Economics

All politicians these days run on the theme that they will create jobs–even if they don’t have the foggiest idea how to do so.

There’s a state representative in my district who boasts with each newsletter and press announcement that his number one priority is creating jobs.  However, he’s a liberal progressive whose “day job” is to work on a governmental board that creates no wealth, just talks the talk.

Then there is Congressman Joe Sestak–yes, that Joe Sestak– who was offered a “job”  in the Obama administration if he would step out of the Pennsylvania primary to make room for Arlen Specter. When interviewed about his priorities, he remarked “I want to create jobs for working families.” However, he’s spent most of his life as an Admiral in the Navy and now as a Congressman. He knows very little about how to create private sector jobs. Besides, last time I checked “all families” work. (Am I missing something?)

Which brings me to President Obama and his administration. They spent 862 billion in their first few months on a “stimulus package” that was supposed to halt the recession and create millions of new jobs. Here’s what the Heritage Foundation says about that failed effort:

“Our nation’s unemployment rate is hovering near 10% not because of record job losses…but because of record job non-creation. Private sector employers have gone on strike. Contrary to what the President’s economic wizards and New York Times columnists believe, massive government deficit spending does not stimulate job creation. President Obama does not have a secret vault of money he can just throw at the American people. The resources the government spends come from the economy. When the government increases spending, it crowds out the resources that business owners could have invested in their enterprises.”

Then came along last week’s Department of Labor jobs report, which showed private sector job creation fell by 190,000 between April and May of this year. Again according to the Heritage Foundation, “this bad news jolted markets worldwide including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which fell 3.2% Friday to its lowest level since early February. In total the U.S. economy has now lost a net of 2.2 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his stimulus bill, and his administration is now 7.2 million jobs short of what he promised his $862 billion stimulus would help create by 2010. This morning on MSNBC, former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL) pressed prominent Keynesian economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs on whether it was too early to declare President Obama’s stimulus a failure. Scarborough had to ask the question twice, but Sachs finally relented: “It did fail.”

Also keep in mind that the American economy needs to add 50,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. So the loss of 2.2 million jobs since the stimulus is abysmal indeed.

I think it’s time to be brutally honest about the leaders who are running the economy in our nation. This need for probing evaluation reminds me of a famous C.S. Lewis teaching in Mere Christianity where he shared the truth about Jesus Christ. He said that there are only three ways to look at the life of Jesus. Based on his life, words and works, he was either:

• A liar,
• A lunatic,
• Or Lord of heaven and earth.

All people must choose based on these three choices. There are no others.

Using similar logic, I believe there are only three rational choices we can make about the economic performance of our current national leaders. They are either:

• Ignorant when it comes to creating jobs,
• Incompetent in their governing skills,
• Or revolutionaries who don’t really want to create jobs but desire to fundamentally transform America into a different kind of nation.

Ignorance

It’s hard to believe that a group of people from Ivy League schools are ignorant about job creation, but wiser minds have been saying for decades that secular universities are educating people away from  common sense. Many of our government elite have been trained in a liberal environment that is anti-free enterprise and pro-Big Government. Their ignorance comes from a man-centered worldview that denies freedom and accountability before God and exalts human governments as instruments of social improvement. They do not understand that governments do not create wealth–they only confiscate it and re-distribute it to non-productive sectors.

Here’s the time-tested formula for economic advance: Faith in God produces human liberty and moral character. Character produces vision, initiative, creativity and hard work, that when combined with limited government and low taxation, produce jobs, wealth and prosperity.

The opposite is also true. Secularization diminishes moral character and human worth producing less initiative and drive creating more dependency on others. Higher taxes and increased social spending inhibit the free market from producing wealth and growing prosperity.

God. Morality. Freedom. Prosperity. These are the American (biblical) ingredients for success.

Are our present leaders simply ignorant of these principles? 

