Well Done Speaker Boehner

A welcome reprieve from the usual heated banter came this weekend when House Speaker John Boehner stated he believes President Obama to be a United States citizen born in Hawaii and of the Christian faith. During his interview NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he cited the state of Hawaii says President Obama is a natural born citizen and the President himself says he a Christian, which is good enough for him.

What this marks is current GOP leadership focusing wasted time and energy away from absolutely ludicrous statements to true politics. The “birthers” and extremists who claim such factually wrong and absurd statements will eventually have to give up their false flag and realign their priorities from fantasy fallacies to actual political problems. I remember back to the 2008 campaign trail when Senator John McCain held a town hall meeting where a supporter of his, which I’m sure he’s not proud of, exclaimed, “If Barack Obama becomes president, he’ll round all of us up in the street and have us shot!” A very sad and disgusted McCain simply shook his head, took the microphone away from her and corrected the laughably misguided person. It’s good to see Speaker Boehner do the same.

That’s all it takes. It takes strong leadership on both sides to correct the extremists within their political ideology. I understand why any politician would be reticent to do so, and quite frankly, it makes political sense to have your opponent viewed in such ways as it invariably damages their image and credibility. Why do you think you see a flood of negative ads come election time? In these unprecedented times of dynamic global politics and a rapidly changing economic landscape, the high road Speaker Boehner took is the way our government is going to best serve itself and the American people.

So Speaker Boehner, I commend you on your wise comments this weekend and appreciate your leadership away from the negative and outrageous rhetoric to a better and more enlightened pathway to solving the real problems that face our great nation.

Extreme Moderation

In an effort to gain more exposure, this blog has recently joined the realms of Facebook. Due to our occasional critique of the right, the blog has unsurprisingly been questioned as not being moderate, and rather leftist. I think it’s a clear sign of where American politics are today. I can speak for the writers of this blog in saying we are very much moderate, however, this is quite dependent on how one defines moderate. Yes, this blog has often attacked people on the right because of where we see the GOP currently stands. We see it as a far right pandering group churning out largely hypocritical rhetoric. As such, we feel it necessary to point out these hypocrisies in an effort to return the GOP to a political group who stands by actual conservative values.

This is not a football game; we’re not rooting for the Donkeys (not a reference to the beloved Broncos) or the Elephants (great football team name?), we are rooting for America. We have plenty of issues with the Dems for sure, but the strange thing is that in regards to substance, Democrats and Republicans are similar in many ways. In reference to spending; when the GOP continually preaches financial responsibility and subsequently the GOP committee winds up $23 million in debt, that’s hypocrisy. [1] Are democrats less guilty of spending? Of course not, but we take significant issue when members of the GOP are under the impression that they can absolve themselves from any blame towards the national debt simply by pointing figures and preaching principles they gave up long ago.

As an institution the Dems are not really better than the GOP, just different. They are inept and incapable of making any long lasting improvements through legislation or otherwise. There are certainly individuals among the Democratic Party for which the writers of this blog genuinely have distaste. But having issues with both sides alone does not make us moderate. Part of being moderate (again we’re getting into operational definitions) is not simply evenly attacking both the left and the right, but rather sticking to principles and never pandering to one side or the other due to misplaced loyalty. As previously stated, this is not a football game. If the GOP was principled, they would have openly criticized George W. Bush for his expansion of government and massive spending, just as they do with Obama.

Ultimately I (or again, we) believe that there needs to be new voices heard in the GOP. We might appear to lean left because we question the right so adamantly. This, however, is not because we are placating to the left; it is because we want the GOP to become a conservative party capable of leading the nation free of inexcusable blowhards. There cannot be civil discourse with the loudest people in the room getting all the attention.

In the future you will likely see articles of varying nature, maybe some geared toward grievances with the left, but that is not to say the writers do not stand by what is written to date.



[1] “RNC Is $23 Million in Debt, Says Chairman Reince Priebus” Lucy Madison, CBS News, February 2011

The Economic Perspective: The Fed

Simple question: if Congress is comprised mostly of non-businessmen/economists, how can they effectively question the policies and merits of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke? Given there are more TV and radio personalities (6) than business people (5 accountants) in the 110th Congress, questioning the man who makes some of the most important economic decisions of the country seems a bit pretentious and misguided. Ben Bernanke earned his BA in economics summa cum laude from Harvard and his Ph.D. from MIT, where he studied the economic cause-and-effects of the Great Depression; very helpful when trying to stave off massive economic downfall.

So what? So he’s an academically gifted man who has proven his merit in the classroom. Why should I care what degrees he has hanging on his office wall if the current state of the US economy isn’t so hot? Simple: without the intervention of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke’s policies, the US economy would be a lot worse off. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) challenged Bernanke this week during a Congressional hearing where the House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Ryan, questioned the worth of the recent Fed stimuli designed to improve US economic health.

Representative Ryan’s comments regarding the inflationary costs of the stimulus stood on shaky ground at best and appeared to channel more of the GOP’s recent “all government sucks” mantra versus true economic tenets:

“These costs may come in the form of asset bubbles and price pressures. We are already witnessing a sharp rise in a variety of key global commodity and basic material prices, and we know that some producers and manufacturers here in the United States are starting to feel cost pressures as a result.” – Rep. Ryan.

He made sure to dramatically waive about a copy of the Wall Street Journal to prove his point; as if Fed Chairman Bernanke didn’t know about the global situation already.

Anyone who has taken ECON 101 can tell you that supply and demand guide the market. While the Fed’s interest rate policy and monetary stimuli play into that, the Fed’s policies do not directly control global inflation. How are rising food prices in China the effect of low American interest rates? (Hint: they’re not directly correlated with one another.) Interest rate hikes don’t increase food supply, the real culprit of food inflation in the emerging markets and somewhat here in the developed world.

Interest rate activity, which is part of the Fed’s recent and second quantitative easing strategy (commonly referred to in the media as QE2), most directly affects the rate at which financing is available. According to the Taylor rule, a monetary-policy that guides a central bank’s interest rate to control inflation, the interest rate the Fed should set right now should be negative. Since the Fed cannot lower their interest rate, the Federal Funds rate, any further because it would cause it to go negative, they must embark on quantitative easing (i.e. buying Treasuries) to effectively push interest rates lower.

Think about the supply/demand note from above: if the Fed purchases Treasuries, it will force interest rates down as the supply of Treasuries is reduced, thus making it easier for consumers to finance mortgages, cars, TVs, etc. Since 70% of US GDP is driven by consumption, this has a positive effect on the economy by allowing people to buy products with cheaper financing.

While it may not entirely feel like it, we stand on a precipice where we could tumble back into deflation instead of running into inflation. While things like food and gas are increasing in price, those represent just a fraction of goods the average US consumer pays for. The other, larger components (house, transportation, etc.) are still on the fence and would tip into deflation if interest rates move appreciably higher. Deflationary pressures would have a negative effect on the economy and would likely push us back into another recession.

Crap! I don’t want to go back into recession, how can we avoid this? That’s easy my friends: keep interest rates low so capital can flow freely through the veins of the reawakening giant that is the US economy. If the Fed and Ben Bernanke didn’t pursue a course to keep interest rates low through a low Federal Funds rate and QE2, there is a strong possibility the economic recovery would have stalled and tipped the economy back into recession.

I guess to put it more succinctly: shut up Paul Ryan.

More Tea!

As many of you know—well, at least the few of you who actually read my blog posts, I am not and have never been a fan of the Tea Party movement, or whatever one might call it. It’s hard to fathom that these “patriots” didn’t notice the rising deficit, political corruption, and deviation from the constitution when George W. Bush was in office, and, what’s more, the past few decades. The deficit didn’t seem to deter them from voting for Reagan or George W. Bush, and the political corruption can be applied with broad strokes to nearly all lawmakers. Therefore, this “resurgence” of a desire for personal responsibility and smaller government is utterly rubbish. Furthermore, the feckless attempt amongst these different Tea Party upstarts to absolve themselves of any culpability in the current state of affairs is completely misguided and cowardly. However, one should not forget the hypocrisy on the other side of the political fence line; while the used the deficit and foundering employment market to take back the legislature, the democrats used Iraq to regain control of the legislature in 2006—and, to an extent, the presidency. Both the democrats and the republicans, as a whole, have failed to properly address the deficit—not to mention a plethora of other issues—and, also, were both culpable for the fiasco in Iraq. But, while Pelosi promised to attack a lot the bad policies and decisions that Bush had enacted, the freshmen legislators who rode the Tea Party wave into power have actually demonstrated some ideological backbone in standing up against the GOP establishment.

The Tea Party still has a long way to go, however, before they will prove that they are more than a trend of anger and self-absolution. Already, many neocons, self-serving politicians and pundits have supplanted their movement. Theses “patriots” would do well to distance themselves from these megalomaniacal frauds and loudly profess their distaste for, at least, how the GOP behaved under George W. Bush. It is, however, unreasonable for the movement to distance themselves from GOP power-players, as well as insufferable pundits.

Both right-wing lawmakers and pundits—they are definitely no conservatives—have been promoting themselves by championing that they, more than anyone else, understand what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. This is beyond absurd it is demagoguery. Moreover, the Founding Fathers are not the same as the framers of the constitution. These Tea Party folks, and what’s more, any actual conservatives who vote republican, would do well to realize that many moderate conservatives, such as myself, have been turned away from the GOP by these ego-maniacal fiends and will not come back until education and reason are valued. The constitution is a tremendous document. But no one or thing, historical, is without flaws. It is unfortunate, but true, that the framers had to make political decisions when ratifying the constitution. The terrible institution of slavery was, just that, terrible. But slavery, was viewed by many, at that time, a necessary evil, as well as an economic imperative. Slavery is, and was, deplorable, but there is no need to pretend that many of our early leaders sought to protect it.

Ultimately, the original revolutionaries were not afraid to stand up against the status quo. They were not afraid to risk whatever they had to in order to better their own existences. Revolting against a tyrant thousands of miles of away of whom one could never vote for is entirely different from donning a tri-point hat with a cheap tea-bag fastened to the side to complain about a president who was just elected by a majority of your countrymen. As with the democrats and Pelosi in 2006, many American voters had a chance to effect policy before, but didn’t. To claim that the problems were new is, and was, laughable.

So, Tea Party (whatever you call yourselves), I applaud your week. You all have done more so far than Pelosi and friends did. It is pleasing to see that, to some, actions speak louder than words. Hopefully, you all can stand up against the fraudulently conservative GOP and actually reduce the deficit. But, I expect this will be a fleeting moment and that this article will be laughable very soon.