Free Frank Warner

Obama years: Measured any way, it's the fastest, biggest debt increase ever

Four trillion dollars has been added to the national debt since President Obama took office.

That's 4 million million dollars. That's 4 with 12 zeroes after it -- for less than three years. It's nearly a third of all federal debt amassed throughout American history. [Note: Actually, there are ways to measure it as not the largest additional debt ever. It isn't the largest increase, by percentage, of any three years.]

CBS News reports:

The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion. It’s the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president.

Taxed to death. If we had 4 million millionaires in the United States, we could take everything they earned this year and pay off those three years of debt. Unfortunately, we have only 250,000 or so millionaires, so even if we tax them to death, we'd pay only one-quarter of $1 trillion.

Meaning: It's time to cut back on federal spending and bring it into balance with the government's once-sane usual income, relative to GDP and inflation. It's time government workers were reminded that they are public servants -- not a favored elite with an unlimited access to the public's privately earned cash. And it's time to reorganize Social Security and Medicare into systems in which expenses are equal to or less than revenue.

It's time to get real, or the nation's wealth will continue its dangerous and unnecessary burn-out on the high-speed train to poverty.

Frank Warner

Gaddafi flees Libya; Assad shakes in Syria; Scotland in disarray

This is one of those hopeful days for freedom. Libyan rebels, aided by NATO air cover, appear to have chased dictator Muammar Gaddafi out of Libya and have taken Gaddafi’s two sons prisoner. [Aug. 23 Update: Oops! At least one son, Saif, is not captured.]

If the rebels have indeed taken the Libyan capital of Tipoli, the big question is what they will do next. Will democrats take the fore, insisting on a government that protects individual freedom? Or will a radical religious cabal pretend to “free” Libyan and imprison the people all over again?

Considering this was a hard-fought, indigenous ground revolution, and considering the rebels may feel a little gratitude to the arsenals of democracy that made the difference, democracy really has a chance here. President Obama’s arm’s-length distance from this rebellion may pay off.

Assad not worried. Meanwhile, in Syria, dictator Bashar Assad is shivering in his jack boots, but claiming not to be worried and telling Syria’s lovers of liberty their chains are permanent.

And in Scotland, which two years ago rewarded Gaddafi’s 1988 terrorism by freeing mass murderer Abdelbaset Al Mohmed al-Megrahi (when the Lockerbie bomber had “less than three months to live”), the government surely is considering a mass resignation and relocation to Algeria.

Frank Warner

How could New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau be so wrong?

Eric Lichtblau, reporter for The New York Times, wrote a story about U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Lichtblau clearly intended to win praise from his fellow Democrats at The Times by making Issa look bad.

Lichtblau's thesis: Issa uses his political power to profit himself personally. The headline on the Aug. 15 front-page story: "Helping His District, and Himself." The story is interesting, but as this post reveals with amazing detail, the central "facts" of Lichtblau's story are wrong.

The "facts" are repeatedly wrong, and never accidentally wrong in a way that would cast Issa in a favorable light. Now Issa is demanding a front-page retraction. An apology might be appropriate, too.

Check out the details. Breathtaking. Let's hear Lichtblau explain how he made so many libelous errors in one front-page story. Can't wait.

Frank Warner

Russian freedom day

Today, Aug. 19, is the day that in 1991 made all the difference for the liberation of Russia and the slave states of the former Soviet Union. It was on this day that hardline Soviet Communists took Mikhail Gorbachev captive, hoping to replace his reform-minded government with strict Communists who could save the USSR and return it to its "glory days" of murder, repression and world intimidation.

The hardline Communist coup didn't work, primarily because Russia's first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, stood up to the Communists' tanks and demonstrated the power of personal courage and democratic legitimacy. By the end of 1991, Yeltsin's Russian government and the other elected governments of the old Soviet world had abolished the Soviet Union.

Today, about half of the Russian people claim to wish they had the old Soviet Union back. They blame democracy for government corruption and a poor economy. They forget the millions murdered by the Soviet Communists and they have yet to figure out that their only hopes to rid themselves of corruption and poverty are democracy and freedom.

Vladimir Putin has corrupted the government and rigged the economy against the people. Russians, it's up to you to use the tools of democracy to remove Putin now before his tyrannical machine is too big to stop peacefully. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Frank Warner

Postal Service: Microcosm of federal government

If only the total federal government were so concerned with balancing its budget. The U.S. Postal Service has concluded that, to remain solvent, it has to withdraw from the gold-plated Federal Employees Health Benefits program.

The Postal Service wants to provide its workers and retirees with a more reasonably priced health plan similar to those offered to private UPS and FedEx workers.

The Postal Service also is planning to cut its workforce of 596,000 down by 120,000 employees. It also may close 3,700 post offices and end Saturday deliveries.

$8.5 billion 2010 loss. Last year, the U.S. Postal Service spent $75.5 billion, but brought in only $67 billion. That was a loss of $8.5 billion, 11.3 percent of its budget, which had to be borrowed.

Last year, the whole federal government cost about $3.55 trillion, and $1.17 trillion (or 33 percent) of that was funded by debt. Despite receiving about the same level of revenue, relative to GDP over many decades, the government again increased spending farther beyond its means.

The big difference between the U.S. government as a whole and the Postal Service in particular is that, unlike virtually the other federal agencies, which operate in a delusional cocoon, the Postal Service is doing something real.

General application. It knows it has to run within its means or fold. Other government departments should learn observe, learn and cut appropriately.

Frank Warner

‘Hurt Locker’ director is fed state secrets to prepare ‘Bin Laden raid’ film

It’s fine that Kathryn Bigelow, director of “The Hurt Locker,” is preparing to direct a movie about the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his lair of pornographic videos and Vaseline.

I’m sure it will be worth watching, even if it’s released a month before the November 2012 election. It’ll be one good thing to remember the Obama administration for.

It’s also fine that Maureen Dowd is questioning why President Obama is giving Bigelow access to classified information when, on almost everything else, this administration has been one of the most secretive ever.

Dowd:

The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of bin Laden to counter Obama's growing reputation as ineffectual. …

The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

Treatment of adversaries. It is an interesting point. It’s interesting, too, to remember whom the Bush administration went after for illegal leaks. It was Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who helped Bush make the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, one of the justifications (in addition to Saddam’s repression itself) for liberating Iraq in 2003. Miller spent three months in jail for refusing to reveal a CIA source.

Bush gave least mercy to his political friends and most leeway to his adversaries. He allowed arch-Democrat Bob Woodward unprecedented access to decision-makers at the White House, and the hospitality often came back to bite Bush. But he went the extra mile in the democratic spirit of openness, and it’s an example other presidents ought to build on.

So let’s hear as many secrets of the bin Laden raid as we can without compromising the next SEALs mission. And let’s have access to all the secrets of the Obama years, from the ATF decision to arm Mexican drug cartels to the Interior Department decision to ban new drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Oh, the movies they could make.

Frank Warner

Maybe we will vote all the bastards out this time

The polls are showing most Americans oppose the re-election of President Obama and their members of Congress.

This is their right. But let me make one suggestion before you think throwing the bums out once is enough. Before you vote in 2012, make sure the candidates you vote for also support term limits for U.S. senators and representatives. Twelve years tops in either house.

We have too many elected officials who view anything that serves their re-election forever as more important than serving the nation. It's a corrupting attitude. It's got us $15 trillion in debt, and it must end.

Frank Warner

Obama says ‘the will to act’ sets Americans apart. Is that it?

In his speech yesterday responding to the Standard & Poors downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, President Obama amended his definition of American exceptionalism. He talked about what sets us Americans apart.

No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country. For all of the challenges we face, we continue to have the best universities, some of the most productive workers, the most innovative companies, the most adventurous entrepreneurs on Earth. What sets us apart is that we’ve always not just had the capacity, but also the will to act -- the determination to shape our future; the willingness in our democracy to work out our differences in a sensible way and to move forward, not just for this generation but for the next generation.

The words reveal the president’s fundamental misunderstanding of what truly has set America apart. It hasn’t been our “capacity” or “will to act.” It’s been our freedom. People all over the world have the capacity and will to act, but not everyone has the freedom to respond every day to the free choices of free men and free women.

