Robert Tracinski skewers some libertarians for the socialism in their heads, but still misses why it's there

Here, chalking it all up to "unexamined collectivist assumptions" and mistakenly allowing "a little dominion of socialism over their thinking" and the left "trying to preserve that territory they own in your head" through various schemes like the estate tax.

In other words, they're insufficiently indoctrinated. You know, like all those intractable Russians who were sent to the Gulag for nothing more than mistakenly expressing incorrect thoughts.

It never dawns on Tracinski that ideology is a coin with socialism on the one side and libertarianism on the other.

The article is amusing because the "conservatives" he skewers for being insufficiently libertarian are or were aligned with the left and leftism: Charles Murray (former labor unionist, six years in the Peace Corps, "rebel"), Ronald Reagan ("I didn't leave the Democratic Party . . ."), Stuart Butler of health mandate infamy (Brookings), Milton Friedman (FDR functionary) and Megan McArdle (self-described former "ultraliberal").

With the example of McArdle on the estate tax before him, one might have hoped that Tracinski had stumbled into the origin of the socialism in our heads, but no, "there is no such collective entity as 'society.'"

The man wishing to leave his estate to that little society called his family might have begged to differ.

Rupert Murdoch abandoned Australia for our country, lies about H-1B visas, and calls us the nativists

What else would a traitor to his own do and say?

The POS, here:

"Next, we need to do away with the cap on H-1B visas, which is arbitrary and results in U.S. companies struggling to find the high-skill workers they need to continue growing. We already know that most of the applications for these visas are for computer programmers and engineers, where there is a shortage of qualified American candidates. But we are held back by the objections of the richly funded labor unions that mistakenly believe that if we keep innovation out of America, somehow nothing will change. They are wrong, and frankly as much to blame for our stalemate on this issue as nativists who scream about amnesty."

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The only shortage of workers in America is of the kind which will take the same pay as a cheaper foreign import. The libertarian idea which has infected the Republican Party is best observed in the person of Rupert Murdoch and his many properties such as Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the NY Post.

If Harry Reid Is Protesting Unlimited Money In Politics, You Know He Must Mean His Own

Kimberley Strassel for The Wall Street Journal, here:

Mr. Reid was quite agitated on the Senate floor about "unlimited money," by which he must have been referring to the $4.4 billion that unions had spent on politics from 2005 to 2011 alone, according to this newspaper. The Center for Responsive Politics' list of top all-time donors from 1989 to 2014 ranks Koch Industries No. 59. Above Koch were 18 unions, which collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries ($18 million). Even factoring in undisclosed personal donations by the Koch brothers, they are a rounding error in union spending. ...

[I]n addition to a system in which organized labor spends "unlimited money" to "rig the system to benefit themselves" and "buy elections," (to quote Mr. Reid)[about the opposition], Mr. Obama's IRS has made sure to shut up anyone who might compete with unions or complain about them.

Democrats: The things they are for and against are the things they are against and for.

Blame The Yankees For The Minimum Wage: A Northern Tariff On The South

Doin' right ain't got no end

Jay Cost for The Weekly Standard, here:

Obama’s [State of the Union] address inadvertently referenced the government’s proclivity to play favorites. The minimum wage is a hallowed talking point for wealthy liberals posing as hardscrabble populists, but in fact its original purpose was to serve as a sort of domestic tariff. By 1937 Northern industries had come to terms with organized labor, but the South still resisted. Fearing a flight of capital to Dixie, it was Northern businessmen who made the difference in pushing a minimum wage through Congress.

Liberal Democrats had outsized majorities during this period of the New Deal, but Southerners controlled key choke points within the legislature, notably the House Rules Committee. It was only a broad coalition that included liberals, organized labor, and, crucially, Northern industrialists that brought the Fair Labor Standards Act to a vote on the floor. Unsurprisingly, the wage floor was set so low that only the South was really affected. And even then, it only passed after it was loaded up with exemptions for all sorts of politically privileged groups.

This decidedly inegalitarian back story of the minimum wage has mostly been lost to history. One would be hardpressed to find a book about the New Deal in Barnes & Noble that discusses this at any length. This is not a coincidence; advocates of bold, activist government want to forget all the inequalities it creates. So it is with Obama. His signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is one of the most grossly unfair pieces of legislation to become law in modern times. Underwritten by a logroll among elite interests as varied as the drug manufacturers and the feminist left, it is an enormous redistribution of wealth from the young to the old, the healthy to the sick, without due regard to socioeconomic status.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review Agrees Obama Is Essentially A Fascist

According to an editorial in Saturday's Pittsburgh Tribune Review, here, agreeing with John Mackey the CEO of Whole Foods, Obama is essentially a fascist. The editorial approvingly quotes this definition of fascism by libertarian Sheldon Richman:

“As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. For those with the hubris to think they, not free markets, could better serve society, ‘fascism‘ (or as we prefer, 'fascistic economics') was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone (classic) liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism.”

Just when you thought there's been no progress defining for the public who and what is Obama, a businessman and a newspaper provide some:

"The general parallels to Obamanomics are glaring. Throw in the specifics of ObamaCare — then consider forays into national industrial policy and state protection of organized labor cartels — and the parallels are blinding", the editorial says.

