By Christopher Cook, with Hannah Thoreson

Obama’s speech in Kansas yesterday was everything one would expect. It was light on facts, heavy on rhetoric. It contained boilerplate leftist tropes and called for solutions that have been proven again and again not to work. It had demagoguery and populist themes, with outright lies interwoven.

If we are trapped in a long national nightmare, this speech was an invitation to stay asleep.

There are so many areas to critique, so let’s get right to it.

 

My grandparents served during World War II.  He was a soldier in Patton’s Army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line.  And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded  . . .

Bailing out cronies on Wall Street, and Frankenstein-monster public-private hybrid GSEs like Fannie and Freddie, hardly seems like rewarding responsibility.

Taking over Chrysler and closing dealerships not based on sales but based on which ones were Democrat allies hardly seems like rewarding responsibility.

But perhaps we define those terms differently. It’s the new math.

 

Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people.

Really? Do we have any data to back up that claim? Or is that just, like most of this speech, rhetorical fluff?

 

But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.  We all know the story by now:  Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or even sometimes understand them.

Yes. Lending institutions were forced to do this, beginning in the late 70s and massively accelerating recently. Forced by government. Forced by ACORN and Democrats, with a little help from Republicans too. He’s got a lot of nerve.

 

But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time.  This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. 

The policies that Obama supports have not been shown to benefit the middle class, or the rich, or the poor. The inflation-adjusted income of the lowest quintile now is higher than it was for the middle quintile in the vaunted 1950s. He can keep pandering to the “middle class” all he wants, but his policies will devastate it.

 

I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. 

Fair share:

We have the most progressive income tax in the world. The rich are already bearing a greater share of the burden than anyone else, and a greater share here than in any other nation.

We have the highest corporate tax in the world. It is devastating to economic growth.

What more does he want?

 

Same rules:

Obama needs to define, in precise terms, who is playing by different rules? He cannot insinuate that there are different rules for different people without providing data.

If anything, his sweetheart deals and bailouts for unions, coupled with rule by regulatory and bureaucratic whim, are creating that very environment.

 

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can.  He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices.

Okay fine, we have anti-trust laws now. What more is Obama looking for? What is missing?

 

 And in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism.  “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” 

Don’t we not have that now?

You see, this is the left’s impulse, writ large. They must destroy what exists in order to create what they want. We have equality of opportunity. Why is he saying we don’t? Only because he must tear down what exists. Where it is not inadequate, he must claim that it is inadequate in order to gain support for its remaking.

 

Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where the workers were cheaper.

Obama’s ideology, in the person of Democrats and leftists throughout the decades, takes the following approach to America’s private economy:

Step 1: Go to someone else’s party.

Step 2: Make yourself so unpleasant that everyone leaves.

Step 3: Blame them all for your behavior.

Possible Step 4: Find a way to make it so that none of them ever go to another party again.

The bottom line is this: Businesses will go where they can get the best climate for their own operations. They will weigh labor costs, the regulatory environment, taxes, and shipping costs and then locate there. They don’t do it out of spite, they do it because businesses are around to make money (by providing goods and services that people want).

Unions and Democrats have made labor costs, the regulatory environment, and taxes so unfriendly to business that they leave. Then unions and Democrats complain or find a way to punish them further, driving more of them away.

 

Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. These changes didn’t just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the internet. 

He’s attacking ATM’s again!

I’ll let Mary Katharine Ham start out on this one:

 

The automobile put the guys who clean horse apples off the streets out of work. But in the long run, and not even in the very long run, the automobile created far more jobs than it cost.

For 40,000 years, the short bow was the technology for missile attacks and hunting. Then, 1000 years ago, some brilliant person decided to make the bow longer, and wham!—the longbow was born. And with it, 40 millennia of tradition were ended, and all sorts of short-bow makers were put out of business! (Not to mention how peeved the French were for getting so soundly trounced at the Battle of Crecy!)

This is the price of doing business on planet earth. Displacements due to technological progress are sad when they occur, but progress always creates more opportunities and new frontiers over time. And usually it doesn’t take very long for those new opportunities to arise.

Anyone want to go back to hunting with short bows?

 

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune.  “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us.  If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger.  Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers.  But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else.  And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory.  And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government.  That’s in America’s DNA.  And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker.  (Laughter.)  But here’s the problem:  It doesn’t work.  It has never worked.  (Applause.)  It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.  It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.  (Applause.)  I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory. 

Capitalism has brought more human beings out of poverty and given them prosperity than anything else in history. Government that have tried to take over management of the economy, beyond a minimal degree, have produced democide by the millions, not prosperity.

You need to be very afraid of this man.

 

 Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history.  And what did it get us?  The slowest job growth in half a century. 

This man’s ability to lie is unreal.

The facts:

 

Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class — things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security. 

He’s blaming that on what? Bush? Free market capitalism?

Seriously?

 

Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity and denied care to patients who were sick, mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford,

Again . . . they were forced to. By government. By Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, and yes, even George W. Bush through the “ownership society,” though he later sounded the alarm to no avail. This is so audacious a statement as to qualify as dishonest.

 

America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity

No. America was NOT built on the idea of broad-based prosperity. America was built on the RIGHT TO WORK FOR prosperity.

This may seem like a picayune difference in wording, but it’s not. In fact, it shows one of the fundamental differences between left and right. Saying that America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity is saying that somehow America must engineer that outcome, as opposed to providing the opportunity for each individual to pursue that outcome. There is a huge difference.

 

America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity — that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made.

First, what Ford did was make a smart business decision about prices. He used interchangeable parts and smart assembly practices to increase his output and lower the price of his products. He did NOT pay his workers more than the market would bear, and certainly not because of some broad-based redistributive strategy. He was a smart businessman.

Second, Obama has a lot of nerve even speaking them name of Henry Ford . . .

Obama’s policies are more similar to Franklin Roosevelt’s than any other president. Not coincidentally, we’re also in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and yes, Virginia, those policies do have something to do with that. When Ford refused to comply with FDR’s corporatist, quasi-fascist NRA code, FDR tried to force him to do so by executive order:

Who can forget the heroic Henry Ford, when he was the only major manufacturer in the auto industry to not sign Hugh (Old Ironpants) Johnson’s Automobile Code under the National Industrial Recovery Act?

Entrepreneurs who kowtowed to FDR’s “voluntary” codes could place the State logo, the NRA blue eagle symbol, in their windows and on the packaging of their goods. Said Ford of the atrocious Blue Eagle: “Hell, that Roosevelt buzzard. I wouldn’t put it on the car.” The National Industrial Recovery Act was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but Ford held his ground against Roosevelt, even as FDR led a boycott against Ford products.

In 1934, Roosevelt went so far as to sign an executive order requiring Ford to comply with the NRA’s automobile code, or face the elimination of government contracts. This lasted until the end of the year, when government agencies swallowed their bitter pill and resumed purchases from Ford.

Now Obama is invoking the name of Ford to support his corporatist, redistributive, business-crushing, statist policies and plans? He’s not short on chutzpah or irony, is he?

 

Inequality also distorts our democracy. 

First, do I need to say it? The alternative to inequality is what? Oh wait, I know . . .

The establishment of soul-crushing, murderous totalitarian regimes designed to level all outcomes and control and perfect human nature. A body count of 100 million and still climbing. Silly me, how could I forget?

Human beings are not equal in talents, drive, looks, intelligence, etc. We are created equal, meaning we are equal in the eyes of our creator. But functionally, we are not equal. The only way for government to eliminate or even significantly mitigate inequality is to try to level human nature and human inequality, and that can only be done through MASSIVE force and coercion.

That is, at the end of the day, what Obama is calling for. He can dress it up in fancy language if he wants, but it all comes down to government exercising just that—massive force and coercion.

 

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder.

Ooo, ooo, wait, I know this one!

Here’s a progressive website (in case you think I’m being biased) on the subject:

The difficulty for Democrats is that the party is on record opposing the use of soft money and supporting McCain-Feingold, which would prohibit soft money contributions. In previous years, the legislation has been held up by the threat of a filibuster, but this year backers say they have the votes to cut off debate.

“The problem is, we’ve painted ourselves into this sanctimonious corner,” said one Democratic strategist with close ties to Capitol Hill. [ . . . ]

More than many Democrats realize, soft money has been essential in remaining financially competitive with the GOP, which has a larger pool of small donors and far outraises Democrats in the smaller donations, known as “hard money.”

So . . . let’s see who gets more donations from rich people:

Here’s 2010, when Republicans did well electorally:

	Count	Total*	To Dems*	To Repubs*	To PACs*	% Dems	% Repubs
Donors giving $200-$2,399	672,049	$450.0	$163.0	$182.0	$105.0	36%	40%
Donors giving $2,400+	146,715	$1,136.0	$496.0	$468.0	$190.0	44%	41%
$2,400-$9,999	122,503	$514.0	$199.0	$215.0	$101.0	39%	42%
$10,000+	24,212	$621.0	$297.0	$252.0	$88.0	48%	41%
$95,000+	717	$84.0	$46.0	$32.0	$6.0	55%	39%
$1,000,000+	2	$2.0	$0.0	$0.0	$2.0	0%	7%

Here’s 2008, when Democrats did well electorally:

	Count	Total*	To Dems*	To Repubs*	To PACs*	% Dems	% Repubs
Donors giving $200-$2,299	1,074,798	$718.0	$344.0	$270.0	$102.0	48%	38%
Donors giving $2,300+	281,454	$1,921.0	$981.0	$765.0	$205.0	51%	40%
$2,300-$9,999	245,155	$938.0	$471.0	$371.0	$102.0	50%	40%
$10,000+	36,299	$983.0	$509.0	$394.0	$103.0	52%	40%
$95,000+	1,006	$118.0	$67.0	$39.0	$14.0	57%	34%
$1,000,000+	2	$5.0	$0.0	$0.0	$5.0	0%	4%

 

The Democrats do just fine in terms of getting big donations, and in spite of Obama’s populist rhetoric, they will do all they can to protect their soft money advantages.

And in case you are wondering about that 100,000+ line, yes, the Republicans have gotten more of the very small pool 100,000+ donations recently, but as recently as 2000, the Democrats got 93% to the Republicans’ 7%.

Obama will happily sell himself to the highest bidder. In fact, he has raised more money from Wall Street than anyone ever. So this talk of risks to our democracy is just hypocritical blather.

 

You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult.  By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent.  And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class — 33 percent.

This one will take more research to see where those data come from, but it is very likely that this is based on the distorted way in which the Census Bureau (and the Democrats, unsurprisingly) like to gauge poverty and class as being entirely relative. Each quintile is seen only in regard to the others. So, the bottom quintile is “the poor” whether they’re living in huts, hovels, houses, or castles. Everything is seen in comparison, and without fixed standards, the view is extremely misleading. Everyone is doing better than they were in the 1950s. EVERYONE. Rich, poor, middle.

 

We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools – we should be demanding more.

Yes, at the state, local, civil, and family levels, not at the federal level. Unfortunately, neither Obama nor his predecessor in the White House got that basic message of subsidiarity.

 

We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college – we should be a country where everyone has the chance to go.

Government is making it harder to afford college. Anything government does, other than get out of the way, will make it worse.

If you want the price of college to go down, the way to do it is to stop having the government provide grants and loans. When people get “free” government money to go to school, it is easier for colleges to raise their prices. When people can easily borrow money for school, with loans guaranteed by the government, it is easier for the parents and students to accept, up front, a much higher tuition cost. So it is easier for the colleges to raise their prices. This is basic economics. College tuition is four times higher than it should be based on inflation alone, and it is government’s fault. Get out, government. If you want more kids to be able to afford college, then just get out.

 

We should be giving people the chance to get new skills and training at community colleges, so they can learn to make wind turbines and semiconductors and high-powered batteries.

Obama is basically saying here that it’s the government’s responsibility to absorb the costs of training workers for big companies (some operating on government money in the first place) with lobbyists that can bribe them into doing it. Super.

 

Our factories and their workers shouldn’t be idle. We should be giving people the chance to get new skills and training at community colleges, so they can learn to make wind turbines and semiconductors and high-powered batteries. And by the way – if we don’t have an economy built on bubbles and financial speculation, our best and brightest won’t all gravitate towards careers in banking and finance. Because if we want an economy that’s built to last, we need more of those young people in science and engineering. 

1) Factories aren’t “sitting idle”; we are still the 2nd largest manufacturing power in the world after China. We have lots of automation in our factories, which, of course, does not make shiftless, ossified unions happy. They’re content to drag industries to their knees (and whole cities, for that matter) in order to stop the hands of time and protect THEIR workers at everyone else’s expense . . . and nonunion workers, taxpayers, and business be damned.

2) American science students will tell you, the problem isn’t that no one is interested in going into science fields, the problem is that our K-12 system is broken (because of unions and other problems mostly caused by Democrats) and so many end up failing out of the programs.  The attrition rates in hard science and engineering degree programs are appalling. That is not because Americans are stupid, and it’s not because of a failure of government to do something more.

3) People need to STOP mocking banking and finance. Do you like houses? Cars? Owning anything more than you can pay for with cash or barter for with magic beans? Then you need banking and finance. How about every medicine or technological advance? R&D can’t happen without banking and finance. How about hospitals and roads? Banking and finance. How about NOT living in a primordial, stone age, or feudal society? Banking and finance.

 

It will require parents to get more involved in their children’s education, students to study harder, and some workers to start studying all over again. It will require greater responsibility from homeowners to not take out mortgages they can’t afford, and remember that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Okay, fine. Good. People should be doing that.

Now, what’s the catch? Where’s the massive government program to make this happen? This is Obama giving a speech, so you know one is in the works somewhere. Of course, it will be rejected by the elected branch of the government, whereupon Obama will implement it via executive order or bureaucratic fiat. It’s coming—we just haven’t seen it yet.

 

Yes, business, and not government, will always be the primary generator of good jobs with incomes that lift people into the middle class and keep them there. 

Just words. All talk.

 

But in order to structurally close the deficit, get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are. Now, most immediately, short term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that’s set to expire at the end of this month. 

How will a payroll tax cut close the deficit? It is a demand-side cut that will starve Social Security, already facing looming insolvency, without creating a single job. That’s a priority for deficit reduction?

 

 Keep in mind, when President Clinton first proposed these tax increases, folks in Congress predicted they would kill jobs and lead to another recession.  Instead, our economy created nearly 23 million jobs and we eliminated the deficit.  

No. No. No.

 

That is the height of unfairness.  It is wrong.  (Applause.)  It’s wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker, maybe earns $50,000 a year, should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50 million.  (Applause.)  It’s wrong for Warren Buffett‘s secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett.  (Applause.)  And by the way, Warren Buffett agrees with me.  (Laughter.)

Yeah, well Warren Buffet is simply wrong. Repeating his lies over and over don’t make them true.

 

We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability.  We should be strengthening oversight and accountability.

More regulations will kill jobs and the economy.

 

That’s why we’re cutting programs that we don’t need to pay for those we do.

What programs? Where?

 

That’s why we’re not just throwing money at education, we’re challenging schools to come up with the most innovative reforms and the best results.  

Over the last few decades, spending on education has more than tripled, while results are flat and we are losing ground academically to countries around the world.

As soon as you cut the budget of the Department of Education, and as soon as we see some improved results, then we’ll talk. In the meantime, this is just rhetoric.

 

 By train, by wagon, on buggy, bicycle, and foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country, and was determined to perfect it.

determined. to. perfect. it.

This is a tough and touchy subject. Teddy Roosevelt was technically a Republican. His big head is on Mount Rushmore. Lots of people have a soft spot for his love of nature, his courage and strength, his charm, and the fact that he saw a bigfoot. But he was a progressive. Indeed, Jonah Goldberg made the very compelling case in 2009 that Teddy Roosevelt was, effectively, a proto-fascist, part of a “fascist moment” sweeping western civilization at the turn of the century.

Whether you call him a progressive or a proto-fascist, though, the facts end up the same. The impulse to perfect society and people, via government means, is the impulse behind nearly all totalitarian, fascist, and progressive experiments. It doesn’t work, and it NEVER ends well. But they do keep trying.

Compare with . . .

Life, liberty, and the PUSUIT of happiness.

TOWARDS a more perfect union.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the rest of the Founders understood that people are not perfectable, certainly not by anything that government can do. Their goal was to set up a system that took that into account and created an environment where we could strive for the best possible outcomes.

Obama, the Democrats, the progressives, the left, 20th century fascists and totalitarians believe that with the right amount of government tinkering and application of force, a sort of heaven on earth can be created. They are wrong, but Obama does not know that. That is why he cites Roosevelt’s determination to perfect the country. Because he believes that such a thing as possible.

But in order to make that omelette, he’s going to have to break a heck of a lot of eggs.