in political correctness, energy companies recognize that wind and solar alternatives don’t make economic sense.

The reason for this was made by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who wrote in a Newsweek commentary that “Strictly from a physicist’s perspective, burning oil for fuel can be understood.” Translation: fossil fuels are an efficient energy source.

Physics and economics aside, energy companies are on a collision course with Obama’s political directive to “make the U.S. a leader on climate change” and “save our planet from the ravages of climate change…”

Enter global warming legislation.

As John Deutch, former director of the CIA and a professor at MIT said, “The important thing is for the government to establish a carbon policy. You can be absolutely confident that oil companies will pursue that, as will any other companies.”

The best way for Obama to achieve the liberal nirvana of electric cars, wind and solar energy is through the brute force of government intervention via cap-and-trade legislation. Alternatives only become cost effective when the cost of traditional energy sources are increased.

Obama reiterated his unyielding support of cap-and-trade in a recent speech on the economy, saying “But the only way to truly spark this transformation is through a gradual, market-based cap on carbon pollution, so that clean energy is the profitable kind of energy… If businesses and entrepreneurs know today that we are closing this carbon pollution loophole, they will start investing in clean energy now.”

If Obama is willing to mandate that GM – a company on the verge of bankruptcy – sell a financial loser for the cause, he will not abandon the opportunity to regulate carbon emissions regardless of the economic costs.

With Obama, it’s policy by ideology; not reason.

Obama, the Pickens Plan and the Potential Fire Next Time

 

By Deneen Borelli
March 25, 2009

In July of 1967, Detroit and Newark were bathed in fire and blood.  Anguished and hurt, people in poor and minority communities in these cities had had enough of crippling policies foisted on them by the ruling political establishment.  They stood up and screamed for change.

In the collective melees, 66 died, 1,914 were injured and around 8,500 people were arrested.

It was an uprising against police brutality.  It was an uprising against poverty.  And it was an uprising against urban renewal and the government’s abuse of eminent domain.

Meant to acquire land for public projects, eminent domain was used as a sledgehammer against blacks rather than a scalpel on behalf of the community.  Neighborhoods were torn asunder so others didn’t have to see “slums.”

Back then, this sort of urban renewal was derisively called “negro removal.”  Today, it could be repeated by the “Pickens Plan.”

You’ve probably seen T. Boone Pickens on television.  He’s the Texas billionaire promising to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by building windmills.  He pleads with us to take his word for it that his plan will work and that we should hurry to build wind turbines across middle America.

But the devil is always in the details, and acting without caution risks repeating the injustices that sparked the 1967 riots.

The Pickens Plan calls for wind farms in places such as Texas and the Dakotas, with power supplied to cities through a massive new network of power lines.  Pickens wistfully compares this proposed power grid to the interstate highway system.

That’s the problem.

When the 46,000-mile interstate highway system was built to move the privileged between cities and to their new homes in the suburbs, planners paid little mind to the property rights of those living in the way of their idea of progress.

Historian Raymond A. Mohl noted that roadbuilding in the early 1960s dislocated 33,000 people a year.  By 1969, that number was up to 200,000 annually.

Some saw these new roads as a tool to pave over black communities already in decline.  In Detroit, it was Paradise Valley – also known as “Black Bottom.”  In Newark, it was the Central Ward.

New power lines for the Pickens Plan would run 12,650 miles.  Where will those lines run?  More than likely through communities that have the least political power to oppose them.

Washington, D.C.’s poor Anacostia neighborhood certainly won’t get the preferential treatment that residents of Middleburg, Virginia did.  A newly-announced power line near there was designed to go around Civil War battlefields and the estates of horse country’s rich and famous.

Pickens will also likely profit from his plan, despite his downplaying it, thanks to our tax dollars.  Wind energy projects benefit from a federal subsidy known as the Production Tax Credit (PTC).

Pickens’ Mesa Power company once hoped to spend $10 billion dollars on a 2,700-turbine wind farm in Texas.  According to a report by the National Center for Public Policy Research, “Pickens’ firm stands to receive between $1.66 billion and about $3 billion in PTC payments alone over ten years, a significant portion of its original investment.”