Not that America's odd mixture of socialism and capitalism is something new.

It was Herbert Hoover, as far as I know, who was the first liberal to identify the American phenomenon of a mixed economics. Hoover located it in the blended strongman presidency of FDR, which was based more on Roosevelt's admiration for Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler as leaders than it was on substantive convictions about the dismal science. The alphabet soup of government which we take for granted today is the direct descendant of Roosevelt's impulse to try something, try anything, until it worked. Well, they're still trying.

Under Roosevelt, perfectly good food was deliberately destroyed by government to keep it from reaching the market in order to support prices in a deflationary economy even as people went hungry all across the country. Today we deliberately devote half the corn crop to produce an expensive, politically correct fuel boosting the cost of food animals while the number of people on food stamps is at an all time high and consumer demand has fallen like a rock. In the immortal words of Curly, if at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed.

But Hoover the loser was on to something, even if calling the man who beat him an un-American dictator lover was beyond the pale for some people. History eventually proved Hoover right when FDR broke with American tradition dating from the founding by running for a third term, and then a fourth. It took until 1951 for the American people to wake up and put a stop to that, with the ratification of the 22nd Amendment. Some dictators are assassinated, others just end up in the circular file. In many ways, Roosevelt simply out-Hoovered Hoover's own liberalism. People forget that FDR ran on what amounted to a repudiation of Republican liberal economic interventionism in the economy, and promptly ramped it up beyond anyone's imagination after he was elected.

But the blended system in America surely began much earlier. We could dial it back probably all the way to Lincoln himself, which would be fitting if only because the current occupant of The White House who practices fascism goes to such great pains to style himself after him, the president who chose to make the principle of national union over sovereign States the new definition of America. That fact of working a revolution, of remaking the country, should trouble everyone who has an ounce of independence left flowing through his veins, which is what troubles so many people who hear Obama speak of transforming the country. For half of us, one such revolution was enough.

This year we might do well to reflect on a later example, however, seeing that it is the anniversary of the abolition of private banking 100 years ago. It's strangely coincidental. The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in 1913 by a fanatical progressive Presbyterian named Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who hated the encumbrances placed upon government by the constitutional order and wanted to forge a new world where nations disarmed, lived in peace and cooperated toward a common goal, with the US not at its then natural place, at the head. The Federal Reserve Act was passed in thoroughly partisan fashion by Democrats who had swept to power in the election of 1912 and rammed it through the Congress without Republican support. Their dollar then is now worth 4 cents.

If Woodrow Wilson doesn't yet remind you of Obama and ObamaCare, maybe its because after 100 years of the pernicious effects of American style fascism, you're just too poor to pay attention.

Blame Walmart For The Part-Timing Of America, And ObamaCare For Ramping It Up

From a very good story by the New York Times, reproduced here:

The rise of big-box retailers like Walmart . . . with their long operating hours and complex staffing needs, has contributed to the increase in part-timers.

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said when Walmart spread nationwide and opened hundreds of 24-hour stores in the 1990s, that created intense competitive pressures and prompted many retailers to copy the company’s cost-cutting practices, including its heavy reliance on part-timers.

Susan J. Lambert, an expert on part-time work and a professor of organizational theory at the University of Chicago, said the use of part-timers had also escalated because of the declining power of labor unions. “They set a standard for what a real job was — Monday through Friday with full-time hours,” she said. “We’ve moved away from that.”

ObamaCare will now put this part-timing trend into high gear as more and more employers seek to avoid ObamaCare's 30 hour rule, at which employers must provide a healthcare benefit. More and more employers are going to schedule people for up to 29 hours per week, and not one more.

If you read the full story excerpted above you'll wonder to yourself how $15,000 per year part-time earners are going to be able to afford to purchase healthcare at Obama's healthcare exchanges, especially since holding two part-time jobs is already impossible in the experience of most part-timers. The answer is they won't be able to afford to purchase insurance, and will be shuffled off to crappy care under Medicaid, which is going bust already.

The healthcare debacle in America is only just beginning, thanks to Obama and the Democrats.

US Gross Public Debt Grew Most Under Reagan, Least Under Truman Since WWII

The record of Ronald Reagan for increasing the US gross public debt is so bad in the post-war era it is a veritable outlier compared to everyone else.

It represents the price this country paid for hefty tax cuts at the same time defense spending was increased to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Conservatism as understood by Ronald Reagan was primarily anti-communist, not fiscal. This is more in keeping with the Democrat Party of the time which he abandoned as communist influence over it grew through the labor unions. Along with the rest of his record, it is arguable that Ronald Reagan out-liberaled the liberals in many respects, making the Republican Party the home of liberals while the Democrat Party got radicalized by the so-called progressives.

Maybe Mitt Romney had a good reason not to think of himself as a follower of Reagan back in the 1990s. This country could use a Republican in the mold of Eisenhower again to restore some credibility to the Republican Party from the fiscal side.

The 170 percent increase in the public debt metric over an 8 year period under Reagan makes his predecessor Jimmy Carter look almost moderate by comparison, who racked up a 40 percent increase in 4. And Bush The Younger was actually in the very mold of fiscally liberal Ronald Reagan, cutting Clinton's tax increases and increasing spending on The War On Terror as well as Drugs For Seniors. Bush The Younger's 99 percent increase in the debt over 8 years comes out to roughly 12.38 percent per year, but it must be remembered that some of Obama's emergency spending in early 2009 became part of Bush's fiscal record, which ended October 31, 2009, another price of electoral defeat. The winners write the history.

Harry Truman narrowly beats out his successor Dwight Eisenhower for being the king of fiscal rectitude, posting an 11 percent increase in the debt in 4 years with Ike logging 23 percent over 8 years.

The numbers on which I relied for the following come from usgovernmentdebt.us, but not for Barack Obama, for whom I relied on the very latest figures available from treasurydirect.gov, which regrettably go back only through 1993. The percentage average annual increase in the debt shown below is for illustration purposes only since the percentage increase in the debt is calculated from beginning of the fiscal period to the end, not for each individual year. Multiply by 4 or 8 to get the actual figure for the term of office (but shown values are rounded, and Obama's record will not be complete until October 31, 2013, over a year from now, in which case multiply by 3).

Reagan                     21.25 percent

Bush The Younger  12.38 percent

Nixon/Ford              11.75 percent

Obama                     11.64 percent

Bush The Elder       11.50 percent

Carter                      10.00 percent

Clinton                      4.50 percent

Kennedy/LBJ           4.38 percent

Eisenhower              2.88 percent

Truman                    2.75 percent

Over time, Republican presidents have averaged a 12 percent annual increase in the debt while in office, while Democrat presidents have averaged almost 6 percent per annum.

Neither record is good, but things are not what they seem in the Republican Party, so-called home of the fiscal conservatives. 

Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Favors Multinationals Over Sovereigns

If I didn't know better, I'd say fascism for Obama is merely a now worn out model for a grander scheme of global governance by elites who exercise that rule as staff of multinational corporations and think of themselves as citizens of the world.

From HuffPo, here:

[A] newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws. ...

[F]oreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings. ...

Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

Such foreign investment standards have also come under fire at home, from both conservative sovereignty purists and progressive activists for the potential to hamper domestic priorities implemented by democratically elected leaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by Congress in 1993, and a host of subsequent trade pacts granted corporations new powers that had previously been reserved for sovereign nations and that have allowed companies to sue nations directly over issues.

While the current trade deal could pose a challenge to American sovereignty, large corporations headquartered in the U.S. could potentially benefit from it by using the same terms to oppose the laws of foreign governments. If one of the eight Pacific nations involved in the talks passes a new rule to which an American firm objects, that U.S. company could take the country to court directly in international tribunals.

Public Citizen challenged the independence of these international tribunals, noting that "The tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as 'judges' and as advocates for the investors suing the governments," according to the text of the agreement.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism here is so beside herself she's wondering if Obama can be impeached over this.

Unions Fail to Get Falk as Dem. Nominee v. Walker in WI

Politico has the story here:

Despite his late entry into the race, Barrett held a wide lead in the polls, aided in part by higher name recognition. Falk acknowledged that fact while campaigning in Milwaukee on Monday, saying she has always been the underdog.

“I have been all along because Tom [Barrett] just ran for governor a year ago,” she said.

Barrett’s victory came despite organized labor’s best efforts against him. Most of the state’s unions – including the AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the SEIU and the United Food and Commercial Workers – endorsed Falk.


The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel shows here the beating the unions' candidate received at the hands of Barrett, who will face  energized Republicans who turned out massively for Walker yesterday in the pro forma Republican primary:

It's Organized Labor Unions That Are Violent, Not The Tea Party

Bill Frezza unloads on them here in the wake of the recent acts of Verizon sabotage:

According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research there have been 4,400 recorded acts of labor violence since 1991. The Teamsters lead the pack with 454, as one would expect from an organization once infiltrated by organized crime. The Teamsters have plenty of company, yet few offenders are called to account. In the Homestead tradition, law enforcement tends to melt away when a union goes on a rampage. Barely three percent of violent crimes committed by union members lead to an arrest or conviction.


Incidentally, damage to the Wisconsin State Capitol, occupied in the teachers' union showdown with Republican Gov. Scott Walker in February and March, is now estimated at about $270,000 according to this story.

The Party of Nyet in WI and IN Merits Universal Condemnation

So says Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor for The Detroit News, in a scathing editorial entitled "AWOL Dems Defy Ballot Box" for February 27, 2011, here:

AWOL Dems defy ballot box

NOLAN FINLEY

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

Democrats in those states, as in most others, were shellacked in legislative races last fall, giving Republicans majority control of their legislatures.

Republicans interpreted their overwhelming victories as a mandate to change the course of the states. Specifically, they set about undoing decades of laws put in place by Democrats to favor labor unions over taxpayers.

Instead of staying on the field to defend their positions, Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box — namely, the right to control policymaking.

Without the Democrats, the legislatures don't have the required quorums to pass budget measures, including cutting pay and benefits for public workers.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.