Corporations Fail in America
By Rebekah Rast
“Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled.”—President Ronald Reagan, May 1983, Williamsburg, Virginia.
The government’s answers to America’s problems are to spend and tax.
It is easy to see the results of those tactics: less productivity, limited competition, fewer jobs and a sinking economy.
These negative results not only affect individual citizens, but America’s corporations as well.
America’s corporate tax rate sits as the second highest in the world at 35 percent; second only to Japan, which is currently in the process of lowering its tax rate.
Though individual taxpayers might not be bothered that corporations in the U.S. face such a high tax rate — in fact, many might be in support of it as some corporations that conduct business internationally pay different rates. But the truth is, the corporate tax rate should be of concern to all American citizens.
After all, who do you think corporations pass their taxes on to?
“The corporate tax doesn’t tax corporations, but taxes people. The corporations pass them down,” says Bill Thomas, former Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the tax law writing committee of the House of Representatives.
That alone should make people think that America’s corporate tax rate should be cut. Not only are citizens picking up the costs, but having a high corporate rate makes America much less competitive compared to all other countries.
America tacks on a tax on products that come in and out of the U.S. Most other countries subsidize or have an allowance for their products so they aren’t double taxed.
“We are at a disadvantage with every country with whom we import/export,” former Chairman Thomas says.
Because America’s tax system includes a form of double taxation on products, consumers are often faced with a choice: if you see a German product on the shelf for $5 and the same American product on the shelf for $7, which one are you more likely to purchase?
“The effect is double taxation,” says Johanna Schneider, executive director of external relations for the Business Roundtable. “You have to level the playing field, compete head to head on products.”
Of the 187 corporations at Business Roundtable, more than 95 percent of them conduct business overseas. America would do best to follow the corporate taxation models of other countries so it can be a viable competitor in today’s world.
But instead, Congress passed a new tax package for multinational corporations. This legislation diminishes the actions in the tax code available for U.S. businesses abroad, therefore not allowing them to minimize their tax burden.
“It denies the ability of U.S. organizations to take tax credits,” Schneider says. “This reduces the returns to the U.S.”
Congress wanted to ensure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes into the treasury, but instead they are punishing these businesses.
“The goal of all policy makers is to make the U.S. competitive, yet one of the most uncompetitive laws is the corporate tax,” Schneider notes. “U.S. companies are penalized for bringing money back into the U.S.”
The international tax code is complicated and confusing, much like the U.S. tax code. Thanks to recent action by Congress, this new law on multinational corporations will make it even more complicated.
“They are trying to get money out of multinational corporations,” says former Chairman Thomas. “If they start taking too much then it is not advantageous to the U.S., but detrimental to the U.S.”
By taxing corporations in the U.S. at a higher rate it effectively impacts investment in the country. Schneider says that upwards of 50 percent of revenues in the U.S. come from outside the country. Furthermore, 90 to 95 percent of customers in the world are outside the U.S., she goes on to say.
If the U.S. takes on the highest corporate tax rate in the world, it will be detrimental to the growth, employment and the economy of the country.
“There is a real penalty on investments being done in the U.S.,” says Alan Viard, resident scholar with American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “We are really behind the curve on this when our solution is higher taxes.”
Many countries around the world have lowered their rates from an average of 38 to 27 percent from 1992 to 2006. Under President Reagan, the U.S. corporate tax rate went from 46 to 34 percent, which greatly helped America’s competitive positioning. But in 1993, President Clinton bumped the U.S. corporate tax rate back up to 35 percent, while other countries around the world were working to lower their tax rates.
“The corporate tax rate is harming competition,” says Scott A. Hodge, president of The Tax Foundation. “It should be moved from its current rate which is 35 percent to 20 percent.”
Viard notes that America’s high corporate tax rate doesn’t help with the current high levels of unemployment either.
“It won’t bring jobs home to the U.S.,” he says.
Former Chairman Thomas adds, “If you want to encourage and influence behavior you put credits and tax cuts on it.”
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson notes, “If you want to discourage activity you raise taxes. It is particular ironic that this supposed job-focused Obama Administration is raising taxes on some of our nation’s job creators.”
Like personal income taxes, the more people have to pay, the less likely they are to invest or save. Corporations work the same way.
America’s leadership needs to decide if the country is going to dive off the cliff economically or take a few steps back and work to encourage growth and business investments back into the system. America is soon becoming the country with the highest corporate tax in the world. This will do nothing but stop corporations from doing business in America, meaning less revenue, jobs, competition and capital.
There is an urgent need for growth in America. If done effectively, a restructuring of the corporate tax laws in the U.S. would bring growth, sustainability, investment and jobs.
America has seen the ineffectiveness of “Obamanomics.” Maybe it’s time for “Reaganomics” to make a comeback. President Reagan was the last to lower the corporate tax rate in 1986. It is one tax law out of many that deserves to be revamped.
Rebekah Rast is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
Obama's Labor Board Targets Dana Corp. Ruling that Allows for Secret Ballot
By Kevin Mooney 
President Obama’s labor board is now positioned to overturn the landmark 2007 Dana Corp. decision that allows workers to vote out via secret ballot a union that was recognized through the card check process.
This week the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced it has merged two cases, which involve union lawyers with the USW and UFCW who are seeking to overturn Dana ruling that allowed for employees to demand a secret ballot election within 45 days after a union obtained monopoly bargaining status through a card check campaign.
In the USW case, the same Foundation attorneys who originally won the landmark Dana case are providing free legal assistance to Mike Lopez, an employee of Lamons Gasket Company in Houston, Texas, who filed the decertification petition when at least 30 percent of employees in the bargaining unit supported the election. Consequently, there is good reason to doubt that the card check vote accurately reflected workers’ support of the union.
Workers have already used the Dana precedent to demand secret ballot votes and kicked out unwanted unions. Here’s a video report about some Dana Corp. employees in Albion, Indiana who did just that.
Many of the workers say they only signed the cards in response to union organizers visiting their homes not out of a genuine sense of conviction.
“While President Obama and members of Congress continue to push for a federal bill that would end the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, an obscure federal agency stacked with union lawyers is poised to eliminate the private vote for workers who have been subjected to unreliable and coercive card check campaigns,” Foundation President Mark Mix said.
One of the lawyers who agreed to review Dana is Craig Becker, a controversial recess appointee who is also former legal counsel to the SEIU and AFL-CIO. As a lawyer with the AFL-CIO, Becker cosigned a joint AFL-CIO/UAW brief in the original Dana case; yet he is now in a position on the quasi-judicial agency to overturn that very decision.
A similar challenge by union lawyers to Dana that has not been consolidated into this review involves Service Workers United, an SEIU affiliate. Earlier this year, Foundation attorneys asked Becker to recuse himself from cases involving SEIU local affiliate unions. Becker responded that he must only recuse himself from cases involving the national union. The Foundation’s vice president and legal director Raymond LaJeunesse, Jr. sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in August asking him to investigate whether Becker is in violation of his Obama Administration ethics pledge for participating in cases involving SEIU affiliates.
While that question remains unsettled, it appears Becker and the two other former union lawyers currently comprising a majority on Obama’s labor board designed the review of Dana to exclude the pending SEIU case so Becker could avoid the ethics problem and still rule to overturn Dana.
None of this should be surprising. According to a report by Americans for Limited Government (ALG) published prior to Becker’s recess appointment, Becker has previously written that “The [National Labor Relations] Board should return to the principle that a union election is not a contest between the employer and the union... Unlike the other proposals, however, it could be achieved with almost no alteration to the statutory framework.”
According to the ALG report, “This unilateral imposition of his views regardless of Congressional approval may apply to Card Check legislation as well.” Now it looks like it may actually happen.
It’s also worth noting that it would be quite rare for the Board to decide important cases like this without at least 3 votes in the majority. If Becker were to actually recuse himself from the Dana review, the vote to overturn Dana would likely be 2-1. This would explain why it’s important for the union lawyer majority on the Board to keep Becker on the case.
Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau and the Executive Editor of TimesCheck.com.
Out of Context, Out of Line
You know the campaign season is heated up when politicians resort to the age-old dishonest tactic of misquoting their opponents. Apparently, when the establishment cannot debate challengers on the substance, it instead debates straw men — misleading the American people and wasting everyone’s time.
Take the latest example of Nevada Democrat Congresswoman Dina Titus, whose campaign saw fit to pull out of context the quote of her opponent, Nevada State Senator Joe Heck.
Heck said, “"The role of Congress is not to create jobs, it is to set the conditions under which the private sector creates jobs.” So, government should get out of the way, and let the private sector do what it does best.
Heck continued, further confirming this point, “And you do that through a stable, fair, predictable tax base, you do that by not pursuing onerous regulations on small, medium and large businesses. And that is where we need to get back to, that limited government that sets the conditions for the private sector to thrive.”
But the only part of the full quote that survived the ad that the incumbent Congresswoman used was “The role of Congress is not to create jobs”. The clip stops there, and then the narrator says, “Sen. Heck doesn't get it.”
Actually, he does. Heck wants government to lower taxes and repeal regulations that prevent businesses from expanding and creating more jobs. Congresswoman Titus, on the other hand, voted for the jobs-killing ObamaCare and the Waxman-Markey legislation capping carbon emissions and increasing energy prices.
Titus has doubled down on her quoting out of context, again saying of her opponent, “He says it’s not the responsibility of Congress to create jobs and I believe it’s very important for Congress to create jobs, especially when unemployment rates are so high.”
As if that was not enough, the ad said "Heck signed a pledge to protect tax loopholes giant corporations use to ship our jobs overseas," citing an Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) pledge. Only, the ATR pledge has nothing to do with jobs being shipped overseas, it’s a pledge against raising taxes at all.
But the malicious campaign does not end there. As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, “The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has spent about $700,000 on ads that recycle a dubious claim that says in the legislature Heck voted against a vaccine for cervical cancer and that he wants to privatize Social Security.”
Only, reports the Journal, it’s not true: “In reality Heck voted against a mandate requiring health insurance providers to cover a specific brand of vaccine against HPV, which can be a precursor to cervical cancer. And his Social Security plan involves a proposal to allow new enrollees to choose how their money is invested, while keeping employer contributions in the current system. The new enrollees could also keep their money in the current system if they wished.”
There’s no indication yet if the misleading claims against Heck will have any impact. But it does show the lengths the establishment will go to in order to keep a hold of power.
Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
Too Hot Not to Note: Reid and the jobless
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial from the Las Vegas Review Journal, Sharron Angle’s basis of criticizing the perpetual extension of unemployment benefits is being validated by the evidence:
Reid and the jobless
Is Angle really so 'extreme'?
It was only five weeks ago that GOP Senate hopeful Sharron Angle was subjected to a public flogging for being "insensitive" to the unemployed.
Not only did Ms. Angle say she would have opposed a July Senate bill extending federal unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, she also said that some recipients of jobless benefits were part of a "spoiled" culture of entitlement.
Her Democratic opponent, unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, jumped all over the comments, as did his many stenographers in the local punditry class. Ms. Angle apologized for using the word "spoiled."
But the potential damage continues.
On Tuesday, the Reid camp unveiled its latest TV hit piece on the challenger, trotting out the "spoiled" quote to continue the theme that Sharron Angle is "too extreme" for Nevada on economic policy.
Ms. Angle's comment is obviously fair game. The candidate has nobody but herself to blame for her choice of words.
But if Sen. Reid really wants a debate over Ms. Angle's view on unemployment insurance, he'd better be careful what he asks for.
On Monday, Robert Barro, an economics professor at Harvard, penned a commentary for The Wall Street Journal headlined, "The folly of subsidizing unemployment." Mr. Barro notes that "it is reasonable during a recession to adopt a more generous unemployment insurance program," but that extending payments to almost two years is unprecedented and has created a "welfare program that resembles those in many Western European countries."
In fact, Mr. Barro argues that the high percentage of long-term unemployed today -- a number higher than any time since World War II -- is a direct result of this generous benefit extension. "My calculations suggest," he writes, "that the jobless rate could be as low as 6.8 percent instead of 9.5 percent if jobless benefits hadn't been extended to 99 weeks."
Mr. Barro's essay appeared just a few weeks after Jeffrey Miron, director of undergraduate studies in the department of economics at Harvard, noted in a TV interview that extended benefits serve as an incentive for some workers to be more selective and thus to stay on unemployment "for extra weeks or months ... for a little bit longer."
Nor does Mr. Miron buy the argument that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy, noting that the checks are generated by taxpayers who no longer have that money to spend themselves. Compassion for the unemployed is fine, Mr. Miron argues, but, "At what point do we say we have to put aside compassion and worry about efficiency and worry about giving people stronger incentive to go back to work, even if it's not the job they'd most prefer?"
It may shock progressives to learn this, but such sentiments are not "extreme," they are solidly in the mainstream of economic theory. Maybe Ms. Angle isn't such a dangerous radical after all to suggest that extending unemployment payments in perpetuity can be counterproductive and create more dependency.
Meanwhile, we have little doubt Sen. Reid is a friend of the unemployed. That's why he and his bosses in the Obama administration have been working furiously over the past 20 months to create so many of them with their high-tax, big government, job-killing agenda.
A "Recovery In Name Only"
By Howard Rich
To the eight million Americans who have lost their jobs during the “Great Recession,” the so-called recovery our nation is currently experiencing hasn’t been very “stimulating.”
In fact it’s been downright depressing — and conditions are not likely to improve anytime soon.
With virtually all economic indicators retreating and a barrage of job-killing tax hikes scheduled to take effect in 2011, a dreaded “double-dip” recession is imminent — despite repeated assurances to the contrary from the administration of President Barack Obama. Also with trillions of taxpayer dollars still being spent, lent, pledged and printed in the name of supporting this phantom “recovery,” government continues to amass a debt so large that its interest payments alone will consume more than a third of federal income tax revenue by 2015.
Far from preventing an economic collapse, the costly federal interventionist policies of Obama and former President George W. Bush have sown the seeds for a larger, longer economic downturn — mirroring the failed “government-first” approach of the 1930s that managed to turn a recession into full-blown depression.
Just as government cannot tax and spend its way out of bad economic times (then or now), the Obama administration is discovering that it can’t talk its way out of them either — although that hasn’t stopped the authors of “Obamanomics” from attempting to do so.
A year ago U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke declared that the U.S. recession was over — a sentiment that was echoed by Obama’s top economic advisor in December of 2009. In April of this year, Obama’s other top economist said that there would be no “double-dip” recession, comments which prompted a flurry of rosy rhetoric from the White House.
“We can say beyond a shadow of a doubt today we are headed in the right direction,” Obama said during a speech back in May. “All those tough steps we took, they’re working, despite all the naysayers who were predicting failure a year ago.”
Around this time, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also predicted a “Summer of Recovery” in which the U.S. economy would create “between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month.”
Clearly, that hasn’t happened — nor is it going to happen.
The official U.S. unemployment rate remains stuck at just under 10 percent, while the broader “underemployment rate” is stuck at 16.5 percent. Neither rate has moved for months, although both are about to start moving again — albeit in the wrong direction.
Last month, the U.S. economic growth rate for the second quarter was revised downward from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent — with roughly the same anemic rate of growth predicted for the third quarter. Meanwhile existing home sales plunged by 27.2 percent — the largest one-month decline ever — and new home sales fell by 12.4 percent to their lowest level ever.
Just as it did in 1929, the U.S. government is on the verge of turning a recession into a depression by virtue of its costly excess interventionism. In 1930, a year after the stock market collapsed, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 8.7 percent. In 1932 — after an ill-conceived government tariff, massive public works program and the largest tax hike in American history — the unemployment rate had nearly tripled to 23.6 percent. Six years later — after the implementation of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” — it was still at 19 percent.
Also, let’s not forget government’s starring role in the years leading up to this crisis — a decade of overspending and politically-correct lending practices that pumped trillions of dollars into mortgages for people who simply couldn’t afford them.
Amazingly Obama and his allies still cannot read the handwriting on the wall, as just a few weeks ago Vice-President Biden reiterated that there was “no doubt we’re moving in the right direction” economically.
Despite the rhetoric of “recovery,” America’s economic hole is clearly getting deeper — and the only way out is a return to the free market, limited government principles on which our nation was founded.
Let’s hope our elected officials realize that before it is too late.
The author is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.
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Primaries Work as Establishment is Uprooted
Now that the Alaskan Libertarian Party has explicitly voted not to nominate Senator Lisa Murkowski, her hopes of appearing on the ballot in November have been dashed. Republican voters too have rejected her, handing the GOP Senate nomination to the relatively unknown Joe Miller. It’s also too late to run as an Independent. Short of a write-in campaign, which would almost certainly fail, she’s out of options.
Which leaves Murkowski with a choice. Does she back Miller or not? How she chooses will determine whether Murkowski is a team player, willing to respect the primary process, or a sore loser who cares more about her seat of power than the greater good.
Certainly, that she conceded when the outcome was clear may appear to be a good sign, but she fell short of endorsing Miller. Apparently, she also actively sought the Libertarian nomination immediately upon losing, which is not a good sign. Had the Libertarians agreed to drop their own candidate, Frederick Haase, she would now be on the ballot.
What’s a primary for anyway? Or a political party for that matter? What good is the will of the electorate if it is not heeded? When a party becomes merely a vehicle to advance the careers of the powerful, and not a vehicle to advance the shared principles of a constituency, it is time to seriously reconsider the state of the political establishment that rules in Washington.
Murkowski would do well to consider the example of Governor Charlie Crist in Florida, whose own campaign against Republican Marco Rubio foundered earlier this year. Rather than lose the primary, Crist instead chose to run as an Independent. Now, no one trusts him, and trails Rubio by 10 points in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll.
Crist cared more about taking the seat for himself than advancing any comprehensive philosophy of governing, as is evidenced by his switching positions on several key issues. He is the perfect example of a career politician who favors personal power over reform. He’s certainly not the first.
Crist’s move mirrored that of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who feared to run in the Republican primary against conservative favorite Pat Toomey. So he switched parties to Democrat. But, nobody trusted him, so he lost his primary battle to Congressman Joe Sestak.
Even when Toomey lost to Specter for the party’s nomination in 2004, he respected the primary process, and endorsed Specter for Senate against his Democrat opponent the same night he lost in the primary.
Now Toomey appears poised to take the seat for himself against Sestak, and it appears that his patience paid off. He leads by six points, according to Rasmussen.
The message? Voters don’t like a sore loser. Even if all Murkowski cared about was advancing her career as a politician, she would do well to get behind Miller at this stage. Vociferous support today could help her later to win a bid for governor or one day be nominated for a cabinet secretary.
Not all ousted Republicans have chosen the path of Crist and Specter, thankfully. Take the case of Republican Senator Bob Bennett of Utah. He was ultimately overthrown in a state party convention by Mike Lee, but then he magnanimously endorsed Lee. And now, Lee is cruising to any easy win.
It’s an example that Murkowski would do well to follow.
It is time for establishment Republicans to respect the will of the electorate. The pursuit of power over principle is why the GOP lost the majority in 2006 — and now it is time that the lessons of the past are learned.
Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
TimesCheck.com: Glenn Beck, Tea Party Activists Uplift Civil Rights, Founding Ideals as NYT Spreads Misinformation
- By: admin
- On: 09/01/2010 20:40:22
- In: Uncategorised
Glenn Beck, Tea Party Activists Uplift Civil Rights, Founding Ideals as NYT Spreads Misinformation
By Kevin Mooney
False allegations of racism aimed against tea party activists who favor constitutional restraints on federal power predictably resurfaced in a New York Times report that sought to discredit Glenn Beck’s Washington D.C. rally. Reporter Kate Zernike has a long history of invoking race as a way to discredit and marginalize tea party activism.
As TimesCheck has previously noted, there is a concerted effort in the news media to interlink small government activists with radical elements. “They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65,” Zernike laments in an earlier report. Their memories are of a different time, when the country was less diverse.”
The data does not substantiate the allegations. Even the New York Times/CBS poll, which typically oversamples Democrats, concluded Tea Party activists were sophisticated and well-educated. There’s also a Washington Post/ABC Poll that shows 20 percent of voters concur with the tea party’s economic concerns; that’s hardly suggestive of an irrelevant, radical fringe.
Glenn Beck, the Fox News conservative broadcaster who joined forces with the tea party in Washington D.C., has been accused by some of dishonoring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial took place on the 47th anniversary of King’s civil rights speech.
Zernike opens her “Political Memo” by citing unnamed critics who have made claims of racial insensitivity.
“It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago,” the report says. “After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.”
The overarching purpose of the rally was to help reclaim the ideals civil rights movement from corrupt political elements that have a separate agenda, Beck explained in an interview with Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday.
On his radio program, Beck has argued that many of the key points King made in his “I Have a Dream” Speech have been lost. Organizations like the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) and the Congressional Black Caucus are off the mark in the criticisms and have lost sight of long-standing principles, Tea Party leaders have suggested.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” King declared.
In her article, Zernike quotes from portions of Beck’s radio program that she later seeks to discredit and dismiss.
“We are the people of the civil rights movement,” Beck is quoted as saying. “We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice.”
While it’s perfectly appropriate to question and analyze Beck’s commentary, the report proceeds to give critics a free pass. If Beck is so far off the mark, then why are self-described civil rights organizations like the NAACP pushing race-based affirmative programs that discriminate on the basis of skin color?
Although the liberal news media has thus far failed to provide any concrete, tangible evidence of coordinated racism within Tea Party events, Zernike implies that these elements will be uncovered and exposed in due time.
“It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies — `Go Back to Kenya’ directed at President Obama, is just one example — are carried by Democratic plants sent to make the Tea Party look bad,” she wrote.
For that matter, it is an “article of faith” among liberal media elites that the best way to silence and shut down libertarian movements is to equate federalism and constitutionalism with racism.
Consider the following from Zernike, “In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.”
She doesn’t stop there, writing, “Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination,” the report continues. “It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.”
All very debatable propositions.
There’s a considerable amount of scholarship that shows how government programs have actually perpetuated dependency and poverty. The point about the minimum wage is equally problematic. Younger Americans just entering the workforce, be they black or white, tend to suffer the most when federal officials coerce higher wages.
An argument can be made that tea party activists are much closer in mind and spirit to the sentiments expressed by Dr. King than the contemporary civil rights establishment.
“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” he said in his own famous speech. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked `insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation…”
Unlike their liberal media critics, tea party activists understand that it is the ideals of the founding period and the constitutional order that helped make liberty possible in the first place; not bankrupt government programs.
Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau and the Executive Editor of TimesCheck.com.
Time to Get to Work
By Bill Wilson
This past weekend saw another significant rally on the nation’s capital by the tea party movement, this time organized by FOX News host Glenn Beck. Estimates suggest that the event, billed the “Restoring Honor Rally,” drew hundreds of thousands of supporters, opposing the expansive role government has seized over the lives of millions of Americans.
For what it set out to do, the event was a success. It sought to honor “our heroes, our heritage and our future.” It also was intended to be non-political, and speeches made at the event focused instead on patriotic and religious themes, praising the military, and “turning back to the values and principles that made us great,” which Beck said “can unite us.”
For the sake of the nation and so those principles might endure, Beck said Americans “must discover them again.”
Beck praised the “American experiment” in self-government, saying that the U.S. is “not just a country, it’s an idea, that man can rule himself.” Beck posed a choice to the American people, asking, “do we today say the experiment cannot work, [that] man must be ruled by someone?”
Ultimately, the choice he posed is between two conditions of man: slavery, or liberty. To submit to an all-powerful government, or to accept responsibility for governing our own lives. “Do we no longer believe in the individual, and the power of the individual? Do we no longer believe in dreams, and the power of one person making a difference? I testify to you here and now: One man can change the world,” Beck declared.
A powerful message, to say the least. How best to do so, however, how best to reclaim the nation and reinstate self-government, was not directly addressed by the rally or in Beck’s passionate plea for “faith, hope, and charity.”
Rest assured, the means are indeed political, if even the rally was not. Americans who hope to restore a constitutional, limited form of government must participate in the nation’s political processes. They must continue to involve themselves with political primaries, in selecting candidates that best represent their values.
They must volunteer their time and resources to those campaigns, knock on doors, help raise money, and make phone calls. And once the elections have passed in November, they must hold their elected representatives accountable for their actions, and be ever-vigilant in demanding policies that enhance liberty and limit government’s powers.
They can never again be silent when government overreaches, as it surely will.
The goals set out at Beck’s rally, and at thousands of other tea party rallies nationwide that have taken place, will not be accomplished without very specific actions on the part of hundreds of thousands of Americans — in political campaigns.
Ultimately, 2010 is a test for the tea parties and other citizen activists — and an opportunity. Can their energy be directed to changing the administration of government in Washington? Can they persuade elected officials to rein in the national debt, to eliminate wasteful spending, to repeal harmful regulations and to stop raising taxes?
Can they change who wields power?
Time will tell, but what must be done by the people right now is not in Washington. It is in their local towns and communities nationwide. Beck was right to take a moment to reflect on what the nation stands for, but now it’s time to get to work. As he said, “It’s what we do from here that matters.”
Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Behind the Unemployment Numbers
By Rick Manning
The first Friday of every month is a special day at the U.S. Department of Labor. Somewhat lovingly called “numbers day,” this is when at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the employment report for the previous month.
Contrary to what many believe, due to the impact that employment data has on stock markets around the world, not even the Secretary of Labor gets to see this data before 8:00 a.m., and she is precluded from making public statements about these numbers until one hour after their public release due to Office of Management and Budget rules at 9:30 am.
When the first Friday falls before Labor Day, it gets even more interesting as there is nowhere for the Labor Secretary to hide, due to various public appearances scheduled to commemorate the state of labor in America.
This Labor Day will be particularly difficult for President Obama’s spinners, they now own this economy, their economic stimulus package and various social engineering attempts have been implemented, and the jobless rate is at 9.5 percent, a far cry from the 8 percent ceiling they forecasted if the stimulus was passed. The blame Bush card has been maxed out.
Given this sensitivity, the Administration will be trying to eke out any good news from the latest report. An example of this type of spin showed up last month when President Obama called July’s increase of private sector payroll employment by 71,000, “a good sign” for future growth. Of course, this “good sign” fell far short of the 100,000 jobs a month that the economy needs to add just to keep up with population growth. So, the “good sign” actually fell 29,000 jobs short of the break-even point to keep the jobless rate stable.
Expect the Administration to be running some key data through the spin cycle this Labor Day weekend. When BLS representatives meet with Secretary Hilda Solis and her team at 8 a.m., they will first look at the top-line number — the unemployment rate. This measures what percentage of those who are actively seeking jobs can’t find one. This rate has been 9.4 percent or higher for the past year, and any movement downward from the current 9.5 percent will be hailed triumphantly by the Administration regardless of the reason.
Many analysts were initially surprised when the rate dropped from 9.9 percent in April 2010 to 9.5 percent in June 2010, in spite of 336,000 fewer people being employed during this two month period. The drop occurred because almost a million people left the workforce during those two months as the civilian labor force dropped from 154,715,000 to 153,741,000. In this two month period alone, the labor participation rate in our nation dropped a full half a percent from 65.2 percent to 64.7 percent. So, the drop in the unemployment rate had nothing to do with the strength of the economy, and in fact was more of a reflection of its overall weakness as almost a million people chose to leave the labor market.
Another particularly troublesome group of people who will be counted by BLS are those who are known as “discouraged workers.” BLS defines discouraged workers as those people who are not currently looking for work because they don’t believe there are any jobs available to them. In July, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers up by almost 400,000 people from one year before. These discouraged workers essentially are providing a giant vote of no confidence to the economy and the Administration’s attempts to bolster it. If this group of people continues to increase, Secretary Solis might find herself to be the only Administration spokesperson available for media interviews on Labor Day, as everyone else will be in hiding.
I have already alluded to the other key number that astute observers will be focused upon like a laser beam — the private sector job creation number. Rather than increasing by 100,000 a month, the number of people employed by the private sector has fallen by 41,000 from July 2009 to July 2010.
This is important because it shows that the stimulus package did nothing to stimulate private sector job creation which is the engine that drives our nation’s economic growth. In order for Secretary Solis to have a good Labor Day, she is praying that when the BLS comes knocking on her door on Friday morning, they have a nice surprise of accelerating private sector job growth.
If not, it is likely to be a bleak Labor Day forecast which portends ill tidings for Democrats running for election across the land, because ultimately, Democratic Party strategist and James Carville had it right when he said back in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government and the former Public Affairs Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor.