When oil prices fell, however, so did interest in the Pickens Plan.  Mesa Power is now scaling back its wind farm proposal.

But Pickens seems to have the ear of President Obama.  In his February congressional address, Obama promoted wind power over the fossil fuels currently accounting for the overwhelming percentage of America’s energy production.  This would give new and unnatural life to the Pickens Plan.

It will be a true test of Obama’s administration as to whether it will look out for and protect the property rights of people in the communities that supported and prayed for him, or if he will risk more of the racial strife he says he wants to overcome to help big business interests.

If Obama sides with Pickens, he won’t be delivering the kind of change that people voted for.

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Deneen Borelli is a fellow for the Project 21 black leadership network.  Comments may be sent to DBorelli@nationalcenter.org. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21 or the National Center for Public Policy Research.

The Anti-Stimulus Plan


The Obama budget ignores the economic crisis.
By Yuval Levin
Posted: Monday, March 16, 2009


ARTICLE
Weekly Standard -- Volume 014, Issue 25  
Publication Date: March 9, 2009

Last September, during the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Obama what the growing economic crisis would mean for his policy ambitions: “What are you going to have to give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan?” Obama’s answer was so evasive that Lehrer asked him if he really meant to say that essentially nothing would change.

Over the past two weeks, we have seen something of a reiteration of that answer in practice. Obama indeed meant that no part of his agenda would be given up to pay for the economic recovery. On the contrary, recovery efforts will be undercut in favor of the new administration’s sweeping liberal ambitions.

The stimulus plan enacted last month came under fire for its many flaws and excesses. But the debate about the plan was a debate about how best to stimulate the economy. Both sides essentially called for throwing money at the public; the Democrats preferred vast new government spending and the Republicans deep if temporary tax cuts. Both sought to use the crisis to advance their preferred political vision, but both sought to do so in ways addressed to some of the real economic problems at hand.

The Democratic plan that was signed into law was an incoherent wasteful mess, but it is likely to stimulate the economy some. It could be (as it often was) sold as something like the New Deal: an ambitious and ideologically laden response to a genuine economic crisis.

But the Obama administration’s proposed 2010 budget, unveiled just a week after the stimulus plan was signed into law, cannot be advanced on such grounds. It is certainly ambitious and certainly ideologically laden, but it is not a response to the economic crisis. Rather, it denies the crisis and complicates the effort to combat it.

The budget offers an audacious array of technocratic initiatives aimed at transforming the relationship between Americans and their government and moving the country in the direction of European social democracy. It sets the stage for a vastly expanded federal role in the health insurance market–as one “option” among many to begin with, but with the help of price controls and the power to set rules of entry guaranteed to soon be the reigning, if not the only, option. It puts the federal government in command of a complex scheme of carbon-emission taxes and credits. It opens the way for a significantly increased federal role in education (including higher education).

These programs are not directed at the economic emergency, but are instead unrelated, enormous policy initiatives. They are not akin to the New Deal but to the Great Society initiatives of the mid-1960s, which were the outcome of a progressive worldview that wanted to change the character and role of government in American life. But the Great Society was not enacted in the midst of an economic crisis. It came in the middle of a lengthy and sustained period of growth and prosperity and was in part understood as a way to make use of the tax revenues flooding federal coffers. The kind of ambitious expansion of government Obama envisions requires similar economic growth.

Watching the market these days, and listening to economists’ predictions (not to mention the president’s own dire speeches before the enactment of the stimulus bill), you might think such growth is exceedingly unlikely in the short term. But the Obama budget simply assumes it will happen: predicting the economy will begin a sustained expansion this year and grow by 3.2 percent in 2010, 4 percent in 2011, and 4.6 percent in 2012.

Yet even as it assumes such a prompt and thorough recovery, the budget plants obstacles in its path. It raises taxes by a trillion dollars on the 2.5 million or so American taxpayers who earn above $200,000 a year (or $250,000 for a couple), and a further $646 billion through a proposed cap-and-trade system that, as administration officials have acknowledged, will be paid by all Americans through higher electricity bills.

