My Choice for President

Like many people the candidate I am backing has changed a couple of times. First I was behind Fred Thompson. When he exited I backed Rudy Guilliani. I pointed out in my post from yesterday that John McCain is not my candidate. Ironically some of the same people I criticized yesterday I agree with on the underlying arguments about McCain, not the made up ones though.

John McCain believes that large companies such as drug companies are to be demonized and has done so in multiple debates. Personally I don't trust drug companies either, but destroying them as he would do by allowing re-importation of drugs would do would harm our citizens more than help. Without profits there is no money or much reduced for research and development. We can't have this as our policy.

I am not totally sold on Mitt Romney either, but he stands a good bit ahead of McCain on economics in my book. I still don't get a good feeling about what he feels down in his gut. I would feel better about this if he would show us what that is. I believe his varied experience will be an asset to him. His experience in business and non profit orginizations will teach him that he has to surround himself with the best people in every are. His experience as govenor will teach him that he still has to make the tough decisions. He will need to draw on all of these to be a complete president.

Mike Huckabee is a non candidate to me. I think he is a good man with populist values. I smell a compassionate conservative.

Romney is the best candidate left in my estimation. That being said everything I wrote yesterday is important. If the candidate ends up being McCain I will proudly cast my vote for him. Even if he is not my perfect candidate he is head and shoulders better than any Democrat in their field.

Political Masturbation

OK we all know what masturbation is and being a family man no need to go further with any descriptions. It is a good analogy when I look at politics today. The individual feels self gratification but no actual good is done.

The left has been practicing this for years. Going back to Ronald Reagan who ever seems to be the leader of Republicans and conservative becomes responsible for anything bad that happens. They voted for Ralph Nader and effectively elected George W. Bush. Libertarians and other third parties do this as a matter of course. Their precious principles are massaged even if we end up with a much worse candidate. Ross Perot joined in and arguably elected Bill Clinton.

One political movement had been immune to this until now. Conservatives seemed principled even when a perfect candidate didn't exist. George W. Bush is not a perfect conservative, but has enjoyed conservative support. With candidate after candidate leaving the Republican race we are getting angry deluded conservatives. John McCain is the object of the vitriol. For the record I am not a McCain supporter. His record is being distorted horribly. I have heard he is in favor of a North American Union. I have heard he will raise taxes. I have heard he will open the borders. I have heard he will expand government. None of these things are true. I am not going to spend much time defending him because there are enough web sites doing that. and probably better than I could.

My problem is the anger. I have heard Glenn Beck say he would vote for Hillary rather than McCain. I have heard Rush Limbaugh quoted similarly. One of two people are going to be president. Either the Republican or the Democrat. Neither identity is known yet, but if McCain is the candidate on the right and Conservatives have a snit, either Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama will be the President of the US. That means judges that are clones of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, that means leftists in the cabinet, that means a friendly signature if a bill comes out that will nationalize health care and nearly 20% of the private economy.

If being a conservative means I have to go into a snit because Ronald Reagan isn't coming back to life, than count me out!!! I love the memory of Ronald Reagan, but we have to pick a current candidate not our ideal candidate. I wrote a piece a year ago outlining my perfect candidate and stated at that time that I knew that person didn't exist today. Get over it, vote the the person imperfect or not that most closely fits your vision of America.

A long time ago Bill Buckley was a lone voice for conservative values. I was very young but I don't remember reading that he voted for McGovern because a perfect conservative didn't exist. Slowly conservative values built a following. I was personally inspired to be a conservative by Jack Kemp. Many conservatives came to their belief by people like Newt Gingrich. These people spoke, persuaded, cajoled but one thing they didn't do was quit. They didn't take their ball and go home. They went on pursuading. Maybe some of our voices should put aside their egos and run for office. Senator Limbaugh? Congressman Beck? Govenor Hewitt? None of them have any plans to run. Maybe they should. We need some elected officials that can enunciate conservative values. There is a dearth of them right now. Maybe that is because there are so many other ways to make a living in politics without running. We need good men and women and we need them now. Your country needs you.

To my follow conservative, grow up, be adults and don't follow the tactics of the left wing 'netroots'.

