Free Republic

"A simple recipe for violence: promise a lot, deliver a little. Lead people to believe they will be much better off, but let there be no dramatic improvement." The brilliant political scientist Aaron Wildavsky wrote these words in 1968 while America was engulfed in race riots and anti-war protests. Sadly, his words from long ago eerily describe the politics of 21st-century America. President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors have been good about promising a lot but delivering little. The current crusade to raise the minimum wage is a perfect example. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, the...

“Moving on from unfulfilling jobs, thanks to health-care law,” was the gleeful headline across the story spoon-fed to the Washington Post by Families USA, a pro-Obamacare group that maintains a “database of people who have benefitted” from the so-called Affordable Care Act. No doubt, that’s a pretty easy list to maintain. One person on the list is Polly Lower of Bourbon, Indiana. She quit her job and says, “It was wonderful.” Lower didn’t want the job anymore, because she went from “doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed.” Oh, the humanity! Take this...

On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama promised the sun and the moon and the stars. That was the day, five years ago, when he signed the $800 billion "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." President Modesty called it "the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history." He promised "unprecedented transparency and accountability." He claimed the spending would lift "two million Americans from poverty." Ready for the reality smackdown? The actual cost of the $800 billion pork-laden stimulus has ballooned to nearly $2 trillion. At the time of the law's signing, the unemployment rate hovered near 8 percent. Obama's egghead economists...

Throughout his economically-troubled presidency, Barack Obama's governing strategy has been one of political distraction: Blaming his failures on others in an attempt to convince enough Americans that he's not at all responsible for an underperforming, jobless economy. His latest, duplicitous shell game is to raise the issue of income inequality, which he blames on heartless business people and Republican lawmakers who refuse to buy into his dubious, job-killing plan to raise the nation's minimum wage and enact a bundle of new big-spending programs to help the unemployed. He's trying to shift our attention from the real reasons behind the growing...

Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that does the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody. Except for me. - Paraphrase from president Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Prepare ye the way for Obama's next State of the Onion speech. By pulling out a TV guide. Radio host Mark Levin has called on the GOP to boycott the State of...

“I just want what is fair for everybody…” If I’ve heard that line once, I’ve heard it hundreds of times on those occasions when I end up discussing business, economic, and public policy issues with members of the clergy. With the uptick in minimum wage worker strikes over the past few months (we saw another “round” of them at Wal-Mart stores this past week), I’ve had these conversations quite frequently. What is striking to me is that the starting point for many of these Pastors, Priests and Rabbi’s is to say that they are standing up for “workers’ rights.” But...

Let me get this straight. For five years Barack Obama has been president. For five years he’s demonstrated -- with amazing consistency -- that he has no clue what we need to get out of the ditch and back on the road to real economic recovery. He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he can’t work with a divided Congress and he can’t, or just plain won’t, lean on Harry Reid to allow the Senate to vote on the stack of jobs bills that has been sent over by the House. The president clearly has learned nothing on the job. And now our...

I'm not sure which the Obama administration is better at, deceiving the American people into accepting its initial policy changes or conning them into accepting, after the fact, the lowering of expectations for these failed policies. Just look at this president's miserable track record on both counts. His administration predicted his exorbitant stimulus package would create boatloads of "shovel-ready" jobs (not to mention reduce unemployment), but it didn't even come close. In response, Obama insisted the economic circumstances he inherited were far worse than he had imagined. He also cynically joked away his promise to generate shovel-ready jobs -- as...

Last week's column discussed the political trade-offs made by black politicians and civil rights organizations that condemn whole generations of black youngsters to failing schools (http://tinyurl.com/6mmlsf). Similar political trade-offs in labor markets condemn many blacks, particularly black youths, to high rates of unemployment and reduced economic opportunities. Let's look at this, starting with a few historical facts. Today white teen unemployment is about 20 percent, while that for blacks is about 40 percent and more than 50 percent in some cities. In 1948, the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent, while that of whites was...

The American middle class, like the American economy in general, is ailing. Labor-force participation has hit a 35-year low. Median household income is lower than it was five years ago. Only the top 5 percent of households have seen their incomes rise under President Obama. Commuters are paying more than twice as much for gas as they were in 2008. Federal payouts for food stamps, unemployment insurance and disability insurance have reached unprecedented levels. Meanwhile, the country is still running near-record budget deficits and is burdened by $17 trillion in aggregate debt. Yet the stock market is soaring. How can...

The jobs report looks good. The jobs report wasn’t as bad as anticipated. There are fewer people working, but that’s okay - the unemployment rate still dropped last month. Are you fed up with the U.S. federal government’s “spin” and constant efforts to convince you that the labor market isn’t as bad as it seems? At the beginning of each month, the U.S. Department of Labor tabulates the number of employment positions that were created the month before. Journalists and pundits are always eager to publicize what has come to be loosely known as the “jobs report,” with headlines that...

The solitary sign in the middle of the throngs who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday raised the salient issue that went largely unmentioned by the speakers at the podium: jobs. In the photograph that ran across the front page of the Washington Post Thursday morning, a black woman held up a large placard that said "We Still Have A Dream: Jobs, Peace, Freedom." That sign spoke volumes about that one issue that still plagues the African-American community whose jobless rates are off the charts. It's especially heart wrenching that a job came first on the list, above peace and...

President Barack Obama went to Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., this week to rearticulate his vision for the American economy and to reassure the American people that, yes, he knows what he is doing. The president's prodigious political skills are always on display, even in the most challenging circumstances. He can take dismal reality and spin a positive and optimistic picture that will inspire his supporters. And no matter how many facts may contradict the claims of the president's vision, that vision never changes and there never seems a moment when he doubts he is right. The president reminded the...

We have all heard about liberal media bias, but this is just over the top. When the president begins looking to reporters for advice and approval of his policies, you know there is a problem! And not only is President Obama flaunting his positive reviews from the media a problem, but the fact that these reporters are giving their opinions seriously calls their professionalism into question. In his speech that lasted over an hour yesterday, President Obama said reporters praise his economic proposals as “great and tell him that they are “all good ideas”. The speech which droned on for...

Whether or not you shop at Wal-Mart, you’ve already benefitted from the mega-retailer’s ceaseless efforts to cut prices. A 2005 study found that the nationwide expansion of the store had driven down everyone’s cost for food-at-home, commodities and overall consumer products. Competition among retailers drives down prices for all shoppers. Meanwhile, by one estimate, Wal-Mart saved consumers at its stores a quarter of a trillion dollars in 2006. And that was several dozen price cuts ago. But you need to live near one to benefit directly. And in our nation’s capital, many residents could be denied the opportunity to shop...

What Egyptian citizens must recognize is that political liberty thrives best where there's a large measure of economic liberty. The Egyptian people are not the problem; it's the environment they're forced to live in. Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? We could make the same observation about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and many other people who leave their homeland and immigrate to the U.S. For example, Indians in India suffer great poverty. But that's not true of Indians who immigrate to the U.S. They manage to start more Silicon Valley companies than any other...

WASHINGTON - The White House decision to delay the implementation of Obamacare's business mandate for one year sent shock waves through political circles here. The Obama administration tried to cloak its decision in soothing rhetoric about giving small businesses more time to provide health insurance benefits for employees who work more than 30 hours a week that was set to begin next January. "We believe we need to give employers more time to comply with the new rules," Obama's senior White House political fixer Valerie Jarrett wrote in her blog on Tuesday night. "This allows employers time to ...make any...

Back in 2008, a black conservative friend, a college professor, said he voted for then-Sen. Barack Obama for president. "Obama," he said, "is post-Jesse Jackson. No more race card. And, with a black president, young blacks will start hitting the books a lot harder. They will see that racism is no barrier to the highest possible achievement." I saw but one possible silver lining. When Obama's tax/spend/regulate policies fail to achieve the expected results, many blacks will do some soul-searching. "I always thought our 'plight' had to do with the President really not caring about us," some black voters will...

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. -- Ronald Reagan Those who attack American culture and tradition should recall that historically, freedom and prosperity are the aberrations, not servitude and poverty. Our nation's success is not a happy accident or part of...

If you are a regular reader of this column, you know, unfortunately, there is a consistent theme that derives from the Left’s constant attempt to develop new rationale to extract money for the ever-expanding cost of government. President Obama dropped his latest stink bomb on hard working Americans with the release of his delinquent budget. He is coming after your 401 (k). This was a shocking development to us, but apparently this idea has been floating around the “Leftist-sphere.” While researching the proposal we read a column from the Brookings Institute touting the proposal to cap the amount of money...