The budget will double the national debt held by the public by 2015, and by 2019 the White House predicts that debt will equal 67 percent of the country’s GDP (up from last year’s 41 percent). Such spending ambitions send a signal about future tax and interest rates that can only depress investment.

And, most important, as it lays out its ambitious agenda, the Obama administration is doing little about the source of the economic calamity we confront: the banking and credit crisis. The budget includes a placeholder for further action but no particulars, and those have not been forthcoming from elsewhere so far. Amazingly, six weeks and two vast legislative proposals into his administration, the president has not said what action he will take to address the bad debt that has turned some of our largest banks into dead men walking and continues to debilitate our economy.

This combination of counter-productive action and baffling inaction only unnerves investors and is deeply anti-stimulative. The administration appears to have decided to look past the economic crisis and start spending the windfall of the coming recovery, even if that spending comes at the expense of the recovery itself.

– Yuval Levin is the Hertog fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and senior editor at the New Atlantis magazine.

Special Election Notice!!!!!!!!!

You Can Shock President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid on March 31! A Special Election Will Stun Washington. Read More Below Dear Reader: In just two weeks you can send a powerful message to Congress, the Senate, President Obama – and even the coddling liberal media. You can express your outrage over President Obama’s plan to increase taxes by more than $1 trillion in the middle of an economic crisis! You can send a powerful message to Obama and the Democrats who control the House and Senate that you OPPOSE their new, wild federal spending programs – and the trillions of dollars of federal debt that they are placing on you and your families for generations to come. Here’s how you can send this powerful message – one that will shock Washington. On March 31 – just weeks from now – there is a Special Congressional Election in the 20th District of New York. This district includes Albany and the area just north of New York City. Voter registration shows that the district leans Republican. This seat was recently vacated by Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand who resigned to be appointed to the U.S. Senate. That position opened after Hillary Clinton resigned to become Obama’s secretary of state. Polls now show that the Republican can actually win this district! There is huge dissatisfaction with the Democrats and Obama – even voters in liberal New York are getting fed up. The Republicans have picked Jim Tedisco as their candidate. Jim is a solid conservative on both fiscal and social issues. As the New York Assembly Republican leader, Jim Tedisco waged lonely battles against New York’s dangerous liberal policies – policies that have turned the state into an economic basket case. Jim also has – against all odds – won some big battles. It was Jim Tedisco who led the fight against Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s insane plan to issue New York State driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Imagine allowing potential terrorists to easily get driver’s licenses. Jim Tedisco rallied county clerks and elected officials to force Spitzer to abandon this naïve and dangerous plan. If Jim Tedisco wins, I believe the Democrats in Congress, including many “Blue Dog Democrats,” will be shocked and scared. We want to urgently help elect Jim Tedisco – Click Here Now. If conservative Jim can win the New York congressional seat recently held by Democrat Gillibrand, this will strike a massive blow to the claim that swing voters are really backing Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid. This is why Obama and the Democrats in Washington are pouring everything they have into this race to keep this seat Democratic. The Democratic bosses even picked a multimillionaire named Steve Murphy as their candidate. Murphy, a big backer of liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer, is already putting big bucks into his own race. But many voters in his district are appalled. Murphy is a Wall Street executive who made millions by shipping U.S. jobs to India. Now Murphy wants to buy a seat in Congress. By stopping Murphy and the Democrats in this congressional district, we can help stop more phony “stimulus” programs, stop higher taxes, stop Eric Holder’s plan to ban our guns, stop card check for unions, and stop Obama’s plan to legalize 12 million illegal aliens. We can win this one and stop Obama’s plans. The public polls show Murphy right on the heels of Tedisco, with Tedisco holding a narrow lead. The polls also show that if all Republicans and conservative-leaning Democrats and independents come out to vote in this Special Election, Tedisco will win. New York Gov. David Paterson even called the election for March 31 in the hopes that Republicans can’t get organized in time to compete with the well-oiled political machinery of the unions and the notorious left-wing community group ACORN in turning out votes for Murphy. Help us stop these liberal groups – Click Here Now. The Working Families Party (WFP), which has endorsed Murphy, is directly affiliated with ACORN, the left-wing community organization charged with voter-fraud in last