Reset Assumptions

Lyndon Baines Johnson has left a lasting legacy. President Johnson passed the Great Society. He and his left wing comrades passed the legislation. Subsequent Presidents funded it. His lasting legacy has nothing to do with the legislation. The laws helped create the legacy. Keep in mind that many historians rank Johnson as one of the worst American presidents of all time. In my mind he is locked in a battle with Jimmy Carter, but that is another piece.

His legacy is resetting the assumptions we have about poverty and poor people in general. Until the Great society period we believed that poor people did not want to be on public support. We believed that government assistance was intended by the giver and the receiver to be temporary and lasting no longer than absolutely necessary. I don't say this to infer that all recipients want to be there. That would be nonsense. My intention here is to point out that today in 2008 many people in government now start out with the assumption that people considered poor are there forever and by no fault of their own, and more importantly there is nothing they can do about it.

Details of the much awaited economic stimulus package are being leaked. There is an agreement in principle on the provisions between the two parties and the White House. This tells me that the majority of those people believe these are the principles that will make the economy grow. of the estimated $150 billion in costs in the plan is is believed $100 billion will be in the form of tax 'rebates'. Why do I put that in quotes? Some of the recipients paid no taxes at all. You can't rebate what you never paid. Personally I will put mine into either savings or my kids college funds. I believe this will be fairly typical. No spending will occur at all. No major investment either. The assumption is that they should not be left out just because they didn't pay taxes. They are suffering so someone must help them. Prior to the Great Society that someone was believed to be family, friends and charity organizations. Now that someone is believed to be the federal government.

Another area where assumptions are clearly changed is in education. Before that period in history we believed that education was important, but not a right. You saved your money, you went into the military (by the way I don't consider military benefits to be in any way a giveaway, these brave men and women served valiantly for these benefits), or you worked for the University, or you worked your way through college. Personally I did receive loans, not government loans, but private loans. I didn't qualify for government guaranteed loans. The assumption is that education is so important that society has a compelling interest in nearly everyone going to college. Economically this injects a huge amount of investment into a sector of the economy, which there is little downside. if someone fails to get their degree there are very little consequences. it also allows Universities to build and expand regardless of budgets. Even though mass investments of government money have come in and continue to grow, the inflation of tuition continues unchecked. This actually makes sense. There is no competitive pressure on tuition. There is competition based on quality in certain programs, but none on price. The investor should require a better use of their money. A stockholder would, but our government does not. The results? We work on the assumption that if we cut back on government supplied loans and grants than poor people will not be educated. Somehow people were educated before all of this investment, but we believe the private sector would not rise to fill that void. This is a wrong assumption.

These assumptions changed for a couple of reasons. Once politicians found out that the more money and stuff you give out, the more votes you get. People found out that it is easier, not necessarily better but easier to subsist, than to go through the effort of excelling. One more thing, the longer we go on assuming people will not strive to excel, the farther away we will get from that ideal. Elections matter!!!

Walter Williams on the Subprime world

I have written my thoughts a couple of times on the subprime situation. Walter Williams today has a column on the subject. Since he is a brilliant economist and I am a schlub blogger I encourage all to read it.

Belief in Markets is neither Republican nor Democrat

We live in a relatively free society. We operate in a society which is run by markets. Some are tangible such as a stock market, or an auction that you may participate in. Others are less tangible, for example the housing market in your city.

It seems from watching politics that the only people that talk about the importance of markets is people of the Republican persuasion. It was not always this way, John F. Kennedy talked openly about the importance of markets.

As we come into a period of economic slowdown, it is important that all people regardless of party understand the importance of markets. Markets go up and then markets go down. This is natural. The idea that government can soften the swings of markets is an idea that is somewhat new, and I might add a fiction. As soon as you take an action that you think will fix a flaw in the market, you may influence something related that may be altogether destructive. The Federal Reserve cut its fed funds rate by 75 basis points. Obviously this is an attempt to spur economic activity. This may do exactly that. This may also cause inflation because making money more available may devalue the dollar. This is a perfectly proper action. This is an adjustment to spur private enterprise. We will see how it plays out but it is entirely appropriate.

The actions being discussed by Presidential candidates range from appropriate to downright destructive. For months candidates on the left have been discussing ways to soften the blow of the housing and banking downturns. They have discussed freezing Adjustable rate adjustments, they have discussed freezing forclosures. This of course would put even more pressure on an ailing banking industry. I have heard plans to outlaw sub-prime loans. This would be one of the most destructive actions I can think of. These loans are made to people with sub-par credit. Sub prime loans made to serious people with good reason to take this risk are perfectly appropriate. The extent that they were used was of course the reason for the problem. They were over sold by banks and over used by borrowers. Portraying these loans as predatory is wrong. It makes one party of a mutually agreed upon transaction a villain. People need to be serious about the actions they take with their money. By extension a bailout of these loans would also be destructive. The expectation would be that taking inappropriate risk and failing would be bailed out, and would reduce the seriousness that people would use in considering these loans.

The different packages for stimulus are also of concern. Many Democrats want tax rebates paid to people who did not pay taxes. This is nothing more than increased welfare. Much of the reason foreign investors don't trust the dollar is because of excessive spending. This would do nothing to improve this, in fact it would reinforce that opinion. Any stimulus package should consist of actions that increase investment that will create new jobs, expansion etc that would improve long term economic activity. Once again this is being proposed by Republicans. Democrats are proposing exclusively tax rebates. This would cause a one time blip of activity that would not sustain growth. From what we say with the previous rebates we saw most people paying down debt and saving the rebates. While solid behaviors, this does not spur economic activity.

Understanding markets is important and even vital for people that want to be our nations leaders. It should not be the exclusive province of one party. It has become that. Future expansion of our prosperity depends on serious consideration of economic policy, not goodies to the highest bidder as measured in votes.

The Religion of Change

Political observers love to talk about change. At any given time it seems that every non-incumbent politician calls him or herself the agent of change. In 2006 the Democrats came to power promising to be the party of change.

The 2008 political season began last night in Iowa. I am somewhat an outside observer, as I have no candidate I stand behind at this point. It seems like the caucus goers in Iowa bought the change argument by choosing Huckabee and Obama.

Change is very popular because surveys tell us all the time that people are not happy with the direction of the country. This is always misinterpreted to mean that the party in power is the reason. These same surveys usually tell us that they are happy with their own lives and mostly optimistic about their own future. What about this, then? We are a diverse people. While the parties are split fairly evenly with most people today identifying themselves as Democrats, the coalitions in the parties are very diverse. In any year a factory worker in the Midwest may describe himself as a Republican, but then a year or two later as a Democrat. The extremes of both parties are what is static. Someone who is interested in nationalizing health care, is always going to identify themselves as a Democrat. Someone whose top issue is anti abortion will nearly always be a Republican.

The middle is what changes. We as voters need to define what change means to us. The change that Barak Obama promises is very different than the change that Mike Huckabee will promise. Additionally change for change sake is not always good. After 2006 when the House and Senate Democrats promised change, and they did to a point. They accomplished very little, but passed a lot of non-binding resolutions detailing what they believed in. In each budget bill they still pass tons of earmarks, they push the military to the point of nearly running out of money, but of course don't have the courage to cut off funding for Iraq and Afghanistan even though their number one promise to their faithful is just that. So here we are in their second year, and very little real change. That is usually the case. The reason is simple. As soon as they take office they are the incumbent and have to start defending their position that they will have to run for in either two or six years forward. They then have to not offend anyone. At that point some other politician starts planning their campaign of change.

My advice, demand to know what change means to each politician planning it. Ask yourself, can this actually happen? The democrats promised to get our of Iraq. Did they have a change with a slim two vote majority in the Senate and a Republican President? Of course not. They promised to return to fiscal responsibility and fiscal transparency. Did they have a chance? Their entire platform depends on giving more services to the people. How can they do that and be fiscally responsible? Again no chance. My last advice, lets all be grown ups. If it sounds like someone in government promising to give you services, provided by government more efficiently than private enterprise and not raise your taxes, ask yourself if this is possible. On the other side, if a Republican tells you they can solve immigration problems in one term ask yourself if this is possible. They need to give us real plans, that have a chance to be enacted that will make the problems we face better. If they tell you they have a program to be administered by government that will solve our problems, ask them if they are selling the Brooklyn Bridge as well. You have as much chance of buying the bridge than those programs being passed and working.