Let's Protect Canadian Cheese !!

I've been going through some old stuff that I've saved for a few months and came across this gem of an essay that run in Industry Week a while back. 
The United States sugar industry has been protected (for various, ever-changing reasons) since the James Madison administration in 1816. 
Remember that when you get to the part about artisan Canadian cheese-makers ! 

This is good stuff.  From an economist named Brian Beaulieau. 

Canada and the European Union are on track to ratify a free-trade deal in 2015. Leaders in both countries expect the deal to be approved without a lot of resistance. The deal, called CETA, would eliminate tariffs on goods and provide for greater access of services both ways across the Atlantic. Some regulatory dismantling would also occur. Free trade with less regulation in Canada and the EU – that's great news if you are a cheerleader for the free market.

The estimate is that this deal would increase the current EU-Canada trade volume of €80 billion (aprox $109 billion) a year by 23%. Consummation of CETA would also mean that Canada is the only Group of Eight nation to have preferential access to the US and Europe, the two biggest consumer markets in theworld.

The European Commission estimates that up to a quarter of the economic benefits will come from eliminating regulatory barriers to trade. Reducing barriers sounds like a terrible idea to protectionists or to uncompetitive industries, but it fosters competition, efficiencies, and in the end, results in economic gains for consumers.

There's an old joke that I love that goes "If you don't go to other peoples' funerals, they won't go to yours." 
But seriously.....  If your citizens aren't allowed to buy other countries' goods and services, those countries aren't going to buy yours.  Protectionists just don't get it. 

There are those who would prefer that the protective barriers would continue. Canada's cheese industry is one such group. They state that Canada will lose its small, artisan local cheese makers as Europe's name-brand makers have easy access to their market. This is exactly the protectionist versus free market point. These small Canada cheese makers are not seeing the potential of access to a huge market; they fear that superior goods will take away market share.

The free market answer is to improve your quality and marketing and compete on a larger stage. If the local cheese makers truly produce an inferior product, why should they be protected from those who are better at their trade? The reality is most will probably improve their process, product and positioning, and in doing so be better entities because of this. That's the beauty of the free-market system; it pushes participants to new heights.

Go here to read about the Florida's Fanjul family and their (protected) sugar empire.  God has more competition than they do. 

The most destructive company in America is about to go bankrupt !!

Busybodies in the USA have spent the last 20 years weeping, wailing, and rending their garments because of the destructive impact of Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart supposedly kills downtown areas, they don't pay people "enough", and they purchase their merchandise from people of the wrong racial makeup. 
Progressive city councils pass legislation almost every day, trying to force Wal-Mart (and no other company) to pay higher wages, build smaller stores, and basically, stay away. 
They almost always fail. 

(Full Disclosure: I work for a company that makes display fixtures for grocery stores.  All grocery stores, not just Wal-Mart.  I've shipped more fruitstands to more grocery stores than anyone who has ever lived.  Hell, somebody had to do it.) 

But if you think Wal-Mart is destructive, you shoulda seen Safeway.  Back in the day,   Safeway built massive (6,000 square feet in some cases) stores, stores that carried EVERYTHING you could ever want to eat.  Some of their stores even had their own parking lots!!  They didn't offer sales on credit to their customers!!  Safeway was a threat to the American way of life !!  The Mom 'n' Pop stores didn't stand a chance!! 

And before Safeway was A&P, a company that few people under 40 have ever heard of.  A&P's destructive tendencies gave it the reputation of "the most controversial company in the nation". 

Marc Levinson of the Wall Street Journal has written a great piece on the A&P controversy, and I'm scraping and posting it here before it disappears behind a paywall.  I've long known about the evolution of the grocery industry, and how government has fought progress every step of the way, but I've never seen this much online about what A&P went through. 

Every day that you don't have to make your own soap, mix your own toothpaste, or stop at four different places for meat, tomatoes, diapers and razors, you owe that unimaginable luxury to the visionary pioneers at The Great A&P Tea Company, Safeway, and Wal-Mart. 

Here's Mr. Levinson:

***********

A prosecutor in Franklin Roosevelt's administration called it a "giant blood sucker." A federal judge in Woodrow Wilson's day deemed it a "monopolist," and another, during Harry Truman's presidency, convicted it of violating antitrust law. The federal government investigated it almost continuously for a quarter-century, and more than half the states tried to tax it out of business. For its strategy of selling groceries cheaply, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company paid a very heavy price.

Now, more than a century and a half after its birth near the docks of lower Manhattan, the Great A&P is reaching the end. The company, with holdings that include East Coast grocery chains such as Food Emporium and Pathmark, filed for bankruptcy in December 2010 and emerged from Chapter 11 status as a private company. Over the summer, news emerged that A&P had hired Credit Suisse to review its options, with a sale—to either to another grocery company like Kroger Co., or an investment firm like Cerberus Capital Management—a strong likelihood.

So far, no deep-pocketed shopper has plucked A&P off the shelf. The watching and waiting continues. When the company with the familiar name finally fades from the American scene, few will recall what A&P once was: the most controversial company in the country, the center of a struggle over the very nature of American capitalism.

 

© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis
               

Price-cutting A&P stores like this one in 1934 angered competitors—and Washington.

A&P was Wal-Mart long before there was Wal-Mart. Founded around the start of the Civil War, it upset the tradition-encrusted tea trade by selling teas at discount prices by mail and developing the first brand-name tea. A few years later, its tea shops began to stock spices, baking powder and canned goods, making A&P one of the first chain grocers.

Then, in 1912, John A. Hartford, one of the two brothers who had taken over the company from their father, had one of those inspirations that change the course of business. He proposed that the company test a bare-bones format at a tiny store in Jersey City, offering short hours, limited selection and no home delivery, and that it use the cost savings to lower prices. The A&P Economy Store was an instant success. The Great A&P was soon opening one and then two and then three stores per day. By 1920, it had become the largest retailer in the world.

John Hartford and his brother, George, the firm's financial wizard, didn't stop there. In the 1920s, they integrated vertically. They opened a produce brokerage to supply their stores with fruits and vegetables, which many grocery chains didn't carry at the time. They acquired bakeries, canneries and bottling plants—and leveraged their ability to make everything from ketchup to chocolate bars to strike tougher bargains with suppliers. They refused to buy through wholesalers and demanded that suppliers pay A&P the standard wholesale commission. And they plowed A&P's cost savings back into lower prices, fueling relentless growth. In 1929, A&P became the first retailer ever to sell $1 billion of merchandise in a single year.

While shoppers flocked to A&P's 16,000 stores, small grocers and grocery wholesalers didn't share their enthusiasm. The anti-chain-store movement dates back at least to 1913, when the American Fair-Trade League pushed for laws against retail price-cutting. It grew through the 1920s, as groups such as the aptly named Association Opposed to Branch Stores in Missouri demanded action against the chains.

The U.S. Supreme Court lent its support to the movement in 1931, approving taxes based on the number of stores a retailer owned. No company suffered more than A&P, which operated several times more stores than any other retailer.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal piled on. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the centerpiece of Roosevelt's economic recovery program, tried to bolster profits by subjecting entire industries to "codes of conduct" created by industry committees. The code for food retailing imposed minimum price markups on almost every product, blocking more efficient retailers from offering lower prices than less efficient competitors. The business sector, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cheered such measures, as did many Republican politicians. When the head of a major trade organization complained that business was "being crucified on the cross of competition," no one thought it strange.

After the Supreme Court struck down Roosevelt's codes in 1935, Wright Patman, a populist congressman from Texas, took up the cause of the country's 600,000 or so mom-and-pop grocers. Restricting chains, Patman declared, would keep "Hitler's methods of government and business in Europe." The Robinson-Patman Act, passed in 1936, kept suppliers from selling more cheaply to large customers than to small ones, stripping A&P of its cost advantage. The law forced up grocery prices and devastated A&P's profits. Six years later, the Justice Department brought one of the most bizarre antitrust cases of all time, accusing A&P and its executives of illegally restraining trade by demanding lower prices from suppliers—and winning.

Thanks in good part to the Hartfords' tenacity, the restraints on discount retailing began to fade away in the 1950s. Chain-store taxes were gradually repealed, and state laws limiting price competition to protect mom and pop were taken off the books. By 1962, when Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, and other modern discount formats were born, the pendulum had swung in consumers' favor.

By then, John and George Hartford were dead, and their company, after passing into the hands of less competent managers and going public, had entered a death spiral that appears to be in its final stages. A&P, once the country's best-known brand, is by now so tarnished it probably has negative value, and any buyer will likely retire it. But even if the Great Atlantic & Pacific doesn't live on in name, it will leave an important legacy: the idea that capitalism can benefit consumers, if only capitalists will allow it to do so.

***************

The luxuries that A&P brought us are now so commonplace that our miraculous abundance now seems almost normal. 

And somewhere this morning, working in the back room of a Wal-Mart, a stockboy (or girl) has come up with the idea that will destroy Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart won't stand a chance
 
Progressives and other busybodies will try to stop him, and call him "a giant blood sucker", a vulture, or just a greedy bastard. 
 
He will be accused of cutthroat competition, monopolistic behavior, and being un-American, all for trying to improve on Wal-Mart's methods.
 
I wish I could figure out who he is, and start buying stock early. 


 

Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-Sugar Tit)

Back in 2010, an Agriculture Subsidies Welfare Queen named Stephen Fincher ran for Congress and won.

Here's a campaign pic of the smiling Fincher family, content in the knowledge that no one will ever legislate that they be Drug Tested prior to receiving their corporate welfare check.  CPS will never show up at their home to ensure that the parents of these kids aren't blowing the money (that you sent them) on crack.   You donated to the Fincher family on April 15, tax day, whether you wanted to or not. 

Here's some of the rant I posted about his campaign a couple of years ago:

Stephen Fincher, a Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's 8th district, favors small-government, lower taxes, and he has an appropriate disdain for Obamacare.

Good for him.
He's also a gospel singer.
He's a succesful cotton farmer.

And in one eleven-year period, from 1995 - to 2006, Fincher and his wife received 2.5 million dollars in crop subsidies from government you.

Now, just for the sheer joy of it, imagine if the Democrats dared to nominate a traditional welfare queen for Congress. Someone who sits around the house all day, collecting welfare and producing little babies who will reliably vote for Democrats. Do you think there might be an uproar?

So what is there about this form of welfare that bathes Stephen Fincher in such down-home, cottony goodness?

When our government subsidizes a particular crop, it confuses the price signals. In a truly free market, if too much cotton was produced, the price would drop. Fewer people would grow cotton. The price would then reflect what people were willing to pay for it, and what farmers would willingly be paid to grow it.

If not enough cotton was on the market, the price would rise. More and more people would grow cotton until the price dropped again.

Are Obama and Pelosi and Reid paying too many people to grow cotton? We'll never know.

But are you having to pay too much for cotton T-shirts, shirts, socks and sheets because of farm subsidies and prohibitive tariffs on cotton imports? Hell yes.

The rant continues for a few more paragraphs, explaining how Brazil was going to retaliate with tariffs on our exported cotton because of Uncle Sam giving handouts to Welfare Queens like Fincher.  We compromised by buying most of the Brazilian Cotton crop.  I swear to God, that's how we solved the problem. 
I hope you'll read the whole thing. 
Go here for it. 
I grinned several times, having forgotten most of the thing.   

Congressman Fincher is back in the news, this time because he wants to cut food stamps while maintaining his own place at the public trough. 
Hell, I'm all for feeding people, but we could easily make a lot of progress on lowering the price of food by ending the Fincher Subsidy, and then ending all the quotas, tariffs, and limitations related to what Mr. Obama allows to come through the bars of our national cage.  The Institute for International Economics estimates the annual cost of U.S. foreign protectionism at $6,027 per household.   

I think that $6,000.00 per family would make up for a lot of food stamps, don't you?  But then Mr. Fincher's farm has to be protected.  Here's what was in today's Huffington Post:

Fincher has said his farm would have shut down without the subsidies, which he argued protect American farmers from more heavily subsidized foreign competition. "We would be all for not having government in our business," Fincher told the Washington Post in 2010, "but we need a fair system."

The federal government's complex system of farm subsidies is supposed to shield farmers from some of the uncertainties inherent to the industry, but critics like the Environmental Working Group say the safety net unfairly benefits the biggest farms at the expense of smaller ones.

You think that farming has "some uncertainties inherent to the industry"???  Try building fruitstands.  Open a restaurant.  Start a used bookstore.  Open a clothing store.  Go into the carwash business.  Drive a semi-truck.  Those businesses open and struggle and crash and burn every day.
There's risk everywhere. 
But the risk in farming is just more....wholesome, right? 

And that's how Welfare Queens like Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-Sugar Tit) wind up getting $70,000 a year from the government  from you. 

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend, and that everyone pause for a few minutes to think of those who fought and died to support Stephen Fincher in the style to which he has grown accustomed. 

Too harsh.  Have a GREAT Memorial Day weekend!!!  Be safe!!  

How Mitt Romney will really harm the middle class

Almost every day of his life, George Mason University Economics professor Don Boudreaux writes a letter to the editor.  He's been doing this for years in a vain attempt to correct economic misinformation. 

Here's a recent corrective that Boudreaux sent to The Wall Street Journal, explaining that the John The Baptist Of ObamaCare is just as goofy as the founder of ObamaCare:

John Taylor is correct that Mitt Romney’s economic policies are less likely to thwart growth than are those of Pres. Obama (“The Romney Cure for Obama-Induced Economic Ills,” Oct. 4). The bar, alas, is low. Because entrepreneurs and investors aren’t keen to produce and take risks when the president threatens them with higher tax rates, saddles them with crushing regulations, and scolds them for allegedly being selfish, ungrateful, predatory, and (to boot!) not especially important to economic growth anyway, entrepreneurs and investors respond by producing less and taking fewer risks.

Mitt Romney does seem to be less hostile than is Barack Obama to entrepreneurship, commerce, and private investment.

Get ready people.... Get ready.  Here comes the patented Don Boudreaux Karate Kid Crane Kick !  THIS IS GONNA HURT !!!

But contrary to Mr. Taylor’s claim, Mr. Romney’s trade proposals are not clearly better than are the president’s. Mr. Taylor writes that “Mr. Romney intends to move ahead on trade agreements and create global enterprise zones to remove barriers to trade.” That would be grand. Yet what we hear most loudly about trade from Mr. Romney isn’t about freeing trade; it’s about restricting it. Mr. Romney repeatedly boasts that he’ll raise taxes on Americans who buy imports from China.

So rather than making a principled case for removing barriers, Mr. Romney’s singular trade obsession seems to be to raise barriers and thereby make trade less free.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

John Taylor, consider yourself bitch-slapped.  Please offend us no more in that way.  Boudreaux WILL come back. 
The Mason Nation logo at the top came from the George Mason University bookstore site.  My arch-nemesis, Dr. Ralph, was good enough to get me one of the shirts, which I wear often.  You know you're a political geek when you wear your favorite university shirt because of the economics department, not the football or basketball team !! 

Big Business loves Big Government

From Tim Carney with the Washington Examiner, with a fresh coat o' Whitening to Instapundit:

The most dangerous enemies of capitalism today are capitalists. This is becoming clearer every day to people committed to free markets.

The conservative and libertarian grassroots came to deeply distrust big business after the Wall Street bailouts and Obama's stimulus and health care bills, both of which had big-business backing. Tea Party ire focused on subsidy-suckling businesses as much as at big-spending politicians.

Beltway conservatives have also joined in the fight against corporatism. Last spring, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation all lined up against the Chamber of Commerce and pressed GOP congressmen to vote to kill the Export-Import Bank, which nonetheless was reauthorized by an overwhelming margin.

Republican politicians, despite being lobbied hard by their big-business donors and K Street advisers, are nevertheless moving slowly away from corporate welfare and toward free-market populism. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan wrote an op-ed in Forbes in 2009 titled "Down with Big Business" (a headline he borrowed from a 1979 Wall Street Journal op-ed).

And now academia's free-market players are getting in on the game, beginning to rebuild the intellectual infrastructure to argue against corporatism. George Mason University's Mercatus Center this week is kicking off a series of papers on cronyism and business-government collusion.

"The Pathology of Privilege: The Economic Consequences of Government Favoritism," written by Mercatus senior research fellow Matt Mitchell, is the first installment.

(Go here for the download.  It'll make your head hurt.)

Here's how Carney closes his review of the research:

The research Mitchell brings together helps show why government-granted privilege is so important to big business and so costly to the rest of society. In one key finding, he highlights research indicating that free markets, with fewer barriers to entry and fewer bailouts to prop up failed giants, make it harder for dominant businesses to maintain dominance.

Mitchell cites a 2008 study in the Journal of Financial Economics that found "big business turnover ... correlates with smaller government, common law, less bank-dependence, stronger shareholder rights, and greater openness [to trade]."

Further, in Mitchell's words, "those nations with more turnover among their top firms tended to experience faster per capita economic growth, greater productivity growth, and faster capital growth."

Big business wants safety, but big-business safety hurts the rest of the economy.

Disdain for bailouts and corporate welfare has resided primarily in the populist corners of the Left and Right. But the scholarly case against systemic privilege is strong and growing, too. The subsidy sucklers, bailout barons and regulatory freeloaders may soon face a challenge on a broad political front.

Lord hasten the day.  If Libertarians know one thing that the rest of the populace doesn't, it's this:  Big Business loves Big Government. 

Go here for the T-shirt. 

Stephanie Cutter is a racist. There is no other explanation.

I got onto a bunch of mailing lists during the 2008 elections.   That's why this letter from a silly twit named Stephanie Cutter was in my inbox last week. 
She thinks she's attacking Mitt Romney (a worthy goal), but this drivel coulda been written by a Mississippi Klansman who struggled to finish the 8th grade. 