years presidential election. ACORN is notorious for phony voter registrations, multiple voting, and other voter fraud tactics. Left-wing organizer Bertha Lewis, who is directing the field effort by the WFP to elect Murphy, sits on the ACORN board. ACORN and the WFP are funded by the exact same left-wing unions, and they intend to deliver for Scott Murphy. Republicans are bracing for millions of dollars to be spent on behalf of Murphy as ultra-liberal special interest groups like the Moveon.org PAC, Pelosi’s Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and 1199: the National Health Care Workers’ Union, all pour money into this New York district. But I have little doubt we can still win this election. That’s where you and The National Republican Trust come in. We at The National Republican Trust are mounting a major effort to alert Republicans and conservatives that this vital Special Election is on March 31. It is urgent for them to vote in order to send President Obama a message and send shock waves across the country. Again – the polls show Republican Jim Tedisco will win if every Republican votes! This will have repercussions well beyond the borders of New York. Send a shockwave to Washington – support our efforts – Click Here Now. The National Republican Trust is preparing hard-hitting television ads to make sure voters know this crucial contest is between conservative Republican Jim Tedisco and liberal Democrat Steve Murphy is on March 31. We urgently need your help to puts these hard-hitting commercials on the air. We can’t out-spend the liberals. With Barack Obama in the White House they have unlimited funds to pour into the 20th District. But we can reveal the truth. And truth has much more power than the spin and distortions the Democrats are offering. With your help we hope to launch a sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort to reach every Republican household and identify those conservative Democrats and independents who agree with us, and make certain they turn out and vote for Jim Tedisco. Make no mistake about it, the union bosses, ACORN, the anti-gun lobby, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic national establishment will each be pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars – if not millions – into their efforts to elect liberal Murphy. One local newspaper speculated that the liberals and unions would spend as much as $1.5 million to win this contest in order to avoid embarrassing President Obama with a stunning defeat. That’s why you and I must act TODAY – Click Here Now. With just weeks before this showdown Special Election, we must move immediately to make sure that the Republican majority in this district know how high the stakes are. They must know the difference between proven conservative Jim Tedisco, with a 25-year record as a solid conservative leader, and Wall Street fast-talker Steve Murphy who tries to sound conservative but who is beholden to Nancy Pelosi, the AFL-CIO, and the liberal special-interest groups. Please consider making a contribution to The National Republican Trust so that we can begin a well-organized effort to get every Republican and Republican-leaning independent out to vote to win this seat. Let’s demonstrate to the liberal media that the Republican Party and the ideals of Ronald Reagan – fiscal conservatism, patriotism, and common sense – are not dead! Believe me when I tell you that Jim Tedisco’s election is the first step in taking back Republican control of the Congress in 2010 and ousting Obama from the White House in 2012. The hour is late. We must move immediately to launch our effort to turn back the tide and take the first small step towards winning back the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012 before Obama and his liberal cohorts destroy this country. Please contribute to this urgent cause – Click Here Now. The National Republican Trust needs your help to win. Jim Tedisco, a solid conservative leader, needs your help and America needs your help. Please let me hear from you today – Click Here Now. Thank you. Yours for America, Scott Wheeler Executive Director P.S. At a time when liberal talking heads like Chris Matthews Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are saying the Republican Party is dead, we have a unique opportunity to prove they are wrong and wipe the smile off their smug liberal faces! I hope to hear from you today. Please donate to us today – Click Here Now.

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Beating Back Obamanomics

It’s raining, pouring, economic fallacies by the hour, followed by a flood of horrible policy that is driving us ever further into economic depression. The regime in charge has really gone nuts, revealing itself as both deeply ignorant and horribly evil.

We find ourselves facing the horror of what has always been the Achilles heel of the left wing: its abysmal ignorance of economic science. The ideological tendency has gone from Keynesianism to outright socialism in a matter of a few weeks.

And the trajectory seems to be accelerated mainly by the logic of the interventionist cycle: bad policy leads to bad results that are addressed through bad policy, and so on, straight down the fast track to serfdom. Obama’s attachment to “transparency” — the buzzword of the day — allows all intelligent people to observe the sickening sight in real time, and to the cheers of the kept class of intellectual phonies like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.

