TRIFECTA: BOB GELDOF...VENTURE CAPITALIST

REAGAN FLASHBACK, 1964: A TIME FOR CHOOSING

Nancy and Ronald Reagan in 1964, the year he delivered "The Speech"

In honor of President Ronald Reagan's 104th birthday, here is the entire televised speech he gave on October 27, 1964 on behalf of the Goldwater campaign.  It was titled "A Time For Choosing" and now remembered simply as "The Speech."  The name of the program was "A Rendezvous With Destiny."  The speech raised $1 million for Goldwater's campaign and is considered the event that launched Reagan's political career.

Among other things, it is remarkable (and frightening) how eerily similar the problems he addressed on that day are to the problems we face on this day, except that today they are even more acute.  And the rhetoric of the liberals is also quite familiar to us.  During the speech, Reagan uttered this famous quote:

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things -- we're never "for" anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

You can read the complete transcript of the speech here.  I would strongly suggest that you take the time to listen to the entire speech and also read the transcript.  It is a magnificent example of why Reagan was known as the "Great Communicator" and it needs to be read as well as heard.  Here is an excerpt:

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."

Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so."

WALKER GOES ALL IN ON EDUCATION REFORM

Gov. Scott Walker to defund new state standardized exam aligned with Common Core standards

Common Core: gone Caps on vouchers: gone School Choice for all: in Scott Walker goes all in on education reform. http://t.co/6qVSYmk1eH”
— Paul Blair (@gopaulblair) February 4, 2015

.@ScottWalker's #wibudget includes a school accountability proposal and reiterates that schools aren't required to adopt the #commoncore.
— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) February 4, 2015

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker delivered his two-year budget address Tuesday night, the highlight of which for many was the promise to defund Common Core testing.

WLUK's Alex Ronallo gave a brief but comprehensive overview of the address.

Walker says his budget will help restore the American Dream in Wisconsin.
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walker says property taxes will continue to go down for most under his budget proposal. #wibudget
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walker says he would continue the UW tuition freeze and add a tuition freeze at tech colleges for "high demand" areas. #wibudget
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walker says his budget would make it clear no school district in state has to use "common core," federal learning standards.
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walker proposes giving every school that receives state funding a letter grade, does not mention sanctions for failure. #wibudget
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walket proposes adults without children be drug tested in order to receive welfare. Those who fail given treatment. #wibudget
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Walker says budget would provide additional funds to help victims of domestic violence. #wibudget
— Alex Ronallo WLUK (@AlexRonalloWLUK) February 4, 2015

Again, the promise to pull state funding for the Smarter Balanced assessment, a standardized exam which is aligned to Common Core State Standards, was the most interesting news to conservatives.

BREAKING: Scott Walker removes funding for Common Core testing (Smarter Balance) in #wibudget #wiright #tcot #PJNET #StopCommonCore
— Matt Batzel (@MattBatzel) February 4, 2015

GO BIG: Walker budget ends Common Core, massively expands school vouchers. http://t.co/rDOJGGQwHs
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 4, 2015

Eff U #wiunion RT @MattBatzel: BREAKING: Scott Walker removes funding for Common Core testing (cont) http://t.co/gzy5r7Sd0o
— VibeVal1 (@VibeVal1) February 4, 2015

“@MattBatzel: BREAKING: Scott Walker removes funding for Common Core testing.#StopCommonCore" This man NEEDS to be next POTUS!! 👏👏
— Terri Buonomo (@TeresaKB0311) February 4, 2015

@VibeVal1 @MattBatzel Walker has shown the blueprint, built the foundation, and has the house in place for bold conservatism.
— SirTweetsALot (@JDSon78) February 4, 2015

Walker defunding Common Core testing, pushing for School Choice, eliminated greedy unions--yet he's still the "anti-education" guy.
— Brooks (@EBrooksUncut) February 4, 2015

Reports on the WI budget proposal sound like Walker's going to start taking a hatchet to Common Core. He's running.
— Brian Roastbeef (@BrianRoastbeef) February 4, 2015

WINNING THE ECONOMIC FREEDOM WORLD CUP

ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS AMITY SHLAES & PAUL RIVOCHE

Amity Shlaes and Artist Paul Rivoche on The Forgotten Man, Graphic Novel Edition

So you've written a best-selling book that has cast an event that everyone in America thought they knew about into an entirely new light, but you'd still like to get it in the hands of more readers. What do you do? If you're Amity Shlaes, the author of the 2007 New York Times bestseller The Forgotten Man, you turn it into a graphic novel. Why not? Lefties have been doing it for years; Howard Zinn's A People's History of American Empire is also available in graphic novel format.

Shlaes turned to veteran Batman writer Chuck Dixon to consult on the script, and then brought in artist Paul Rivoche to craft the illustrations. The result is The Forgotten Man Graphic Edition: A New History of the Great Depression, now available from Amazon.com and your local bookstore.

During our nearly half-hour long interview, Amity and Paul will discuss:

• Who was the "Forgotten Man" of the 1930s?

• How was new graphic novel's visual look created?

• How did Paul research the visual details of the 1920s and 1930s?

• Every comic needs a hero and a villain. Who plays those roles in The Forgotten Man Graphic Edition?

• What is the real story behind Dorothea Lange's iconic "Migrant Mother" photo from 1936?

And much more...

Also read: Remembering "Silent Cal" Coolidge

CPAC: WHY CONSERVATISM IS RIGHT FOR WOMEN

In a relaxed but rather hard-hitting women's panel on Saturday at CPAC, Tammy Bruce moderated a discussion titled "Why Conservatism is Right for Women: How Conservatives Should Talk About Life, Property, & National Security."

The symbolism of scheduling the panel for Saturday - which was also International Women's Day - as a lead-in to Sarah Palin's speech probably explains why female speakers at CPAC were not scheduled earlier in the conference.

It was strange, however, that even though the GOP boasts four of this country's five female governors - Nikki Haley (South Carolina), Susana Martinez (New Mexico), Jan Brewer (Arizona) and Mary Fallin (Oklahoma) - none were scheduled to speak.

But the women on this panel were determined to make up for the relative lack of female speakers with some brutal truth about what the GOP needs to do going forward with regards to women's empowerment in the party, messaging to women in the electorate and supporting those GOP women who are in the arena when they are attacked by rabid PIGressives.

"Why do we continue to allow men to talk about our issues?" asked Crystal Wright.

"If women in America think that Republicans and conservatives hate them, they're not going to vote for us," Kate Obenshain, author of Divider-in-Chief: The Fraud of Hope and Change, pointed out.

"We have the message," Marilinda Garcia, a State Representative in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, noted later in the panel. "But we lack the messengers."

It's a fast-paced discussion and I strongly encourage everybody to make time to watch the video in its entirety.

Also read:

Please, Don't Say Anything Stupid

Women's Empowerment Starts with Economic Freedom 

VIRTUAL PRESIDENT WHITTLE ON HEALTH CARE

In this installment of the Your Government series, Virtual President Bill Whittle explains why a two-cent aspirin pill costs $20, and how we can replace the waste and inefficiencies of our present system with one that empowers patients to use their own money, just as if it were...their own money.

AFP'S DEFENDING THE DREAM: ARTHUR BROOKS

VIRTUAL PREZ BILL WHITTLE - TOWN HALL MEETING

HOW LIBERAL "SOLUTIONS" HURT YOUNG PEOPLE

Student Loan Scam - July 17, 2012

Federal student aid, whether in the form of grants or loans, is the main factor behind the runaway cost of higher education.  As Cato Institute economist Neal McCluskey explained in an April 2012 article for U.S. World & News Report: "The basic problem is simple: Give everyone $100 to pay for higher education and colleges will raise their prices by $100, negating the value of the aid. And inflation-adjusted aid - most of it federal - has certainly gone up, ballooning from $4,602 per undergraduate in 1990-91 to $12,455 in 2010-11."

Higher Minimum Wages - February 27, 2013

Are people responsive to changes in price? For example, if the price of cars rose by 25 percent, would people purchase as many cars? Supposing housing prices rose by 25 percent, what would happen to sales? Those are big-ticket items, but what about smaller-priced items? If a supermarket raised its prices by 25 percent, would people purchase as much? It’s not rocket science to conclude that when prices rise, people adjust their behavior by purchasing less.

Obama's War on the Young - May 15, 2013

According to recent polls, younger Americans are increasingly disillusioned with government and cynical about the political process. Maybe they will finally realize that they are being played for patsies by the Obama administration. After all, on issue after issue, President Obama has fed younger voters a steady diet of high-minded rhetoric and then delivered policies that leave them holding the bag.

Obamacare will hurt young people the most - February 20, 2013

Younger, healthier people, many of whom voted for Mr. Obama in droves, will see their insurance premiums climb sharply as Obamacare demands that insurers provide them with more medical coverage than they want or need.