Incompetence

The Carter administration is often viewed as the most incompetent of the modern presidencies. Jimmy Carter also believed in Big Government solutions, higher taxes, and social re-distribution (it was his Community Re-Investment Act that sowed the original seeds of the mortgage meltdown of 2008). In foreign policy he was seen as a weak leader who dithered while American hostages were taken and multiplied “malaise” among the public. It took Ronald Reagan to point the nation back to God, morality, freedom, lower taxes, and peace through strength.

After eighteen months in office, it appears that Barack Obama is a gifted orator and campaigner, but a very incompetent leader. It’s no wonder. He’s never led anything in his life except a brief stint of community organizing. He has no executive experience, he’s painfully cerebral in reponding to needs and crises (four month delay in sending additional troops to Afghanistan, no response to Nashville flooding, and slow and inept response to protecting the shores of the Gulf States from the BP fiasco). And on foreign policy, he has emboldened both Iran and North Korea by his weakness and dissed America’s only democratic friend in the Middle East–the nation of Israel.

Is the Obama administration sincere, but just over its head in trying to lead our nation?

Revolutionaries

Most people believe that our president and those around him are really smart people. They just can’t be this ignorant about how to stimulate job creation! Not with all those Ph.Ds! They are also hard-working folks who can’t be guilty of gross incompetence!

That only leaves one honest choice: What they are doing to the American economy is deliberate. They know what they’re doing and they’re doing it fervently and incremently because at heart they are revolutionaries who want to fundamentally change America from a Christian-based, freedom loving nation to a secular-oriented social democracy like much of Europe. Many believe this is the major driving force behind the lack of job creation and massive growth of government. They don’t want to create more jobs–they truly want to create more dependency which increases their power and paternity.

The present Administration in the United States is not doing much for the nation. They are either ignorant of free enterprise, incompetent in governing skills, or revolutionary in outlook.

Maybe they are a little of all three. You make the call.

Today is a primary day in many states. I am praying that the American people take an honest look at their current leaders and pray fervently and vote wisely on June 8, in November, and in 2012.

Our future depends on what John Adams wrote on a plaque that hangs in the White House:

“May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof” (women too).”

What does the African-American community think of Barack Obama? Do they remember the 1960’s? Do they remember how their ancestors began life in this world on the good old American plantation?

Star Parker knows–and she’s uniquely qualified to tell her story to her fellow African Americans and all the rest of us. This article is so good, so true, it will make you cry. RB

By Star Parker

Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam’s Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas — a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation’s poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from “How do I take care of myself?” to “What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?”

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems — the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Through God’s grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed 50 percent of its Democratic members.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, “Thank you, Suh.”

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America ‘s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education.”

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place “with unprecedented transparency and accountability.”

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the SynfuelsCorporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — The War on Poverty — which President Johnson said “…does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.”

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.

It’s not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama’s invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?
“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a 501c3 non-profit think tank that provides a national voice of reason on issues of race and poverty – in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy.

In addition to heading CURE, and its network of inner city clergy nationwide, Star is a syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, offering weekly op-eds to more than 400 newspapers worldwide.

Vladimir Lenin, the Marxist leader who helped establish the Soviet Union, which lasted in Russia from 1917 to 1991

The following article by Stanislav Mishin is stunning–coming from a man that writes for Pravda–the former Soviet Union communist propaganda organ. Maybe it takes a Russian who’s experienced communism personally to remind us Americans that ideas have consequences. He also wisely reminds us that “the one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” And those who fail to take history seriously are condemned to repeat it.

I’m fascinated by Mishin’s astute analysis of what has led America down the road to socialism-communism. He sights the dumbing down of education, the Church, and the rise of Barack Obama. If he is correct, then we need to pray for a renewal of education in America, a great revival in the Church, and a change of political leadership. May we be faithful. RB

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless “sheeple”, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blinds the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American Congress (parliament). Again, Congress has put up little more then a whimper.

Then came Barak Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.

Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democrat-controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is.

The world will only snicker.