Lord have mercy, what a jingoistic woman. 
And The Teleprompter Jesus should be ashamed of himself for all this racket about The Yellow Peril. 
Here goes....

Whited --

The Washington Post reported this morning that "Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India."

This is the same guy that goes around the campaign trail talking a huge game about being able to protect American jobs by standing up to foreign countries like China. But now we know that Romney and his partners made millions while sending American jobs overseas.

Where to begin, where to begin.  The computer you're reading this on was made in a foreign country.  Some of the people who made it weren't event Baptists !!!!   They worship strange Gods !!!!  
Look, I've beaten the Free Trade horse to death more times than I care to remember or regurgitate.  Here's a Don Boudreaux argument:

In fact, the critical assumptions on which the economic case for free trade rests are highly descriptive of reality: (1) the ultimate justification for economic activity is to improve living standards for consumers; (2) producers facing competition serve consumers better than do monopolists; (3) each party to a voluntary trade is generally made better off by such trades; and – most importantly – (4) the first three assumptions aren’t nullified merely by putting a national political border between consumers and producers.

The lines of latitude and longitude of the factory don't matter to anyone but Statists collecting payoffs from Crony Capitalists.  Do you really want to ensure that your child has a factory job putting plastic cases on iPhones???  I don't.  And you don't. 

Are you willing to pay 50% more for a lawnmower made in your hometown?  Home state?  Nation?  Continent?  Hemisphere?  Who is going to make the rules for protecting your job?  Who are these angels who are going to ensure that your neighbor gets paid what you think he's worth? 

Ok, back to Stephanie Cutter's plea for racial protectionism.  (Sorry, but I've got to call it racism.  Read it a couple of times.  There's no other explanation that makes sense.)

This is a critical point, and we need to make sure everyone knows it. Check out this video I recorded today, and share it far and wide:



Romney's support of outsourcing didn't just happen in the private sector. As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed legislation that would have banned companies from shipping state jobs overseas -- and he actually outsourced state jobs to a call center in India.

On shipping state jobs overseas.....If we can save .50 cents an hour on the money stolen from me to pay for "state jobs", we should send those jobs overseas.  Now.
If people were given a choice on their ballots, they would vote for the same thing.  Seriously.  If you could lower your tax bill by, say, 30% by sending all state activity overseas, would you do so? 
Hell yes, you would. 

In contrast, President Obama has a jobs plan that could put up to a million people back to work -- including teachers, cops, firefighters, construction workers, and veterans -- help small businesses create jobs right now, and help to put an end to American jobs being shipped overseas.

Here's the problem with putting American teachers, cops and firefighters back to work.  You have to pay them a ridiculous amount in retirement benefits.  Some who are barely older than me are already retiring.  
That ain't sustainable.  
And did you notice how Stephanie wants to help "small" businesses create jobs, but not McDonald's, IBM, or Amazon?  What's up with that?  

He's also fighting for tax breaks for companies that bring jobs back to America.

Who is going to define what is an American job? 

Mitt Romney is fighting for tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas -- the type of companies he ran in the private sector.

This isn't just a policy position for Romney, it's his economic philosophy -- and it's his record.

Read the article, watch the video, and share them both far and wide -- doesn't get a lot more important than this one.

Thanks,

Stephanie

I'm going to call in sick today so I can spend the morning praying for Stephanie Cutter to get a freakin' clue. 

God Help Us All ! Obama is now promoting manufacturing jobs !

Barack Obama is now promoting manufacturing jobs.  Hit this link. 

I work for a manufacturing company as their shipping manager.  This is terrifying.  Doesn't he care about my child?  Our investments in our companies?  Our very way of life ????? 

This is the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize, then kept all the current wars going and got us into a few others.  Now he's going to promote manufacturing?  I can already imagine the Manufacturing Shop Bankruptcy Auction notices I'll be getting in the mail. 

We need Barack Obama promoting manufacturing jobs about like we need his Surgeon General and his wife stomping around the country trying to stamp out obesity. 

Barack Obama is the man who has achieved a teen minority unemployment of 48%. 

This is the man who has had to replace 3/4 of his totally failed economic team, but hasn't changed any of their policies !!!  (You can go ahead and cross out Larry Summers on the far left.  Long gone.)  Geithner is supposedly wanting out also, but he knows that Congress wouldn't dream of letting Obama nominate someone else for the job.  Hell, who would he nominate now that Marx is dead and Castro and Hugo Chavez are both ill? 

In an effort to kick-start Detroit, Barack H. Obama destroyed 650,000 cars with his stark raving mad Cash For Clunkers program.  That's the same economic philosophy of the old Soviet factories that made things, melted them down, and then made them some more.  It guaranteed full employment, it destroyed valuable resources, and was stark, raving mad. 

Barack Obama decided to invest your money in Green Energy.  His pet investment, Solyndra, went bankrupt a while back, and they just pulled the plug on LightSquared. 

Did Barack Obama inherit a bad economy?  Yeah, but at this point, most of us are sick and tired of Obama talking about what he inherited.  There are entire families of Rockefellers and Hiltons and Vanderbilts who don't talk about what they inherited as much as Obama has. 

Barack Obama tried to help the economy by ladling out pork to donors at unprecedented levels, $650 billion worth.  Call it the stimulus plan, the porkulus plan, whatever.  It didn't work.  Hell, he could have mailed out $6,500.00 checks to the 100 million households in America and at least gotten a political bounce out of it.  But no, it went to cronies and pet projects that Democrats had wanted to get under the Christmas tree for a long, long time.  I challenge you to name a half-dozen of those projects that an impartial jury would declare successful.  No fair Googling.  If someone spent $650 billion for your benefit, you should be able to remember something to brag about. 

Barack Obama presided over our downgrade from AAA to AA+.  Most presidents would spend the rest of their term hiding out in the Rose Garden, but Obama is out there trying to help manufacturing !!!!!

Do I need to mention "Recovery Summer"?  Way back there in 2010?  Do you feel better now?  Recovered? 

Please, Barack, stay at the house.  I apologize for dragging your wife into this at the top, but hell, she doesn't know what she's talking about.  You don't either.  Admit it.  Please stay home.  You've got two beautiful daughters who need you, just like I need my job.  I like manufacturing. 

We have a lot of competition from overseas, and but we don't need any protectionist legislation or goofy new tax schemes coming from Washington during your administration.  The last thing we need right now is your help. 

There's an old handyman/manufacturing/contracting poster that goes something like this....

Our rates are....

$50.00 per hour


$75.00 per hour if you watch


$100.00 per hour if you help


$150.00 per hour if you did the job, then called us to fix it

Our great-grandchildren will be fixing your "job" for a long time. 

Please, please, please, don't promote manufacturing.  I'm begging. 

You now have the right to eat Roach Coach food in San Antonio

The Institute For Justice has triumphed over evil. 

Practiced since ancient times, street vending is more popular than ever. The Economist magazine predicted that in 2011 “some of the best food Americans eat may come from a food truck.” Vendors are the darlings of many food critics, and they even have their own reality show on the Food Network.

But El Paso, Texas, has recently made it illegal for mobile food vendors to operate within 1,000-feet of any restaurant, convenience store, or grocer. The city even prohibits vendors from parking to await customers, which forces vendors to constantly drive around town until a customer successfully flags them down–and then be on the move again as soon as the customer walks away.

Thus, while people across the country embrace mobile vendors for the vitality and creativity they bring to a local restaurant scene, El Paso has decided to threaten vendors with thousands of dollars in fines and effectively run them out of town. El Paso’s No-Vending Zone scheme is in place for one reason: to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants from honest competition. But economic protectionism is not a valid use of government power.




Someday soon, I'm going to throw out a Bon Apetit/Gourmet magazine parody post that ranks all of the Fort Worth Roach Coaches, since I'm somewhat of a fan of the concept. 
The people who operate them have to endure lots of crap from government pygmies. 
Go here if you've got time to read some old rants about other municipalities trying to shut down street vendors.  Or licensing tamale ladies. 

I want to purchase 5 tires from China

From Industry Week:

The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) is pointing to Continental Tires' announcement on April 28 that they are building a new plant in the U.S. as an example of trade laws working.


In September, 2009 the Obama Administration imposed duties on surging imports of subsidized tires from China. The three-year plan was designed to provide relief for U.S. tire manufacturers under Section 421 of U.S. trade law, the first time the law had been used since its inception, the group noted.

Only one year after the import duties were applied, a study by AAM found that the U.S. tire industry had already reversed a significant decline. Sales were up, and workers were being hired.


I need to buy some new tires for the truck.  Two would be nice, since the ones up front are about a month away from having steel belt poking through. 
A sane person would go ahead and replace the back ones also.  They would never pass an inspection. 
Most normal humans would go ahead and purchase a new spare.  Don't ask about the condition of my spare. 

Most of my tire budget is going to Texas A and M University, in College Station, where my little Aggie is laboring to become a critter doctor.  So I need a really good deal on tires. 

China makes some good tires, and is willing to subsidize my purchase of their tires.  China wants to get me the best possible deal on five tires !!! 

China's government subsidizes Chinese manufacturing in a number of ways.  As far as I can tell, they don't go so far as to cut checks to manufacturers, the way our silly government does for ethanol producers, farmers, or producers/researchers of ridiculous "green" products, but they help out with manipulating the RMB, import/export laws and quotas, and the like. 

I think I should be allowed to purchase five Chinese tires at the lowest price possible.  I want to call one of my friends in Xiamen, tell him what I'm looking for, and have him throw five of those bad boys on the next shipping container coming my way.  I want to swap some pieces of paper with Benjamin Franklin's picture on them for five tires.  The deal doesn't need to involve Barack Obama, George Bush, John Boehner, Goodyear, Firestone, the National Labor Relations Board, the Department of Commerce, or a gaggle of theologians asking "Where Would Jesus Shop?"

And those pics of Ben Franklin?  There's only one place where they eventually come home to be spent.  Trade deficits are based on totally bogus numbers.  I run a huge trade deficit at the Starbuck's where I'm writing this, BTW.....

I also want to purchase a new suit.  And if The Men's Wearhouse sells a suit for $800, but Joseph A. Bank has decided to take a loss on the same suit and sell thousands of them at a loss for $400, I'm going to buy the suit from Joseph A. Bank. 

But what of the jobs lost at The Men's Wearhouse? 

Most of us would say that The Men's Wearhouse needs to change its ways, or get ready to go out of business.  Or we would purchase $400 suits from Joseph A Bank until Joseph A Bank went bankrupt. The health of either organization is a secondary consideration to getting a good deal on some clothing. 

When I shop in Dallas, I don't worry about the impact of money not being spent in Fort Worth. 
Ditto for when I shop in Mississippi.  I don't want to pay an extra import tariff on things I bring across the Vicksburg bridge, just to keep it fair for East Fort Worth.  
If I want to bring a bottle of tequila, a silly hat, three tasteless T-shirts and a box of Cuban cigars back from a vacation in Mexico, its nobody's business but mine. 
The same thing goes for Chinese tires.  They should cross borders at the same tax/duty rate as everything else produced anywhere else. 

This would cause some discomfort for American politicians and bureaucrats who earn their living by selling exemptions and exceptions to the rules. 
This would eventually bankrupt China.  Or China would quickly learn not to imitate the U.S. - subsidizing pet political constituencies.  Whichever came first. 

I choose Kroger over Albertson's whenevr Kroger has the best deal on Campbell's soup and Michelob Ultra. 

All this, despite Kroger NEVER EVER using my shipping and freight services.  I have a massive trade deficit with Kroger, but I still shop with them.  Am I a silly person, or what? 

Why are we not allowed to make the same choice with everything else? 

The picture of the worn out tire came from here. 

Apples that didn't fall too far from the tree

If you are entertained by this type of thing, you can see an earlier post on Jackson by going here. 

If you want to know more about the history of the Luddites (and Jesse Jr is a Luddite of the worst possible sort), then here's a video that was produced for middle school history classes.  Can someone who isn't busy today e-mail this link to Congressman Jackson? 



A fresh coat of Whitening to The Swash for the video. 

Another Don Boudreaux Karate Kid Crane Kick

Of all the anti-protectionist slapdowns Don Boudreaux has ever issued, this is my favorite:

9 March 2011

Mr. Ian Fletcher

Dear Ian:

In your latest essay at the Huffington Post you state that sensible protectionists, like you, want to use tariffs to protect, not “dying” industries, but, rather, only industries of “the future” (“Protectionism of the Past vs. Protectionism of the Future,” March 9).

Who but a backwoods bumpkin doesn’t cheer for the industries of “the future”? But I’ve some questions.

- How do we identify such industries? Who’ll be charged with determining which industries are of “the future” and which industries are sufficiently passé as to be left unshielded from being slain by foreign competition – slayings that you suppose are the inevitable fate of all U.S. industries not protected by high U.S. tariffs?

- What criteria will be used to distinguished industries of “the future” from what I suppose we ought to call “industries of the past”? Rates of return on capital? Total volume of employment? Productivity per worker? Rates of annual productivity growth? Rates of export growth? Total amount of corporate taxes paid? The technological ‘wow-ness’ of the industries’ outputs – as determined, perhaps, by the amount of positive attention such outputs receive from nightly network news reporters? The age of the industry?
Oh! I know the answer: total dollar amount of contributions to the political campaigns of incumbent members of Congress and the U.S. presidency.

Ok, here comes the Don Boudreaux Karate Kid Crane Kick, the takedown, the crushing blow:

- In those inescapable instances when dispassionate minds, such as yours, discover that protection was mistakenly given to industries of the past that were for a time wrongly thought to be industries of the future, will the shareholders and workers in those industries, whose prosperity has for a long time been made possible only by the tariff protections that their industries received, gracefully accept the revised determination that they have all along been investing in, and working for, industries of the past and, therefore, must now lose their assets and jobs for the greater good? What will you tell these poor workers, shareholders, and bondholders?

- Finally, if an industry really does have such a promising future that even government bureaucrats recognize this promise, why wouldn’t this same promise be recognized by private investors? Seems as though it would. And private investors, then, will pour sufficient amounts of private financing into this industry. Isn’t it one of the central functions of private capital markets to identify – and to shower with liquidity – upstart firms that are likely to be parts of industries of “the future”?

I’m eager to receive your replies.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Hit the link at the top to read his readers' comments, involving Godzilla, Bambi, priests, and some discussion about failed "Industries Of The Future". 

The solution to high gas prices? Let's put in a 62 mpg mandate !!!

Derrick Z. Jackson is a typist for the Boston Globe.  He is deeply and profoundly wrong so often that I've "liked" him on Facebook just to keep in touch. 

Here's an excerpt from his latest, called "United States Must Break The Addiction To Foreign Oil". 

Unrest continues to spread, from the Middle East to the Middle West to . . . the gas pump.


The democracy uprisings against repressive regimes, many of which America propped up, has also fanned fears for the flow of oil. In response, Big Oil has jacked up its prices and gasoline is back up to $3.20 a gallon for unleaded in Massachusetts and is reportedly headed to $3.50 nationally. As the Obama administration tiptoes between popular protests and potentates who turn on our oil spigot, Americans are concerned about prices at the gas pump.

As well they should be.  What should we do?  OMG, what can we do? 

If only we had oil of our own, oil of our very own somewhere off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and all those other little Yankee states in the middle where my geography is fuzzy? 

If only, if only.  

Seriously.  That part of Jackson's rant is so profoundly screwed up that it doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong.  The Middle East is in the middle of a huge upheaval, and that's going to jack with fuel prices for a while.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, has huge reserves.  Gasoline costs what it does at any given moment because that's what people are willing to pay at that moment, all other factors taken into account.

 

Competitors, especially small ones, have huge barriers to entry, all put in place by the people who stand in front of each other once a year for the SOTU speech, and rant about our addiction to foreign oil   Otherwise people would be out there drilling near the states listed above. 

One other thing....trade is a funny thing.  Both sides need each other.  Whose economy do you think can last longer without the other?  U.S. Consumers or Evil Foreign People?  That's the question our politicians never ask.  Citizens of other countries now rely on American Dollars.  They can't eat, build houses, or educate their children without them.  Have you ever had a 25% drop in sales?  It's tough, isn't it? 

And when we give our dollars to those foreigners with funny names who worship funny gods, do you know what they have to do with them?  There's only one place where they accept green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on 'em. 

Back to Derrick Z. 

....Instead of whining about gas prices, Americans should be demanding that the Democrats and the Republicans make oil independence a top priority. Less than a year after the BP oil spill, energy has disappeared as a top issue of the day in current polling of Americans. This is even though energy affects everything from jobs to the environment to what wars we wage to how many blind eyes we offer to dictators who sit on fossil-fuel resources.

Like almost all other Statists, Derrick Z. can throw down an eloquent rant about how many billions of dollars we idiotically pay dictators, all in the name of "stability".  Derrick slams The Teleprompter Jesus for his response to the BP spill.  And after griping about our government's ineffectiveness, what does he want? 
What does he want? 
Derrick Z. wants more government involvement. 

Last month, the new Republican House majority, which has declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency, inspired infantile behavior from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The organization wrote Darrell Issa, the new House oversight chairman, to protest the potential cost of fuel-efficiency standards as high as 62 miles per gallon being considered by the Obama administration.

Yeah, 62 miles per gallon.  Declare it, make it so, get pro-active. That's all it takes.  Ask King Canute.   

Derrick, mandates and Congressional Performance Art won't get us anywhere. 
Building a "Fortress America", taking us back to a trading system like Feudal China's, won't get us anywhere.   We need the Evil Foreigners and they need us. 
We need for our government to leave everyone the hell alone.  Build some roads.  Referee in some disputes.  Defend the borders.  That's all. 

And on the seventh day, Donald Boudreaux rested....

George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux has gone on a tear. The last few days on his Cafe Hayek blog have included some of the best posts I've ever read.

First, he has to correct Harold Meyerson's assertion that American manufacturing is declining. It isn't. We're combining parts from all over the world with our parts. That's what we do at my Jukt Micronics gig. If you're so inclined, you can go here to read an ancient post of mine about Harold Meyerson. Before this blog was two months old, I already knew I'd be needing a "Harold Meyerson" post label.

Professor Boudreaux then went to bed, but apparently slept fitfully. Perhaps he knew that there were still some mercantilist rent-seekers who hadn't been properly bitch-slapped. We will never know what motivated him, and it's not our place to ask the great man why, but The Professor got up early the next morning and explained to the English-speaking world that if you "protect" some of your citizen-manufacturers, all you're doing is making their products more expensive than they should be. This, in the long run, helps a small number of your wealthy citizen-manufacturers, but it hurts most of your citizen-citizens.

Later that afternoon, someone defiled Professor Boudreaux's comment field with disturbing news about what Beijing was doing to protect Chinese manufacturers. The Professor took off his academic robe, placed his chalk in the tray at the bottom of the board, and delivered a Karate Kid Crane Kick to the commenter. (I've added the commenter and his family to the prayer list at Broadway Baptist Church, and wish him a speedy recovery.)

Finally, before embarking on a much-deserved Sabbath day of rest, The Professor explains why there's no such thing as a free subsidy. Whether it's cotton, soybeans, corn, tobacco, or those things for which you can trade in a Clunker, someone is paying for every subsidy. And that would be you.

The posts about the Whole Foods boycotts are the dessert.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff. I want to go to George Mason U., and follow The Professor around while he teaches the multitudes. Maybe spend some time fishing on the Sea Of Galilee with him. Hold his coat while he heals some lepers. And then when Obama has him arrested for heresy, deny three times that I ever knew him. Then retire to my home village to write The Gospel of Saint Don.

It could happen.

What were we expecting to happen?

From The Associated Press:

WHISTLER, British Columbia (AP) — Canadian mayors have passed a resolution that would potentially shut out U.S. bidders from local city contracts.
The resolution is in retaliation to "Buy American" provisions in President Barack Obama's stimulus bill. Mayors voted 189-175 to approve the resolution at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Whistler, British Columbia.
The resolution says the federation should support cities that adopt policies that allow them to buy only from companies whose home countries do not impose trade restrictions against Canadian goods.
The mayors also voted to hold off on any action for 120 days while Canada is negotiating a possible compromise with the U.S. government.

Canada's reaction to the "Buy American" provisions in the porkulus plan is, of course, an irrational response to our stupidity. Economies prosper when consumers are protected, not producers.
But still.... what kind of response was our Doofus In Chief expecting?
Hit the Protectionism label below if you want to read several dozen rants on the same topic.

A Beginner's Guide To Protectionism

I've been going back and reading a lot of the older posts on Stephen Smith's "A Beginner's Guide To Freedom" blog.

Here are a few excerpts from a piece on Protectionism. Nothing in this section is new. Nothing in this paragraph would be news to anyone who took Economics 101 (which would rule out most of Congress). But Stephen writes so well I'm tempted to email all of his posts to The Teleprompter Jesus in hopes that maybe the central logic will sink in.

Protectionism is nothing more than an unrelated third party interfering with the voluntary exchange of goods and services between two parties. If I have a quarter, and Joe has a pencil, we may decide to enter into an agreement in which I buy the pencil for a quarter. If we decide to do this, it is only because we both stand to gain from the exchange - otherwise we wouldn’t do it. If I buy the pencil, it’s only because I value the pencil more than I value the quarter. Conversely, if Joe sells me the pencil, it’s only because he values the quarter more than he values the pencil. As a result, we are both better off by having made the transaction.

But for some reason, people accept the idea that government bureaucrats can and should step between Joe and me and take a cut of the proceeds. Some guy from Washington says, “You can’t buy your pencil from Joe for a quarter. I want you to buy your pencil from Fred. If you still buy the pencil from Joe, you have to give me 5%.” It’s really no more complicated than that.

But does it really harm us if we can't get that pencil for a quarter? Well, yes. It does.

Protectionism flies in the face of the division of labor. We all benefit by obtaining goods and services from the most efficient producers, no matter where they happen to be located. That frees up money that we can use to consume other goods and services, and it is this increase that raises our standard of living. Protectionism also ensures that capital remains tied up in less efficient industries instead of being freed up to be used in more efficient areas that would further increase our standard of living.

Stephen ends his post with a Milton Friedman parable that I hadn't heard before.

Milton Friedman used the following example which helps to clarify the true nature of protectionism. In a time of war, the enemy will often attempt to blockade a country to prevent the importation of goods and services. Protectionism is merely an effort to do to yourself in peacetime what your enemy would do to you in a time of war.
Keep that in mind the next time you hear some politician calling for additional restrictions on imports.

I wish I'd written that. Hit the top link to read the entire piece.

Follow-up Hypothetical Question

Here's a follow-up to the previous hypothetical question, which I'll copy here:

Imagine you live in an apartment complex with a diverse assortment of tenants. There's a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. A doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian Chief. A truck driver, a dentist, a mortician, a schoolteacher, and a mechanic.
Anything you need, you can get from the residents of your apartment. No one purchases anything from anyone outside the apartment complex. It helps to protect your apartment complex's jobs.
There's a slight problem. The schoolteacher hates kids. The truck driver is an alcoholic. The butcher is a Muslim, and won't handle pork.
Should you be allowed to trade with people who live in other apartment complexes? Even if it endangers the jobs of those in your apartments?

If someone uses the services of people living in another apartment complex, lessening the amount of potential revenue within the landlord's grasp, what percentage penalty should he/she be required to pay on those transactions?

Irony Is Dead

Irony is now dead.
Hold a mirror up to its mouth, and you'll see no fog.
Irony has achieved room temperature.
You can bury it now. Don't even bother to take the morgue tag off its toe.



