Political Translations

by Dr. Thomas Sowell: It is amazing how many different ways the same thing can be said, creating totally different impressions. For example, when President Barack Obama says that defeating ISIS is going to take a long time, how is that different from saying that he is going to do very little, very slowly? It is saying the same thing in different words.

Defenders of the administration's policies may cite how many aerial sorties have been flown by American planes against ISIS. There have been thousands of these sorties, which sounds very impressive. But what is less impressive — and more indicative — is that, in most of those sorties, the planes have not fired a single shot or dropped a single bomb.

Why? Because the rules of engagement are so restrictive that in most circumstances there is little that the pilot is allowed to do, unless circumstances are just right, which they seldom are in any war.

Moreover, the thousands of sorties being flown are still a small fraction of the number of sorties flown in the same amount of time during the Iraq war, when American leaders were serious about getting the war won.

Politics produces lots of words that can mean very different things, if you stop and think about them. But politicians depend on the fact that many people don't bother to stop and think about them.

We often hear that various problems within the black community are "a legacy of slavery." That phrase is in widespread use among people who believe in the kinds of welfare state programs that began to dominate government policies in the 1960s.

Blaming social problems today on "a legacy of slavery" is another way of saying, "Don't blame our welfare state policies for things that got worse after those policies took over. Blame what happened in earlier centuries."

Nobody would accept that kind of cop-out, if it were expressed that way. But that is why it is expressed differently, as a "legacy of slavery."

If we were being serious, instead of being political, we could look at the facts. Were the kinds of problems we are concerned about in black communities today as bad during the first century after slavery or in the first generation after the vastly expanded welfare state?

What about children being raised with no father in the home? As of 1960, nearly a century after slavery ended, 22 percent of black children were being raised in single-parent families. Thirty years later, 67 percent of all black children were being raised in single-parent families.

What about violence? As of 1960, homicide rates among non-white males had gone down by 22 percent during the preceding decade. But, during the decade of the 1960s, that trend suddenly reversed, and the homicide rate shot up by 76 percent. The welfare state vision was often part of a larger, non-judgmental social vision that was lenient on criminals and hard on the police.

Few people today know that marriage rates and rates of labor force participation were once higher among blacks than among whites — all of this during the first century after slavery. In later years, a reversal occurred, largely in the wake of the welfare state expansions that began in the 1960s.

Another fashionable phrase that evades any need for evidence is "disparate impact" — a legal phrase accepted in the Supreme Court of the United States, despite being downright silly when you stop and think about it.

Whenever there is some standard for being hired, promoted or admitted to a college, some groups may meet that standard more so than others. One way of expressing that is to say that more of the people from group X meet the standard than do people from group Y. But politically correct people express the same thing by saying that the standard has a "disparate impact" on group Y. Once it is expressed this way, it is the standard that is suspect — and whoever set that standard has to prove a negative, namely that he is not guilty of discrimination against group Y. Often nobody can prove anything, so the accused loses — or else settles out of court.

Stupid? No. It takes very clever people to make something like that sound plausible. But it also requires people who don't bother to stop and think, who enable them to get away with it.
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Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and degrees from Columbia University and Harvard University. He is a retired professor of Economic and presently is a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Visit his website: tsowell.com and view a list of other articles.

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America’s Lost Decade Is Here

Editorial Cartoon by William Warren

by Robert Romano: 2.2 percent. That is what the annualized, inflation-adjusted growth rate of the economy is so far after three quarters in 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports.

To get 3 percent growth for the year — a milestone the U.S. has not achieved since 2005 — the economy will have to grow at an extremely robust 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter.

It won’t. It has not grown that fast since 2003 when it increased 6.9 percent annualized in the third quarter that year in the midst of the housing bubble, and right now, conditions still appear rather weak with Europe and Japan still in depression and emerging markets like China now in full-fledged correction.

All the while, interest rates are still quite low, so is consumer and producer inflation, credit demand is weak, and incomes remain flat.

As a result, 2006 to 2015 could very well end up being the slowest 10-year period of economic growth since 1930 to 1939, which clocked in at an average annual 1.33 percent growth rate. 2006 to 2014 is actually weaker at 1.29 percent, the worst readings since the GDP was invented as a measure in 1934.

So what gives?

Demographics, the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip wrote last week in a new series from that paper, 2050 Demographic Destiny: “[Economists] are now coming to realize that one of the stiffest headwinds is also one of the hardest to overcome: demographics. Next year, the world’s advanced economies will reach a critical milestone. For the first time since 1950, their combined working-age population will decline, according to United Nations projections, and by 2050 it will shrink 5 percent.”

And that will impact growth, Ip finds. “Previous generations fretted about the world having too many people. Today’s problem is too few. This reflects two long-established trends: lengthening lifespans and declining fertility. Yet many of the economic consequences are only now apparent. Simply put, companies are running out of workers, customers or both. In either case, economic growth suffers.”

This is a topic we have previously touched on at Americans for Limited Government starting in January, linking the slowdown of the working age population with the slow-growth economy. In the spirit of Ip’s analysis, we have gone back to U.S. Census Bureau data again to show the same relationship, this time linking nominal economic growth specifically to the percent growth annually of the 14-64 year old resident population from 1952 to 2014.

It is not perfect, but does appear to show the overall trend: rising working age populations coinciding with strong nominal growth, and slowing working age populations with weaker growth. As we noted in January, “The relationship is simple to understand, and based on laws of supply and demand. The faster the working age population grows, the more demand there will be, and the greater the consumption that will occur, all resulting in higher measured economic growth. And, as population growth slows, so too will demand soften, and less consumption will occur, resulting in lower measured growth.”

In other words, demographics may help explain not only the current slowdown, but also the post-war economic boom, including the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the slowdown at the latter end of the 1980s and the 1990s economic boom.

So, what does the future hold? Unfortunately, even slower growth, if U.S. Census Bureau population projections through 2050 are to be believed.

In fact, it will be the slowest growth of the working age population on record since the end of World War II, averaging just 0.39 percent growth annually. For context, it averaged 1.17 percent average annual growth from 1945-2014.

So what does it all mean?

Demographics matter. Aging populations and low fertility do not lead to prosperity. Some have argued those trends might be offset with immigration, but with our chain migration system, it might only exacerbate the issue, since for every working age person we bring in, we may also be taking in their parents, their grandparents in some cases, and so forth.

And with the median age of immigrants to the U.S. currently at about 43, according to the Migration Policy Institute, any temporary demographic gains from new immigrants may be offset within 20 years when those people reach retirement age, too.

Besides, immigration might not be a long-term solution with slower population growth expected worldwide over the coming decades, if the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base is to be believed, which similarly projects that the global population will continue flattening for the next 35 years, until it stops growing altogether.

Another problem is that as the working age populations of the world slow down and begin to even shrink — which could lead to deflation — debts owed, particularly by governments, will continue to rise, particularly due to massive health care and retirement costs from the postwar baby boom. Meaning, the rate of taxation per individual to pay for interest owed on the debt will only rise, which could hurt growth even more.

If it were not for the $18.7 trillion national debt and the massive credit bubble on which we sit — with over $59 trillion of debt outstanding nationwide according to the latest Federal Reserve data — these trends in demographics might otherwise be benign. Sure, growth would be slower, and so would job growth, but there would be fewer people seeking jobs and less goods and services to consume. It might just be a wash.

But combined with too much debt, demographic decline might risk a vicious cycle of debt deflation if action is not taken soon. Meaning, unless we can get our fiscal house in order and/or the working age population experiences a swift turnaround with a new baby boom, this could be the first of many lost decades to come.
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Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government. His article was first shared on the ALG's NetRight Daily blog.

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Syrian Immigration, Shameless Left, Misguided Agenda

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author:  Syrian Immigration - I joined more than 60 conservative leaders today in the Conservative Action Project (CAP) calling on Congress to take action addressing the potential national security threats posed by the Obama Administration's insufficient vetting of Syrian refugees. We outlined compassionate approaches in a letter that mitigate the security risks that currently exist.

Meanwhile, doubts are growing in Europe about the wisdom of taking in hundreds of thousands of unvetted migrants, mostly from Islamic countries. German authorities are reporting that many Muslim migrants are seeking out Arab language mosques, some of which are known to be havens for Islamic extremists.

In addition, the leader of Germany's Jewish community, Joseph Schuster, warned last week that new migrants are coming from "cultures in which hate towards Jews and intolerance are fixed components."

Exactly! This is why Europe and the United States should revisit our immigration and refugee policies to ensure that we are not importing hate in the name of compassion.

Shameless Left - I join other pro-life leaders in condemning Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The alleged shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, is being arraigned today and we may find out more about him and his motives then.

But everything we know so far indicates that Dear is a deeply disturbed man. He was a recluse. His neighbors avoided him. He had several run-ins with the law, including various charges ranging from domestic abuse to animal cruelty and invasion of privacy.

Nothing indicates that Dear was in any way, shape or form part of or inspired by the pro-life movement. Predictably, that hasn't stopped voices on the left from attempting to exploit this shooting to smear the roughly one half of the country that believes abortion is, at its core, the taking of innocent human life.

Left-wing media outlets even went so far as to check Dear's voter registration status. What does that have to do with anything? But, of course, you know the answer -- the media were desperately hoping to find out if he was a Republican. It turns out he is a registered independent.

For the last seven years, many on the left have engaged in over-the-top, hateful rhetoric toward the police and then claimed that the assassinations of police officers that followed had nothing to do with their remarks. (A common chant at some Black Lives Matter demonstrations is "Pig in a blanket," referring to a dead cop with a sheet over his body.)

This same left-wing crowd tells us that mosques around the world where imams preach that infidels must be killed have nothing to do with jihadists who are killing infidels.

The Obama Administration is quick to excuse government-sponsored demonstrations in Tehran where "Death to America, Death to Israel" is chanted by thousands as hyperbole "for domestic consumption," even though Iran has in fact killed hundreds of American soldiers.

And the left has excoriated Americans who believe marriage is between a man and a woman, calling them bigots, haters and the equivalent of the KKK. Yet it rejects any responsibility for the man who shot up the Family Research Council and was stopped only by the bravery of the security guard on duty that day.

The left has no shame.

Obama's Misguided Agenda - World leaders have gathered in Paris, France -- the site of horrific attacks earlier this month by radical Islamists. They are in Paris pledging their resolve to tackle the world's most urgent threat. President Barack Obama addressed the summit today, saying, "What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it."

How is Obama proposing to save the world? By defeating ISIS? By fighting Iran's mullahs, Hamas or Hezbollah? No. Obama is in effect declaring war on the energy industry and economic growth. When it comes to putting boots on the ground, Obama seems more likely to deploy bureaucrats to control your thermostat!

Meanwhile, news broke over the Thanksgiving holiday that the FBI has deployed elite mobile surveillance teams to track at least 48 "high risk" ISIS suspects within the United States.

Many on the left think climate change is our greatest national security threat, and that likely includes the president himself. Michael Morell, Obama's former CIA director, suggested that the president hesitated to attack ISIS oil facilities (one of its largest sources of cash) out of concerns about "environmental damage."
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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12 Policy Reforms Could Save An Average Household $4,440 a Year

by Dr. Salim Furth: Economic freedom is a matter of principle, but it’s also a boon to family budgets.
Just 12 economic policy reforms would save the average household $4,440 a year. Opening up markets to more competition, treating outsiders and insiders equally, and squeezing out bureaucratic delays could push prices down enough to give American families some budgetary breathing room.

Nor do Americans need to wait for Washington: States and municipalities can implement some of the biggest cost-saving reforms.

Dozens of studies have looked at specific ways that prices are driven up by policy mistakes. I collected the evidence on 12 policy mistakes and found that the combined effect of free-market reforms would be a huge benefit to consumers: $546 billion a year, more than all the rent paid by Americans in a year. The 12 policy mistakes—and paths to reform—are detailed below.
Local reforms
The characteristic vice of local government is to protect the status quo when it ought to embrace the organic changes that consumers seek.