Young people get short end of Social Security - January 21, 2013

The year 2013 has not brought a happy New Year for the salaries of workers across the United States. The two-year Social Security payroll tax reduction, which brought the employees’ share of the tax down to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent, is over. Young workers - who have particularly struggled in this economy - will be hit hardest as they are forced to pay more toward the promise of far-off retirement instead of making ends meet today.

Hey Kids: Tonight You're Young, Tomorrow You're Unemployed - February 18, 2013

So knock yourselves out, kids, when it comes to boozy hook-ups at bars – or the ballot box for that matter. Set the world on fire, burn bright, and all that. Tonight, you're young. Tomorrow, you're either unemployed or working to pay for the retirements of the folks who are cleaning out the buffet tables before you're even out of your seats.

WEALTH CREATION

I have a million dollar idea. Send $1 for details. Act now, offer limited to the first million investors.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 24, 2013

Charity Begins With Wealth Creation

Private charity is unquestioningly better than government efforts to help people. Government squanders money. Charities sometime squander money, too, but they usually don't.

Proof of the superiority of private over government efforts is everywhere. Catholic charities do a better job educating children than government - for much less money. New York City's government left Central Park a dangerous mess. Then a private charity rescued it. But while charity is important, let's not overlook something more important: Before we can help anyone, we first need something to give. Production precedes donation. Advocates of big government forget this.

We can't give unless we (or someone) first creates. Yet wealth creators are encouraged to feel guilt. "Bill Gates, or any billionaire, for that matter," Yaron Brook, author of Free Market Revolution and president of the Ayn Rand Institute, said on my TV show, "how did they become a billionaire? By creating a product or great service that benefits everybody. And we know it benefits us because we pay for it. We pay less than what it's worth to us. That's why we trade—we get more value than what we give up. So, our lives are better off. Bill Gates improved hundreds of millions of lives around the world. That's how he became a billionaire."

ALEC: RICH STATES, POOR STATES

Rich States, Poor States from ALEC_states

Rich States, Poor States is an annual economic competiveness study authored by Dr. Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and Jonathan Williams, Director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

SMALL GOVERNMENT & FREE ENTERPRISE

This Is No Ordinary Scandal
Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government.

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don't look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.

Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.

As always it comes down to trust. Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department?

DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE NEW DEAL

It's been said a million times since the fall of 2008: the financial collapse was the worst this country has experienced since the Great Depression.  So it's only natural to take a look back at that earlier time and to figure out what worked and what didn't.  As the video below explains, neither Hoover nor Roosevelt were exactly what they've been portrayed to be over the subsequent decades.



Five Myths About the Great Depression

The current financial crisis has revived powerful misconceptions about the Great Depression. Those who misinterpret the past are all too likely to repeat the exact same mistakes that made the Great Depression so deep and devastating.

Here are five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression:

• Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting.
• The stock market crash in October 1929 precipitated the Great Depression.
• Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.
• Greed caused the stock market to overshoot and then crash.
• Enlightened government pulled the nation out of the worst downturn in its history and came to the rescue of capitalism through rigorous regulation and government oversight.

ECON 101: PRICE VS. COST

In an article published last week, the economist Walter Williams explains the difference between price and cost.  Understanding the difference is necessary to grasp the importance to our economy of keeping taxes as low as reasonably possible.

Suppose you buy a gallon of gas for $3. How much did it cost you? You say, "Williams, that's a silly question. It cost $3." That's where you're mistaken, because there's a difference between price and cost. To prove that price and cost are not the same, consider the following. Suppose you live and work in New York City and routinely pay $15 for a haircut. Imagine you were told that there's a barber in Boise, Idaho, who can give you the identical haircut for just $5. Would you start going to the Boise barber? I'm betting you'd answer no because even though the price is cheaper, the cost is greater.

We might think of price as the money that's actually given in exchange for the transfer of ownership. When you purchased the gallon of gas, you simply transferred your ownership of $3. What the gas cost you is a different matter. One way to determine the cost of a gallon of gas is to ask yourself what sacrifice you had to make in order to have $3 to buy it. Say that your annual salary is $75,000. Your total federal income tax, state income tax, local taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes come to about 35 percent of your salary. That means that in order to purchase the $3 gallon of gas required that you earned about $4.60 in order to have $3 after taxes. That means a gallon of gas costs you $4.60 worth of sacrifice. But that's not so costly as it is to a richer person — for example, someone earning a yearly salary of $500,000. He has to earn more than $5 before taxes in order to have $3 after taxes to purchase gas.

If taxes only concealed hidden costs of what we buy, we'd be lucky, but taxes are destructive in another hidden way. Suppose I want to hire you to repair my computer. Having the work done is worth $200 to me, and performing the work is worth $200 to you. The transaction occurs because we have a meeting of the minds. Suppose Congress imposes a 30 percent income tax on you. That means that if you repaired my computer, you would receive not $200, what it was worth to you to do the job, but instead $140 after taxes. You might say the heck with repairing my computer; spending time with your family is worth more than $140.

You might then offer that you'd do the job if I paid you $283. That way, your after-tax earnings would be $200 — what doing the job is worth to you. There's a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $283. So it's my turn to say the heck with it.

This simple example demonstrates that one effect of taxes is that of destroying transactions and hence jobs. But politicians have what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world. In other words, they're fool enough to believe that people will behave after taxes are levied just as they behaved before and that the only effect of a tax is to bring in more revenue. Of course, a more flattering assessment is that politicians are not fools and know that their actions destroy transactions and hence jobs but they don’t give a damn and only care about revenue.

Here's a question: Would you and I, as well as our nation, be better off if you repaired my computer and I gave you $200 in cash and we agreed not to report the transaction to the agents of Congress? I'd answer yes and no. Yes, because there'd be more transactions, more jobs and greater wealth. No, because we'd be criminals.

Taxes are necessary to fund the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. If Congress spent according to its authority under Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, taxes wouldn't be any more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product, as it was between 1787 and 1920, as opposed to today's 20 percent.

And here is an Econ 101 video from 2011 that further explains why higher taxes do more harm than good.

BILL WHITTLE'S VIRTUAL PRESIDENCY

Bill Whittle gave a speech shortly after the election last November that I found incredibly inspiring.  During the hour-long talk he mentioned that he was planning a new project for 2013 and beyond in which he would be the Virtual President.  It sounded like a great idea and now it has become a virtual reality.  

He has already given his virtual inauguration speech.  Now that we've had Obama's SOTU address to Congress I'm sure that there'll be a virtual SOTU coming soon.  In the meantime, here is the virtual inauguration speech by V-POTUS Bill Whittle.  As always, it is remarkably inspiring and a powerful statement of Conservative principles.

Be sure and check out the website, sign up for e-mail alerts, etc.  Trust me, it's worth it.

BARACK OBAMA IS THE ONE WHO IS OUT OF TOUCH

It's been over a week since Barack Obama delivered his off-prompture speech in Virginia in which he took some deliberate shots at the free-enterprise, entrepreneurial spirit of America and turned it into a punchline. Normally I would have simply created a link to the excellent article below but Charles Krauthammer does such a magnificent job of refuting Obama that I wanted to make it available in its entirety on this site because I think it's that important.  Below the article is the Romney campaign's rapid first response.  But first, please have a look at the video below in which Bill Whittle gives his own views on what it is about Obama that makes him so out of touch - and indeed hostile - when it comes to mainstream Americans.

DID THE STATE MAKE YOU GREAT?
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: July 19

"If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

— Barack Obama, Roanoke, Va., July 13

And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement. 

To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom. 

Moreover, the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective. 

Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.

Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes. 

The ultimate Obama fallacy, however, is the conceit that belief in the value of infrastructure — and willingness to invest in its creation and maintenance — is what divides liberals from conservatives.

More nonsense. Infrastructure is not a liberal idea, nor is it particularly new. The Via Appia was built 2,300 years ago. The Romans built aqueducts, too. And sewers. Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government. 

The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist taxation, about geometrically expanding entitlements, about tax breaks and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work — the latest Obama entitlement-by-decree that would fatally undermine the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.

What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world, an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in which a fictional Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life by an all- giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day” magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care, business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her grave site. 

Julia’s world is totally atomized. It contains no friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s married to the provider state.

Or to put it slightly differently, the “Life of Julia” represents the paradigmatic Obama political philosophy: citizen as orphan child. For the conservative, providing for every need is the duty that government owes to actual orphan children. Not to supposedly autonomous adults.

Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, meaning Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own - those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.  Limited government so conceived has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations.

BILL WHITTLE EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHTS AND COMMODITIES

One of the things that often comes up in conversations about ObamaCare ObamaTax is the idea that health care is a right. And that this means that health insurance is also a right. But as Bill Whittle explains so effectively, health care and health insurance are both commodities that must be paid for somewhere down the line. It cannot be "free" and since it is never really "free" then it cannot be a "right."