Newport Beach, California. The sun was shining, the Pacific Ocean was inviting, and the chocolate-covered frozen bananas on Balboa Island were still as tasty as ever on Saturday. For a moment, one could pretend that all was right with the world. But the WCPAC's 5-star panel, Obama Express: Anti-American Policy Blitzkrieg, would soon put an end to that fantasy.
Chaired by Lew Uhler, the President of the National Tax Limitation Committee (www.LimitTaxes.com), the panel detailed both the disasters of Obama Economics to date and provided a map for Conservatives to guide the country out of the Crisis it now sees itself in.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) reminded the attendees of the tragedy of illegal immigration - and the massive welfare and lost-job costs which have resulted - has single-handedly put California into the hole by billions of dollars. Then Thomas Del Beccaro, well-known political activist and founder of www.PoliticalVanguard.com received a standing ovation for his talk on how conservative can take specific direct action by volunteering their efforts to save the Constitution.
Larry Eastland, Ph.D. member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (www.Conservative.org) and Chairman of LEA Capital Advisors, Inc. then cut to the quick about the real world Obama politick as it affects our pocket books and the world's free markets. "I am a capitalist...a risk taker: someone who is willing to risk my capital for a long period of time with the goal of receiving a much larger reward.", he said. "Through our efforts, companies create: new products and services, jobs, wealth, and tax revenues." Larry has done business on four continents and the Middle East and has represented America's interests on behalf of multiple US administrations.
He reminded the audience about a key power of capitalism: "the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter recognized that 'Creative Destruction' is the essential fact about capitalism", and then observed how this as been perverted by (Wall Street multi-millionaire) Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff into the frank statement "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
And they haven't wasted it. What immediately followed was "the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind from the taxpayers into the most dysfunctional institutions in the country - the very same institutions that caused the crisis in the first place...with government now as the largest shareholder in: Citibank, General Motors, AIG, and the Bank of America, to name a few."
Next, the systematic "collapse of the U.S. dollar as the global currency" has been engineered by the White House.
And, finally, the "most significant transfer of political power and private property from the citizens and private companies to the federal government since Franklin Roosevelt and the new Deal" has been engineered. Millions of shareholders in these public companies have seen their assets wiped out by government fiat.
The goal, Dr. Eastland reminded us, is the destruction of the status quo. (change!). Why did GM fail? Was it because it ran out of money? "The answer is obvious to any entrepreneur: No! GM was in trouble (1) because they weren't making cars anyone wanted to buy...and (2) at a price people wanted to pay because of huge labor cost add-ons." The Obama Administration then decided that "the rule of innovate or evaporate shouldn't apply to American car manufacturers or their obsolete union boss system." And we're picking up the tab.
The warning here: beware of government bearing gifts.
"America's greatest weapon in the world today is the U.S. dollar: it's the dollar that guarantees us access to the resources and services of the world, buys us products for the American consumer, and guarantees us political power beyond every other nation on earth." The systematic running of America's printing presses..."flooding the market with trillions of dollars with no way to pay them back in our lifetime" is the greatest threat to America from the Obama Administration. "After all, the dollar is not backed by gold. It is backed by confidence in America. Destroy that confidence and you destroy the dollar".
The third disaster, the destruction of the right of private property is the ugliest. "The right of private property is the most sacred right of every free individual because from it flows all other rights we hold." Confiscating the property of millions of shareholders is one technique. "The second way - equally onerous and dangerous ... is the continued assault on our right of free speech ... (for example) the right to disagree with the Obama policies without being called a racist."
Free speech is a fundamental property right of the individual, below only the right to possess one's own body free from the state's or another's ownership of it. "As James Madison, the father of our Constitution reminded us: where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions..."
Dr. Eastland ended his speech with an impassioned cry: "I believe in America. I am not a citizen of the world like Mr. Obama, Mr. Gore or Mr. Kerry. I am a capitalist, I am a taxpayer, I am a voting citizen, I am an American."
Richard Vedder, Ph.D. senior fellow of The Independent Institute (www.independent.org) and Professor of Economics at Ohio University summarized the last 9 months of the Frankenstein birth: the stimulus package, the budget & fiscal policy, the health care bill, and cap & trade. He reminded the group that the first stimulus package of $150 billion plus was created in 2008 "amidst a near love-fest between President Bush and Pelosi & Reed."
And what happened?
"Unemployment rose, the stock market plunged, bank failures reached a modern era high, and iconic names like Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and GM went bankrupt or disappeared!" More specifically, "from the time the first stimulus bill was signed to the time the second one was enacted, 4,245,000 jobs were lost - 8 jobs every minute, day & night for a year."
But if you fail to succeed once, try again. So Obama in February, 2009 got his own $787 billion stimulus package.
"It reminds me of the medieval doctor who bled his patient, who then got worse, so the doctor bled him more profusely again! Obama said his stimulus package would create 3.5 million new jobs. Seven months later, the number of new jobs has fallen by another 2,884,000! After two stimulus packages costing almost a trillion dollars, employment is down over 7 million." Real unemployment - using the old pre-Clinton government method of calculation - shows unemployment in California is now above 17%.
The federal government's budget is completely out of control. As of October 1, 2009, the treasury has spent $1.4 trillion more than it has taken in. "George W. Bush behaved fiscally irresponsibly by spending like a drunken sailor...but Bush is the model of fiscal conservatism compared with Obama." Obama has put the American taxpayers in hock 500% more than Bush in just his first year in office, and the money to pay for all this is simply being printed up by the Federal Reserve out of thin air.
"Markets are anticipating a rise in inflation. The interest rate gap between 90 day T-bills and 30 year US Government Bonds has grown about 120 basis point since Election Day...The price of gold has risen over 40% since Obama was elected, and the dollar has tanked against the Euro. The probability of a 1970s-style stagflation or worse is rising."
"Private spending is being crowded out by government outlays, and resources are moving from a highly efficient private sector where markets allocate resources based on supply & demand to an inefficient public sector where decisions are made by politicians fro reasons of short-term political expediency." And power.
Then there is health care.
"The reason health care prices have risen far more than inflation is primarily the pernicious effects of third party payments, especially by government... but Obama is doing the opposite, proposing greater public involvement, a government insurance system, and taxpayer financed insurance for millions of uninsured. He claims this will reduce health care costs. This is absolute baloney, and everyone knows it."
"At a time when the nation is facing near double-digit unemployment" and the government is facing "trillion dollar deficits", Obama wants to "foist a costly, bureaucratic & inefficient system of health care on Americans."
Finally, Professor Vedder turned to Cap and Trade: "the whole rationale for this bill is based on dubious science, faulty economics, and a hidden radical agenda of the left to fight the American way of consumer life". He observed that "the cap and trade bill is primarily an energy user's tax...It hurts those parts of the country that are already most suffering, like Michigan and Ohio.
"It is a bad idea sponsored by environmental zealots whose true agenda is to change the life styles of Americans to fit their warped and demented view of utopia. Cap in trade in un-American, unfair, costly, administratively unworkable, a true Obamaination!"
Dr. Vedder concluded that the Obama Administration is helter-skelter implementing at breakneck speed a "socialist agenda that will transform us from the Land of the Free into a socialist land of stagnation, dependency, and captivity."
After that, I walked out into the sunny cloudless blue-sky day and headed over to the pool nestled under the palm trees - where I ordered a strong drink from the bar.
I felt much better.
Chaired by Lew Uhler, the President of the National Tax Limitation Committee (www.LimitTaxes.com), the panel detailed both the disasters of Obama Economics to date and provided a map for Conservatives to guide the country out of the Crisis it now sees itself in.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) reminded the attendees of the tragedy of illegal immigration - and the massive welfare and lost-job costs which have resulted - has single-handedly put California into the hole by billions of dollars. Then Thomas Del Beccaro, well-known political activist and founder of www.PoliticalVanguard.com received a standing ovation for his talk on how conservative can take specific direct action by volunteering their efforts to save the Constitution.
Larry Eastland, Ph.D. member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (www.Conservative.org) and Chairman of LEA Capital Advisors, Inc. then cut to the quick about the real world Obama politick as it affects our pocket books and the world's free markets. "I am a capitalist...a risk taker: someone who is willing to risk my capital for a long period of time with the goal of receiving a much larger reward.", he said. "Through our efforts, companies create: new products and services, jobs, wealth, and tax revenues." Larry has done business on four continents and the Middle East and has represented America's interests on behalf of multiple US administrations.
He reminded the audience about a key power of capitalism: "the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter recognized that 'Creative Destruction' is the essential fact about capitalism", and then observed how this as been perverted by (Wall Street multi-millionaire) Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff into the frank statement "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
And they haven't wasted it. What immediately followed was "the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind from the taxpayers into the most dysfunctional institutions in the country - the very same institutions that caused the crisis in the first place...with government now as the largest shareholder in: Citibank, General Motors, AIG, and the Bank of America, to name a few."
Next, the systematic "collapse of the U.S. dollar as the global currency" has been engineered by the White House.
And, finally, the "most significant transfer of political power and private property from the citizens and private companies to the federal government since Franklin Roosevelt and the new Deal" has been engineered. Millions of shareholders in these public companies have seen their assets wiped out by government fiat.
The goal, Dr. Eastland reminded us, is the destruction of the status quo. (change!). Why did GM fail? Was it because it ran out of money? "The answer is obvious to any entrepreneur: No! GM was in trouble (1) because they weren't making cars anyone wanted to buy...and (2) at a price people wanted to pay because of huge labor cost add-ons." The Obama Administration then decided that "the rule of innovate or evaporate shouldn't apply to American car manufacturers or their obsolete union boss system." And we're picking up the tab.
The warning here: beware of government bearing gifts.
"America's greatest weapon in the world today is the U.S. dollar: it's the dollar that guarantees us access to the resources and services of the world, buys us products for the American consumer, and guarantees us political power beyond every other nation on earth." The systematic running of America's printing presses..."flooding the market with trillions of dollars with no way to pay them back in our lifetime" is the greatest threat to America from the Obama Administration. "After all, the dollar is not backed by gold. It is backed by confidence in America. Destroy that confidence and you destroy the dollar".
The third disaster, the destruction of the right of private property is the ugliest. "The right of private property is the most sacred right of every free individual because from it flows all other rights we hold." Confiscating the property of millions of shareholders is one technique. "The second way - equally onerous and dangerous ... is the continued assault on our right of free speech ... (for example) the right to disagree with the Obama policies without being called a racist."
Free speech is a fundamental property right of the individual, below only the right to possess one's own body free from the state's or another's ownership of it. "As James Madison, the father of our Constitution reminded us: where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions..."
Dr. Eastland ended his speech with an impassioned cry: "I believe in America. I am not a citizen of the world like Mr. Obama, Mr. Gore or Mr. Kerry. I am a capitalist, I am a taxpayer, I am a voting citizen, I am an American."
Richard Vedder, Ph.D. senior fellow of The Independent Institute (www.independent.org) and Professor of Economics at Ohio University summarized the last 9 months of the Frankenstein birth: the stimulus package, the budget & fiscal policy, the health care bill, and cap & trade. He reminded the group that the first stimulus package of $150 billion plus was created in 2008 "amidst a near love-fest between President Bush and Pelosi & Reed."
And what happened?
"Unemployment rose, the stock market plunged, bank failures reached a modern era high, and iconic names like Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and GM went bankrupt or disappeared!" More specifically, "from the time the first stimulus bill was signed to the time the second one was enacted, 4,245,000 jobs were lost - 8 jobs every minute, day & night for a year."
But if you fail to succeed once, try again. So Obama in February, 2009 got his own $787 billion stimulus package.
"It reminds me of the medieval doctor who bled his patient, who then got worse, so the doctor bled him more profusely again! Obama said his stimulus package would create 3.5 million new jobs. Seven months later, the number of new jobs has fallen by another 2,884,000! After two stimulus packages costing almost a trillion dollars, employment is down over 7 million." Real unemployment - using the old pre-Clinton government method of calculation - shows unemployment in California is now above 17%.
The federal government's budget is completely out of control. As of October 1, 2009, the treasury has spent $1.4 trillion more than it has taken in. "George W. Bush behaved fiscally irresponsibly by spending like a drunken sailor...but Bush is the model of fiscal conservatism compared with Obama." Obama has put the American taxpayers in hock 500% more than Bush in just his first year in office, and the money to pay for all this is simply being printed up by the Federal Reserve out of thin air.
"Markets are anticipating a rise in inflation. The interest rate gap between 90 day T-bills and 30 year US Government Bonds has grown about 120 basis point since Election Day...The price of gold has risen over 40% since Obama was elected, and the dollar has tanked against the Euro. The probability of a 1970s-style stagflation or worse is rising."
"Private spending is being crowded out by government outlays, and resources are moving from a highly efficient private sector where markets allocate resources based on supply & demand to an inefficient public sector where decisions are made by politicians fro reasons of short-term political expediency." And power.
Then there is health care.
"The reason health care prices have risen far more than inflation is primarily the pernicious effects of third party payments, especially by government... but Obama is doing the opposite, proposing greater public involvement, a government insurance system, and taxpayer financed insurance for millions of uninsured. He claims this will reduce health care costs. This is absolute baloney, and everyone knows it."
"At a time when the nation is facing near double-digit unemployment" and the government is facing "trillion dollar deficits", Obama wants to "foist a costly, bureaucratic & inefficient system of health care on Americans."
Finally, Professor Vedder turned to Cap and Trade: "the whole rationale for this bill is based on dubious science, faulty economics, and a hidden radical agenda of the left to fight the American way of consumer life". He observed that "the cap and trade bill is primarily an energy user's tax...It hurts those parts of the country that are already most suffering, like Michigan and Ohio.
"It is a bad idea sponsored by environmental zealots whose true agenda is to change the life styles of Americans to fit their warped and demented view of utopia. Cap in trade in un-American, unfair, costly, administratively unworkable, a true Obamaination!"
Dr. Vedder concluded that the Obama Administration is helter-skelter implementing at breakneck speed a "socialist agenda that will transform us from the Land of the Free into a socialist land of stagnation, dependency, and captivity."
After that, I walked out into the sunny cloudless blue-sky day and headed over to the pool nestled under the palm trees - where I ordered a strong drink from the bar.
I felt much better.
Mr. Easton teaches University economics and is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship. He is rosy about the long-term future: “The glass isn’t half full, it’s overflowing!”
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