Skip to main content

Michael Munger nails the key issues in both campaign and recovery

From the Mungowitz's own Kids Prefer Cheese:

Look, folks, until someone makes some effort to (a) reduce military spending, (b) solve the growth of entitlement spending, and (c) turn off the spigot flooding businesses with new and unpredictable regulatory burdens, there will be no increase in jobs created. We are doing the deficit-spend thing about as much as is possible, and the Fed keeps firing its own bullet, right into the ocean. Ploop! Nada. 
If this helps Romney, it's not because he has any kind of plan, or deserves to be helped. Romney has given no specifics of what he would do, or even how he thinks of what he might do. 
Romney is running like an incumbent, in fact. Even though he has no indication of being able to address the three problems above. And the reason is, just like David Leonhardt said in May, that bad job growth numbers mean Obama loses. Not that Romney "wins," but that Obama loses. 
I never thought Obama and co. would be this inept and pigheaded, but they are. They absolutely refuse to move from their position that the solution to the economic malaise is to pay more money to government employees and to fund their pensions.
"The private sector is doing fine," indeed. That was NOT a gaffe. It was a statement of core beliefs. Some people have said that Obama does not trust markets.  That's actually not true.  He has too MUCH faith in markets.  He thinks he can tax, regulate, and abuse people, and they will still doggedly go to work and try to make that cheddar.  That's not actually working out very well for him.
Or for us.
I get it that my liberal friends will not agree with (b) and (c) above, and we can have legitimate discussions about individual policies and their effects.  But . . .

. . . not until they come to grips with (A).  Mr. Obama's supporters have to explain and defend, in no uncertain terms, why they are willing to continue to support a bloated defense establishment and an interventionist military policy around the entire planet.  There is neither a case to be made that significant cuts in the defense budget will either make us less safe or disrupt the economy.  In fact, there is significant evidence that cutting Defense would produce MORE jobs, dollar for dollar, than all this weapons spending is producing now. 

So here's my new premise:  when those of you who support Mr. Obama's hundreds of billions of dollars (over a trillion per year with current wars worked in) can either defend it or recant it, we'll talk about entitlements, but not before that.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba