Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Hat tip to Terry Headley for passing this gem along from the director of the AFL-CIO's  West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy:

Ted Boettner @WVpolicywonk
It's amazing how many people say America is "broke" and have little clue that since we issue our own currency that we can't go broke.

Ted needs to go back to the drawing board on his economic thinking.  History is chock full of examples of states that have deluded themselves in this way.  Thinking that one can simply print money to pay bills assumes way too much.

Paper currency based upon "full faith and credit" of the government relies on the understanding that the state will work to maintain its artificial value.  It assumes that people will use it in place of commodities that have tangible value.

Some states have abused the trust and faith of the people in their money and government by printing money to pay its bills.  This produces the classical definition of inflation, which is "too many dollars chasing too few goods."

Liberals like a moderate amount of inflation because it redistributes wealth from creditors to debtors.  If debt is repaied at fixed amounts with a fixed interest rate, its real value will fall during periods of inflation.  The debtor has to pay back less value than he or she originally borrowed.  This will harm an economy in the long run because lenders will adjust their policies to protect themselves against this kind of loss.

Taking Boettner's idea to its logical end produces disaster.  The Confederate States, Weimar Germany, and countless Latin American countries fell to this temptation.  Weimar Germany obtained loans from the United States to shore up its system after the world saw the spectacle of people wheelbarrowing in bills to pay for bread.  Those in the Confederacy relied on barter toward the end of the Civil War because the central government simply printed to pay.

There is no easy way out of paying debt, even for nations.  To think otherwise is either delusion or ignorance.

That being said, America does not need to be broke.  If federal and state regulators pare down burdens to those which are necessary.  If the federal government gets out of the way of energy production.  If Obamacare is reformed and put on a free market basis.  If, if, if the competitive free market can be restored, then the United States can prosper and pay its bills.  We have wealth locked not in our power to print money, but in our resources and potential production.

Unleash it, pay off the debt, secure the future.

Neo-Confederates?

The scribes at West Virginia Blue, with their usual grasp of history and facts, have dubbed those supporting the Intrastate Coal and Use Act "Neo-Confederates." This must come from the fact that they are citing the Tenth Amendment and its defense of states' rights.

The Confederates did cite states' rights in defense of their cause, as did the legislators in the last session. That must mean that abolitionists in the North between 1850 and the Civil War were Confederates beofre the fact. In 1850, Congress passed a Fugitive Slave Act that expanded the law enforcement powers of United states Marshals and infringed upon property rights. Abolitionists cited states' rights in opposition. This makes them pre Confederates, according to the Democratic blog.

Other pre-Confederates, according to the logic of West Virginia Blue, include Democratic Party founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They were the first to articulate states' rights doctrine. In 1798, they penned the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions that claimed state courts could find federal laws unconstitutional. The law that created such powerful objections was the Sedition Act. This law made it a crime to satirize or make any untrue statements about the government, its policies, or its officials. In other words, today it would allow the arrest of newspaper editors, the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live, and a lot of bloggers. Who defines what the truth is about the government? The government would! Jefferson and Madison knew no other recourse against such an abominable law rather than to resort to states' rights doctrine. And Madison, being the architect of the Constitution, would know what could and could not be done.

Since we are on the subject of associating ideas with regimes, I wonder if anyone at West Virginia Blue has ever done the following:

Driven on the interstate

Ridden in a jet plane

Used satellite television

Approved of Obama using cruise missiles in Libya

Owned, drove, or simply admired a Volkswagen

If so, this makes them neo-Nazis. The National Socialists came up with the idea of the authobahn, which Eisenhower adapted into the interstate highway system. The German Air Force invented the jet engine. Germans in World War II created the ballistic and cruise missiles; of course ballistic missiles were the basis for the rockets that brought the advance of space flight and satellite deployment. And we all know that Volkswagens were "Hitler's car."

The states' rights principles articulated by Republicans and Democrats in the past session are meant to put checks on an overreaching federal government. A bipartisan group of men and women want to make economic conditions better for everyone, regardless of race. They see the federal government standing in the way at every turn. and just like the co-founders of the Democratic Party, Messrs. Jefferson and Madison, they see states' rights as a shield of liberty when the federal government goes too far.

So the Terrorists Won After All

Just after 9/11, it was bandied about that if we allowed substantial changes to our national character as a result of crisis, it meant the terrorists were winning. Who ever would have thought we'd see the following:

The government is no longer our obedient servant. Now General Motors is the government's obedient servant.

Those who interpreted the law so that we could compete on the front lines of terrorism now possibly face worse treatment than all but one of the Confederate States of America military and political officials who actually took arms against the United States. They do not get a thank you for preventing additional attacks, they get threatened with prosecution.

Law abiding gun owners are told that the freedoms they believe in somehow give Mexican drug lords 90% of their guns. I am not sure how they got all those Russian, Chinese, and Czech arms from American dealers.

We'd rather form government labor battalions than reduce taxes so that employers can hire more people.

The British head of government and head of state are treated with crass disrespect while anti-American dictators get the "best buddy" treatment.

We regard captured terrorists as civilians and returning solider-heroes as terrorists.

Republicans are, for the most part, also mostly terrorists for standing behind our Founding ideals.

This is a government that plays hardball with corporations, but swoons with affection towards the brutal Hugo Chavez. The world is turned upside down. A few years ago we were prosperous and strong, now we mollycoddle enemies and trample the free market.

Two years cannot go past soon enough. We need to get our America back.