Thompson vs. Moore - Obama on Social Security

The great battle of the wits is at hand.

Michael Moore, as many of you know, is currently in Cuba filming his new documentary, "Sickos," which chronologies how Cuba's health care system is allegedly superior to the United States'. We've previously covered the inaccuracy of such statements. He's received a good deal of criticism (shockingly), and is under investigation by the Treasury Department for a possible infringement of our embargo on Cuba.

In the midst of this, Moore lashed out at former Tennessee Senator and potential Presidential candidate Fred Thompson, who, as many of you know, is my pick for President.

Moore accused Thompson of supporting Cuba as well by purchasing Cuban cigars. He then challenged Thompson to a public debate on health care. Thompson then posted a video response on the internet that has been circulated since.

Watch the video. You won't regret it.



Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on ABC's program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" last weekend. He had a little chit chat regarding social security reform, and apparently he's very open minded to being closed minded.

Stephanopoulos: You've also said that with Social Security, everything should be on the table.

Obama: Yes.

Stephanopoulos: Raising the retirement age?

Obama: Everything should be on the table.

Stephanopoulos: Raising payroll taxes?

Obama: Everything should be on the table. I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did back in 1983. They came together. I don't want to lay out my preferences beforehand, but what I know is that Social Security is solvable. It is not as difficult a problem as we're going to have with Medicaid and Medicare.

Stephanopoulos: Partial privatization?

Obama: Privatization is not something that I would consider . . .

Good show, Mr. Obama.

Free Market Education Solutions - Literally

US News & World Report showed us an interesting perspective on education reform in their April 29th edition.

For Trinity Gardens, a poor neighborhood in Mobile County, Ala., that sends children to Brazier Elementary, the neglect wasn't a huge surprise. In 1965, a nearby Air Force base closed-taking away 10,000 jobs-and a series of paper mills shut down in the 1990s, stealing at least 3,000 more. Most of the Gardens' residents live below the poverty line, holding two jobs to get by. Who had time to care how many fifth graders passed a state writing test? (In 2003, only 7 percent.)

But in 2004, Brazier Elementary suddenly began to change. In just one year, workers cleaned up the halls, new teachers poured in, and test scores shot up. Noting the change, parents like Patrick sent their kids back to Brazier. Patrick thanks Brazier's new principal, Merrier Jackson, for the turnaround, calling her "a godsend." But it was actually a less heavenly group that sent Jackson to Trinity Gardens: CEOs.

Four times a year, Everage Thomas, a supervisor at the nearby Budweiser Busch Distributing Co., squeezes into the school's miniature plastic chairs for a meeting with Principal Jackson on student performance. Budweiser has invested capital in her school, and it wants to see results. So Jackson, a former businesswoman, brings PowerPoint presentations, graphs, and charts to prove her students are learning. She calls Budweiser a "stakeholder." That terminology fits a district-ordered reorganization three years ago intended to use a business mind-set (and accountability) to improve Mobile's worst-performing schools. The overhaul followed a reform campaign bankrolled in part by local business groups and the Chamber of Commerce.

It's the same quintessential principle behind school choice: incentive. The government has little accountability and incentive contained with it's quasi autonomous functions. The infamy of bureaucratic blunders lies, at least partially, in the government's inability to innovate and conquer. Businesses, on the other hand, have a direct stake in their performance. All income is contingent on performance. That same risk assesment in decisions can be applied to many realms. The private sector, or at least, government programs that offer private contracts, or private entities supported by government, consistently outperform pure-governmental functioning. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is noted for low-quality and rapidly deteriorating housing that can't compete with private offerings to low-income families needing shelter (e.g. Habitat for Humanity).

Objections in the article come from sources like John Dewey, who lamented:

Education would then become an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the existing industrial order of society... Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve?"

Because the industrious spirit of private enterprise considers only the short term, and perpetuates its own ignorance, while state glorifies mankind and innovates beyond the individual citizen's wildest expectations? The precedent itself cries out in agony.

Why can't private innovation be applied to education? Why, after every hour of Milton Friedman's explanations, do only a handful of states offer realistic school choice? Why do the John Deweys of the world still see government as the panacea? Perhaps Brazier Elementary will pose these questions yet again.

A Restored Ally?

Last week may have put an end to French jokes for a while. America-friendly, pro-free market, center-right candidate Nicholas Sarkozy edged out Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal 53% to 47%. Sarkozy's platform included desperately overdue economic reform, lift trade barriers, reduce taxes, and roll back regulations. Royal advocates, as Steve Forbes put it, "to boost France's job-killing minimum wage, meddle even more in its nationalized electric industry and increase state control over the financial and media sectors." She also continues to express support for France's strict 35 hour work week cap and mandatory vacation.

The increasing socialist influence in France has inhibited growth for several years. As the venerable British magazine The Economist said in 2002:

At the time of its introduction, most economists pronounced the law's motivation--that if each employee works fewer hours, there will be more hours to share around--to be nonsensical. The idea that a fixed quantity of work exists, to be parcelled out among workers, is the so-called lump-of-labour fallacy. France's own Frederic Bastiat had pointed out two centuries ago that there is no limit to the work that needs doing.

But, unemployment did go down after the enactment of the 35 hour work week, and some productivity figures remained the same. At least, so it appeared.

In sum, the productivity figures may be misleading. Restrictions on hours mean that output per hour is bound to rise, as firms shed lower-value, yet still profitable, tasks. France's output per worker, however, has remained flat. What is more, the government bought big employers' agreement to the law by offering tax breaks. These tax cuts would have helped to bring down unemployment even had there been no 35-hour law.

The original problems on a more fundamental level weren't be alleviated by perpetuating the same state-dependent mindset. The French voters desperately wanted a change, an innovative reform-style candidate. Sarkozy represented the majority party in France, and by all accounts, the socialist to left candidates should have had the upper hand. But Sarkozy projected himself as a new, fresh, reformist candidate, and took the popular vote. Perhaps in a lesson of strategy to the GOP in 2008.

His platform included some no-brainer solutions that we've known for years, as The Economist said back as far as 1997:

Why not seek instead to reform France's rigid, high-cost labour market, for instance, by encouraging more part-time work (which occupies 16% of French workers, against 24% in Britain and 38% in the Netherlands); by lowering the minimum wage (of FFr6,643, or $1,127, a month); by making it easier (and less expensive) to sack workers; by reducing France's generous unemployment and welfare benefits, and so on? Not, apparently, on Mr Jospin's mind

As music to the ears of a Bush White House, Sarkozy also promised to restore relations with America and the Bush Administration (that have been less than cordial under Jacques Chirac). Of course, Mr. Sarkozy retains his fair share of flaws, but a fundamentally feasible philosophy under riding the French President, along with some basic economic understanding, could do wonders for the cornerstone EU state. Not to mention, France could remain a dedicated ally and friend to their freedom-loving comrade across the Atlantic.

2008 Update: Searching for Reagan and... Thompson?

The Reaganite impact has been seen in the establishment of an ultimate idiom for national leadership. A man who can unite the party's vast internal ideological differences. Individualist lovers of liberty that make up the quasi-libertarian branch of conservatism (the "New Right"), the traditionalists of neoconservatism who long for the men who will opine to their cries for society bound by a transcendent order, and those "anti-communist" members of the party (whom today would be "anti-terrorism") who stand firm in the hawkish zeal to defend the homeland against those totalitarian forces of aggression who wish to see us dead. The battle for a balance between order and liberty drove wedges in the party for much of the 20th Century, yet Reagan was able to unite them under their common goals. Their Jeffersonian libertarian ideals that the "government which governs best governs least," and their neoconservative ideas that a strong military and national defense must be maintained to save the Western World and the Shining City on a Hill. This fusion of ideas, produced Reagan. The economic zeal of Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek and George Stigler drawing from frustrated calls for return to sanity in The Road to Serfdom and Free to Choose. The staunch defense of the free world, aggressive, definitive, and imperative; laden with Churchillian and Lincoln poetic rhetoric. A defense inspired by the terrorizing tales of defected Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers in Witness. These factions of the party united to defend the natural and necessitated rights of men esteemed by Locke and Hobbes, the Burkean ordered liberty of society, the Hayekian and Chicago School ideas of free markets and monetarism, the fundamental values of Kirk and Milton, while preserving the individual autonomy of Bastiat-style classical liberals.

But is it even comprehensible that a GOP candidate in 2008 could unite the tory notions, drive away the gathering storm of neo-liberalism, and land a seat in the Oval Office?

The Reagan legacy has impacted many great leaders of our day. Names ring in the minds of his students: Quayle, Williams, Gingrich, Sowell, Meese, Kirkpatrick, Weinberger, Noonan, Bennett... McCain? Giuliani? The vacuum is opened.

Of the present field of candidates, for balance of ideology and electability I draw nearer to supporting Mitt Romney than anyone else. Charismatic, well-grounded, deep fund raising pockets, and understands liberty. He's lurched to the right in the past few years, but it seems more sincere than others, and could be in the same style that Reagan lurched right before running for President. His economic record in Massachusetts is impeccable, and his advocacy on other issues impressive. Yet, his lackluster support in comparison to Giuliani, and the prejudice from some of the Religious Right over Mormonism (however preposterous a gripe) still leaves a spot in the candidates. Sure, Brownback, Gilmore, and Huckabee are noble chaps. But $1.5 million or half a million in fund raising is going to get you no where.

A new factor is actor and former senator Fred Thompson. A relative latecomer, his window of opportunity for announcing may be short, yet as Bob Novak puts it, "many conservatives may embrace Thompson with a sigh of relief." The popular senator from Tennessee has had a strong limited-government record on virtually all major issues, and has sustained some of the limelight while starring on NBC's "Law and Order" and maintaining his PAC. A current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he's garnered a good deal of support from GOP base publications ranging from Human Events to Patriot Post to the Wall Street Journal.

His support is not universal, however. Pulitzer Prize winning conservative columnist George F. Will scoffs at the notion of a Reaganite Thompson. Mr. Will cites his age, lack of experience in a tightly contested campaign, and hypothetical lackluster energy. He also details, to my hearty agreement, discontent with Thompson's support of the reprehensible McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform legislation. As of a March interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace, Thompson maintained his support of the freedom-suppressing measure. An additional area of concern is his 1995 vote against Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

All other aspects of his prospective campaign may prove strong. A recent LA Times poll, according to Dick Morris, has Thompson at second place behind Giuliani, trumping McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and the undeclared Newt.

GIULIANI 29%

THOMPSON 15%

MC CAIN 12%

ROMNEY 8%

GINGRICH 7%

HUCKABEE 3%

If Gingrich feels Thompson represents the cause fully, there's a good chance he won't declare in September (his deciding point). Thompson would be a likely choice for many Gingrich supporters, while Huckabee will likely be forced out due to lack of competitive fund raising. Leaving the vote of those like me to be split between Romney and Thompson, either of whom I would be happy with. A true blue lover of liberty at the helm of the GOP ticket may be the only thing that can prevent a second Clinton White House. Thompson/Romney '08?