It's Saturday...

Reagan’s Legacy

Robert Samuelson  explains Reagan’s true concrete accomplishment:  Snuffing inflation.  Yes, Fed Chairman Paul Volker did the heavy lifting, but President Reagan kept a steady hand at the wheel and resisted politically-smart but economically-stupid advice to lower interest rates sent through the roof by Jimmy Carter's disastrous policies.

The lesson liberals draw (and urge Obama to imitate) is that Reagan's political success reflected his optimistic presidential stagecraft. It wasn't policy, it was presentation. Wrong.

Reagan earned his success the hard way - by backing policies that, though initially unpopular, served the nation's long-term interests. That's called leadership, a quality Obama has yet to demonstrate. (Samuelson)

Who’s Afraid of E-Verify?
The US Chamber of Commerce.  Wouldn't want to hurt the bottom line by hiring Americans and paying them a decent wage, would we? 

Only in America could we be talking about "jobs Americans just won't do" while we have 10% unemployment.

Mr Obama, You’re No Ronald Reagan

Liberals spewed hatred on Ronald Reagan for thirty years, now they are attempting to co-opt him 

I know, the Reagan Centennial was last Sunday, but I’m left with that feeling you get after attending a really good concert. Still basking in the sights and sounds, you’re left wanting more, so you pop in a CD or DVD to make the feeling last.

What spurred me to this latest outburst was all the stupid blather comparing Obama to Reagan. It’s another foolish indulgence of the Washington press corps, for really, there is no comparison.

Ronald Reagan’s communications were symphonic masterpieces...

...crafted and delivered from a deep and thoughtful well of study and experience. His rock solid words now resonate through the ages. “Tear down this wall!” …and the wall came tumbling down.

He backed up his words with action. He told the air traffic controllers to go back to work. They didn’t. He fired them. This put the world on notice that the American president meant what he said. Communists really were trying to make inroads into Central America, and Reagan defeated them by keeping our military profile low and helping freedom-loving Central Americans help themselves. The region in now freer and more prosperous as a result.

Obama’s speeches are cotton candy…

…top 40 bubblegum pop songs that catch the listeners’ ears with a cheap lyrical hook or a catchy tune, but are forgotten the next week. His award of an anticipatory Nobel Prize was a farce, and it was the apotheosis of Obama. All flowery words and billowy hope, but no substance, no action.

Reagan made history by collapsing communism and freeing tens of millions of people.  Obama made history by being the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to host and toast a tyrannical regime that imprisoned a  fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Reagan Encouraged Us, Obama Scolds Us...

Reagan believed in the American people and uplifted us; President Obama is perpetually disappointed in us. He, his wife and his cabinet scold us on eating habits, going green, police who act stupidly, people too cowardly to talk about race, and even how to sneeze properly.

President Reagan shrugged off criticism with a smile and a joke, President Obama encourages his fervid worshipers to punish their enemies.

Reagan believed in American exceptionalism. Obama compared us to Greece, and leads us there with his disastrous policies.

Progressive fanboys and fangirls love talking about how intelligent Obama is, but when pressed they can produce no evidence besides “he ran a successful presidential campaign,” or that he was titular head of some college newspaper.

“Amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan has left a rich legacy of writings in his own hand that prove beyond a doubt what an intelligent and studied man he was.

Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan...

Comparisons to the loser that Reagan defeated in 1980 are more appropriate. In fact, Jimmy probably rests a little easier knowing he’s now moved up to the second worst president.

Toby Harnden – You’re No Ronald Reagan
Five Myths about Ronald Reagan
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/time-magazine-obama-loves-reagan.html
Time – The Role Model

Happy 100th President Reagan!

Ronald Reagan:  A Defense and a Criticism

Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century.  He recaptured America's glory and global respect after the ham-handed buffoonery of the Carter years.  Yeah, FDR must be considered great for his fireside chats and WW II leadership, but his statist economic policies increased the country's misery.  Reagan, on the other hand, knew how to jump start an economy left for dead by liberal experimentation.

Nonetheless, liberal gargoyles like Paul Krugman love to blame all our ills on Reagan, the man responsible for the longest economic boom in our nation's history.  He was not perfect, but on balance, Reagan was a great president, but more importantly, he was a great man of rock-solid values who knew why he believed what he believed.  Here I offer a summary of Reagan criticism (some legitimate), and some links that defend his policies.


Paul Krugman is a dishonest, diabolical troll
Instead of using his education to enlighten Americans about the difficult and dismal science of economics, he chops up facts like firewood and serves up selectively sliced statistics in order to score cheap political points in an attempt to smear this great president.  Ignorant liberals lap it all up and regurgitate it on the rest of us, forcing us to do the homework lazy liberals just won't do.

Practitioners like Krugman use little funhouse mirror tricks to stretch and distort our view.  Yes, some conservatives do it too, but I don't listen to them or repeat their BS.

Most liberal writing on our economic mess is a hopeless tangle.  A typical writer will take crony capitalism, spending, deregulation, bubbles, and poverty, wad it all in a big ball and throw it in Ronald Reagan's face.  The logic is terrible and typically lacks cause and effect. 

Tis true, Reagan didn't shrink the government and he grew the national debt
In return, we collapsed the Soviet Union, freeing tens of millions of Eastern Europeans and got a well-respected kick-ass military to boot.

Add to that the regulatory reform that allowed millions of Americans to start their own businesses and brought structural unemployment to below 5%.  The result was the longest economic expansion in American history, thanks to President Clinton continuing Reagan's policies. What have we gotten for the trillions Obama has spent?  At least Reagan's spending produced results.

For a serious libertarian criticism of Reagan, see free-marketer Sheldon L. Richmon's article, or Murray Rothbard's excellent critique, The Myths of Reaganomics. Their main criticism is he did not roll back government and he spend too much.  These are not liberal screeds, but rather cold-eyed analyses of the facts devoid of any personal criticism of the man.

Reagan was a great man and a great president.  If you want to defend him, you must consider his record, warts and all (no one in the public arena is wart-free).  He did the best he could in an America remade by progressives.  FDR build a clanking, soul-destroying bureaucratic machine, and even the great Ronald Reagan couldn't dismantle it. 

The only way progressives can defend Obamanomics is to turn it all upside down, and that involves taking the success that is Reaganomics and convincing enough soft-headed people that the longest economic expansion in our history was really a failure.

For a serious defense of Reaganism, see the following articles.  There's a lot of liberal BS out there, you'll need to refer to them often:

Reaganomics - William N. Niskanen
Thomas Firey - There Krugman Goes Again
Max Barron - Chief Lib Propagandist Krugman
Reagan Did What? Fantasies of Paul Krugman
Donald Luskin - That Old Hack Magic
Robert Scheer - Krugman Ignores the Real Culprits
Stefan Karlsson
Nick Gillespie - Blame Reagan!
Krugman - Enron's Nobel Advisor

GOP Destroyed America!

Republicans stand guilty of collaboration with progressives

Market Watch's Paul Farrell has written a scathing critique of Republicans, entitled GOP Destroyed the US Economy, where he comments on Reagan OMB Director David Stockman's stinging rebuke of Republican economic policy.

I'm particularly attuned to Reagan criticism, since I combat so much of it in Left Blogistan.  Lefty critiques are incoherent babble, easily refuted, but the libertarian thrusts draw blood.  Farrell and Stockman, though not libertarians, nonetheless deploy classic Rothbardian arguments (excepting their advocacy for higher taxes and protectionism).

Here Are the Four Republican Sins that Set Us on the Road to Perdition

• Nixon reneging on the Bretton Woods agreement and completely decoupling the US dollar from the price of gold.  The precipitous decline of our dollar is the result
• Crushing debts, from domestic pork and overseas adventures
• Corporate welfare for Wall Street
• Addiction to cheap crap and easy money has hollowed out our economy

We are a Progressive Nation
All I can say in defense of Republicans is they worked with what they had.  Give a sculptor a pile of dung, and she can sculpt something with it.  It won't come out as beautiful as her work in clay...

Progressives built a doomsday device.  Try to dismantle it and it will explode, destroying our nation and society.  You can't starve the beast without starving granny.

But this excuse won't fly anymore.  If the GOP gets power back, they had better use it to shatter the existing system, or we are done for.

Free Markets, Free People:  Let's try it here in America
We have been suffering under the fallacy that there is not downside to government programs.  Austrian School libertarian Kel Kelly provides some guidance:

in a free market, we would not need government "protection" because we would be protected by tough competition in the marketplace. If one company tried to underpay or overcharge us, there would be many more companies we could turn to that were offering higher wages and lower prices (i.e., market wages and prices) in order to attract us.

Companies would therefore find ways to produce with lower costs, a goal they could more easily accomplish with more capital available to them. The more capital they employed and the greater workers' corresponding productivity, the higher the market wages.

Stop the Printing Presses!

And without the government's manipulation of interest rates and the printing of money, there would be no wide-scale malinvestment, and therefore no recessions and financial crises. In this case, prices would fall instead of rise most years, and our lives would generally improve through time.

You could also save your money in a safe, low interest bank account and not have it nibbled away by inflation, thereby being able to support yourself in your old age.


Failure:  Businesses go broke - Government grows bigger

No central planner can determine what is best for each of us individually or in the aggregate. The economy works only though individual decisions and choices.
No politician can help companies produce more efficiently or in a way that better pleases consumers. By using market prices and rates of profit, businesses generally best determine what we individuals want for our lives. If they judge correctly and produce what we need and desire, they succeed; if they don't, they die.

Government, on the other hand, dictates what it wants us to have, and has no system of profit and loss to determine whether it is succeeding in pleasing its "customers," or whether it is producing or destroying wealth in the process. Since it can't determine its success or failure in money terms, it is necessarily always destroying wealth on a net basis. And since government is a monopoly, it does not allow competitors for us to turn to.

Is government doing a "good job?"

The only real test of whether a "good job" is done is whether or not it has become easier for people — all people — to achieve an increased living standard from one year to the next, given the same amount of labor hours performed.

Excerpts from Mises.org: Kel Kelly - Can Politicians Help Us?