New Media Alliance - Robert E. Meyer

By Robert E. Meyer

On election night, just after Barack Obama was declared the President-elect, Fox News interviewed Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who is thought to be a rising star within the ranks of the GOP. With a facial expression which telegraphed resignation, Ryan offered a synopsis of the Republican party’s problems, and a sense of resolution, that eerily mirrored a speech given by Ronald Reagan on March 1st, 1975, entitled, “Let them go their way.” More than anything else, Ryan expressed the idea that too many Republican’s had been afraid to stand on conservative principles, and it was time for that practice to end, and it is time for that sort of politician to go.

Several themes from Reagan’s historic speech ring true of our current times and the last election as well, as I comment on Reagan excerpts (in quotation marks).

“Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached ‘the gospel,’ in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism which was, in truth, a call to collectivism.”

The election results are certainly the most bitter of pills for conservatives to swallow. The neo-socialism of Barack Obama is anything but new, but was a temptation to liberals of the 1970’s, also. Conservatives identified the socialist tendencies in Obama ‘s economic themes. Interestingly enough, Obama shrugged off the criticism with a false analogy. He said that it must have been discovered he shared his peanut butter sandwich in kindergarten. In reality, his policies are more akin to his teacher taking away the sandwich and giving it to another child, based on the presumption that Obama already had his fair share of square meals at home.

“In another recent survey, of 35,000 college and university students polled, three-fourths blame American business and industry for all of our economic and social ills. The same three-fourths think the answer is more (and virtually complete) regimentation and government control of all phases of business—including the imposition of wage and price controls. Yet, 80 percent in the same poll want less government interference in their own lives!”

Notice the same parallels–today all our current economic problems are said stem from the failure of the Bush administration to regulate Wall Street, or reduce the progressive nature of the income tax to the greatest benefit of wealthy citizens. “Limit CEO pay,” and “cap the profits of the oil companies,” are just the latest among calls to embrace economic controls. We must observe that people are up in arms over government intrusion via the presumption of surveillance occurring against private citizens, yet they want government intrusion in the form of greater regulation of business and markets.

“In 1972 the people of this country had a clear-cut choice, based on the issues—to a greater extent than any election in half a century. In overwhelming numbers they ignored party labels, not so much to vote for a man or even a policy as to repudiate a philosophy. In doing so they repudiated that final step into the welfare state—that call for the confiscation and redistribution of their earnings on a scale far greater than what we now have. They repudiated the abandonment of national honor and a weakening of this nation’s ability to protect itself.”

As I discussed in an editorial piece only weeks ago, that Obama’s election might be compared to the first term of George McGovern that we were graciously spared of in 1972. Though there were many similar problems in 1972, people saw the clear choice and soundly rejected socialism. I predicted that Americans in 2008, might be less judicious in their ultimate selection. In months to come, we will hear about plans to weaken our military, by cutting defense spending as a way to help ameliorate deficits in the federal budget.

“This is no time to repeat the shopworn panaceas of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society… that market arrangements in our economy have given us inadequate housing, terrible mass transit, poor health care and a host of other miseries… [and some will insist on] socialism as the answer to our problems.”

Our last election just proved that people still haven’t overcome the lure of Fabian fantasies.

By Robert E. Meyer

My call-in editorial was posted in Saturday’s edition of a local newspaper, intended as a satirical presentation of some conspiracy theories which I have heard since the last election cycle.

“I was talking with a politically left-leaning friend about the recent plunge in fuel prices. His conspiracy theory was that McCain was behind in the polls so Bush told his oil buddies to lower the price of gas to help out McCain. After chiding him for his lack of originality, I explained what’s really happening. The oil companies CEOs already know Obama is going to be the president and so they are lowering prices to avert the likelihood of windfall profits taxation and price-gouging investigations. But since it has been alleged that the Republicans can fix every presidential election and have bribed officials of the voting machine manufacturers, neither the price of gasoline nor the poll results really matter much. If all else fails, we can still blame the infamous Bradley effect.”

So what was my point? Very simply this: If one can move popular polls by manipulating the price of gasoline, then they probably can’t control voting outcomes. If a political party can control the outcome of an election by suppressing votes, disenfranchising voters, or rigging the voting process, they probably wouldn’t need to manipulate oil prices to impact polls either. Yet many liberal ideologues thoughtlessly hold to some version of both views (That Republicans are manipulating oil prices, as well as fixing elections) simultaneously. They seem oblivious to the contradictions of holding both positions.

A few days ago, one caller complained that consumption of gasoline has only dropped slightly, while oil prices have plunged, so according to him, it proves that the price of oil was manipulated all along. He apparently knows little about price elasticity, or how future expectations exacerbate the current trend.

My own view is that the futures markets are looking ahead to the possible impact of a world-wide recession on commodities, such as oil, and see declining demand going forward.

The whole phenomenon with people complaining about high energy prices reminds me of a bit of a wise observation familiar to many of us:

“There are three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who ask what happened.”

Instead of being proactive and making adjustments in our lifestyles, too many of us just act like helpless sheep going to the slaughter, falling into one of the two latter categories. We can all employ similar strategies that the wealthy use, albeit on a smaller scale, to insulate ourselves or profit from swings in energy prices.

I am no speculator, but a couple winters ago, I made a modest investment in energy that paid my extra costs for gasoline and heating oil for the year. Tell me if you believe the price of oil is going back up, and I will give you a strategy. Tell me you’re certain oil is going down, and I’ll give you advise on how to play that scenario, also.

I concluded my piece by saying that we can blame the “Bradley Effect” if all else fails. In other words, if the alleged manipulation of fuel prices doesn’t “fool” people, and the alleged fixing of voting doesn’t work either, there is yet an important, insidious factor.

The Bradley Effect deals with the circumstances surrounding the California gubernatorial race in 1982. Mr. Tom Bradley was an African-American candidate for governor. The polls showed a close race, but he actually lost by several percentage points. A theory came forth from that election, which theorizes that the people who were surveyed prior to the election were afraid to tell pollsters of their true candidate selection. They feared that if they avoided expressing preference for the minority candidate, they might be deemed prejudiced. Therefore, they were dishonest in reporting their true selection, skewing the pre-election polls. It all seems like another ugly attempt to exaggerate the impact of latent racism.

If McCain pulls this election out, we are going to hear a lot of talk about that sort of thing. I guess we will know if any conspiracy theories were relevant factors before eat breakfast Wednesday morning.

By Robert E. Meyer

The recent collapse in the stock market has caused a number of folks to smugly suggest that the advocates who promoted personalizing Social Security have buried themselves in their foxholes of embarrassment, never to be heard from again. Quite to the contrary!

The reasons for these erroneous assumptions are that the naysayers never really understood all the advantages of personalized accounts.

The issue has been reduced to a false dilemma, where on one hand the government provides a defined benefit, whereas, on the other hand each person is left to his own expertise to navigate through a financial chamber of horrors, needing to invest in a gyrating stock market. That would be a wholesale misunderstanding of all the options available.

In addition, the recent exclamation “Look what would have happened if we privatized Social Security,” is purely emotion sophistry. None of the people who were eligible under Bush’s privatization plan would have been able to withdraw money for years to come, so it is irrelevant to observe that the market is way down at the moment. It is like judging a movie by viewing a snapshot.

The recent debacle on Wall Street only strengthens the arguments in favor of personalized accounts. In principle, politicians have long ago done to the Social Security Trust Fund, what CEO’s did by bankrupting their firms. Yet nobody in the government is held accountable for this impropriety against the American people.

The SS trust fund is not a separate account fully funded with payroll taxes. All the money withheld for Social Security from your paycheck has been redirected and comingled with general revenues to give the government more current money for spending on social programs. The trust fund is simply an accounting entry–IOU’s in the form of treasury bonds which are unfunded liabilities, redeemed as needed for the dispersions of monthly benefit checks.

Before the 2000 presidential elections, Vice-President Al Gore talked about a “lock box” for Social Security funds that would end the comingling practice. But the only secure lock box is one where each of us holds our own key or combination.

That’s the initial argument for personalized accounts: The funds can only be used by you for your own personal retirement.

