SL 02-03-2012

Time To Wake Up

February 3, 2012

As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America

By Seth Leibsohn



Some days I truly don’t know where to begin, or how to do this in seven or so minutes.  You take a look at the blogosphere, the news sites, the newspapers, and you have to ask yourself if you even recognize the country you thought you lived in, or the direction that country is going.



It was a commonplace, something so obvious it was hardly spoken about, that this country stood for a handful of things on the domestic front:  fulfilling its obligations to its citizens, creating an environment for employment and prosperity, respecting religious freedom (Bill Kristol’s phrase for all of this was “a politics of liberty and a sociology of virtue”); and on the foreign stage: standing by allies, and opposing enemies.



We come to our President, our economy, religion, and the international stage this week and we have to ask what has happened?  Let’s start with yesterday and the National Prayer Breakfast-



Speaking at a religious gathering, and saying he would not be political, he invoked Jesus Christ to defend his economic agenda, saying, it “coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’”  He then went on to say this also coincides with the “Jewish doctrine of moderation.”  As someone who has studied some of these teachings, I have no idea what he is talking about regarding a Jewish doctrine of moderation.  As for “unto whom much is given, much shall be required,”  well, of course that’s true, but the question that is raised is how much, and forced by whom?  The President prefaced this quote from Luke by saying “if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.”



So now we have a President invoking the Bible for his political economic plan.  I just want that on the record. That that’s okay all of a sudden.  But let’s parse a bit what he’s saying here, too:  Does the Bible tell him marginal tax rates need to actually be higher?  It actually says nothing on the subject.  But we need to say something:  Earth to President Obama: You are already giving up something as someone who has been blessed, as is everyone else who achieves in America.  In fact, your class, the top 10% of earners in America, pay 70% of the taxes.  Last week I said all of us need to go back to basic lessons in the defense of capitalism, including our Republican front runners.  The defense of themselves and our nation’s system—which has done more for more people than any other country in the history of the world—is somehow elusive to them.  So let’s try it.



The question truly is this: do we want to increase or decrease human flourishing?  If we want to go after the wealthy, as the President has done in his State of the Union and every other economic speech he’s given, that is certainly his right; he said he wanted to “spread the wealth around” in the 2008 campaign—and that means take it away from people once they earn it—and enough Americans thought that a good idea, but it is actually a bad idea.  Recently, Dean Zarras over at Forbes wrote an excellent column on this, channeling Jack Kemp.  We actually want more people to become rich in America—that is the idea here, that is the big idea here.  That’s what a land of opportunity means.



From wealth comes the ability to invest, which creates jobs and, if created via free market capitalism — as opposed to crony-capitalism — advances society.  The opposite of wealth of course is poverty.   We see endless government reporting and programs attempting to alleviate the latter, but little understanding of the need to create the former.   If we want less poverty, we need to create more wealth.



Let me quote a little further as President Obama likes to use Warren Buffett and his secretary as examples of inequality (and hit Mitt Romney along the way):



Obama’s beef with the [Buffetts and Romneys] is that not everybody is equal in their ability to create wealth.  Yet this is no more an injustice than my permanent inability to dunk a basketball.   Do we need to punish Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James or Kobe Bryant because I can’t jump three feet into the air?   While we cheer for O’Neal, James and Byrant on the court, can’t we similarly cheer for the entrepreneurs in the business world who create the jobs that everyone talks about wanting?



In the end it all goes back to Obama’s core belief that government itself can (and should) right the O’Neal vs. Zarras injustice by creating the opportunities for me that The Shaq somehow took away.  Notice, however, that if the tax rate “inequality” between Warren and his secretary is too high for Obama, he’s not proposing that we reduce the secretary’s rate to that of Warren’s, and then match government’s spending to the resulting revenue.  No, Obama wants Buffett to pay more in taxes and he’s going to figure out a way to give that extra money to the secretary through additional government services, programs and transfer payments.



Note that no additional wealth is being created here.



Now, let’s look at what confiscating wealth does—or surtaxing the wealthy as Harry Reid keeps proposing.  It takes away what the wealthy do with their money, which is four things:



Spend it. Whether it’s spent on luxury goods or candy and gum, it keeps people employed making the stuff.



Bank it. The bank doesn’t just hold onto the money. They loan most of it out for people to buy cars, houses, start businesses and the like. They’ll even loan it out to customers with poor credit ratings if Congress leans on them long enough, but that’s another story.



Donate it. Countless organizations such as hospitals, churches, museums and community centers rely on donations to perform their missions, and society benefits correspondingly.



Invest it. Of the four possibilities, this is where the initial sum of money is transformed into something worth more by someone else — that is, where value is added and wealth is created.  Often enough the investments take the form of starting new companies or financing the expansion of existing companies, both of which create more jobs and ultimately put other individuals onto the same decision tree.  If the investor succeeds, they’ll circle back to these same four alternatives. Likewise, anywhere along the way, the investor stands to lose some or all of the money.  Somehow that fact is often overlooked, and the difference between the investors who can consistently grow wealth over time versus those who can’t is both incredibly instructive and woefully under-appreciated.



Which of the four rich man’s activities above is harmful?



Now, we conservatives don’t need lectures on generosity and charity.  As an ABC News report put it:



[The] idea that liberals give more…is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election.



Arthur Brooks, the author of "Who Really Cares," says that "when you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more."



There’s a lot more to say here, especially as the new unemployment figures will come out today, and likely we’ll see unemployment mostly unmoved at about 8.5%.  And just to remind, when Obama entered office, unemployment was at 7.6%....and the unemployment we see now is after 5 trillion dollars more in spending by President Obama.  As the Politico put it yesterday, President Obama is the first President in history to pile up $1 trillion or more in spending every year in office.



But, if the President really cared about jobs rather than punishing job creators under some perverse notion of distributive equality, here is what he would have done by now (as the Investors Business Daily has put it):



He would have cut the corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the industrialized world, so that businesses would grow, hire, and compete again. He would end senseless regulation. The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that federal regulations impose $1.75 trillion in costs on the economy — or about 12% of GDP. Today there are 4,225 regulations "in the pipeline." Overall, these cost U.S. companies $8,086 per employee. At a minimum, those regulations that cost more than their real benefit should be ended — saving hundreds of billions for U.S. businesses.  He would have approved the XL pipeline instead of canceling it and he would ending the drilling ban on offshore oil which would unlock at least 180 billion barrels of oil, creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs — the kind now missing from our "green" economy.



Those are just a few things. And they don’t even get us to lowering marginal rates.  And there is more.  Much more.  But we must move on to another violation of what we thought this country was about, beyond getting out of the way of employers to employ people.



See Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal.  She nails it.  As the President was speaking of the importance of faith at the Prayer Breakfast, he and his administration cracked down on the Catholic Church.  Here is how Peggy puts it.  This week,



the president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says under ObamaCare Catholic Institutions—including its charities, hospitals and schools—will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. If they do not, they will face ruinous fines in the millions of dollars. Or they can always go out of business.



In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore.



I invite you to imagine the moment we are living in without the church's charities, hospitals and schools. And if you know anything about those organizations, you know it is a fantasy that they can afford millions in fines.



There was no reason to make this ruling—none. Except ideology.



I do not want to give the First Amendment short shrift in moving on, but this quote unquote constitutional scholar of a President we have has done far worse with this decision—he’s eviscerated the First Amendment, not violated it, eviscerated it.  He would actually have a long way to go from here to get us to contempt of the Constitution, this is actually beneath such contempt.  If a church—which does great things for this country and the world—can’t be a church, that’s not a violation of the First Amendment, that is the end of the First Amendment.



Let us go to the Attorney General yesterday, testifying on Fast and Furious yesterday before the House of Representatives.  We can say a lot about the invocation of executive privilege the Democrats have now rediscovered after slamming President Bush and Vice President Cheney over its use for eight years about far less consequential things than the death of a federal agent and the loss of a lot of Mexican lives.  But notice something in yesterday’s hearings even I forgot about—Eric Holder admitted he is now, quote, “at a point where we are about to close those investigations.”  What investigations?  The investigations of CIA agents who interrogated terrorists we captured.  I thought that was done and over with long ago—I was wrong.  We put good Americans who were helping us glean information from terrorists in the dock of the Justice Department (even as we lament why more people are not interested in signing up to defend this county) and now—now—three years later we are “about to close those investigations.”  Three years too late.  The investigations should not have ever even commenced.  Only those embarrassed by our success in the war against Islamic radicals would put our own men under investigation for interrogating terrorists.  We deserve a lot better.



Let me put it this way: We deserve a lot better on a lot of fronts.  And it comes down to what I just said: Not being embarrassed about or for America.  Not our way of life, not our way of empowering people, not our faith, and not our way of defending our way of life from those who would end it in the most gruesome ways possible, blowing out all the moral lights.



But embarrassed by success and power we are. And that is how countries fall, they stop believing in themselves. But that is why President Obama went on an apology tour his first year in office.  And that is why we appease our enemies.  Note just yesterday what our Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did: he undercut Israel once again, telling the mainstream media that Israel is likely to strike Iran in April, May, or June.  What was the point of that message?  It could only be one of two things: a) to warn Israel to back off (broadcasting the US would not support such a move) or b), more nefariously, to warn the Iranians.  Either way: undercut an ally, help an enemy.



“What has happened?” I asked at the beginning of this monologue?  The answer is we took a flight from our senses in experimenting with far left ideology and placing that experiment in the White House.  It failed.  We must hold this President, our politics, and ourselves, accountable.  That time is this year.  Let us not fail in that, for if we do, the consequences, I fear, will be irreversible.