The encouraging thing — and perhaps this too was inevitable — is that the right wing is getting its act together. It has suddenly discovered that economics matters. You can cheer on the hot wars, fight the culture wars, and crack down on political dissidents all you want. But in the end, what makes for the good society is a sound economy. Without it, all the rest falls apart.

Thus all our favorite conservatives are starting to make sense. The American Spectator is alarmed. Rush Limbaugh sounds like LRC. The American Conservative has temporarily dropped its love of protectionism to warn of dollar inflation. The love of war has gone AWOL at National Review. The Heritage Foundation is warning that government spending and taxation are driving us to ruin. Pat Buchanan is defending the free market!

Where were these people during the last eight years of Bush’s misrule? Asleep or seeking preferment or something. It’s not as if Obama caused this crisis; he is only making it worse. In any case, the Right has begun to turn to the side of truth and justice, precisely as they did during Clinton’s rule, and this is all to the good, in general.

But just in case we are observing yet another expedient shift, it might be a good idea to understand precisely why socialism is a bad idea. The Obama administration doesn’t seem to get it. And there is plenty to get. Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration.

People have made those points for hundreds of years. Somehow, and for whatever reason, many people rejected these critics. No, they said, all of this sounds plausible, but you don’t understand how the sheer glory of the socialist ideal, with perfect equality and social justice, will bring about a new sense of things. Mankind will be inspired to share, create, work, and obey by the astonishing emergence of a completely new form of social organization.

Ludwig von Mises in 1920, however, added something special and new to the critique of socialism. He said that socialism in all its forms cannot accommodate any economic development beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. And the reason has to do with the socialist attack on the ownership and exchange of capital goods. Without ownership, there is no exchange, and so prices do not emerge. Here is his 1920 essay, which says it all.

Without market prices for capital goods, accounting is not possible. You don’t know if you are making money or losing money, saving resources or wasting them, doing the right thing or not doing the right thing. Think of all the decisions that have to be made on the production end that require you to know whether you are wasting resources or not. With steel, do you make more buildings or trains? Or do you make cutlery or computers? Or cars or cables?

You can’t just rely on assessing consumer demand. The demand for stuff is infinite. What matters are choices in light of foregone alternatives. These can’t be discerned with polls or intuition. What matters here is the weighting of all alternative uses of resources. They can only be worked out in real time, in light of the choices of consumers and the profitable production decisions of producers.

None of this is possible if you don’t have real market prices providing the real stuff that makes cost accounting possible. Collectivize property and you abolish the market for capital goods. No prices emerge. Every choice you make is arbitrary. There is no more rationality remaining. You just end up groping around in the dark.

No socialist has ever been able to provide an answer to Mises’s devastating point. And why? Because no socialist has seriously thought through how their cockamamie system would work. Lenin used to say, oh whatever, just run the whole economy the same way the post office is run. But notice: the post office has a problem with innovation, pricing, cost accounting, and making ends meet. Its only source of life comes from the competition provided by private competitors. The post-officeization of the entire economy would mean a return to barbarism.

Mises’s illustration of the failure of socialism provides a fantastic means to discover what is right about markets and wrong about all forms of collectivized economic planning. It shows what happens when you nationalize banks and credit. But it also shows what is wrong with all bureaucracies.

Mises put all his criticism together in a single book, a book that remains the definitive refutation of the entire intellectual apparatus of socialism. It is a classic, a must-read, a treasure for all ages. To read it is to be amazed. It has changed the minds of millions of people since it appeared in 1922. It is the one book that utterly crushes the economic agenda of the Left, revealing what fools they really are.

Mises’s point has also been a fruitful one for further theorizing about all forms of collectivism. See, for example, Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.

And look: it’s not as if socialism is a new idea. It was tried in the 20th century. It produced economic stagnation and despair. In its purest form, it extinguished more than one hundred million people. That’s why The Black Book of Communism must be owned and read and understood by every thinking person. It is the most terrifying book you will ever read. It is a standing rebuke to any living soul who claims that economic understanding doesn’t matter.

Take this seriously: it is where the Obama tendency is leading us.