Monthly Archives: November 2011

How to fix Social Security

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We are moving the Friday Letter early this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. We hope that all Americans are as blessed as we are to be with family, an institution that Ronald Reagan called the most vital to the nation’s survival.

The Friday Letter / November 25, 2011

Some problems are complicated. Some are ridiculously simple. Social Security could be fixed with simple, common-sense reforms. But to work, Social Security reform must be taken out of the hands of career politicians and other mental defectives

Congress sees ‘public’ money as its own

By Ron Falkner / The Federalist Review

Calvin Coolidge had it right: “Nothing is easier than spending public money,” he said. “It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.”
The most insidious thing about Social Security and Medicare is that we have plenty of money for both programs. But because most politicians are genetically incapable of keeping their hands out of our pockets, good-faith payments by honest American workers into the so-called Trust Fund have found their way into the general fund where politicians have used them to buy votes from non-working Americans. This has been going on from the beginning, 78 years ago.
This has to stop. Of course, it will not stop without the removal of Barack H. Obama as President. And so goes the gravity of this situation. (more…)

Public education and the Democrat-media alliance

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Joined at the hip

The Friday Letter / Issue #152

By Stephen Combs / The Federalist Review

If any good comes from the midnight raid on Herman Cain’s character it is this: The stark contrast between what that Left is doing to this country and what she needs right now is undeniable. The challenge, as usual, is to convince voters of this reality, no easy task given the media infrastructure that controls the information flow.
And not just news media. The Left has a Soviet-style iron grip on entertainment and so-named “social” media, where most people under 30 get their information.
In eight years as a college teacher I have learned – not from what someone told me but from firsthand observation – that our youth are not so much educated as indoctrinated. For those who have long suspected this, I argue that the evidence, though anecdotal, is undeniable.
Students enter college equipped with a firewall of protection against challenges of their rigidly-held opinions. They are quite sure of the superiority of their positions and are unreceptive to argument. For this we can thank 12 years of public school enculturation wherein students learn that what the teacher says is Gospel. It says, “I am the teacher. What I say is correct. Memorize this and repeat it back to me. And do not question my authority on this or any other matter.”
Quite simply, we have no hope of saving this great nation unless we remove the toxic influences of public education and leftist media – two institutions intractably conjoined with the Democrat Party. They work hand in glove in a co-dependency relationship. Neither would survive in their current form without the other.
While Politco.com was busy destroying Mr. Cain, Barack Obama and Democrats continued to operate unchecked. Politco – once we called it a fair and reasoned voice of the moderate left – ran 90 stories about the unsubstantiated claims of anonymous angry women who claimed Mr. Cain somehow offended them in a wholly isolated three-year period while Mr. Cain ran the National Restaurant Association.
Nancy Pelosi and some House Democrats were trading securities on insider information. Eric Holder continues to reign as Attorney General when he should have long since been indicted in the gun-running scandal for lying to Congress. Recently, President Obama, facing a tough political choice whose only purpose is to win re-election, had to choose between two factions of his base: unions and environmental terrorists. He came down on the side of the eco-terrorists, figuring they would be impossible to control if a 1968-like war breaks out at the Democrat convention. Mr. Obama stopped the Canadian oil pipeline, and anyone who drives a car or reads by electric light is the loser. The unions will come back home in time for the election. They always do.
Typical news media reaction was no reaction. It’s important to remember that Herman Cain flirted with a woman 12 years ago. Now that Mr. Cain’s star has faded, it’s on to – Newt Gingrich! The news media’s job is not to reveal but to destroy. In the next few weeks we will be reminded – again – that Mr. Gingrich bought some expensive jewelry for his wife, with his own money! The outrage!

Mr. Cain has very likely talked his way out of contention for the Presidency, not because of the manufactured scandal but through his own words. This is not pleasant to say because we like him and have written favorably about him many times in the last year. Let us hope that President Gingrich or President Romney finds an important role for him in the next administration.

Novel idea: teach civics!

Last night I broke my rule against discussing politics in the classroom by offering the opinion that we Americans are in danger of losing what our founders called “certain unalienable rights” endowed by the Creator. A student challenged me to elaborate.
The class is small – three adult men: a corrections officer, a fire department paramedic and a recovering heroin junkie who works with young adult addicts in hopes of steering them on a different path than the one he took. At 50, he plans to become an addictions counselor. He rides a Harley Road King 30 miles each way to school, weather permitting or not. He has never missed a class and has attended supplementary writing labs.
Trying to avoid a partisan attack on the current administration – one of a student’s unalienable rights should be freedom from professorial proselytizing in the classroom – I said the threat is caused by the uncontrolled growth of government.
I intended to leave it at that, but the student pressed on. He who maketh his bed shall lie in it.
            OK, let’s discuss a hypothetical setup using numbers we four can easily grasp. The government wants to create a job, and it needs $2,500 from each of us in the form of higher taxes. It takes the $10,000 and hires someone to pick up roadside litter. The job lasts for six months and then disappears. The worker has earned a wage, presumably spent it, and the four of us will never see our $2,500 again.
Now, let’s say we each get to keep our $2,500, and each of us decides to open a hotdog stand in front of Home Depot (not the same Home Depot). We buy the equipment, some hotdogs and ketchup, and open shop. There. We have created four jobs that will last as long as customers are willing to buy our product. We make back our investment, use the funds to expand and create four more jobs. The state and federal governments get paid as well – in taxes paid not by us but by our customers. Even illegal aliens who don’t file tax returns contribute to this economy in the form of sales taxes.
It’s just about this simple, until the EPA, health department, Greenpeace, ACLU, PETA, SEIU, code enforcement division and the salt Nazis get involved. But you get the picture.

And so did my students. “Why don’t you write about this and explain it to people?” one of them asked.
That’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give it some thought.

 

Occupy Wall Street protest: a gift from politicians

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Student loans and the unhappy campers of Wall Street

The Friday Letter / Issue # 151

By George Leef

For the last several months, the various “Occupy” (OWS) protests have gotten enormous media attention. While their many expressed grievances cover the waterfront, the one that has received the most fame is that they’ve been lured into very expensive college debts—debts they can’t pay because they don’t have jobs. Coverage of the protest has enabled many tell the rest of the world about their plight.  One handwritten sign I saw a few days ago read:

I graduate college in 7 months
with a “useless”
degree in Classical Studies. I
have worked very hard
and am on track to graduate
with highest Latin honors.
I am in a Greek organization
with many volunteer hours
under my belt.
MY JOB PROSPECTS?
0

That is plaintive.

What’s plaintive about it, though, is not the fact that this young woman worked hard in her college classes and now calls her classical studies degree “useless.” Nor is it plaintive because she is probably going to have a hard time paying off her college loans.
No, what’s plaintive about this is the student’s assumption that college graduates are
supposed to have good job prospects. Why on Earth should anyone, much less an apparently intelligent woman, think that good job prospects should automatically be chasing after anyone who has gone to college?

Answer: Politicians and higher education leaders have been suggesting exactly that. They have been doing so for decades and have convinced large numbers of Americans that going to college, no matter how much it costs, is a “no brainer.” That’s because having a college degree improves your skills and knowledge, leading to good, high-paying jobs.

Unfortunately, as the protesters will tell anyone who walks by, it simply isn’t true. Having a college degree gives you no assurance of a good job—or of any job at all. The OWS protesters aren’t hesitant about assigning blame for the bad conditions they perceive,
although they mostly get it wrong. (“Greed” and “capitalism” don’t really explain anything.) Americans who think that it’s bad for the country to have a great many un- or under-employed young people overwhelmed by debt should not hesitate to assign blame either.

Instead of pinning the blame on a  person or group, let’s start by pinning it on an idea. The mistaken idea behind  America’s  higher education mania is this: Education is always good. Stated more  precisely: People always make a wise decision when they continue their formal  education.

For  a while, at least, those ideas seemed to be true. As college  enrollments steadily increased in the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, most of  those who graduated found employment that paid much better than average, thus  giving rise to the idea that there was a large “college earnings premium.”

Higher education  boosters like the College Board trumpeted the  correlation between college completion and higher lifetime earnings, settling  on the impressive figure of about $1 million as the average payoff for going to  college. Federal websites conveyed the same idea that going to college was a  sure-thing “investment” that led to higher incomes. The Lumina  Foundation told people that America’s  economic and social challenges could best be met by greatly increasing the  number of people with “high quality degrees and credentials.”

More education is good. Naturally,  politicians could not resist telling voters that higher education (which they  generously supported, of course, with taxpayer money) was a tremendous benefit  to each individual and to the country as a whole. Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm  declared in 2003 that higher education was “like jet fuel for the economy.”  Hillary Clinton, during her campaign for the Democratic nomination, told an
audience at Plymouth  State University  that higher education “has never been more important” and pointed to that  additional $1 million that four-year college graduates supposedly earn over  their careers.

Speaking at the Universityof Texas  last August, President Obama declared  that “America
has to have the highest share of graduates compared to every other nation”  because other nations would out-compete us if we don’t. His secretary of  education, Arne Duncan,
testified before a Senate committee on June 28 that higher education “is an economic growth engine and a ticket to a middle-class lifestyle.”

The message to  young Americans was loud and clear. As the president stated in a February 2009 speech, if a student doesn’t continue education beyond high  school, “It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”

Conversely, you  search in vain for any statement by a prominent official or education leader  that going to college might be a bad idea. Questioning the benefits of more education  was just as unthinkable as questioning the benefits of home ownership. All that
Americans ever heard was: More education is good.

Almost everyone  believed it. Even students who had finished high school with mediocre-to-poor  records were encouraged to go to college so they wouldn’t miss out on that
“ticket to a middle-class lifestyle.” Crucially, federal grants and loans were  available to nearly everyone to help defray the cost. No reason for any student  to pass up the wonderful advantages of college over a mundane cost/benefit  analysis.

Several years ago,  Nike’s advertising slogan was “Just Do It!” That’s exactly how most Americans  looked at their college decision. College grads get good jobs and make lots of
money, so Just Do It.

That attitude led  to stories like that of Kelli  Space with her sociology degree and huge student loan debts. It led to OWS  protesters like the one holding the sign above.

The closest thing to a coherent  demand from the protesters has been that their student loans should be  forgiven. It does not speak well of the education they have received that they  can’t see how forgiving their loans would encourage more irresponsible student
debt in the future.

Encouraging students to go to  college at public expense was just as irresistible to politicians as  encouraging people to buy houses they couldn’t afford. The Pope Center’s
Jane Shaw noted the similarities between housing bubble and the higher ed bubble
back in 2009. The question is how we escape from that mistake.

Unfortunately, the  Obama administration’s policy is not to escape at all, but rather to dig in  deeper. (Many writers have made that point and Andrew Gillen’s essay is especially cogent.) If we want to avoid more  college grads with large debts and no job, we have to abandon the policies that  treat college graduation as something like our national Holy Grail.

Mr. Leef is director of research  for the John William Pope Foundation for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is  the author of  Free  Choice for Workers: A History of the Right-to-Work Movement (2005). He may be reached at georgeleef@popecenter.org.

This article appeared this week on the Pope Center’s website.

Cain not intimidated / Craig Miller: 40 years is enough for Bill Nelson

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The Friday Letter / Issue #150

What we got here is a failure to communicate

If cheap-shot ambushes from partisan Internet websites with obvious political motives don’t matter, consider this: A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 66% of Herman Cain’s supporters are thinking about voting for someone else in their Republican primary. The shots might be coming from a Saturday Night Special, but they’re hitting the target.
This essay is only partly about Herman Cain and whether he offended someone 12 years ago by telling her she looked nice. It has something to do with the Left’s very real fear that electing a black conservative could destroy the race industry – an enormously profitable enterprise in terms of both money and votes that has kept the Democrat Party in business for 40 years.
It has more to do with how Barack Obama – far from leading what he promised would be a post-racial country – has made racial tension the centerpiece of his administration. The fomenting of envy, class warfare and racial discord plays some role in practically everything that comes out of the White House.

Last night in class I was telling a black male student about two important American economists, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. He was not familiar with either. I said nothing about their politics, only that Dr. Williams says he never discusses his political views in his macroeconomics classes at George Mason University. (Of course, he doesn’t have to. Macro theory and practice speak for themselves. But that’s another matter.)
I also did not tell my student that Dr. Williams and Dr. Sowell are black. That thought doesn’t enter the thought process of conservatives. We don’t think in terms of race. We think in terms of grand ideas and important philosophies. What irony that Americans elected a half-black President who only thinks of race in every speech he makes, in every move he makes. If you think not, then listen to his next speech, and pay attention to the code words: Republicans = white. Millionaires and billionaires = white. People who have jobs = white.
In Roll Call last night, contributing writer Stuart Rothenberg writes that “diversity and multiculturalism aren’t highly valued” by Republican loyalists. Of course not. As even Rothenberg admits, conservative voters “prefer to look past group membership and stress the individual.” Democrats, on the other hand, pay close heed to “racism, equality, fairness, justice, etc.,” he writes. Yes, but in words only, not in actions.

If you vote against Barack Obama, you’re a racist! If you oppose government health care, you’re a racist! If you vote for Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain, you’re a racist! 

This preoccupation with race and group membership is so much a part of leftist thinking that leftists can’t seem to understand why some things are what they are. Television talking heads love to say that few blacks are in the tea party movement. Of course not. Ninety-five percent of them voted for Obama, and Pat Buchanan, who follows these matters closely, predicted last week that Obama will keep 92% of them this time.
As Mr. Buchanan noted, people who depend on government for their livelihood are not predisposed to join movements that promote small government and individual responsibility. That, however, is not the tea party’s fault.
The tea party is open to all. In my travels to Restoring Honor last year and to local tea party events, I have never heard a racial slur, never seen a racial sign. Such behavior is simply not part of conservative thinking. The Left is incapable of understanding this because the Left is preoccupied with race.
For his part, Mr. Rothenberg displays a remarkable ignorance of conservative thinking. “The thought of rallying behind a conservative African-American candidate,” he writes, “ . . . undoubtedly is appealing to many conservatives, if only to prove to liberals and journalists that they aren’t the racists they are often portrayed to be.” If this isn’t the ultimate in naiveté, somebody please tell me what is. Who cares what liberals and journalists (sorry to be redundant) think?
In its pontifications from Washington, the press is mowing down Herman Cain, not for his 9-9-9 tax plan, his promise to scuttle the Education Department, his determination to defend Israel, but because he is running with the top dogs. Isn’t this getting tiresome?
Why isn’t Sarah Palin’s back-porch view of Russia the media’s top campaign issue these days? Because she is no longer running with the pack. It really is that simple. And simple is a good term for journalism.
Meanwhile, the ideas that matter – Newt Gingrich’s truly profound ideas among them – are smothered. People who spend their evenings watching “American Idol” and “Storage Wars” have little to contribute, and that suits Democrat-media alliance just fine.

‘I made a better pizza than he did’

Believe it or not, on the blogosphere this is all some of Herman Cain’s detractors can come up with. But Craig Miller is only joking. He has known Mr. Cain for a long time as a competitor and as a fellow former president of the National Restaurant Association.
Mr. Miller is too busy these days to get mired in the brouhaha over accusations that Mr. Cain sexually harassed a now Democrat Party operative who worked for the NRA during Mr. Cain’s term. Miller is focused on one goal: his “40 years is enough” campaign to unseat Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.
Sprinting around the state in “a five-year-old Chevy Suburban with 125,000 miles on it,” he is waging a grass roots battle against former interim U.S. Senator George LeMieux and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner. Others are in the race as well.
The former CEO of Ruth’s Chris Steak House and pizza restaurant executive raised about $200,000 in the latest reporting quarter, and he is pleased. “When you haven’t been elected before, you don’t have the same places to tap into,” he told The Federalist Review. “Nobody else is setting the world on fire, nobody sucking up the big chunks of money.” The action right now is on Main Street, and that is where he is working.
Miller was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Florida’s 24th Congressional district in 2010.
He is running on his record as a businessman who began working in restaurant kitchens at 14. He served in Vietnam as an Air Force enlisted man. He thinks 40 years is enough time to spend in elected office, and he wants Bill Nelson, seeking his third Senate term, out. He likes to hammer Mr. Nelson on the state of the declining U.S. space program, a  huge issue in Brevard County and the Cape Canaveral Space Center.
“People are disgusted by his lack effort,” he says of Sen. Nelson. “He is supposed to be the champion for manned space travel. It’s been indicated that the private sector will step up” to fill the void left by a shrinking NASA, “but the bottom line is we’re going to spend a decade riding Russian rockets, and that never should have happened.”
He complains that the mainstream media follow what’s hot at the moment – who is getting in, who’s getting out, who is catching fire – and not enough effort on explaining the important issues. “I don’t believe they really have their fingers on the pulse of the mainstream,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
As for Mr. Cain, “I found out the same time everybody else did” about the accusations. He describes the matters as a “human resource issue within the association which apparently occurred, and even Herman said it did.”
Mr. Miller, who served as NRA’s president after Mr. Cain, said he has known Mr. Cain for a long time. “His business, his leadership have always been stellar,” he said. “The more things you’ve done in life, the more things people pick at.”
Asked if he has debating experience should he face Mr. Nelson in the election, Mr. Miller said he has little, not even from college. “When I was in college, I was washing dishes,” he said. The important thing is “what you do when you have experience and you understand what your responsibilities are.”

 

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