The next reason for personalized accounts is that it would end the pyramid scheme structure, where the current generation pays for the retirement of the last generation. Social Security is running into a funding crisis due to demographics: There are increasingly fewer workers to pay for each retiree’s benefits. Eventually, this will lead to means tests, reduced benefits, an older retirement benefit age, and the need for larger payroll tax contributions.

A third reason for personal accounts is that the current structure affords an abysmal rate of return on invested premiums. For people in my age group, we can expect no better than a 2% real rate of return on money withheld from paychecks. A person who did nothing but invest in bank CD’s over the last 40 years would have easily achieved an average 5% rate of return. Such a conservative investment could produce 2-3 times the annuity payout received currently from Social Security, with the same investment.

That illustrates one need not invest in risky technology stocks to far exceed the current payouts of Social Security benefits. But if you’re a risk taker, the stock market has achieved about an 11% annual rate of return since the 1920’s, including all the worst market declines. Let’s also remember that the money is not all contributed at the same time.

And in spite of all the analysis, nobody would be forced to have a personal account, so we should stop spooking elderly citizens.
I have not yet touched on the process of converting from private to personal accounts, but will in a future column.

By Robert Meyer

Senator Barack Obama once again reminded us during his Friday evening debate with John McCain at Oxford Mississippi, that his tax cut proposal will benefit 95% of Americans, omitting only the wealthiest taxpayers.

I have several problems with the ramifications of this statistic. First of all, far less than 95% of Americans pay federal income tax above the $1,000 level that Obama plans to return as a rebate. In fact, many pay no income tax at all, which means that his proposal would really amount to a transfer of wealth for those people, not a tax cut.

Now I’m not against helping the needy, but I don’t like the idea of the federal government playing the role of Robin Hood, or acting as a charity of first resort.

Another problem is that “one time payments” are far inferior to permanent tax reductions, particularly in terms of aggregate tax savings for each tax payer over the long haul. Offering a one time tax rebate is a pandering gambit for political gain, is not a long lasting economic stimulus, and is a proportionally small reduction for those who pay large amounts of federal income taxes.

Admittedly, Obama’s tax proposal is not limited to a lump sum rebate. However, that is the feature of his plan that he chose to highlight, so he obviously believes that aspect of his plan will attract the most votes.

Those of a politically liberal persuasion have a tough time understanding how a reduction in tax rates can actually bring in more revenue to the U.S. Treasury than higher marginal tax rates.

More revenue does not translate into balanced budgets, or budget surpluses, if increased congressional spending outpaces gains in revenue. That is what is never considered when conservative economic policies have been ridiculed as counterproductive.

Opponents have apparently never heard of the Laffer curve, an economic model constructed by economist Arthur Laffer to project the ideal rate of taxation for revenue maximization. Many liberals naively joke that if lower taxes mean more public revenue, then a 0% tax rate should bring in the most money.

As an aside, and with apologies to professor Laffer, I’m not sure that I want the government to procure more revenue than is necessary to perform its constitutionally mandated functions. Still, Laffer’s curve refutes the idea that you must increase marginal tax rates to procure more revenue.

With all of Obama’s fantasizing about new spending programs, and considering his apparent ideological rejection of tax policies influenced by Laffer’s model, I wonder how committed he actually is to reducing middle class tax burden? Let’s remember that Bill Clinton made the middle class tax cut a hallmark theme of his campaign. Even after the economy grew out of its previous deficits and budget surpluses were projected, Clinton balked at the idea of returning any money, based on the belief that the federal government better knows how to use and spend your own funds than you do. Given the track record and economic philosophies of his party, can we really trust Obama to offer anything more substantial than a Milk Bone biscuit to a pack of hungry dogs?

Liberals might reluctantly agree that wealthy people do indeed pay the lion’s share of income tax, but they will then point to the income caps on payroll taxes, or observe that a greater proportion of discretionary income for the poor and middle class are absorbed by other taxes.

Perhaps so, but it is also true that the effect of other taxes amounts to regressive benefits for higher income people. For example, the person with an average salary of $90,000 a year does not get twice the benefit from Social Security as a person who makes half as much, although they theoretically have paid twice as much into the system. Obama wants to raise the cap on payroll tax, but what about the corresponding level of benefits? If the payroll tax is subjected to a higher income threshhold without a raise in maximum monthly benefit, some will be required to pay into an economic black hole.

