Common sense and the New York Times tell us that not raising taxes on the richest Americans must mean the Republicans are at best protecting their rich contributors, but more likely mean-spirited and selfish. The Republicans have not done a good job of explaining their reluctance, and choosing instead to focus on spending reductions.

Before condemning the Republicans it might behoove us to learn about the Laffer Curve and the effect taxation has on the economy. The below three videos explain the theory of the Laffer Curve, real-life examples of the Laffer Curve at work, and finally, in the third video, an explanation of the laughable and sad process Congress uses to determine the effect of raising or lowering taxes.

Laffer Curve--What it is



Laffer Curve--Real Life



Congressional Scoring Errors

I believe John Adams foresaw the modern Democratic party when he said,
 "Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society."

The public is mostly pro-union but often doesn't consider the difference between a union in the private sector and the often newer unions in the public sector.

In the traditional union bargaining scenario, you have the business owner on one side of the table and the workers on the other side. The money on the table belongs to the business owner. Any money going from the table to the workers is a loss to the owner. Any money left on the table goes back into the pockets of the owner.

In a public union bargaining scenario you have the workers on one side of the table, but a politician on the other. The money on the table belongs to the taxpayer. Any money going from the table to the workers is no loss to the politician, and often gives him a good feeling for "taking care of the working man." The real corruption occurs when a part of the money received by the workers comes back to the politician in the form of campaign donations.

The public union structure is inherently corrupt. The taxpayer needs to learn he is not being represented at the table.

Unions became powerful in private industry. As a result of the imbalance in management/worker power, steel companies were forced to move operations overseas, car manufacturers were forced into bankruptcy, and much of industry was forced to either export operations or go out of business due to loss of competitive edge.

Union leadership is not stupid. Seeing their membership diminish, they looked around for a sector that could neither go bankrupt nor export jobs overseas.  They settled on government. Government had an additional benefit. If in private industry the union bosses attempted to bribe the negotiators sitting across the table from them, someone was likely to go to jail, or at least get fired. In negotiations with the government union bosses were free to buy favorable negotiations via political donations.

The cancer that destroyed much of American industry is now destroying our entire economy, and we feel we can do nothing about it. That is simply wrong. For one thing we can quit abetting this union power by ceasing to collect union dues for the bosses. Let each employee write a check each month for their dues, rather than having it taken out of their paycheck.

Second we can pass legislation disallowing any entity deriving 30% or more of its income directly or indirectly from government from donating to political campaigns. If 30% of a company's profits come from government contracts, or if 30% of a union's membership works for a government, that company and that union cannot make political donations.

Strategies such as these would do much to restore power away from unions and back to the people.

Dennis Prager at the University of Denver

There was a time when highly reputable physicians would treat sick patients by releasing a quantity of their blood, believing that by releasing the "bad" blood the patient would improve. This practice was reinforced when many of the patients did indeed improve. We now know that the patients were improving in spite of the blood-letting, not because of it.

The national economy is very much like the human body. Both are resilient and will usually heal with no outside help. Any steps taken to promote healing should be tested rigorously to determine if the treatment is helping, hurting, or not affecting the process at all.

The medical community is quite good at evaluating its practices. After sound examinination and evaluation of historical data, effective treatments are kept and detrimental or ineffective treatments are discarded. Economists are also good at looking at historical data to evaluate best-practices in dealing with economic downturns. The problem is, although physicians make medical decisions, politicians make economic ones. Unfortunately, politicians are not good at looking backwards to see what works and what doesn't.

When President Obama takes credit at every sign of economic improvement for the success of his various stimulus bills, he is much like the physicians who were proud of their successes after administering blood-letting. If he were to examine the two economic downturns in the 1920's, he would learn the first corrected itself with no governmental interference. The second, however, was met with massive governmental "help" and lasted for ten years. Only the Second World War brought us out of the Great Depression.

There are many other examples where our economic recessions healed themselves with no, or minimal, government help. Yet politicians still believe we can spend our way out of debt, we can help unemployment by paying people not to work, and we can spur investment by taxing profits.

President Obama, stop the blood-letting!

When I first became a police officer in 1969, the Miranda ruling was still fresh. I learned in the police academy that professional police investigations were pretty much over. The art of interrogation was dead.

We were wrong, of course. We learned other, better ways to conduct investigations. Technology improved. But always, we yearned for some Supreme Court decision that would overturn, or at least strongly modify Miranda. We always looked hopefully at any case that might diminish the restrictive constraints of Miranda.

So why then, am I so uncomfortable with Attorney General Eric Holder's recent consideration of a broad exception to Miranda rights for terror suspects? I've been thinking a lot about this. I should be happy and encouraged that the restrictions of Miranda are being reduced for law enforcement. But I am concerned.

My first concern is that this suggestion is coming from a person who has never been friendly to law enforcement. Eric Holder is from the extreme left--the segment of society which generally wants to impede police powers rather than expand them.

Secondly, this proposed Miranda exception does not affect common criminals such as murderers, rapists, burglars, and robbers. It concerns political prisoners. You may not think of a terrorist's crimes as being political, but that's exactly what they are. Muslim extremists want to change our form of government. Changing Miranda is but one example of our civil liberties being challenged. Indefinite detention is another. How many other compromises to our freedoms are in the works?

My concern is not for terrorists. They are enemy combatants and should be so treated. But the Obama administration has failed to label them as enemy combatants. They're considered perpetrators of "man-caused disasters." They've said these people are a threat to the country, but they've said the same about the "right-wing fringe." Both explicitly and implicitly Obama and friends have called talk-radio, the Fox network, the Tea Party, and others dangerous--a threat to our country. In the future will these civil rights "exceptions" apply to these groups as well, or to others who disagree with the administration?

My fear is that we have an administration that is confusing the existential threat of Muslim radicals with their fear of legitimate political adversaries. Without that clear distinction, and with an administration willing to compromise the civil rights of the citizenry, we have cause to worry.

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
-- Thomas Jefferson --

Imagine your doctor telling you a growth has been found in your breast and tests need to be done to determine if it is a malignant tumor, but he wants to go ahead and perform a double mastecotomy in case the tests are positive. That is essentially what Congress is doing regarding our financial collapse. The Financial Crisis Commission has been formed to determine the causes of our financial collapse, in order to prevent it from happening again. The Commission is tasked to deliver its findings on December 15, 2010.  In the meantime, Congress wants to pass the most far-reaching financial law forms since the Great Depression.

You might assume that Congress already has its mind made up about whom to blame for the crisis, and considering the continuous mantra eminating from Washington about greedy bankers and the Bush Administration's lax regulations, you'd probably be on the right track. So why even have a Financial Crisis Commission? Congress needs an official cover to hide its own role in the financial debacle. Congress needs someone to blame, and the banks are a convenient target for two reasons. First, the rich banks are an easy target whom ordinary people are ready to hate. Second, the banks can't talk back too loudly because Congress controls their ability to grow and prosper through government regulations. The bankers are pretty much forced to sit back and take any criticism or accusations any blustering member of Congress wants to dish out in order to impress the constituents back home.

Congress certainly doesn't want a commission that might point out Congress's own failings, so they staffed it with the right people. The chairman is Phil Angelides, former chairman of California's Democratic Party. We certainly wouldn't want an independent economist running an important commission like this one. Appointing Angelides is like George W creating a commission to investigate the legality of the U.S. entering Iraq and appointing Carl Rove to chair that commission. Angelides set the tone the first day of hearings when he brought in the CEOs of the major banks and accused them of "selling a used car with faulty brakes" to describe their selling of mortgage-backed securities. That certainly sounds like unbiased inquiry.

Another commissioner is Brooksley Born, who has already made her fame by being the sole regulator questioning the marketing of financial derivatives and suffering the brutality of  other regulators for her remarks. Do you think she has a pony in the race?

What you won't hear from the commission is the following:
The financial collapse would not have happened were it not for too many people defaulting on their mortgages. Too many of those people should never have been granted mortgages in the first place. The banks were forced to lend to them to satisfy quotas for minority and low-income loans. These risky loans were made possible because Fanny Mae and Freddie Mack guaranteed them, and because the bad mortgages were bundled together with more responsible loans into securities. These bundled loans were also bought up by Fannie and Freddie who marketed them to other investors as highly rated securities. All of these mistakes were caused by Congress, who grandly believed the cure for poverty in the United States was home ownership for everyone, and intervened in the mortage business to make that possible. Congress gave cover to the lenders by guaranteeing the loans through Fannie and Freddie. This incentivized mortgage brokers to grant low-down and no-down mortages to unqualified people who were likely to default on the loans.

The Federal Reserve Bank accelerated the bubble and subsequent collapse by keeping interest rates below the rate of inflation, creating a world-wide subsidy for credit. Investors around the globe were looking for investments for this fountain of cash and found it in the mistakenly highly-rated mortgage securities. This increased the money available for home loans which increased demand for homes, thereby inflating the price of residential real estate. The bubble grew.

Responsible economists warned Congress about the housing bubble and told them to reign in Fannie and Freddie by capping their housing portfolios. Congress saw this as an attack on poor people and refused to see the danger. Barney Frank famously said, "...I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing..."

Some savvy bankers were a bit smarter than Congress, and saw the housing bubble was in danger of collapsing. They bought derivatives which paid off handsomely when the bubble burst. Was this greed, or just taking advantage of the stupidity of Congress?

The best analysis I have seen of the financial collapse is Thomas Sowell's book, "The Housing Boom and Bust."   Do you think the Financial Crisis Commission will call Dr. Sowell to testify? 

-- Re-posted from an email -- Look carefully at the B-17 and note how shot up it is - one engine dead, tail, horizontal stabilizer and nose shot up.. It was ready to fall out of the sky. (This is a painting done by an artist from the description of both pilots many years later.) Then realize that there is a German ME-109 fighter flying next to it. Now read the story below. I think you'll be surprised ...

As a police officer, I advised many people of their rights during my 36 years of service. Many people I dealt with also advised me of their rights. I learned from various people that they have a right to drive a car, the right to discipline their wives when they misbehave, the right to make as much noise as they want, and other "rights" too numerous to mention. The "right" to health care is as erroneous as the others people claimed.

But when some conservatives ask, "Where is healthcare mentioned in the Constitution?," they are missing the point. Many of our rights are not mentioned in the Constitution. Our framers understood that, and included the ninth amendment so as to disallow the government from infringing upon any rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The ninth states,"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

This amendment deals with implied rights, not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Implicit rights include the right to privacy, outlined in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and also basic unspecified rights such as the right to travel freely and the right to the presumption of innocence. The right to the healthcare of your choice would also be an implied right.

But this right to healthcare cannot be construed to mean the government should provide healthcare or guarantee its provision.  "Freedom of the press" does not mean the government is obligated to buy you books and newspapers.  "The right to bear arms" doesn't mean you are to be provided a free gun. And the "right to healthcare" does not mean that healthcare is provided by the government.  People fail to realize that Constitutional rights are actually freedoms--freedom from governmental interference.  The "right to healthcare" is the freedom to go to the doctor of  your choosing and get the type of treatment you want, without governmental interference.

The danger to society when government  provides us with a good or service is that by doing so, the government retains the power to designate the goods and define the services.

Thus a "right" becomes not a freedom, but a loss of freedom. If under "freedom of the press"  the government is to provide us with free reading material, then the government decides what we read. If under "freedom of healthcare" the government provides our healthcare, then the government can decide the form and amount of healthcare we receive.

It would behoove us all to review what our rights and freedoms really are, understand their fragility, and realize how endangered they have become.

We are all victims of our up bringing. The values and beliefs we learned in childhood are deeply ingrained in our psyches. They can be positive, negative, or neutral, but overcoming them is tough. They are the chains that bind. A faith in God, a distaste for green beans, a hatred of Jews, a fear of water, a belief that good overcomes evil, a faith in government or a fear of government--all can be learned at a young age and stay with us through life.

Barack Obama was brought up in a home with socialist values. His mother was a political activist. His father and his childhood mentor "Frank," (Frank Marshall Davis,whom he talks about in his autobiography), were both communists. This childhood identity was reinforced in college. He says in "Dreams of My Father, "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. TheChicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." Then in Chicago he became a community organizer, working with organizations like ACORN.

Suffice it to say, Barack Obama did not grow up with free market values, pro-military values, a preference for  capitalism, nor many of the values of a Judeo-Christian society.

This is not to say that President Obama is a communist, a socialist, or harbours a hatred for the military. I don't believe any of that. But one doesn't have to look far to see the difficulty he has in breaking the chains of childhood prejudices.

When an African-American professor had a run-in with police, Obama was quick to say he did not know all the facts, but that "..it was obvious the police acted stupidly." This was not a thought-out response. It came from the gut. It came from his core values.

As President, Obama is the Commander in Chief of the military. But in his heart he wants no part of the military. The whole idea of a military-style patriotism is quite distasteful.  Notice the hesitancy to wear a flag pin?   After being sworn in he had to deal with the Afghan front. He had, after all,campaigned on the "good war." He followed the lead of the outgoing adminisration and kept Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and wisely appointed General Stanley A. McChrystal to lead the war effort. But when McChrystal sent his assessment of the war and a request for troops, Obama froze. This was not what he's about. He's a war protestor, not a war supporter. This role goes against his basic self identity.Of course none of this is rational nor intellectual. Once again, it comes from the gut. I'm sure President Obama is not even aware of it. But it is shown by his hesitancy to act, his putting the request on the back burner, and his lack of communication with General McChrystal.

What about President Obama's repeated snubs of our closest ally, Great Britain? From returning the bust of Winston Churchill to the casual choice of gifts for the British leaders, Obama has shown a callousness for the feelings of our biggest partner in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here again these things are not thought out, nor meant to be provocative. They stem from the leftist belief that Great Britain has historically been an oppressor of minorities, expanding its empire by colonizing and subjugating the poor people of the world. Forget how much better off these many countries are, for the imposition of British values and practices.

And finally the chains delaying our economic recovery. The Obama administration is bereft of anyone with private sector business experience. Not surprising, because in Barack's mind, business, businessmen, and capitalism are all the enemy.They are the oppressors of the worker. Obama surrounds himself with union organizers and academics, none of which has ever created a job. It's not surprising that no one there understands the fear and uncertainty that's preventing businesses from expanding. They've never walked in a business person's shoes.  The idea that a business can be a team of workers, supervisors, and administrators, all working together to produce a successful product for the betterment of all, is a total anathema to someone of Obama's mindset.  Business people oppress workers and capitalists are greedy. Obama decries the greed of bankers, calling them "fat cats"for taking bonuses while typical Americans are cutting back. Of course these reactions are limited to the private sector, and he ignores the increased spending of Congress, lavish lifestyles of many in government, and his own jetting off with Michelle for a "date" in New York.  Eleven months after President Obama took office, he finally said that jobs are created by small businesses in America. This is an intellectual conclusion on his part, going against his core belief in big government and distrust of private enterprise. How much better off would we be, if he had started his term with a confidence and faith in the free market system which has made us the most powerful nation on earth?

The chains are hard to break.   Recently our president took a break from apologizing for America to remind the world that the reality of evil requires nations willing to confront it. He said there will be times when nations will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. He admitted jobs are created by the private sector. And he's wearing an American flag pin.  Perhaps there is hope after all.

When I hear the of global warming scientists "massaging the data" and demonizing their detractors, I am reminded of Stalin's favorite agricultural scientist, Trofim D.Lysenko.

With a crisis in food production in the Soviet Union, Lysenko had a theory on how to greatly increase food crops. His idea was at odds with the prevalent theories of Mendelian genetics. Being politically astute, Lysenko attacked his opposition by saying their theory was akin to fascist policies of eugenics and they were "people haters". His attacks were successful and many traditional genetics scientists were sent off to Siberia or otherwise "disappeared." Lysenko himself was promoted to director of the Lenin All Union Institute of Agricultural Science, replacing world famous geneticist Nikolai I. Vavilov, who was arrested and shipped off to die in prison. Lysenco had apparently "massaged the data" in his experiments, because his early "successes" never translated to the real world. For decades Soviet agriculture dramatically lagged behind the Western world and countless numbers of their citizens died of starvation as a result. In 1964 the Soviet Union acknowledged Lysenko's experiments were fraudulent.

When science becomes politicized, and scientific discussions are not allowed to flourish in a free market of ideas, disastrous consequences can result.

The corruption of science, as seen in the emails of some of the world's leading climate scientists (see "Climategate--Nothing New", below,) leads to a broader question of how deep and how far the problem goes.  In a study by Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson, and Raymond de Vries published in June 2005 in Nature on the behaviors of U.S. scientists, it was discovered that the problem may go deeper than we had imagined.

We have generally assumed that most scientists are conscientious and principled, and that the few "bad apples" which we occasionally hear about are the exception. We have heard about falsifying data, making up statistics, stealing research, and the like, but surely those "scientists" are discovered and removed from their positions. The US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) defines research misconduct as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism" (FFP). But it appears there is a large grey area of less serious misconduct which scientists are engaging in.

In the Nature study over 3000 scientists, both early-career and mid-career, were surveyed anonymously concerning their ethical behavior. Sixteen criteria were studied, ranging from inadequate record -keeping to changing results due to pressure from a funding source. Survey questions were to be limited to the last three years. Interesting results included:

• 12.5% of respondents admitted overlooking others' flawed data or questionable interpretation of data.
• 6% failed to present data that contradicts one's own previous research.
• 20.6% of mid-career scientists admitted to changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.
• 13.5% said they had used inadequate or inappropriate research designs.
• A more serious question of falsifying or "cooking" research data was admitted to by only 0.3% of respondents.
• 10% of respondents admitted to at least one of the top ten categories during the previous three years.

It can be assumed that the respondents under-reported their bad behavior, and the most egregious violators probably failed to respond.

So what's the cause of this disrespect for scientific principles? Is it a reflection of a decreasing morality in society? Is it pressure to be recognized, pressure to produce, or financial pressures? Is it a type of political pressure? Whatever the cause, it is crucial to the future of our country that it be rectified.

We should begin in our educational institutions. Scientific ethics and responsibility should be emphasized. One of the chief scoundrels in Climategate is Michael Mann. In spite of questionable scientific practices early on in is career, he was lionized by the climate community and made director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Pennsylvania State. The first step in changing the system should be to remove this type of role model, and hire or promote only those who have demonstrated fealty to sound scientific principles and practices.