Leaders of liberty. What has set us apart, what has made America exceptional, is the confluence of history, geography and the good luck to have leaders who decided, in key moments, to shape a society with the best chance to unleash and expand the creative power of freedom.

What sets the Obama administration apart is its inability to grasp what freedom does.

I had hoped that, by now, reality would intrude on the cynicism toward world liberation and skepticism toward free markets that the president and his advisers brought with them to the White House. But I am disappointed and time is running out.

Missing the clues. On foreign policy, President Obama has taken only baby steps toward recognizing that freedom and democracy increase the chances a nation will have peace and progress.

On domestic policy, he sees our productive workers, innovative companies and adventurous entrepreneurs, but he acts as if he has no clue what drives them in the right direction.

It’s freedom, Mr. President. Figure it out fast.

Frank Warner

Government unwilling to cut debt, S&P downgrades U.S. credit rating

There it goes.

The U.S.A.'s AAA credit rating just went down the tubes. Suffering to follow.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's says it has downgraded the United States' credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.

The credit rating agency says that it is cutting the country's top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said late Friday that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country's debt situation.

Buckle your seatbelts and cover your eyes. The fertilizer has hit the fan.

Frank Warner

Bad luck tanked the economy? Ezra Klein continues to be the world’s stupidest writer

No wonder he created the Journolist. Ezra Klein cannot come up with a logical thought on his own. In 2007, he formed a secret society of Democratic hacks to feed him words that at least sounded authoritative.

Ezra was on to something when it dawned on him he couldn't explain purely partisan articles of faith. But he has yet to understand that while his Journolist co-conspirators could generate elegant prose, they were almost as clueless as he is on economic policy.

Post-Journolist, he's as embarrassing as ever. Check out his offering for The Washington Post yesterday. The first sentence accidentally makes sense, but then poor Ezra spins downward on his patented spiral of confusion:

A dramatic gap has opened between the economy as Washington sees it -- and wants to intervene in it -- and the economy that actually exists. Whatever weak recovery we might have hoped for is being hindered by global commodity prices, consumer deleveraging, fears of flagging demand in emerging markets, earthquakes in Asia, and much more. Globally, it’s been an almost uninterrupted run of crises and bad luck.

Yeah, right, bad luck.

The federal government wasted a half-trillion dollars on a “stimulus” that left the economy worse than what the White House economic advisers predicted it would be without the “stimulus.” Meanwhile, the government set the stage for a trillion-dollar “affordable” health-care plan that scares employers, doctors and patients alike. The government “saved” failing businesses – GM, GE, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac among them -- that it should have left alone to reorganize soundly on their own. The government blocked every real attempt to make the nation energy self-sufficient on practical, competitive American resources.

And Ezra Klein calls it bad luck.

Then he goes on to ask, not when the recovery will come, but where the recovery will come from. He flails and flaps and declares it won’t come from the United States. Or Europe or Japan. Or even China. He doesn’t know where, which is what I knew about him before I read a word. Ezra doesn’t know anything useful.

'No one knows.' His conclusion:

Today there's more stability [than two years ago], but we seem to have stabilized into an era of high unemployment, low growth and endless risk. Rather than recovering from the crisis, it is almost as if we have settled into it. And no one quite knows how we’re going to escape.

Ezra Klein gets paid to write this drivel?

Any adult with more than 10 minutes of coherent thought a day knows how we’re going to escape this Second Depression.

Up for air. We’re going to escape by breaking the government’s chains on the economy, by freezing and then cutting government spending, by reforming regulations so that they are firm, fair and clear, by re-doing health-care reform so that it is economical and innovative through private competition, by letting GM, GE and the other failures go, by reining in Freddie and Fannie to meet sound banking practices and then splitting them up, by encouraging energy exploration for everything from atomic power to oil to cheap solar. And probably by raising taxes here and there in ways that don't kill our gold-making goose.

We’re going to escape this Second Depression by shoving the corrupt, self-serving agents of government off our collective chest and letting the American economy come up for air.

How does a free market heal itself, Ezra? It heals itself with freedom. I'll bet you never heard that on Journolist.

Frank Warner