Higher income taxpayers also tend to benefit less from social services than lower income people, based on need and qualifications for benefits.

Keeping the Bush tax reductions for all income levels is more evenhanded and plays less into the destructive envy of economic class warfare. Making the tax brackets still more progressive is unfurling yet another unnecessary evil.

By Robert Meyer

John McCain’s selection for Vice-President, Sarah Palin, has electrified the conservative base, and has succeeded in attracting some voters back to the Republican ticket, who were resigned to sit out the election, or vote for a minor party candidate.

One would expect the typical knee-jerk criticism about a surprise choice such as Palin, both from the Democrats and the main-stream media. Obviously, Palin’s lack of experience at the federal level is a legitimate concern, but it’s really the additional, gratuitous piling-on, that is the scornfully predictable behavior I’m referring to.

The revelation that Palin’s 17 year-old daughter is pregnant out-of-wedlock, is the most newsworthy item providing fodder for these attacks, despite the fact the girl is engaged to be married to the father of the child. Obama has suggested that foibles of family members are out of bounds, seemingly not wanting a historical examination of his own rearing. That has the same effect as telling people not to think about pink elephants.

Other allegations focus on an attempt to fire an Alaska State Trooper who was married to Palin’s sister, and questions about a controversial statement made by the preacher of the church Palin’s family attended years ago. Undoubtedly, other things will surface as the dirt-digging excavators get busy dissecting Palin’s past. So what else is new?

Many editorial writers can probably tell you stories about some E-mail serial stalker(s) who is only too happy to provide a barrage of spam or huffy rebuttals to the latest piece. I have had at least one liberal or atheist shadowing me for the entire time I’ve been writing editorials. I refer to such characters as “the secularist Du Jour.”

The current attention-seeker is using the incident of Palin’s daughter to launch a campaign of playground taunting. This individual, following the lead of liberal talking points, asks the questions, “What about the party of values?”, and “How can Palin be Vice-President when she can’t take care of her own household?”

Alright, for the record I have to admit that the revelation about Palin’s daughter is an embarrassing and shameful incident. Should that change my decision about which presidential ticket is stronger on family values, which would seem to be an objective of the spammer’s efforts?”

Politics is partially about legislating public policies that are going to be favorable to different groups or individuals. Which ticket is going to promote more issues that are applauded by groups who are advocates for “family values?”

Of course, one can conveniently redefine principles in an effort to change the terms of the debate. One correspondent asked me whether it was more important to oppose abortion, or to support the Family Medical Leave Act? Alright, I’ll up the ante then; any political party that doesn’t pay for food, a home and transportation, must be anti-family. We shift from ethics and morality to only economic considerations as family values.

In discussing advocacy groups, out of curiosity, I wanted to see if any atheist groups supported Obama. As I searched the web, I typed in as a search term, “Atheists for Obama,” and came to the following link: http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/AtheistsforObama.I could not locate any such similar acclamation for McCain, although I came across a blogger who suggested that he form a group called “Atheists for McCain.” His reasoning was that since atheists are the most despised special interest group in the country, the publicity would harm McCain’s campaign.

One must observe that Obama professes to be a Christian, and has said far more about his faith publicly than McCain. In fact, in McCain’s past, there are comments disparaging the religious right. A less careful observer might have come to the conclusion that McCain was deliberately eschewing the support of religious voters. What then explains the allegiance of radical secularists to Obama?

I am not one to referee the authenticity of any one’s claim to faith, but apparently atheists themselves do not take Obama seriously, or reason that his professions will have little impact influencing administration of public policy. Rather troubling is the fact that atheists have had such closely-knit ideological ties with the Democratic platform in recent elections.

It seems curious how a group of folks who profess to be so “open-minded,” “independent,” enlightened,” and “free-thinking,” can be similarly monolithic in their political persuasions. This is evidenced by the near unanimous support Obama is given from militant atheist organizations.

Without any other guidance, that tells me all I need to know. Once again, it’s all so predictable.