The most costly policy mistake of all, overregulation of land use, is a local issue. Americans once had the right to build what the market wanted, and the result was soaring skyscrapers, elegant mansions, affordable homes near jobs, welcoming town squares, and secret mountain retreats.

Zoning laws, nosy neighbors, parking minimums, height restrictions, and minimum lot sizes have been choking out the organic growth of cities and suburbs across the country. I found that if the typical coastal city adopted milder land use restrictions, rent would fall 10 percent, and home prices would fall 20 percent. (Incidentally, that does not necessarily mean that current homeowners would lose money: lower regulation has been found to increase the price of land and decrease the price of buildings.) In all, adopting mild land use restrictions could save Americans $209 billion per year, with the benefits concentrated among those who currently pay the most for housing.

State reforms
The characteristic vice of state governments is to write laws so that workers and businesses have to ask permission.

Occupational licensure is particularly harmful, costing the average household $1,033 per year. Workers in professions as disconnected from public safety as teaching school or applying cosmetics now have to be licensed by the state for no good reason. One proposal to reform occupational licensure is Lincoln Labs’ “Right to Work 2.0,” which would force regulators to defend labor regulations on their merits.

Auto dealership monopolies are established by law in every state. Anyone with a storefront can sell bicycles, but if you want to sell cars, you have to get permission from the state government. That also means that manufacturers can’t sell directly to consumers online.

In Brazil, General Motors tried an online sales model, and the result was a 6-percent drop in prices. Scholars estimate that U.S. consumers would get a similar benefit, which works out to $1,950 in savings on a new car. Most people don’t buy a car every year, so the savings works out to $288 per household per year.

Renewable energy mandates have been established by many states, benefiting favored energy industries, harming others, and raising the price of electricity. If states repealed their mandates—and let all types of energy compete on an even playing field—consumers would soon save $108 per household nationally. In the states that have the most restrictive mandates, there would be even larger benefits.

Medical tort reform, such as limiting the size of payouts in medical malpractice cases, could make health care significantly cheaper. Washington is doing plenty to raise the cost of care, but states can lower health care costs by $82 per household with tort reforms.

Federal reforms
The characteristic vice of the federal government is cronyism. Lots of well-connected insiders have figured out that if you take a few dollars from everyone in America, you will be very rich, and the victims might not notice. Below are just a few of Washington’s reverse Robin Hood schemes.

Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards are the way that Rube Goldberg would have regulated fuel efficiency. When the Obama administration rewrote the CAFE standards in 2009, engineers and economists predicted that consumers would lose at least $3,800 per new car. Six years later, the price of cars is $4,500 above its previous trend. Repealing the CAFE standards would save the average household $448 per year.

The ethanol mandate requires that refiners use corn for gasoline. Corn isn’t very good at being gasoline. Just letting corn be itself would lower the price of gas by 19 cents per gallon and lower food prices by about one percent, for an annual household savings of $255.

Corporate tax complexity forces corporations large and small to employ armies of accountants and lawyers just to comply with the tax code (and to seek out its many loopholes). Commonsense corporate tax reform would lower their costs. Even if only half the gains were passed on to consumers, the average household could save $230 per year.

Repealing the crude oil export restriction would also lower the price of gas by 12 cents per gallon. That’s just a minor side benefit of repeal, which would also create jobs and increase incomes as well. But the average household will welcome an extra $227 per year.

The Sugar Program and Federal Milk Marketing Orders transfer money from consumers to wealthy landowners by raising the prices of staple foods. A gallon of milk would be 49 cents cheaper with a competitive milk market, and a pound of sugar would be 28 cents cheaper. Consumers would save 16 cents a pound on butter and four cents on a box of breakfast cereal. Each reform would save the average household $29 per year.

Cement production regulation is just one example of the many ways that the Environmental Protection Agency imposes high costs on consumers. Regulation has made it much more expensive to build a cement factory, allowing the existing plants to behave like monopolies. They pass on the costs of regulation to consumers and then some. Going back to the 1990 level of regulation in the cement industry would save the average household $14 a year. The broader lesson is that environmental regulations should be subjected to rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

Conclusion
Twelve steps toward economic freedom and away from cronyism and overregulation would save the average American household $4,440. Congress can make a difference, but so can state capitols and town halls around the country.

There are benefits to economic freedom that are not discussed in this op-ed: more jobs, higher wages, and less volatility in the housing market, for instance. More deeply, economic freedom is a civic virtue in itself—lower prices and greater prosperity are the fruit of individual liberty, not its justification.
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Salim Furth, Ph.D., (@salimfurth) researches and explains how public policy affects economic growth as a research fellow in macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. His economic research has covered fiscal policy, international economics, labor market trends, and economic mobility.

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We’ll Show ISIS . . .

. . . President Obama says the Paris Climate Change Summit is a powerful rebuke to terrorists.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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McConnell Warns About President Obama's Reckless Anti-Middle Class Power Plan

Today in Washington, D.C. - Nov. 30, 2015:
The House will reconvene at 2 PM today. Bills requiring recorded votes will not occur until 6:30 PM EST.

This week the House of Representatives will consider the Energy and Commerce Committee’s comprehensive energy bill, H.R. 8, the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act, and two resolutions disapproving of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for new and existing fossil-fuel fired power plants. As the House works on legislation that capitalizes on America’s energy abundance and protects ratepayers and grid reliability around the country, President Obama is in Paris touting an alternative energy vision that says no to American energy.

Bills, other than administrative land use bills and naming bills which may be considered are:
S. 611 — "To amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to reauthorize technical assistance to small public water systems, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3490 — "To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to authorize the National Computer Forensics Institute, and for other purposes."
H.R. 3279 — "To amend titles 5 and 28, United States Code, to require annual reports to Congress on, and the maintenance of databases on, awards of fees and other expenses to prevailing parties in certain administrative proceedings and court cases to which the United States is a party, and for other purposes."
H.R. 1755 — "To amend title 36, United States Code, to make certain improvements in the congressional charter of the Disabled American Veterans."
H.R. 1541 — "To amend title 54, United States Code, to make Hispanic-serving institutions eligible for technical and financial assistance for the establishment of preservation training and degree programs."

The Senate will reconvene at 3 PM today. At 5:30, the Senate will vote on confirmation of the nomination of Gayle Smith to be Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. (USAID).

Later this week, the Senate is expected to take up a bill repealing Obamacare.

As the climate conference begins this week in Paris, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warns in The Washington Post about the many reasons for skepticism of President Obama’s plans for the summit and for the United States.

McConnell writes, “It would obviously be irresponsible for an outgoing president to purport to sign the American people up to international commitments based on a domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, that Congress has voted to reject and that his successor could do away with in a few months’ time.

“But that’s just what President Obama is proposing to do at a U.N. climate conference in Paris starting Monday. The president’s international negotiating partners at that conference should proceed with caution before entering into an unattainable deal with this administration, because commitments the president makes there would rest on a house of cards of his own making.”

He explains, “What his power plan will do is unfairly punish Americans who can least afford it. It could result in the elimination of as many as a quarter of a million U.S. jobs. It could raise energy costs in more than 40 states, with double-digit increases in states ..."

“Predictably, the president’s attack on the middle class — one that won’t even meaningfully affect global carbon emissions — has received loud applause from wealthy left-wingers who just want to pat themselves on the back for ‘doing something.’ Lost jobs or higher energy bills may be a mere trifle for some on the left, but it’s a different story for a senior citizen on a fixed income or for a working mom who struggles paycheck to paycheck.

“Few expect this anti-middle class power plan to last much beyond the months remaining in Obama’s term though. The courts appear likely to strike it down, the next president could tear it up, more than half of the 50 states have filed suit against it, and — critically — a bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress just approved legislation to expressly reject it.”

Leader McConnell notes, “It’s unclear what the president hopes to achieve at this U.N. conference, given that Secretary of State John F. Kerry recently said that there are ‘not going to be legally binding reduction targets’ and that large countries including Japan have echoed the sentiment.”

Politico writes, “Obama has steadily raised the stakes for a climate deal throughout his second term, amping up his talk about the dire threat of global warming and the need to unite the world toward solving it. He’s the one who drew a direct connection to Paris when he rejected the Keystone XL pipeline three weeks ago, and when he rolled out a series of contentious climate regulations in the past two years. He’s the one who welcomed Pope Francis to Washington to try turning climate action into an international moral imperative.

“But the two-week summit is unlikely to give Obama the world-saving, wall-of-the-presidential-library-defining achievement that he clearly wants. Even the best-case scenario won’t make sense to most people — there’s no easy headline or heroic narrative to be had in a patchwork of nonbinding pledges by 200 nations that may or may not eventually limit the rise in global temperatures to around 2 degrees Celsius. . . .

“Aides are already dialing down expectations. . . . The Obama administration and top United Nations officials have known for months, even years, that the end-product of the Paris negotiations wouldn’t be ambitious enough on its own to tackle climate change, and they’ve been working to set realistic expectations about what the talks will accomplish.”

The Washington Post adds, “Whatever agreement emerges from Paris, [President Obama] has no intention of submitting it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. The administration argues that any agreement does not bind the United States to a course of action Moreover, it says the Clean Air Act and the United Nations Framework on Climate Change signed by former President George H.W. Bush already give Obama the authority he needs to carry out climate commitments.

“There are disadvantages to that approach: a new president could back away from the Obama climate plan. A treaty would bind all future presidents to comply with it. For now, however, even without formally signing an agreement, the Obama administration is expected to abide by its own policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. . . .

“If an agreement were to end up in the GOP-controlled Senate, rejection would be its most likely fate. That would be a setback for Obama and for international momentum on the climate issue, but it would be consistent for Republicans who have repeatedly skewered the president for what they view as his overreaching use of executive power.”

“[T]his much is clear,” Leader McConnell says. “We know that the president is concerned with his legacy, and we know that he often prioritizes symbolism over substance. If Obama thinks it’s okay to push a power plan that threatens working families for the benefit of, at best, a carbon rounding error, then he should say so.

“But Congress and more than half of the states have already made clear that he won’t be speaking for us. The courts will also continue working to determine if this power plan is legal.”

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Why Does Government Not Know - or Ignore - History?

We Need to Broaden This Base

by Seton Motley, Contributing Author: It’s one of our most oft-cited quotes. George Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The reason it so regularly recirculates is because we far too often fail its tenet. Which is truly sad. Because if you pay attention to the past – you can make some reasonable, rudimentary predictions about the future. And avoid a whole lot of completely unnecessary errors.

As predictable as the sun rising in the east and water being wet – is government stinking on ice at everything it attempts to do. We have more than a century of such evidence just here in the United States. The Soviet Union and its many satellites were a 20th Century-long global visual aide of government gone wrong. Then there are the juxtapositions. East Berlin vs. West Berlin, North Korea vs. South Korea. There is millennium more evidence – for those who care to remember the past.

Sadly, far too many Leftists instead adhere to the Shampoo Principle: Lather, rinse, REPEAT.

Which brings us to this pathetic “news” retread: “‘Needless Experiment': Cities Weigh Gov’t-Backed Broadband, Critics See Tax $$ at Risk.” Wherein we learn local governments all across America are ramping up plans to use our money – to try to be Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Yet again. Because local governments have already tried being ISPs. The 2000s were rife with their attempts. Shocker – the results were disastrous. A particularly pernicious example was Provo, Utah’s “UTOPIA”: “UTOPIA…was conceived in 2002 as a local government-managed alternative to commercial cable, telco and satellite broadband and has struggled ever since….As of late 2012, the agency was $120 million in the red and had fewer than 10,000 customers.”

But fret not – President Barack Obama uber-crony Google made out like a bandit: “Provo, Utah…ultimately…sold to Google for a whopping $1.” For everyone else – a woeful misadventure. For which all of Utah must pay: “Residents of 11 Utah cities would be billed as much as $20 a month, as part of a plan to salvage the state’s once-heralded UTOPIA fiber optic network.”

Twenty states decided Santayana-style to learn from this past – and passed laws limiting their local governments’ ability to engage in this folly. But as history teaches us, President Barack Obama cares not a whit for the past – or the rule of law.

Despite this decade of failure, the President signed the horrendous 2009 “Stimulus” – which contained $7.2 billion for more such local government nightmare messes. But those twenty state-outliers remained a thorn in President Obama’s federal UTOPIA side – so in February his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unilaterally threw out their laws. Despite having zero authority to do so. Because that’s what this Administration does.

So this latest administration absurdity is indeed a “needless experiment.” Just as the 2009 Internet “Stimulus” was. Unnecessary errors piled on top of unnecessary errors. Government-as-ISP has time and again been a dismal disaster. But there is no amount of history the Left won’t ignore – so as to continue to inexorably grow government.

Again, this is why the late George Santayana is so often re-cited.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to ARRA News Service. Please feel free to follow him him on Twitter   /   Facebook.

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Cruz, Obama, and Eligibility

by Nelson Hultberg, Contributing Author: I recently wrote an revised article, "Trump's VP Choice and Eligibility," which you may have read and passed on to others. If anyone has disputed the article to you, linked below is an updated and much better version that should settle the issue once and for all. The law of the land states that Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are ineligible to be President because they were born of alien parents and thus not "natural born." But the law also states that Ted Cruz is a "natural born citizen" and thus is eligible for the Presidency.

Anti-eligibility advocates are correct about Rubio and Jindal (and as we will see below probably about Obama also). But they have gone one bridge too far when they try to say that Ted Cruz is not eligible. The official law of the land states clearly that he is as detailed in the previous article.

This revised version of the article gets more extensively into the two laws that prove Cruz's eligibility: the Naturalization Act of 1795 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

What anti-eligibility advocates don't grasp is that unless the Supreme Court is willing to overturn these two laws, the issue of "natural born citizen" has officially been defined by Congress, which they have a constitutional right to do. The fact that the Supreme Court has let the 1795 law stand for 220 years and the 1952 law stand for 63 years tells us that they are satisfied with this congressional definition of "natural born citizen."

In other words, the Supreme Court has actually made its determination as to what a "natural born citizen" is by refusing to intervene in the congressional passage of the 1795 Act and the 1952 Act.

This is a very important part of how jurisprudence progresses in America. Legislation is passed by Congress, which then becomes the law of the land. If this law is deemed "unconstitutional," the Supreme Court intervenes to strike down such a law. But if it is not struck down, it is deemed "constitutional."

Thus until the Supreme Court overturns the 1795 and 1952 immigration laws, they form the backbone of what an "American citizen" is, whether natural born or naturalized. The chances of the Supreme Court overturning these two laws are nil.

Moreover, contrary to the beliefs of anti-eligibility advocates, the term "citizen" is not inferior or secondary to "natural born citizen." The fact that the term "citizen" is often used in U.S. immigration law instead of "natural born citizen" is because the two terms are interchangeable, with the term "citizen" actually being the superior (or inclusive) term. In other words, there are two types of citizens, natural born and naturalized. Thus whenever the law uses the term "citizen," it means both natural born and naturalized unless clarified otherwise. This has been the case since 1795.

These two laws of 1795 and 1952 are why the Obama eligibility challenges never went anywhere. Obama was born from Ann Dunham, a natural born citizen, which means he was natural born. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 validates this. And it doesn't make any difference where he was born, inside or outside the borders of the U.S. Section 3 of the Naturalization Act of 1795 validates this. But there is a very important question that we have to ask:

Why then did Obama produce such an obviously forged birth certificate that was immediately torn apart by hundreds of document experts as a fabrication? Something was being covered up. But what?

Here are three of those analyses:



Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona's investigation - 5 min. video

Obama Birth Certificate Faked - 7 min. video

Jerome Corsi Article on Zbest analysis of the forgeryTo answer why Obama and his advisors produced such an obviously forged birth certificate, perhaps they were trying to cover up the fact that Ann Dunham and Obama's father were not legally married, which is a requirement under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. Barack's father was previously married and never divorced. Thus his marriage to Dunham was not legal, just a temporary contrivance to allow him to stay in the U.S. and finish his education.

If this was so, then Dunham would have officially produced a child out of wedlock, which apparantly would still qualify her baby as "natural born," but only if she was physically present in the U.S. for a year prior to the birth. The 1952 act states:



For persons born out of wedlock, the person is a U.S. citizen if all the following apply: 1) the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person's birth, and 2) the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the person's birth. I'm presuming that this means one year directly preceding the birth, i.e., while she was pregnant. So perhaps Obama and his advisors were trying to cover up the fact that Ann Dunham was not legally married and not in America for one year directly prior to the birth. Why precisely they released the forged birth certificate we do not know, but obviously they were trying to cover up something. Was it something that made Obama NOT a "natural born citizen" and thus not eligible? We can't be sure.

But there is one thing we can be sure of. Hundreds of computer and photoshop experts have testified that the released document in 2011 was highly altered with numbers and names changed and with layers added, thus, making it not a single document released intact by the Hawaii Department of Records, but a "constructed document," i.e., a fabricated document by rather amateurish computer people (probably some low level operatives in the administration). Hundreds of experts have testified to this fact of fabrication. Yet not one expert has come forward to testify to the released document's authenticity. The Obama administration has relied on the gullibility of the American public and the compliance of the media to allow their forgery to pass.

What's important to realize, however, is that the eligibility issue in regards to Obama is probably too murky to make fruitful. But Obama can be clearly attacked on the grounds of forgery. This is a felony punishable by prison. Obama and his henchmen are definitely guilty of committing a major crime. Merely view the above two videos and read Jerome Corsi's article for verification.

Now that Obama's term is winding down, he's not going to be impeached on the eligibility issue or even the crime of forgery. His term will expire before any such cases could be brought in front of Congress and won. But it would be fitting justice if Obama was eventually taken to criminal court on the crime of forgery. In this way the truth about the man would be known, and his place in history would be rightfully discredited.

Thus if conservative activists would like to tackle the criminal case of forgery, there are valid grounds for proceeding. Perhaps some group with the legal chops and money to back them up will take on the challenge. Perhaps a Trump Justice Department will be willing to prosecute such a crime. That would be true "patriot justice."

