Do we actually want these people enacting laws that are counter to the Constitution?

Common sense is YOU NEVER SIGN ANYTHING you have not read.
So what do you do with people who are to stupid to understand that.
How stupid are “we the people” to allow them to remain in office?

Who is Dennis L. Guthrie?

Simply put an ALL AMERICAN PATRIOT!
Another just like so many who have had more than enough of the corrupt renegade politics from which we all suffer.

Posted below is a letter he sent to Nancy Pelosi.
If it was witheld from her view it has not missed those of us in the real world. This letter has transversed the globe a number of times since it was written in 2009. It is as valid today as it was then.

The text is below if you can not read it off the image.
It is varified as accurate and valid by snopes.

Dear Ms. Pelosi:

I write to you out of utter disdain! You are as despicable and un-American as the traitor Jane Fonda.

I am a soon to be 65 year-old who has voted in every state and local election since 1966. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats alike. I have worked on campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats, white and black. I served the country that I love in Vietnam, as my son did in the Middle East. I was awarded two bronze stars. I have been involved in politics since age 6 when my father was campaign manager for a truly great American Congressman, Charles Raper Jonas, who worked for his constituents and his country, and was to be admired, unlike you.

You obviously haven’t read the Constitution recently, if ever, the Federalist Papers, or even David McCullough’s book on John Adams. You ought to take the time while riding around in your government provided luxury executive jet to do just that. You represent Socialistic and even Marxist principals that our founding fathers tried to avoid when setting out the capitalistic republican form of government represented by our Constitution.

I find it interesting that you and your husband are multi-millionaires with much of your fortune being made as a result of your “public service”. You have controlled legislation that has enhanced your husband’s investments both on and off shore. At the same time you redistributed the wealth of others. Our system of a free market economy is being destroyed by the likes of you, Harry Reid, and now our President. You ride around in a Gulfstream airplane at the tax payer’s expense while criticizing the presidents of companies who produced something for the economy. You add nothing to the economy of the United States; you only subtract therefrom.

I would like to suggest that you return to the city of fruitcakes and nuts and eat your husband’s canned tuna and pineapple produced by illegal immigrants and by workers who have been excluded from the protection that 90% of the legal workers in the United States have.

I await your defeat in the next election with glee.

Don’t ever use the term “un-American” again for protesters who love this country and are exercising their rights upon which this country was founded. By the way, while I served in the Army, I was spit on by the same type of lunatics who support you and who you probably supported in the 60’s and 70’s. You are an embarrassment to all of us who served so that you would have the protected right of free speech to call us un-American. But at the same time, I have the right to write you to notify you that I consider you to be un-American, as do the majority of the people of this formerly great country. You are a true disgrace to most of the people who served this country by offering themselves for public service in the United States Congress.

I feel certain your aides will not share this letter with you, but I intend to share it with many.

Sincerely,

Dennis L. Guthrie

We are fast heading toward the November mid term elections.
Independents, libertarians and the TEA PARTY are very likely to make their voices heard in a big way.
The GOP mistakenly thinks this is a tremendous advantage. What they do not seem to understand (especially the old guard) … it is NOT THE PARTY “we the people” are interested in IT IS the mindset behind the person running.

We have already seen a number of upsets which have ushered in the “out with the old and in with the new” attitude. The opposition is left shaking in their boots HOPING BEYOND HOPE that somehow that tide recedes before it is their turn for the proverbial boot.

Meanwhile all they have as argument for keeping their jobs are blatant lies and MORE SPENDING promises while looting the public coffers. These still are people who voted for a 2000 page bill which was not read beforehand.

Then we see Senate Republicans hold a closed-door meeting Wednesday afternoon to elect someone to replace Senator Murkowski as the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Rather than taking away Murkowski’s leadership position on the committee, Senate Republicans decided to let her keep it. One senator after another stood up to argue in favor of protecting her place on the committee ? a position she will no doubt use in her campaign against Joe Miller, the conservative Republican nominee.

Bet hedging behavior or plain old stupidity?
We the public are not noticing any of this?
Foolish if they are counting on that.

Political runs according to Dick Morris.

Joe DioGuardi, the Republican nominee for US Senate is now only one point behind Democratic appointed Senator Kristin Gillibrand. According to a poll by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the White Plains Journal News and conducted by SurveyUSA, Gillibrand has only 45% of the vote to DioGuardi’s 44%!

Republicans need to get ten seats to take control. They have sure wins in Indiana, North Dakota, and Arkansas and strong leads in Colorado and Pennsylvania. That’s five. Republicans have smaller leads in Illinois and Wisconsin, both of which look like likely GOP pickups. That’s seven. In Nevada, Harry Reid and Sharron Angle are locked in a 46-46 tie and have been for almost two months. If Reid cannot improve his vote share, he will lose most of the undecided and Angle should win. In California, Democrat Boxer is a bit ahead of Republican Fiorini but still below 50 and in Washington State, Democrat Murray is a bit ahead of Republican Rossi, but also below 50.

To those 8-10 pickups, now add New York and West Virginia where the Democrat Manchin clings to a 46-44 lead over Republican Raese. And Republicans have a chance to come back in Delaware and to win in Connecticut.

We have a date with destiny. The ponzi schemes in Social Security, federal, state and local pensions, bloated government school systems and crazy borrowing will soon plunge us into chaos. With the exception of the old fart blue hairs who can’t think clearly and the liberal class envy emotionally handicapped crowd most rational white people get it. We understand it was all a game our politicians played on us and we were just too self absorbed to pay attention.

One group that is still pretending not to get it is the Republicans. The Republicans rolled out their “Pledge to America” plan. Its sugar and cream and not much substance. Their plan to roll back federal spending to 2008 levels ($2.9 trillion) is unrealistic. The Republicans are not dealing with the reality of the severity of our financial situation.

Most of us white trash folks with IQ’s over 100 understand socialism doesn’t work but Republicans, Democrats and all the elites don’t.

What about that national debt interest? Currently it’s about $200 million. What happens when the economy heats up, there a Republican in the White House and the Keynesian (Democrat) Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke decides its time to fight inflation by raising interest rates? Most of our debt is short term treasury bills and notes. Our national adjustable rate mortgage could increase considerably in a very short period of time. Opps. Will the Republicans be able to keep the budget at $2.9 trillion?

And what about that ponzi scheme the blue hairs refer to as Social Security? It’s scheduled to be in the red permanently in 2015. With a unfunded liability of $14.5 trillion things could get really nasty. Do the Republicans want to raise the retirement age to 70? The average life expectancy of black men is 70. I can just hear the cat calls of racism now. Do the Republicans’ want to raise the social Security tax to 18%? And break another promise? Or shall they reduce benefits 27%? Of course the only sane rational answer is to get rid of the program and set up personal accounts. But neither party will discuss that option.

What about the $19 trillion prescription drug liability? What about the $76 trillion dollar Medicaid liability? And of course Obamacare which to the Republicans credit they vow to kill.

To a clear thinking white peasant the problem is very clear. Socialism. It never works. They don’t call Social Security Social Security for nothing. It’s socialism. Socialism always leads to failure. Socialism always leads to bankruptcy.

Now I understand the Republicans have to win the popularity contest. I understand that they need the blue haired old ladies votes to win. I respect that but God help us if the leadership actually believes the pledge to America is nothing more than a campaign gimmick. $2.9 trillion will come and go in a nanosecond with our unfunded liabilities and debt payments. If the Republican are serous about getting America back to fiscal sanity and off the road the USSR traveled down they need to address the root cause of the problem and that is socialism.

I love Ann Coulter most of the time.
She is smart and has a quick wit. She says exactly what is on her mind and does not care who likes it or not.

This is her artical from Sept. 10. 2010

In the October issue of Vanity Fair now on newsstands, Michael Gross reverts to junior high school to issue gossip-girl digs at Sarah Palin. Next up in Vanity Fair: “Sarah Palin Super Stuck Up; Thinks She’s All That.”

Gross dramatically reveals, for example, that her speech in Wichita, Kan., was “basically the same speech she gave 18 hours earlier to the tea-party group in Independence (Mo.).”

A politician repeated lines in a speech? You must be kidding! Hello, Ripley’s? No, you cannot put me on hold. This is a worldwide exclusive. I’m sitting on a powder keg here.

Gross also apparently believes Vanity Fair readers will be tickled, rather than appalled by this story about Palin:

“Sometimes when she went out in public, people were unkind. Once, while shopping at Target, a man saw Palin and hollered, ‘Oh my God! It’s Tina Fey! I love Tina Fey!’ When other shoppers started laughing, the governor parked her cart, walked out of the store, and drove away.” (That jackass was lucky Sarah didn’t have her moose rifle with her.)

A random encounter with a rude, abusive jerk in public is supposed to make her look bad? Liberals have really lost their minds about Palin. They’d laugh if someone hit her with a baseball bat.

Gross also includes a strange exegesis about Palin’s tipping. It seems an unnamed bellman at an unnamed Midwestern hotel “waited up until past midnight for Palin and her entourage to check in – and then got no tip at all for 10 bags.”

First of all, what does Gross’ imaginary bellboy think the entire Palin family and their assistants and aides were doing until after midnight? Bowling? Playing beer-pong at a local pub? They’ve been traveling – with kids – all day, arriving after midnight, and the only thing he can think about is how he had to stay up past midnight.

Assuming the story is true, which I do not, why is it Palin’s fault no tip was given? According to the bellboy, there must have been at least half a dozen people in her group. Palin is the “talent.” Other than Trig, she’s the last person who should be held responsible for the tip.

Gross was just getting warmed up with the bellboy. “The same went for the maids who cleaned Palin’s rooms in both places,” he reveals in a worldwide exclusive: “no tip whatsoever.”

I think most normal people reading that aren’t thinking about Palin, they’re thinking, “Wait – do I tip maids?”

I don’t on principle, unless I’ve stayed several nights or left a dead body in the room. Even then, it depends on the size of the body. I also don’t leave a tip for the guy who put batteries in the TV remote, the hotel buyer who chose the nice soaps or the interior decorator who designed the room. That’s what I’m buying: a clean, functional room for one night.

Also fantastic is Gross’ conspiracy theory on why no one in Alaska will talk to him about Palin.

In part, this is the typical, head-up-the-butt, New York reporter’s view of Alaska. Gross assumes everyone in the state personally knows Sarah Palin and if they don’t talk to him … they must be afraid!

Thus, according to Gross, “(t)hey don’t want her to find out they have talked with a reporter, because of a suspicion that bad things will happen to them if she does.”

Why else wouldn’t people talk to him? It’s me – Michael Gross from Manhattan! Everyone in Alaska should want to hang with me! The fact that they don’t, he believes, is indisputable evidence of a conspiracy.

Another explanation is that not everyone in Alaska, not even everyone in Wasilla, personally knows Sarah Palin. Nor are they in awe of Manhattan or Vanity Fair. In other words, maybe Alaska is remarkably like other places.

Most psychotically insane is Gross’ rumination on why the Palins would leave their home on, I quote, “the anniversary of Sarah’s resignation.”

This is the kind of “anniversary” celebrated only by Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other Palin obsessives. It is not yet, as we go to press, an anniversary celebrated by Hallmark.

The fact that Michael Gross imagines the date Palin resigned is an “anniversary” anyone else in the world would notice proves only that he is a head case.

He discusses the Palins’ absence on this momentous day (in his own mind) with his fellow obsessive, Joe McGinniss – the man who moved into the house next door to the Palins for more convenient stalking.

On and on the two nutcases speculate about why the Palins are gone – because, you see, there must be an explanation!

Perhaps “the Palins would want assurance that no curiosity seekers would trespass,” Gross offers. But why, he asks himself, “make such a long flight”?

In the climactic scene of the article, Gross asks McGinniss, “Wouldn’t it be easier to hire a guard?”

Before giving the reply, Gross notes that McGinniss has put himself “in the frame of mind of his subject – where everything is fungible, and everyone is suspect.” So McGinniss speaks with authority. And he says: “A guard would have a story he could sell.”

Yeah, like the Midwestern bellboy. But the reader is supposed to be gasping at the strangeness of the Palins, not the strangeness of the two reporters, standing alone, staring at the Palins’ empty house on an imaginary “anniversary,” postulating theories on why the Palins aren’t there.

It turns out the Palins had simply flown to Todd’s parents’ house for the weekend. No “curiosity seekers” showed up at the house to gawk – other than the two reporters, who are utterly oblivious to the fact that the only paranoid psychotics in this story are themselves.

I tire of people who cut Obama slack for his reasons WHY he is leading the charge to stomp all over the Constitution and destroy this nation.

In my opinion this is not lack of experience or accident it is a deliberate attempt to do as much damage as he can in 4 years.

Do I give him credit for being some mastermind?
Not at all!
He is a second rate puppet who is handled by someone or something larger.
Well the jig is up and the thinking public is finally getting the drift. They are willing to act and in November we will see just how pissed they really are at all of this.

My guess is Obama will be totally crippled (lame duck) in the future.
Of course THEN and only THEN will we see him whining about how he wants to be bipartisan.

You can see the enlarged image at:
http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=379

I teach economics. I like to think I understand economics better than the average bear. I try to explain to my students who the witch doctors (Keynesians) are. I try to explain that they still believe in blood letting with leeches, borrowing massive amounts of “stimulus” funds. The heroes are the Austrians (F.A. Hayek) and Monetarist (Milton Friedman) understand things like the business cycle and capitalism. Biased? Yes but in the mist of reliving the Great Depression very painful as well.

Ten years ago I swear I kept my politics out of teaching economics as an adjunct professor. I just stood there with my overhead projector and regurgitate Keynesian IS-LM curves to the students like a good dutiful professor. I admit I assigned a money supply class projects here and there to try and get across to the students the concept of inflation and deflation but that was it. A typical boring economics class that surly is repeated thousands of times all over the United States.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman pretends to be for the “little people” but lacks the compassion or a understanding of economics to accomplish his professed desire

Eventually all things come to an end, sometimes with a huge thud. With the Keynesians in Washington, New York and the Federal Reserve the Florida construction industry shrunk 50%? 80%? Who knows but it’s on life support getting infusions of Obama money here and there for the politically connected and politically correct workers and business owners. Yes for years the appeal of construction was getting away from political correct class of asses, now the politically correct government dweebs control what 70% or was that 80% of the current construction activity. No room anymore for the undisciplined libertarian white guys. No place for us to go now but to form militias and wait for the deconstruction of the United States. Ah revenge just around the corner.

So here I am ten years latter teaching economics again. The Fed has blown up the monetary base 162%, a few trillion stimulus dollars latter American rediscover Roosevelt economics doesn’t work and Paul Krugman is still as dense as ever. Paul Krugman the guy who in 2003 wanted housing prices to rise so as to stimulate the economy, the guy who supports 17th century Mercantilism economic policies, price floors for energy markets, and in general a centralized command and control of the economy by Washington politicians.

I have come to the conclusion that Krugman either doesn’t understand economics and should find another profession or is just a mean bastard that believes the elites are the only ones who should partake and enjoy in the fruits of their labor. I favor the latter theory.

I show videos in class of real economist like Dan Mitchell and even the kind of sort of economist Peter Schiff. Inevitably some bright liberal “balanced” young student will ask for some Paul Krugman videos. I am ashamed to say it but it is true. My response “Paul Krugman doesn’t understand economics.” And as far as I am concerned he doesn’t and neither do 99% of the economists in Washington DC. They basically are the equivalent of the 18th century doctors who believe in blood letting and leeches to drain the sickness from patients for any and every disease that is encountered. Witch doctors who should be shown the door, forever ostracized and forgotten except as a example of what not to do.

Keynesian economics are the 18th century equivalent of doctors using leeches and blood letting to cure a patent. Medicine came out of the Dark Ages and now it is time for economist to come out of the Dark Ages and ostracize those in their profession who do not understand the profession. Just as medicine made dramatic gains in the 19th and 20th centuries now is the time for economist to do the same.

Krugman should just come out and say “I am for the dictatorship of the elites. I do not think most people on this planet are worthy of the consumption of resources above and beyond bare subsistence levels. If we impoverished people to say Middle Ages levels of income of about $150 per year we would lessen environmental damage and free up resources for the elites to experiment with alternative life styles. Eventually I would like to see a world where there was no need for money and society was classless. To do this the number of humans will need to be reduced down to 500,000 or so.” Now that would be honest. Instead Krugman writes like he is a serious economist giving out supposedly rational advice to improve the standard of living for all. He masquerades about being for the little man. In fact the opposite is true and that’s why I refuse to show Krugman videos in my class.

The latest example of this elitism is Krugman’s article in the New York Times where he professes to be on the side of the working man. He wails out against the angry rich and their Republican allies who have the audacity to ask to be treated like the other 98% of Americans when it comes to extending the Bush Tax Cuts. He is for the common man, right?

Paul Krugman and the elites want the United States peasants to be more like Chinese peasants both in attitude and income levels.

Okay Mr. Krugman please let me explain it to you. There are certain segments of the tax code that are highly responsive to increases or decreases in tax rates and how it affects GDP. If you increase taxes on cigarettes not much will happen to the economy one way or the other. If you tax the top 2% then that is a completely different matter. That cuts off the already wealthy, already elites from competition in their industries from young upstart entrepreneurs like Bill Gates 35 years ago.

You see Mr. Krugman the elites already have capital and wealth. They already have market share. They can live off their capital quite well thank you. Now who cannot live off their capital and wealth? Who has not accumulated capital and wealth? Maybe the up and coming entrepreneur? Krugman know this or is the dumbest economist on the planet.

Oligopolies the world over know this and favor high taxes and complex tax codes to protect their market share from new and innovative competition. Basically kick the young challengers when they are down tax policies. Deny new competitors capital and the ability to accumulate capital and if you are working for the elite oligopolies of the world you will always enjoy your position of power and privilege. Pay off the political congressmen and senators on a regular basis to maintain the status quo.

When the government increases regulation and taxes the most politically connected and corporations who already are established gain and young entrepreneurs as well as the people who work for them lose. Society becomes rigid and the elites benefit with higher prices and secure market shares for basic products like Coke, oil, catsup, milk and so forth. The poor and working class pay more and have their standard of living lowered, unemployment increased depressing wages and the “little people” really do suffer under Krugman economic policies.

Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) understood how to limit competition and bribe politicians

Now for a “real” economist like myself its not to hard to see the ulterior motives of Mr. Krugman. When he talks about price floors on energy I see through it. The poor do not deserve air conditioning or heat.

When he talks about protecting the poor by taxing the top 2% I get it. We don’t need more capitalism but must transform society to a socialist statist form of government. The poor and middle class are consuming more than they need to in Mr. Krugman’s view and they should not be allowed to join the ranks of the elites.

When he vilifies Steve Forbes “defending the interests of the rich” I get it. Mr. Forbes should shut up and enjoy his privileged status and stop talking about capitalism and its benefits.

Unfortunately millions of Americans do not. Krugman and his Keynesian buddies are charlatans spreading myths and lies throughout the land to protect their privilege class and status. Dare we ask Mr. Krugman who benefits from centralized government planning? Could it possibly be Mr. Krugman and his statist at the New York Times? Would a Obama dictatorship let the New York Times go bankrupt? Krugman and his pals enjoy the best lifestyle in the world by supporting the elites. Why would he want to change? It’s sickening to realize millions take a bastard elitist like Krugman at face value.

I feel bad in a way about not showing Krugman videos. Freedom of speech right? I guess in ten years when the Keynesians are totally discredited and removed from economics text books across the land I will show video of Krugman like a history teacher would show film of Hitler in 1955 ten years after the end of WWII. Right now as we are in the mist of this horrible economic turmoil caused by Krugman, Bernanke, Greenspan, Bush, Obama and the thousands of Keynesians in Washington spreading this garbage to our leaders. It’s all just too painful to watch. Sorry kids maybe someday you will understand.

Someone sent this my way today.

I do not know if Buchanan wrote this for sure … I did however find it posted on a few other sites. Be it from Buchanan or not it is dead on true. If it was not an open letter to Obama it should have been.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ‘ 60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude??

Barack talks about new ‘ladders of opportunity’ for blacks. Let him go to Altoona? And Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for ‘deserving ‘ white kids? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African- Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African- American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on- white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about
40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

by Alan Reynolds

This article appeared in Investor’s Business Daily on September 15, 2010.

ana Milbank, a new Washington Post columnist, thinks Republican politicians “managed to turn the Keynesian notion of economic ‘stimulus’ into such a dirty word that President Obama and his aides are afraid to let it escape their lips.”

He blames “think tanks such as the Cato Institute” for not agreeing that Keynesian theory is so “unassailable” and “universally embraced” that daring to question the elixir of deficit spending “has a flat earth feel to it.”

CATO Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds

UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong wrote a 2004 paper for the Center for American Progress assailing Bush’s budget deficit. “A bigger deficit means less investment in America,” he wrote; “And less investment in America means slower economic growth.” DeLong quoted Bush adviser Greg Mankiw who likewise argued that, “government budget deficits reduce the economy’s growth rate.”

Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, is the author of Income and Wealth.

More by Alan Reynolds
Milbank now claims Mankiw supports the exact opposite idea — namely, that budget deficits “stimulate” the economy’s growth rate. Unfortunately, any theory that explains everything must also explain nothing.

The Republican alternative to more fiscal stimulus says Milbank, is for government to “do nothing, and let the human misery continue.” Any doubts about the efficacy of fiscal stimulus, he argues, were discredited by the remarkable discovery that recessions still happen: “Economists offering alternatives to Keynes devised mathematical models showing how markets would behave efficiently. But those ideas collapsed along with everything else in 2008.”

This is ignorant nonsense. Efficiency never meant markets can’t be surprised and crash. Besides, academic criticism of fiscal stimulus is mainly based on fact, not theory.

Apologists for the 2009 spending spree point to an August paper by Ben Page of the Congressional Budget Office, “Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” The only part of that paper worth reading is the Appendix: “Evidence on the Economic Effects of Fiscal Stimulus.”

Page confesses that, “In analyzing ARRA’s economic effects, CBO drew heavily on versions of the commercial forecasting models of two economic consulting firms. … Because they emphasize the influence of aggregate demand on output in the short run, the macroeconometric forecasting models tend to predict greater economic effects from demand-enhancing policies such as ARRA than some other types of models do.”

Even short-run predictions from such models are notoriously lousy, so CBO simulations of what might have happened under different scenarios tell us more about the models’ assumptions than about reality.

The CBO paper goes on to explain that “another type of research uses historical data to directly project how government policies will affect the economy on the basis of how economic variables such as output and consumption have behaved in the past relative to government spending and revenues …

“Many estimates of this sort suggest that crowding-out effects dominate in the case of government purchases so that the impact on output tends to be less than one-for-� one and tends to diminish over time. … Estimated multipliers for tax cuts are generally higher than those for spending, and they tend to grow over time.”

Footnote 5, where a sample of such non-Keynesian evidence is buried, reads as follows:

See Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks,” American Economic Review, vol. 100, no. 3 (June 2010), pp. 763—801; Robert J. Barro and Charles J. Redlick, “Macroeconomic Effects from Government Purchases and Taxes,” Working Paper 15369 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2009); Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig, “What Are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?” Working Paper 14551 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2008); Roberto Perotti, “In Search of the Transmission Mechanism of Fiscal Policy,” Working Paper 13143 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2007); Olivier Blanchard and Roberto Perotti, “An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 117, no. 4 (November 2002), pp. 1329—1368; and Valerie Ramey and Matthew Shapiro, “Costly Capital Reallocation and the Effects of Government Spending,” Carnegie—Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, vol. 48, no. 1 (June 1998), pp. 145—194.

The first name on that list is Christina Romer, the outgoing head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Another is Olivier Blanchard, director of the research department of the International Monetary Fund. The CBO’s Ben Page is not quite in the same league.

In a paper co-authored with Cato Institute scholar Jagadeesh Gokhale, however, Page wrote, “If the government does not pay for what it purchases with current taxes, it must raise them later — either to retire the ensuing debt or to pay interest forever.” That explains why sending borrowed bucks to Peter at the expense of taxpayer Paul is no stimulus.

The CBO’s footnoted paper by Romer and her husband estimates that a legislated “tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent.” Moreover, “the output effects are highly persistent,” with a “strong response of investment.” The Romers acknowledge that “when marginal tax rates actually change,” it “could have large supply-side effects … on incentives and productivity.”

The second paper, by Harvard’s Robert Barro and his former student, also finds no evidence that federal spending has a “multiplier” effect on GDP. Barro and Redlick estimate that “a one-percentage-point cut in the average marginal tax rate raises the following year’s GDP growth rate by around 0.6% per year.

The third paper, by Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhling of the University of Chicago, found that “investment falls in response to both tax increases and spending increases and that the multipliers associated with a change in taxes (are) much higher than those associated with a change in spending. … The responses of investment, consumption and real wages to a government spending shock are difficult to reconcile with the standard Keynesian approach.”

The other papers in the CBO footnote likewise find little or no “stimulus” from added borrowing and spending. Reducing the highest, most damaging marginal tax rates is far more effective.

As the Romers observed, “The most significant tax cuts to stimulate long-run growth are well known: the 1948 tax cut passed over Truman’s veto; the 1964 Kennedy-Johnson tax cut; the 1981 Reagan tax cut; and the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts.”

Republicans should get some credit for the last two of those growth-oriented reductions in top marginal tax rates (the 1986 tax reform was more bipartisan). Yet Milbank suspects, “Republicans don’t realize that some of their tax-cut proposals are as ‘Keynesian’ as Obama’s program.”

That depends. Any tax policy like the frivolous 10% tax bracket added in 2001 is indeed a Keynesian policy and it always fails. Republicans suggesting that multiple surtaxes on high incomes would be harmless if postponed for a year or two are also using foolhardy Keynesian arguments.

The research by Romer, Barro and others is about raising revenues in ways that do the least damage to economic incentives, not about deliberately planning to minimize short-term tax collections.

Keynes explained that, “taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.”

By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann

September is drawing to a close and it is incredibly, amazingly clear that the Democratic Party has no strategy for winning the midterm Congressional elections. Instead, the national leadership lurches from one improvisation to another while local campaigns scramble to find garbage they can dig up on their opponents in the hopes that these negative ads will suffice even though they have no message. To the extent the Democrats address the Obama agenda at all, it is to distance themselves from it, heralding their votes against Pelosi, Reid, and Obama as badges of independence and honor. Nobody is out there saying the stimulus is working or that Obamacare is good or that the economy is recovering or that they wish we had cap and trade. The legislative program of the Obama Administration is an orphan while dissent has a thousand fathers.

Symptomatic of the absence of a national Democratic message was Obama s orchestrated criticism of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R Ohio) as a tool of the lobbyists last week while this week the Administration accuses the Republican Party of having been captured by Tea Party crazies. You cannot both be the tool of monied special interests and in the grip of outraged revolutionaries. One or the other.

On the local level, Democrats are pedaling three lines of attack against their Republican opponents, one more pathetic than the next.

* Privatizing Social Security. Many Republican challengers have embraced the plan put forward by Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan reiterating the old Bush proposal that people under 55 years of age be allowed to decide for themselves how to invest up to one-third of their Social Security tax payments. This sensible idea, rejected by a Republican Congress in 2005, is being twisted into a proposal for privatization of the system. Most people support the Ryan-Bush idea so when Republicans explain the details, they usually succeed in defusing the Democratic charges.

* Imposing a 23% national sales tax. Those Republicans who have endorsed the Fair Tax proposal pioneered by talk radio host Neil Boortz and the fiscally conservative Club for Growth have been hit with supporting a national sales tax of 23%. But the Democratic ads always forget to mention that this tax has been proposed as a replacement for — not an addition to — the federal income tax. The only people who are speculating that a VAT or national sales tax might be added on top of the income tax are in the Obama Administration. Again, once Republicans point out the truth, the Democratic allegation backfires since voters rather like the prospect of a world without the IRS, tax audits, and revenue agents.

* Shipping jobs overseas. In the most convoluted of all negatives, Democrats are accusing their GOP challengers of supporting corporate loopholes which reward companies that open overseas offices with tax favors. They derive this Republican position by construing the no-new-taxes pledge most Republican candidates have taken at the behest of Americans for Tax Reform, headed by Grover Norquist as meaning that no corporate loopholes will be closed. Of course, once Republicans point out that the Obama Administration pushed the General Motors bailout even though two-thirds of the GM jobs were abroad, proposed cash-for-clunkers even though almost half the cars were foreign, and supported TARP bailouts for banks much of whose money went overseas, the accusations fall apart.

That is it! That is the entire Democratic Party campaign! On the strength of these tender reeds rest the entire case of the Party to keep power!

The reason for this intellectual bankruptcy is plain to see. Obama and his minions refused to read the polls that showed how unpopular their program was and gambled all on a recovery summer. When it became clear that the very spending and borrowing programs they had passed had torpedoed any recovery that might once have been underway, they had no plan B on which to rely.

So the Democrats are scrambling with only six weeks to go!