In the past, liberal western democracies have understood that no nation has ever "protected" its way to prosperity. The only way for anyone or anything to prosper is through trade. Trade with other people, families, neighborhoods, counties, cities, states, and especially, nations. That's the only way for consumers in one area to take advantage of the comparative advantage held in another area.


Well, it ain't looking good for Free Trade these days, mostly because those who can only survive and prosper inside a Protectionist Greenhouse are bribing others to put up more trade barriers.


But wait ! ! ! Four unlikely heroes, men of good sense, logic, and an understanding of history have risen to save the day ! ! They understand math, psychology, and economics ! ! According to some accounts, they can read books ! ! Some say they can read books without moving their lips ! !


Here's Lee Hudson Teslik, writing for RCP :


Pleas for economic openness rang out at this year's summit, particularly among the leaders of emerging economies. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against reliance upon intervention and protectionism to cure economic ills, saying such policies could backfire (Guardian). Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao backed Putin, saying world leaders must remain vigilant (Xinhua) in their efforts to curb trade protectionism. Egypt's trade minister echoed concerns (Reuters) about protectionism, as did India's (Reuters).


Russia, China, Egypt, and India. Four of the most bass-ackwards places on earth. They get it.


We don't.


The date and time for Irony's funeral service has not yet been announced. But the family asks that you not bring any flowers or food that you didn't produce yourself. You might as well get used to it now.


Irony pic from here.

A Failed Fisking Of Pat Buchanan

Journalist, Presidential Speechwriter, Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan has written a column entitled "Obama's Choice: FDR or Reagan".

Hmmmmm.....I'll be needing my Fisking tools....
Scalpel - thanks.
Laptop - got it.
Righteous Indignation - I've got plenty.
Various History Websites - check.
My copy of "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes - Here it is. First edition.
Chainsaw - yep.
Let the Fisking begin ! Here's Pat Buchanan:

Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.
The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.
By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent -- among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.

Nothing I can argue with there, although I can't find a reference for 89% of stock value being wiped out.

FDR's answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes -- like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.

Not much to attack there, either. But curiously absent from this analysis? The Smoot-Hawley tariffs. As soon as economic times got tough, Little Herbie Hoover signed something called the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which raised taxes on any goods imported into the U.S. That prompted all of our neighbors and trading partners to do the same, in a misguided effort to "protect" their own manufacturers. The result? No one traded with anyone. The only way to wealth is through the market, and the market died.

Next time you hear or read someone like Pat Buchanan or Tom Tancredo wanting to put up more trade barriers, remember that disaster. (To read an old post of mine that I'm rather fond of, click here. I was trying to explain the exact location of Tom Tancredo's head.)

The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot."

I'm seeing that Morgenthau quote all over the 'Net, but haven't found a source for it. But if he didn't say it (Morgenthau was an FDR appointee) he could have done so and remained truthful. It just doesn't seem like something an FDR loyalist would say.

Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR's landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.

As the cliche goes, "Anyone robbing Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul." Especially when Peter is still wearing diapers and can't vote.

Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the "stagflation" of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.

I bet somebody out there can help me out with this question.... Has EVERY economic crisis (recession) since 1929 been called the worst since The Great Depression? Do politicians like to hype the situation so that we can Loot The Children® to line our own pockets?

Reagan's answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.
From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. "The Seven Fat Years," author Robert Bartley called them.

That's pretty much how it happened. Too bad that Reagan spent money like a Hollywood Cowboy with Alzheimer's. Which, come to think of it, he was.

Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson's wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in "The Roaring '20s," a time of unrivaled prosperity.

Ahh yes. Harding and Coolidge. The laziest presidents, with the best economies. Mommy Party Messiahs don't get the same results. Could there possibly be a correlation?

The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT WE STARTED TRADING WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN A BIG, BIG WAY, TARIFFS BE DAMNED, SUPPLYING THEM WITH EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO CONTINUE FIGHTING THE DAMN NAZIS. That may have helped a little, Pat, you protectionist clodhopper....

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.
In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.
Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan's largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.

Wait a minute....wait a minute....didn't we already spend something like 700 Billion channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats when we bailed out Wall Street? Wasn't that supposed to solve the problem? Or could it be that the Obama candidacy was paid for by Wall Street, and that first 700 billion was merely in exchange for services rendered? And now we've gotta go back to the well for the real bailout? I have a warped admiration for Loot The Children® policies as much as the next person, but even the four-year-olds are starting to figure this thing out, and are starting to protest.

And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?
Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern "demogrant" program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.
Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for "infrastructure" projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.

Yeah, the "infrastructure" projects are a synonym for pork and earmarks. But I kinda like Obama's idea of unemployed stockbrokers and investment bankers working on the roads, building bridges, leaning on their shovels, and taking a lunchbox to work.

Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money.

Foreigners will give Bernie Madoff money before they give us any more money. Foreigners will loan money to Somali pirates, in hopes of a quick turnaround on their investment, before they loan us any more money. They might seriously consider the plight of that nice Christian lady in Nigeria who wants to get her money out of the country, but they're not going to loan us any more money. Foreigners will give money to the winos lounging outside of Convenience Stores who "just need a little money for gasoline so they can get home" before they give us any more money.

So The Fed is going to print the money. Count on it.

Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?
Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?

Well, when my daughter was playing blackjack on our recent cruise ship vacation, she lost more than half of her allotted gambling funds on the very first night. By putting more money at risk, she was able to restore prosperity. Eventually. It could've gone either way. She's a big girl now, and it was her choice. What if I'd bailed her out after the first night? I could belabor the analogy by guessing that she might've kept the money instead of putting it at risk again, much like the banks are doing now with the first 700 billion that The Children® loaned them.

Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.

I prefer to see the toolbox as half-full. There's still a chance that Somali pirates will attack Pearl Harbor.

And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.

Or a very well-funded Jack Sparrow movie.

I apologize for the total failure of this Fisking. Things are in a sad state when I find myself in general agreement with Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan.