Americanly Yours

It has been common for conservatives and libertarians to criticize President Obama lately, especially for his economic policies.

The attacks from fiscal hawks (myself included) have been relentless.  But, what is becoming increasingly more common is to hear attacks on the President’s economic policies from the left.

I wrote earlier that Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz criticized the bailouts and argued that the type of government intervention proposed by President Obama could lower our standards of living for the next 20 years.  As I mentioned in that previous article, Joseph Stiglitz has advised both President Clinton and President Obama.  Interestingly enough, Joseph Stiglitz is a liberal who has been very critical of the free market and free market economists in the past.

Dr. Stiglitz is hardly the only liberal economist to criticize President Obama’s economic policies.  In fact, he is not even the only liberal Nobel Prize winning economist to criticize the President’s economic policies.  Recently, 2008 Nobel Prize in economics winner Paul Krugman has become a vocal critic of President Obama’s economic policies.

Paul Krugman is very much a liberal economist.  He is a strong advocate of European style “social democracy” as well as welfare programs, and the welfare state.  He even said of the welfare state:  “I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state, which I regard as the most decent social arrangement yet devised.”

I dont agree with Krugman’s proposed solution–a nationalization of the banking industry, but I do agree that Mr. Obama’s plans will hurt the economy and the country in the long run and that his plans are the wrong way to go.  Here are a few articles written by Mr. Krugman criticizing the Administration’s plans.

2/22/09

3/8/09

3/29/09

In one of my classes this semester [right before the passage of the "stimulus" bill], we had a guest speaker who was a labor economist who eventually became an Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter.  This man was very critical of Reagan, Republicans, and conservatives in general.  However, he came out strongly against the “stimulus” plan.  He complained that it was very expensive, that it was spending money too slow, and that it was spending money on things that wouldnt lead to job creation or real stimulus of the economy.  A similar argument can be found in this writing by Robert Samuelson.

As I said above, you can expect conservative and libertarian economists to oppose the President’s economic plans.  However, it is somewhat disturbing when prominent (Nobel Prize) winning liberal economists begin criticizing the President’s economic policies.  Even supporter Warren Buffet has criticized the President’s plans.  These liberal critics of the President’s policies, combined with the conservative and libertarian critics leads to an important question:  are there any prominent economists who are not a part of this administration who support President Obama’s economic policies?  I have yet to hear from any.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been sick most of the week and am just now starting to feel better…

The big news is the “stimulus” package that is about to be passed whether or not the American people want it to.

My friend Art sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal which talks about what all is included in the “stimulus.”  It is pretty ridiculous.

But on top of this, there are are some truly outrageous things in the bill.  Under the terms of the bill, illegal immigrants who have been working in this country illegally will be able to get a tax rebate check of $500 per person.  Seriously.

This bill also gives money to dairy farmers to take their dairy cows out of production in order to raise the price of milk and create a greater profit for the dairy industry.  This type of government intervention is not only wrong, it is very dangerous.  Remember that less that a year ago, there was a global “food crisis” going on in which hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people were on the verge of starving.  By paying farmers to not produce food and drink, our government is playing a very dangerous game.  But this is not a game.  This is real life.  If government intervention causes the price of food to go up, people could actually die.

Here is an interesting article from CNN that was sent to me by two of my friends, Squeak and Hawk (yes, I have a friend named Squeak and a friend named Hawk).  This talks about solutions that Libertarians have come up with to address the current [government manufactured] crisis.  I dont support all of them and there are at least two that I completely disagree with, but they are all better than what we are going to end up spending the money on.

I want to write more, but this is getting to be too long.  Ill have an article for yall tomorrow.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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I am leaving the Democratic Party to join the Libertarian Party. My fit with the Democratic Party has been less great in recent years, and I have got to the point where I no longer feel comfortable calling myself a Democrat. And, although I voted for John McCain, I cannot consider myself a Republican either. Even though I supported Senator McCain, I actually disagreed with him on more issues than I agreed with him. It wasn’t a “lesser of two evils” thing, it was just that at the time Senator’s McCain’s views were closest to mine.

Since the election, however, a wave of bailouts has swept aside our Capitalist system and has moved us towards a socialist system in which the government owns and directs the economic activities of large corporations. The government’s reaction to the recent economic crisis (which I blame on government intervention in the first place) has hardened my non-interventionist views.

I decided to join the Libertarian Party after these bailouts convinced me that I could not support the Democrats or the Republicans. I began looking at the party platforms for different parties and found that I agreed with most of the Libertarian Party’s platform. Sure, there are major areas where I disagree with them, but I feel great about joining the Libertarian Party.

Why did I join the Libertarian Party you ask? Well…

Who stood up to Republicans and opposed the Patriot Act?

Who stood up to Bush and defended the 4th Amendment to our Constitution after details of Bush’s warrantless wiretap program were revealed?

Who has stood up against the efforts of the Democratic Party to take away the rights given to Americans by the 2nd Amendment?

Who has opposed every government bailout?

Who has opposed the increasing governmental control over every part of your personal life, from how you educate your children, to what types of cars you drive, to what type of energy you use to heat your home?

Who has fought for the right of ailing patients to be allowed to use medicinal marijuana to soothe their pain?

Who has fought for an end to the immoral system of taxing human labor, investment, savings, and entrepreneurial activity?

Who is the only party that defends the Constitution, as written?

Who is the only party that promises to cut the fat from our bloated bureaucracy?

With both parties turning toward bailouts and excessive regulation, who is the only party left still advocating Capitalism?

Which party is a staunch supporter of Free Trade, knowing that it is the best way to create jobs, economic growth, and save consumers the most money?

And which party holds the fundamental belief that individual freedom and personal responsibility are natural rights which should not be abridged by government for any reason?

The Libertarian Party.

Do you get the point?  The Libertarian Party is the only American political party which advocates complete economic and political freedom.

Many people say that voting for a “3rd party” candidate is a “wasted vote.”  This is not true.  It is true that the odds of a Libertarian candidate being elected to National office in the next elections is small.

The Democratic and Republican Parties want you to think that your vote only matters if you vote for one of their candidates.  And, this is only true to the degree that you accept their argument.  If you want to vote for a candidate who supports Liberty, but you do not believe that he can win, so you vote for one of the candidates from the two major parties, you are wasting your vote.  You are making the Democrats and Republicans right in their assertion that a 3rd party candidate cannot win.

This is a democracy.  In a democracy, there are no wasted votes.  A vote for any candidate, be he Republican, Democrat, Communist, Libertarian, or a protest write-in vote for yourself is equally valid and is not a wasted vote, as long as you are voting for the candidate that you feel is the one most suited for the job.  A vote is wasted if you compromise your beliefs and vote for a candidate that you do not like over a candidate that you agree with because you assume that the candidate that you agree with has no realistic chance of winning.  Penn Jilette says that if you “keep voting for the lesser of two evils [you will] watch things get more evil.”

Additionally, a vote for a 3rd party candidate should be viewed as an investment in the future.  A candidate may get only 5% of the vote this time, but getting 5% could encourage more people to vote for him.  Maybe in the next election, he gets 10%.  And as this happens, we could see a Libertarian or other 3^rd party candidate win. In Georgia in November, a statewide Libertarian candidate for Public Service Commissioner received over 1 million votes and received over 1/3 of the total votes cast for his position, even winning my county by over 37,000 votes. Maybe next time, he can win.

They say that “absolute power corrupts, absolutely.” Well, I say “absolute freedom enlightens, absolutely.”

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet