To my Ron Paul friends

Photo source: Politico

To my Ron Paul friends:

You know I love you all.

You know I think you’re the future of the Republican Party.

You know I think the GOP Establishment acted swinishly, and with little regard to its own interests, in overturning the results of caucuses, after you worked your butts off to learn the rules and get chosen as convention delegates, fair and square.

Now grow up.

I didn’t vote for Romney in the primaries either. But Barack Obama threatens the freedom that is the core of our political philosophy. It’s time to work together to toss him out on his ass. If we don’t, the prediction I made in my novel Full Asylum of armed government CREEPS in black body armor kicking in our front doors may very well come true.

Does Romney offer everything we want? No. Can we tell the difference between him and Obama on the issues that are important to us? Absolutely. Obama has grown the government to a level unknown since World War II: Washington now spends 25% of GDP. Romney promises to claw that back to less than 20%. Obama has put more pages of new regulations in the Federal Register per year than any president in history. Romney promises to roll them back. And while Romney may not want to End the Fed, he does promise to replace Bush/Obama appointee Ben Bernanke with a chairman who will exercise some restraint in running the printing presses.

Will Romney keep these promises? I don't know. But we’ve seen how Obama governs; we know from experience what he’ll do if he’s re-elected. No, Romney may not keep his promises, but that’s the way to bet.

So please give Mitt your support. I know you won’t join me in taking Ron Paul to task for his classless refusal to do so. But at least stop tweeting that you’re going to vote for Obama. Obama? Seriously? The guy who spends his life trying to think up ways to get around the Constitution?

Also, please be polite. Do not support displays like this one that occurred on the convention floor yesterday:

Reports are conflicting. But as best I can reconstruct it, Ron Paul supporters, rightly angry that some of their delegates wouldn’t be seated, tried to shout down Committee on Permanent Organization chairwoman Zoraida Fonalledas as she began to present the credentials report. Romney supporters responded by drowning out the Paul supporters with shouts of “USA!” Because Ms. Fonalledas happens to be Puerto Rican, the net result was a lovely bit of video that the Democrats are already using to reinforce their fabricated “Republicans are racist” narrative. Giving ammunition to the enemy doesn’t help our cause.

I leave you with a question: Politics is the art of the possible. What is possible in 2012?

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel which shows what America will look like if Obama is re-elected. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

I decided not to be so negative. So today I present a a stat about Mitt Romney's record, instead of Barack Obama's.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Those liberal 1950s Republicans

Photo source: Facebook/Being Liberal

A meme has been making its way around the web featuring MSNBC commentator and Justin Bieber look-alike Rachel Maddow. She's quoted as saying “I’m undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I’m in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.”

Leaving aside that Ms. Maddow would gleefully and wrongly pillory any Republican who embraced the Eisenhower platforms for wanting to bring back segregation, it's no secret that the party has become more conservative since the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. Nevertheless, it's interesting to take a look at those old platforms. I suspect Ms. Maddow hasn’t.

The 1956 platform is a mixed bag. Ms. Maddow would no doubt applaud greater antitrust enforcement, expansion of the minimum wage, and a promise to fight employment discrimination. But she would be appalled by proposals to cut taxes, reduce government spending, invest in nuclear power, and counter “Communist aggression or subversion.”

But it’s the 1952 platform that’s really interesting. It reads like something that Thomas Jefferson wrote about King George, or maybe a Facebook post by that guy from the Tea Party who keeps telling us to write in the ghost of Ronald Reagan instead of voting for “Obamney." Check out these excerpts from the preamble:

We maintain that man was not born to be ruled, but that he consented to be governed; and that the reasons that moved him thereto are few and simple. He has voluntarily submitted to government because, only by the establishment of just laws, and the power to enforce those laws, can an orderly life be maintained, full and equal opportunity for all be established, and the blessings of liberty be perpetuated… We charge that [the Democrats] have arrogantly deprived our citizens of precious liberties by seizing powers never granted. We charge that they work unceasingly to achieve their goal of national socialism. We charge that they have disrupted internal tranquillity by fostering class strife for venal political purposes. We charge that they have choked opportunity and hampered progress by unnecessary and crushing taxation. They claim prosperity but the appearance of economic health is created by war expenditures, waste and extravagance, planned emergencies, and war crises. They have debauched our money by cutting in half the purchasing power of our dollar. We charge that they have weakened local self-government which is the cornerstone of the freedom of men. We charge that they have shielded traitors to the Nation in high places, and that they have created enemies abroad where we should have friends. We charge that they have violated our liberties by turning loose upon the country a swarm of arrogant bureaucrats and their agents who meddle intolerably in the lives and occupations of our citizens.

Would make a good platform for 2012, don’t you think?

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel that shows what happens when government arrogantly deprives its citizens of precious liberties. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

The number of Americans employed in non-farm jobs has increased (slightly) since Barack Obama took office, which sounds good, until you take population growth into account. The decline in % of population employed shows that we're actually losing ground.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, July 2012, January 2009.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

The failed policies that got us into this mess

Photo source: Citizens Against Big Government

In an AP interview over the weekend, Barack Obama accused Mitt Romney and the GOP, for the bazillionth time, of “offering the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.” I’d like to explore that accusation.

Gov. Romney’s economic policies are based on limiting the size of government, reducing regulation, and restraining monetary growth. The Bush administration, in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, did none of these things.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, during the presidency of George W. Bush federal spending grew from $1,789B in fiscal year 2000 (18.0% of GDP) to $2,983B (20.9% of GDP) in 2008. Growth in government continued under the Obama administration, with spending hitting a record $3.603B in 2011 (23.9% of GDP).

The administration of George W. Bush added an average of 73,400 pages of regulations to the Federal Register, compared to 66,500 pages under Clinton, and 50,700 under Reagan. Obama continued regulating at a record-setting pace of 77,100 pages per year.

We don’t talk a lot about monetary policy in our political discourse, but according to both Austrian and Chicago economics, it’s the real driver of both the business cycle and of bubbles like the one that created the mortgage crisis. According to Federal Reserve data, the money supply (seasonally adjusted M2) grew at a restrained 3.3% annual rate from the beginning of Chairman Greenspan’s tenure in August 1987 through March 1995. At that point, policy shifted. During the balance of Greenspan’s stewardship, which saw both the dot com and the housing bubbles, M2 expanded an average of 8.50% per year. Ben Bernanke, who was appointed by Bush in 2006 and re-appointed by Obama in 2009, continued cranking the printing presses at a 7.6% clip through September 2011.

In each case – fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and monetary policy – we see that George W. Bush did the exact opposite of what Mitt Romney proposes to do. And in each case, Barack Obama continued and even accelerated the policies of George W. Bush. Sorry, Mr. President. The failed policies that got us into this mess are not Mitt Romney’s. They’re yours.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

Data source: Sentier Research via LA Times

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Movie Review — 2016: Obama’s America

Photo source: 2016TheMovie.com

This movie is misnamed. Only a short portion of Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary is devoted to what America will look like in 2016 if Obama is re-elected. The bulk of it is spent in the years 1961 through 1983, Barack Obama’s formative years, from his birth to his graduation from Columbia.

They were formative years for Mr. D’Souza as well, and rather than starting with Mr. Obama’s story, Mr. D’Souza starts with his own parallel one. Born in Mumbai a few months before Obama was born in Honolulu, Mr. D’Souza came to the US on a high school exchange program, over the objection of at least one relative who felt there was no place in America for those who weren’t white. Mr. D’Souza remained in the US after graduation, earning a degree from Dartmouth and a place in the Reagan White House. Along the way, he came to love the United States with an intensity that only an immigrant who has known poverty and socialism elsewhere can share. This brief autobiography allows a movie that was potentially very negative to start on a positive note.

The movie goes on to ask a question. Since becoming president, Barack Obama has done things which may seem bizarre: intervening on behalf of Mideast revolutions in countries friendly to the United States while doing little to help revolutions in hostile countries, reversing US policy in the Falkland Islands, giving only lukewarm support to Israel, returning a bust of Winston Churchill to the British. How do we understand these policies? What is the common thread?

To answer this, Mr. D’Souza sets off on the trails of the young Obama and his father, from Indonesia, to Hawaii, to Kenya. This part of the movie comes across as an honest attempt to understand a complicated man. The cinematography is gorgeous. Whether the scene is the Honolulu skyline or a Nairobi slum, bright colors burst from the screen. I learned about the fights that occurred between Obama’s mother Ann Dunham and his stepfather Lolo Soetoro – she was upset that Soetoro was becoming too successful in the capitalist system – and about the internal crisis that Obama faced on being told by his half-sister Auma that their father was an abusive drunk – not the hero Obama imagined him to be. This section of the movie draws heavily on Obama’s own autobiography, Dreams from My Father, so it is well-documented.

I liked the next part of the movie less. It covers Obama’s relationships with the familiar rogue’s gallery of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Frank Marshall Davis. While Obama’s association with these radical anti-capitalists is well-known, the movie has little to say about their actual influence on him, and what it does say is pure speculation.

In its last minutes, the movie returns to the central question of how to understand Obama. Then it finally makes its predictions for 2016. These are all quite chilling; the one that stuck in my mind was a warning from former Comptroller General David Walker about the acceleration of government borrowing under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. We are on the path of Greece.

I did learn one other thing. If you go to the movies at 11:00 in morning, in order to get a review posted before the end of the day, the tickets are really, really cheap. It’s been a long time since I got into a theater for $6.

2016 is in theaters now. To find one near you, go to http://2016themovie.com/theaters/.

Michael Isenberg is the author of the novel Full Asylum, which presents his own vision of what America will look like in the future if we re-elect Barack Obama. Check it out on Amazon.com.