Category: Reagan

Jonathan Bean: You’re not Reagan, you’re Hoover

The parallels with our current president are astounding.
. . .
When the economy tanked, he increased government spending, cut taxes, bailed out businesses “too big to fail,” and proposed a massive infrastructure bank to employ men in shovel-ready jobs. Contemporaries called this stimulus package “priming the pump.”

Hoover blamed his woes on the international economic situation and his political opponents. Sound familiar?
. . .
He is very seldom willing to take advice. Since he knows more than any advisers could, why should he?”

Here.

The Battle to Be Free from Excessive Regulations and Taxes

The ideological battle between central planning and free markets is over, but the battle to be free from the death of a thousand cuts rages on.  This battle is with the Nanny Staters, Taxers of the Rich, Protectors of Entrenched Interests, Control Freaks, Social Engineers, and Technocrats.

John Stossel’s program was about attacks on entrepreneurs. He showed boxes and stacks of regulations that were created just in the past year.

I have an idea for the boxes of regulations. Build a wall of them, a wall big enough that you can knock over. Then show the video clip from Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate where he says “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” Then knock over the wall.

This illustrates the next battle for freedom, which is the battle to be free from excessive regulations and taxes.

“In this present crisis. . .”

government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become to complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior, to government, for, by, and of the people. Well if no one among us is capable of govrerning himself, who among us has the capacity to govern someone else.

U.S. economic growth was 1.6% for Q2 2010, having slowed sequentially from Q1 2010 and Q4 2009. Here.

U.S. unemployment was 9.6% in August. Here.

U.S. budget deficit is forecast at $1.3 trillion for 2010. Here.

Long Island East End (NY) Tea Party Supporting Anti-Immigrant Candidates

Oh well. 

Nearly everything said last night at a Bridgehampton “meet the candidates” forum sponsored by the East End tea party got applause from an enthusiastic audience.

Some applause was louder than others, and the wooden floor boards actually shook a bit when George Demos, who wants to run for Congress against incumbent Tim Bishop, was asked about illegal immigration and what he would do to stop it.

Here.

So much for shrinking government. If Tea Parties favor this position on the immigration issue they will have lost an opportunity to fix the underlying problem: local, state, and federal governments that are too big.  Big government suffocates economic opportunity and causes people to scapegoat and turn on minorities of whatever ethnicity, race, etc.  New immigrants are in the same boat as locals.  Taxes are too high and regulations too stifling for people to grow their businesses.  Trade barriers prevent opportunities to increase revenues via exports, and lower costs for via imports.  Lower costs benefit consumers, and also businesses when they import stuff they use for their end products.

As well, Tea Parties will have lost potential allies in immigrants.  New immigrants also are smothered by big government.

Here is President Reagan’s interpretation of a Shining City Upon a Hill:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.

Figure out how to implement this.

“ultimately the US and UK had to elect Reagan and Thatcher to get us back on track”

The golden years were the 50s and 60s then the 70s changed everything, he said about the political situation.

“Having elected people who said everything would be all right, ultimately the US and UK had to elect Reagan and Thatcher to get us back on track,” according to Janjuah.

Bob Janjuah, the chief markets strategist at RBS, told CNBC Friday.

Interesting narrative. I think politicians generally screw up things while making themselves better off. After the guiding philosophy becomes indefensible, we need someone to come in and fix things. Hence, Thatcher and Reagan. I do not consider this a traditional left-vs-right phenomenon. One or more politicians from any party just has to be astute enough to figure out what has to be done. The Obama Democrats went in the exact opposite way we needed to go.