In the absence of such a challenge and prosecution, we will just have to live with the fact that the 44th President of the United States was a most despicable human being and a Marxist arch enemy of everything our country has stood for over two centuries. Hopefully his term in office will stand well into the future as an example of the horrible damage a Marxist ideologue can do to our country by becoming President. God help us if Hillary follows in his wake.
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Nelson Hultberg is a contributing author to the  ARRA News Service. He is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic and author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values.

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The Latest on Obama / Clinton Scandals

Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama Scandals

by Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch: Secret Service in Cover-Up Mode on Obama Travel Costs - There may be legitimate reasons for the Secret Service to keep some documents from the public. But concealing taxpayer-funded security expenses for Barack Obama's luxury vacations sure isn't one of them. That's why your JW has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Secret Service for failing to respond to 19 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for security-related expenses related to travel by Barack Obama and other VIPs. The Secret Service has not responded to any of the 19 FOIA requests since July 21, 2014. The FOIA lawsuit, filed on November 10, asks the court to enjoin the Secret Service from continuing to withhold responsive documents from Judicial Watch. (The Secret Service is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.) The lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon.

For years, Judicial Watch has regularly monitored expenditures of U.S. Government funds by the president, members of the first family, and other VIPs receiving Secret Service protection.

FOIA requests to the U.S. Air Force and other agencies enabled Judicial Watch to determine that, to date, the total known travel expenses for various trips by the Obamas and Bidens are currently $70,563,336.75.

But the extraordinary lack of cooperation by the Secret Service has prevented Judicial Watch from gathering complete records of taxpayer-funded, VIP travel. These Secret Service records typically include records of expenses incurred for ground transportation, lodging, meals, and other related costs, as well as the accompanying Secret Service details. The lawsuit details:
Since July 21, 2014, Plaintiff has submitted 19 travel-related FOIA requests to the Secret Service as part of Plaintiffs on-going monitoring of federally-funded, VIP travel. All of the requests were identical or nearly identical but for the name of the VIP and the date and/or destination of the travel. Plaintiffs requests sought: "All records concerning use of U.S. Government funds to provide security and/or any other services to [name of VIP] and any other companions on their [date] trip to [location]."

The Secret Service has not made a determination on a single, travel-related FOIA request served by Plaintiff since July 21, 2014.Judicial Watch previously sued the Secret Service five times between 2012 and 2014 for security related information on presidential and VIP travel. Prior litigation and other FOIA requests resulted in a number of details about security costs of trips to New York for a "date night" ($11,648.17), a 2013 trip to Africa ($2,189,727.60), a 2013 adventure to Ireland ($251,161.86), and 2014 fundraising trip to Denver ($200,383.70).

Judicial Watch asserts that the Secret Service has "a policy and practice of violating FOIA" requirements, Judicial Watch attorneys are asking the court to enjoin the Secret Service from continuing to withhold the requested records and other information from Judicial Watch for 19 current requests.

Prior examples of Judicial Watch FOIA requests that gathered travel cost information include:
A February and March 2015 golf and fundraising trip which cost taxpayers $4,436,245.50 in travel expenses alone;

A June 2015 trip by Michelle Obama to the UK and Italy which cost taxpayers $240,495.67 in travel expenses alone;

A March 2014 trip by Michelle Obama to China which cost taxpayers $360,000 in travel expenses alone;

An April 2015 single day trip to the Florida Everglades for Earth Day which cost taxpayers $866,615.40 in travel expenses alone;

And a February 2015 weekend ski trip by Michelle Obama to Aspen, Colorado, which cost taxpayers $57,000 in travel expenses alone.Rarely does Judicial Watch seek an injunction under FOIA, but the Secret Service has ignored a record 19 Freedom of Information requests on Obama and other presidential-level travel. The FOIA requests seek access to records about taxpayer dollars expended on the extravagant and often unnecessary travel enjoyed by the President, his family members, and others receiving Secret Service protection. We have little doubt the Secret Service, which is already mired in controversy, is covering up embarrassing numbers about the costs of security for Barack Obama's vacation and political fundraising trips.

State Department Rushed Approval for Hillary Clinton's Memoirs - We've been stonewalled for years on our Benghazi and Clinton cash Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits by the State Department. However, if you are Hillary Clinton, the State Department will rubber stamp your proposed, perhaps with sensitive information that should not see the light of day, in record time.

That's the conclusion from reviewing the documents we just released revealing that State Department officials ordered rushed approval of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's manuscript for her memoir Hard Choices. The documents show a key State Department official had concerns about the disclosure of classified information in the book concerning Iran and an effort to destroy draft copies of Clinton's book in State Department files and from State Department computer systems.

The documents were obtained from the State Department last month in response to a June 12, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the following:
Records regarding the review, vetting, and/or approval of the publication of the memoir Hard Choices by former Secretary of State Clinton. This request includes, but it not limited to records of communications between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of State and any other individual or entity related to the review and approval process.(It took over a year to respond to our request!)

The documents show the first Clinton book chapters were delivered to Director of the Office of Information Programs and Services John Hackett in February 2014. Hackett began pressuring his staff for approval on March 7. On March 10, Senior Reviewer Charles Daris urged reviewers at the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau to "turn these around as quickly as possible to meet the hopes and expectations of the author." That same day, State Department official Neil Silver writes: "The FOIA office is under great pressure to turn this around quickly. If you are tardy in your response, you may get a high-level Department official call.

On March 13, Daris emails show that the Near East staff was given three working days to respond to the book's chapter on Benghazi and that the State Department delayed sending the manuscript to the CIA for review at the request of former Clinton campaign staffer Ethan Gelber. Daris also documents that factual errors have been found in the Iran chapter and that the Maghreb desk has "comment" on the CIA in Benghazi.

The documents also show an effort to destroy copies of draft copies of the Clinton book, evidently because "revisions were in the works." A March 20 exchange with State Department official Paul P. Blackburn reads:
• Daris: New marching orders from our Front Office. Will you please suspend our request for clearance and find a way to get all/all of the copies back that you sent to EAP [East Asian and Pacific Affairs]. Please confirm to me when you have done so.

• Blackburn: I have just retrieved the two copies of the chapter portions Neil passed to the China and Japan desks (i.e., pages 53-73 of "Back to Beijing" and 87-119 of "Green Light.") In each case, I was assured that no reproductions were made, so I think we now have "all/all of the copies."

• Daris: Excellent, Paul. Please destroy them. Thank you. CThe documents show a sudden decision to halt all work on the review of Clinton's chapter on Iran, followed by a request that all extant copies be found and destroyed, apparently prompted by the State Department's Iran Desk's concerns about the manuscript.State Department officials were cautioned to be careful in how they proffered editorial suggestions to the former Secretary's staff. In a March 12, 2014, email to Silver, Peter Hemsch suggests, "We may reach out informally to the former Secretary's staff re: the policy issues raised; just a low-key, friendly heads-up to double-check that they have considered a policy angle." Daris forwarded the email, adding that suggestions should be passed along "reiterating that it is not/not a formal Dept response."

Hillary Clinton can get her book, despite disclosing classified material, approved in record time from the same State Department that is slow-walking and obstructing, over years, the release of the notorious Clinton emails about Benghazi and other scandals.

The desperate effort to destroy copies of the Clinton draft shows that any remaining drafts need to be uncovered and reviewed.

My guess is the American people, the courts, and law enforcement will be angry that yet more Clinton records, which included sensitive and potentially classified information, were destroyed.
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Tom Fitton is President of Judicial Watch.

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Tags: Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch, secret service, cover-up, mode, President Obama, First Lady, Michelle Obama, travel costs, Hillary Clinton, State Department, rushed approval, Hillary Clinton's Memoirs, scandals To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Disappearing GOP Governors From Presidential Race

Dr. Thomas Sowell

by Dr. Thomas Sowell: There is a painful irony in a recent decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on the side of Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, whom the U.S. Department of Justice tried to stop from making charter schools widely available to minority youngsters in his state.

The Circuit Court's decision over-ruled a lower court decision on the side of the Justice Department, which was opposing the large-scale creation of charter schools in Louisiana, on grounds that this would interfere with long-standing federal government efforts to racially integrate public schools.

In short, Governor Jindal's attempt to give minority children a chance for a better education prevailed against the attempts of the political left to use these children as guinea pigs for their theories about mixing and matching students by race.

What made the Circuit Court decision ironic and painful was that this decision came right after Bobby Jindal had withdrawn his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Nor was he the first governor to withdraw from the campaign for a presidential nomination. Nor is he likely to be the last.

Some of us think someone who is going to govern from the White House ought to have had some experience governing somewhere else before, if only so that we can get some idea of how good — or how bad — he is at governing.

How good someone may have been in business, or in a profession, or as a member of Congress, is no real clue to what that individual will be like when it comes to governing the country.

Certainly choosing a first-term Senator on the basis of his political rhetoric is something that has not turned out well in the case of Barack Obama, and may turn out to be truly catastrophic, as international terrorism spreads.

The withdrawal of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and then of Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, are major losses — not because we know that either of them would make a great president, but precisely because we have no idea whether either of them would have been great or awful.

The primary campaign is supposed to help us find out such things. Instead, the media have turned this into a side show about Donald Trump.

Nor was this all media political bias. The Fox News Channel, which broadcast the first "debates," opened up the second-tier candidates' session with a question about Donald Trump, who was not even present, rather than about the nation's problems, which have been all too present.

The media instinct for the flashy and clever irrelevancy seems to be non-partisan. The fact that we may be at a crossroads in world history does not seem to spoil their sense of fun and games.

Much of the time that could have been spent bringing out what candidates with governing experience have to offer was spent instead interviewing not only Trump himself but even members of his family.

This year the Republicans have had a much better qualified set of nominees to choose from than in previous election years. But most of them may be gone before we have learned enough about them to know whether we would have been for them or against them.

We may already know as much as we are likely to know about the three first-term Senators — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul — since they have no governing records to be examined. We may also know as much about the candidates from outside politics — Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina — as we are likely to know.

It is the governors who have a record that goes beyond their rhetorical skills. And it is those records that need to be examined.

A complicating factor in this and some previous Republican primary campaigns is that there are so many conservatives splitting the conservative vote that it may guarantee that some mushy moderate gets the nomination, but cannot get enough Republican voters to turn out on election day.

At this point, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey seems to be the kind of articulate conservative candidate who can galvanize Republican voters to turn out on election day to vote, and perhaps even attract some Democrats with that political rarity, straight talk.
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Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and degrees from Columbia University and Harvard University. He is a retired professor of Economic and presently is a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Visit his website: tsowell.com and view a list of other articles.

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Tags: Thomas Sowell, commentary, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana, charter schools, wins court case, already withdrew from presidential campaign, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Paul Ryan House Puts A Big Down Payment On The New Republican Prosperity Agenda

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: Last Thursday the House of Representatives “under new management” of House Speaker Paul Ryan, gave Americans much to be thankful for before the Congressional Thanksgiving recess. The House passed, by an impressive 241-185 majority (although along mostly partisan lines), the most important monetary policy legislation in almost 40 years, the Federal Reserve Oversight, Reform, and Modernization Act of 2015 in which was included, last but by no means least, the Centennial Monetary Commission.

If you care about economic growth, this matters. Before getting to the profound significance of this legislation, let’s take a quick look at the problem, stagnation, and the cluelessness maybe now beginning to end in Washington. “Let’s clue you in.

“Secular stagnation” is a euphemism — “mysterious forces of the universe” — meant to hide feckless federal policy. According to the New York Times “Bigfoot Floyd” Norris, several years ago, Ranking the Presidents by G.D.P. :Barack Obama, 1.2% annual G.D.P. growth rate (previously 1.5%)

George W. Bush, 1.6% (previously 1.7%)

George H.W. Bush, 2.1%

Gerald Ford, 2.2%

Recommended by Forbes:
Dwight Eisenhower, 2.5%

Richard Nixon, 3.0%

Jimmy Carter, 3.2%

Ronald Reagan, 3.5%

Bill Clinton, 3.8%

Lyndon B. Johnson, 5.0%

John F. Kennedy, 5.4%Reagan deserves even better, having taken a stand for killing the inflation dragon, after which economic growth exceeded 4%. Obama deserves somewhat better as well, to be fair. From 2011 to 2015 we clocked in at 1.6%, 2.3%, 2.2% and 2.4% according to the World Bank. This remains, however, well below the anemic record of Eisenhower against which JFK campaigned. It is not a record of which to be proud.

We are at least 15, and arguably 44, years into a “Little Dark Age” of economic stagnation. Note Keynes:A Saturday Evening Post reporter asked, in 1932, John Maynard Keynes if there had ever been anything like the Great Depression. Keynes replied, “Yes. It was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years.”Now this stagnation may be about to change. If you’re tired of having gone, maybe, 5 or 10 or 15 years without a raise, keep reading.

There are many of us, both of the left and the right, who indict the Fed as torpedoing economic growth. 15 years ago, when stagnation beset the American economy, there had been no material change in tax, regulatory, spending or trade policy. The only signal change? Monetary policy. The Fed departed from its era of the “Great Moderation.”

Many Republican presidential aspirants, including Dr. Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, Govs. Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie, and businesswoman Carly Fiorina are putting Fed policy into the national conversation. Now comes the Congress which, by the United States Constitution, is vested with the power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standards of Weights and Measure.”

It is notable that the same clause couples the regulation of the value of money with the power to fix the standards of weights and measures. Of the three axiomatic qualities of money — a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account — perhaps the most important is its property as a unit of account. As Forbes’s own editor-in-chief Steve Forbes observes, in his, with Elizabeth Ames’s, seminal classic Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It:[Money] it is an instrument of measurement like a scale, a ruler or a clock. Instead of measuring time or weight, it measures value.It is high time, long past time, that our officials turn their attention to how critical is monetary policy to vibrant prosperity ... and what a botch the Federal Reserve System has been, and is, making of it.

The New York Sun, along with Forbes.com a pace-setter in coverage of monetary matters, shed some dawn’s early light:We’d like to think it’s no coincidence that less than a month after Paul Ryan of Wisconsin became Speaker, the House of Representatives passed the most important monetary reform bill since Humphrey Hawkins in 1978. This happened today with the decision to send to the Senate the Fed Oversight, Reform, and Modernization Act. Mark it well that the Ryan era is about substance, and the most representative body in the American government is unhappy with the performance of the Federal Reserve and is ready for reform.Why does this legislation matter so much? Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, with whom I briefly met last week, provided an exclusive statement for this column:Six years have passed since the recession ended and U.S. economic opportunity remains well short of its potential. We will not fully realize robust economic growth until the Fed improves the conduct of its monetary policy. By directing the Fed to employ and communicate a more predictable and transparent rules-based approach to monetary policy, the FORM Act will improve income mobility for everyday Americans by giving them the certainty they need to save and invest for their future.Keep a close eye on Chairman Huizenga, who occupies one of the potentially most crucial — to economic growth — subcommittee chairs in the Congress. A sea-change is occurring in the political and policy culture.

In both the presidential and the Congressional wing of the GOP, fresh and premier attention is being paid to the importance of high integrity monetary policy for economic growth and equitable prosperity. Regarding the recently House-passed legislation respecting the Fed I elsewhere (in press) have written:The premier architects of this historic legislation are Monetary Policy Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Capital Markets Subcommittee Chairman Scott Garrett (R-NJ), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX). House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx) was instrumental in the advance of this legislation.

Impressive team. Impressive teamwork. Game changing.

Speaker Ryan and Leader McCarthy now have a deep bench of chairmen who have, between them, perhaps the greatest level of financial intelligence enjoyed in the Congress since Rep. Gramm dined alone.Ignorant, and bad-faith, progressives keep claiming that the GOP somehow is courting austerity with its attention to monetary policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is beyond ironic to see figures such as polemicist Paul Krugman throw themselves on their swords in defense of Richard Nixon’s monetary regime.

The regime ushered in by Nixon correlates quite precisely with the flat-lining of median family income. That, and not “income inequality,” is the key issue besetting voters. As JFK once said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” The tide has been going out for far too long. Why?

The Fed’s now vice chairman, Stanley Fischer (an honorable and eminent public servant, now as then), when serving as chief economist of the IMF in 1999, was interviewed by Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota official Arthur J. Rolnick. Dr. Fischer was asked about the gold standard, one of several rule-based monetary regimes now coming to attention and renewed respect.

Dr. Fischer then stated that “It may be hubris to believe that human beings can do better than depend on the supply of gold, but we certainly should be able to do so, and are doing so now.” Very soon thereafter misguided Fed policy brought the American economy a cropper.

And, not long thereafter, another cropper. Hubris, as defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary, is “excessive pride or self-confidence.” Nemesis always follows hubris.

The Fed, backed by the White House, is pushing back, hard, on a virtuous effort by the Congress to press toward a rule-based regime and to ask whether the Fed might in fact be at least somewhat accountable for the “secular stagnation” besetting America. One hopes that the United States Senate will not be intimidated by the Fed’s pressure.

One hopes that, without impairing the invaluable independence of the Fed (which the FORM Act in no way impairs), the Senate, following the House, will execute its Constitutional power over the regulation of the value of our money. It really is high time for our elected officials to intervene to restore equitable prosperity.

The Paul Ryan House, under the Majority Leadership of Kevin McCarthy, and thanks to real statesmanship of Chairmen Hensarling, Brady, Huizenga and Garrett, among others, at long last is rising to the occasion. Congress now, by attacking what appears to be the root cause of secular stagnation — mediocre monetary policy — is pointing America back to vibrant, equitable, economic growth.

Mark November 19, 2015 on your calendar. This might just mark the beginning of a big, and welcome, transformation: the turning of the tide toward prosperity. Congress is working, with at least initial success, to put an end to a Little Dark Age long besetting the American economy. Let the Senate do its work. May a rising tide lift all boats.
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Ralph Benko is senior advisor, economics, to American Principles in Action’s Gold Standard 2012 Initiative, and a contributor to the ARRA News Service. Founder of The Prosperity Caucus, he was a member of the Jack Kemp supply-side team, served in an unrelated area as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House. The article which first appeared in Forbes.

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