The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation’s soul. That is what this administration is doing.”

Thomas Sowell

Arthur Laffer, Economist & Author

This year’s Jamboree is different.  It marks the first centennial celebration… the 100th Boy Scout Jamboree!

President Obama was invited to speak to the 43,000 Boy Scouts in attendance.

Instead he chose to appear on the morning women’s talk show, “The View,” to discuss “the roses and thorns” of his Presidency.  This says a lot about the man.

Consider All Parties Effected

Seek Out Unintended Consequences

Ignore Candy On the Surface

Remember Someone Always Has to Pay

…………………………………………………Remind you of a recent election?

My suggestion would have been to take all $3.6 trillion and declare a federal tax holiday for 18 months.  No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all…

Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound?”

Arthur B. Laffer, Economist

“In its highest form, heroes are those rare individuals who exercise physical, moral, and intellectual virtue far beyond the capacity of ordinary men and women. During the time of the American Founding, one hero stood out above all others: George Washington. By his example, the rest of us can see what it means to be courageous, temperate, wise, and just. Washington shows us in his actions, and teaches us in his writings, how to be a self-reliant, self-governing citizen of the freest nation on earth, and he makes clear the lengths to which citizens must be willing to go if they are to defend that freedom.”

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Imagine an American President who reluctantly takes the job, with no self-interest, because he knows that he is the only man alive who has the know-how and talent to get the job done.

Cheers to George Washington!  Happy Independence Day!

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

-George Washington

Cleaning the Gulf starts with utilizing the most effective technology available.  In order to use the latest technology, impediments to using the technology must be eliminated.  Our government has flat out ignored this hard fact:

1) Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater…the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

2) …Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of (the Jones Act).

3) …Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf.  Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis.

4)…the media endlessly reports stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.

The author’s suggested possible reasons for this MASSIVE FAILURE:

1) “Sheer incompetence”

2) “Placating organized labor (which benefits from the regulation)”

3) The oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle…”You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals.

Paul H. Rubin – Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow?

In the market, when a firm fails to please its customers and fails to earn a profit, it goes bankrupt, making those resources available to another that might do better.  That’s unless government steps in to bail it out.  Bailouts send the message to continue doing a poor job of pleasing customers and husbanding resources.  Government-owned nonprofit entities are immune to the ruthless market discipline of being forced to please customers.  The same can be said of businesses that receive government subsidies.

The ruthlessness of the market discipline, which forces firms to please customers and thereby earn profits, goes a long way toward explaining hostility toward free market capitalism.”

Walter Williams

“The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms,” Greenspan said.   The “very severity of the pending crisis and growing analogies to Greece set the stage for a serious response.”

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