Speaker Moonbeam Advocates Lunar-Based Stimulus

When I heard Newt Gingrich say that he aims to build an American colony on the moon, I was not surprised.  The Republicans have a habit of aiming to prove that they can spend as much as Democrats.  It was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who invented big government Progressivism. A project of the size that Gingrich proposes would cost in the trillions.  According to The Washington Post, a moon colony project was scuppered in 1989 when the $700 billion price tag (in current dollars) was released. Building a colony on the moon is not the way to explore space. Drones can do so at a fraction of the cost and can go much further.  What possible scientific gain would come from planting thousands of people on the moon?

Not surprisingly, The Washington Post is supportive of Speaker Gingrich's lunatic proposal. He is going Obama one better in ignoring the Constitution of the United States, emphasizing public at the expense of private spending, and using failed Keynesian stimulus ideas to buy votes.

Obama Stimulus Has Failed

 
Remember the 2009 stimulus? Remember Barney Frank and his Merry Band of Democratic Party Idiots and their economic advisors telling us that Keynes's ideas really do work despite a century of failure?  (Their reasoning: how else can we subsidize all-thumbs investment and commercial bankers and hedge fund managers?)

It turns out that a nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus has not improved the jobs picture.  The economics profession is to the economy as doctors like Benjamin Rush who used to use leeches to draw blood are to medicine. 

Unfortunately, quite a few Republicans are just as incompetent as the Democrats. Examples are George W. Bush and his compeer in idiocy and greed, Rick Lazio, the New York State GOP gubernatorial candidate who was instrumental in obtaining $25 billion for JP Morgan during the Bush administration's bailout days.

The ways and means Republicans sent the above table. Scroll down to see how much damage the Democrats’ deficit spending stimulus bill has done in your state.  The three exceptions are North Dakota, Alaska, and of course Washington, DC.

The Democratic Party's Stimulus Has Failed

The Ways and Means Republicans have released the numbers below via e-mail.  While Mr. Obama and his colleagues claimed that there would be across the board job increases following the stimulus, one year later there have been across the board losses in job numbers.  I wonder how their assumptions about the fianncial impact of health care will turn out.  In the 1930s and 1970s the Democrats claimed that Social Security would pay for itself.  The Baby Boomers believed them in the 1980s.  Now, they see diminution of their retirement prospects.  How much socialist lying ought America tolerate?  How many failed programs? How much waste? How much ignorance?

America Going to Hell in A Handbasket

Cartoonist Paul Nichols of the Catholic Cartoon Blog links to my blog about Cortes de Russy's article here. The blog to which he links is as follows:

America Going to Hell in A Handbasket: Stimulus A Fraud

Cortes de Russy has an excellent article in Pajamas Media about the nonsesensical economic stimulus that our economic experts, who are rather our economic illiterates, have been advocating on the half-witted media outlets.

De Russy notes that:

"We now find ourselves informed by 'leading' economists and politicians that the solution to our current economic malaise is for government to embark on a gigantic spending spree. This spending, we are assured by one of the leading securities rating organizations, Moody’s Economy — whose recent history of ratings brings into question its judgment for quality analysis — that these expenditures will generate 'multiples' of growth in GDP in magnitudes exceeding 1.5 times the amount spent."

What a laugh. If I print $10 and spend it on a baseball, then prices go up because baseballs become scarcer. Any additional production due to the spending is offset by higher prices. Only cranks would make Moody's argument. And, of course, Moody's is one of the firms that was giving Enron an "A" rating in the weeks prior to its collapse. Now, they feel qualified to dispense dumb economic advice.

De Russy notes:

"Lest we forget, capital formation is the seed corn of wealth and job creation, and since wealth creation is the driver of economic progress, one must ask if government spending increases or enhances capital formation."

Government spending does not enhance capital formation--it demolishes it.

De Russy concludes that:

"The history of economic progress throughout the world provides irrefutable evidence that the economic well-being of ordinary citizens is closely correlated to the relative degree of freedom in markets and the relative lack of government planning and spending. To argue that government direction and allocation of resources will produce better results is to ignore history and the general understanding of how markets function."

A conclusion with which I have to agree.

Looking over the comments on de Russy's articles on Pajamasmedia, some are of better quality than others. This one from Sara for America caught my attention:

"The stimulus is like the treasure found in a mummy’s tomb. It excites at first, but then everyone who touches it starts dying."

E-mail to Radio Announcer Mark Simone

Dear Mark--I was listening to you on my way to NYC from Woodstock, NY. I teach at Brooklyn College. I heard a caller call in somewhat stridently claiming the need for stimulus. You did not question him. His claims about the Great Depression having been resolved by the heavy borrowing of World War II went unrefuted. This is bad.

You cannot cure America's addiction to socialism if you accept socialist monetary and business cycle theory, i.e., Keynesian economic theory. There is no reason to. Keynesian theory was refuted in the 1970s by Milton Friedman. Your caller, and today's economists, and the media, and all advocates of stimulus, the bail out and the recent inflationary monetary expansion by the socialist Bernanke Fed and Ol' Hammer and Sickle George W. Bush (not to mention his Comintern follower, Goosestepping Socialist Barack Obama) are all ignorant fools.

There is no need for stimulus. Stimulus is not the solution. It is the problem. Unemployment did not become a major problem until AFTER the creation of the Fed and stimulus. In a system of free banking and a gold standard business cycles would be muted. They only exist because of the banking system and stimulus. Trying to cure today's problems with government spending, inflation and stimulus is like trying to cure cancer by drinking a bottle of chlorine.

You might consider inviting a guest from the Cato Institute or my old friend Howard S. Katz at (http://www.thegoldbug.net and http://www.thegoldbugnet.com) to educate your listeners about a more realistic approach to the business cycle than the socialist crap that has become a single chorus Democratic and Republican Hammer and Sickle version of L'Internationale.