Katie, bar the doors! (or, welcome to the People's Republic of America)

A couple of recent notes from my lawyer updating me on new legislation:

"In a move designed to promote Congress's aggressive pro-labor/pro-employee
agenda, last week the House leadership introduced into the "American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" stimulus bill a number of pro-labor
provisions."

And, perhaps more frightening:

EFCA: Four Letters, One Huge Employment Law Change:

"The Employee Free Choice Act will make successful union organizing, even in Texas, the rule and not the exception. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House last year, but fell a few votes short of passage in the Senate. It may well become law in the first 100 days of the new 2009 Congress; it has been designated as a high priority for passage by the congressional leadership.

I ask my Right Honorable Friends from the Left, how will these changes help to make American more productive? If, as those friends claim to agree, domestic production combined with competitive exports are key to (re-) building our nation's wealth, how will these two bills help? Will they promote domestic production (vs. outsourcing)? Will they encourage employers to hire workers here in America? Will these bills reduce costs of domestically produced goods to better compete with China?

First draft of history

I've been thinking about a prediction for Obama's legacy. Something to give my daughters so they have an understanding of how things were before the biggest cult of personality I have ever witnessed. Behind the scenes are pure back-to-the-bad-old-ways of pre-Thatcher Britain or pre-Reagan US. Leave it to Dick Morris to get it done before me...

http://thehill.com/dick-morris/the-obama-presidency--here-comes-socialism-2009-01-20.html

Some Optimism from Reason

The Libertarian Moment
http://www.reason.com/news/show/129993.html

Bush Legacy

"This does ensure that President Bush will have a legacy," laughed Competitive Enterprise Institute president Fred Smith after that Americans for Tax Reform meeting. "It's a legacy that will set back the concept of economic liberty by a century. The free market, for all intents and purposes, is dead in America."

Some interesting reading:

Atlas Blinked: http://www.reason.com/news/show/129941.html

Jefferson's Wisdom

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not"
--Thomas Jefferson

America's Lost Decade?

Great article on The Wall Street Journal today (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123007755316531663.html). It touches on the theme of FDR's Folly (a great book): government action made the Great Depression worse, not better. We are setting up to make many of the same mistakes again. Public spending on a massive scale, nationalization of big parts of the economy, public funds spent in uncompetitive industries with "Czars" assigned with no record of industry related experience performance to make sure the money is spent wisely (i.e., to further the political agenda of the Government), wasted money on infrastructure.
The title of the article refers to the lost decade in Japan after the real estate and equity bubble burst in 1989. The Japanese governement wasn't willing to let the economy take its medicine and kept many big companies and banks alive that should have been allowed to fail. They pumped shocking amounts of money into "infrastructure" to build roads and bridges to nowhere. I wonder how many more light rail projects we will have in this country as a result of our new new deal democrats $2trillion pubic spending?

'Tis Done

'Tis done. After a failure of historic proportions in George W. Bush, the country has punished the Borrow and Spend party by putting the Tax and Spend party in charge government. The good news is there will be a shrinking tax base even if they don't increase taxes so the short-term damage is limited. Of bigger concern are all of the people that will die before their time when the benefits of Universal Health Care really become apparent. Simply put, scientists and entrepreneurs will find other places for their talents. R&D money will not be spent and drugs and treatments won't get better at the rate they would have. There is one reason the US has the best health care in the world: the profit motive. I've lived in Japan (the second biggest economy and by some measures the richest country) and their health care doesn't come close to the US. Why? They have socialized medicine.