A new poll from Rasmussen shows that the government has lost the consent of the governed:

The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
[…]
Among voters under 40, 25% believe government has the consent of the governed. That compares to 19% of those ages 50 to 64 and 16% of the nation’s senior citizens.

Those who earn more than $100,000 a year are more narrowly divided on the question, but those with lower incomes overwhelming reject the notion that today’s government has the consent from which to derive its just authority. Those with the lowest incomes are the most skeptical.

When a government constantly goes off course by defying the Constitution, colludes with business to undermine taxpayers and attempts to alter rights and liberties that existed before the foundation of the government, you cannot expect anything less than people to lose faith.

(via United Liberty)

Hey, everyone!  Billy Hallowell here.  As you know, RENEWtv has been “off the air” for a few months now.  Today, the blog will go live again, as I am at CPAC and will be updating throughout the day.  And in the next week, we’ll be adding new video content and re-launching the weekly show.

Be sure to also follow my Twitter feed as well.  Stay tuned for more.

For most of a century, macroeconomists have debated the pros and cons of government “stimulus” policies. Because there is no way to determine how the economy would have performed without a stimulus, the debate comes down to dueling economic models, assumptions, and theories. With Nobel Prize-winning economists lining up on both sides of the issue, the debate has seemed destined to continue. Apparently, that is, until now.

PolitiFact – a group of reporters affiliated with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida – has declared the debate over. In a “fact check” column, they have declared from on high that the last stimulus bill successfully created or saved 1 million jobs so far, and will create or save 1 million more in 2010. End of debate, right?

Typically, fact-checking is limited to checking, well, verifiable facts. Whether the budget deficit is rising, how much Washington spends on Social Security, and what provisions are in the latest health care bill are not open to interpretation. They can be verified factually.

Whether the economy would have performed better or worse without the President’s $862 billion stimulus is an analytical and theoretical argument. It is not a “fact” to be “checked.”

PolitiFact’s analysis displays a lack of understanding of the complexities of macroeconomic analysis. They cite as a “consensus” four studies claiming that the stimulus worked – yet those studies were all essentially Keynesian economic models, so of course they will declare that a Keynesian stimulus worked.

For example, PolitiFact cites a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study claiming the stimulus saved (a middle estimate of) 1.5 million jobs. Yet CBO didn’t determine this from observing recent economic trends. Instead, they “proved” the stimulus created jobs by programming their economic model to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs – a classic example of the begging-the-question fallacy.

PolitiFact included no economic models from other schools of economic thought, such as supply-side or neoclassical. Nor did they consult the multitude of economists who have concluded that governments cannot spend their way out of recessions.

Instead, they openly dismiss the entire population of conservative economists, saying that “With the notable exception of conservatives, the independent economists who have produced studies agree that the stimulus has saved or created upwards of 1 million jobs, and that the bill will likely create another million or so jobs in 2010.” [emphasis added]

PolitiFact does quote the Heritage Foundation’s more critical view of the stimulus – and then dismisses it simply because it conflicts with the more liberal Moody’s Economy.com.

These macroeconomic debates are complex, technical, and messy. There is no verifiable way to determine how many jobs the stimulus has saved or created. PolitiFact’s reporters are free to believe the stimulus saved or created millions of jobs, but such an analysis belongs in an opinion editorial – not a fact check.

Poor Dubya. Not even the 43rd president’s exercise regimen — biking and running in addition to hitting the White House gym — is safe from No. 44’s criticism.

Joe Curl wrote in The Washington Times the other day how President Obama and congressional liberals think the ol’ “blame Bush” refrain will keep working  for them in the  2010 midterm elections.  (Karl Rove, for one, doubts it.  “They have been doing that very intentionally in New Jersey and Virginia thus far, ” the former president’s top strategist notes, “and both their candidates are behind.” )

One clue Curl missed in the Bush blame game, though, was in the dishy details of that 25-minute, friendly interview with Obama published Sunday by the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“President Bush biked a lot,” one of the four reporters and editors ventured. “Do you exercise daily?”

To which Obama replied:

I do, we got a little gym up there in the residence — treadmill, elliptical, and some weights. The biking thing or the running thing, the problem is that it really puts a strain on the Secret Service because they basically have to shut down a whole section and so I always feel guilty about asking them to do all that.”

But although Obama  faulted  Bush for such selfishness, he stopped short of calling it stupid.

On a visit to Prague in April, President Obama stated that nuclear non-proliferation would be a flagship policy of his Administration, with the long-term goal of total nuclear disarmament. If he is serious, then stopping Iran’s relentless ambition to join the club of nuclear weapons states must be a top priority. A nuclear-armed Iran would be not only an existential threat to Israel, but a potential nuclear proliferator throughout the Middle East. Combined with its closeness to Hezbollah (Iran is already the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism), the ramifications are unfathomably chilling.

Reports on Iran’s latest gambit, demonstrate that the brutal regime in Tehran remains perfectly happy to engage in the same tried-and-failed negotiations that have been tested to destruction and allowed Tehran precious time to advance its nuclear weapons program. Since the constitution of the EU3 in 2003 – with its policy of unfettered diplomatic engagement – the international community has failed to leverage repeated offers of generous incentive packages in exchange for greater cooperation from Tehran. The Iranian presidential elections conducted in June 2009 witnessed the vicious suppression of Iran’s people including mass arrests, politically-motivated beatings and murders, and systematic human rights abuses. These are not the actions of a nation who wants to play by the rules. 

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently stated that Tehran has already amassed sufficient enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb if Iran further enriches it to bomb-grade level. The time for light-touch sanctions have clearly passed; the U.S. must now work with the Europeans, Japan and other concerned countries – outside of the UN if necessary – to impose targeted and heavy sanctions immediately. As the largest trading partner with Iran in the EU, Germany would set a powerful example to the rest of Europe by imposing such sanctions in conjunction with the U.S., especially to Italy and France who also have significant economic ties to Tehran. It is time for Germany and Europe to put long-term global stability and security before short-term economic interests.

Ultimately, sanctions may not be enough to deter Iran from seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, in which case President Obama will be forced to accept either a nuclear-armed Iran or the use of force to disarm Tehran. For the West, the first scenario should be unacceptable; and even if the second is risky, it can not be ruled out.

You hear or read the number all the time. The New York Times breathlessly reports there are 46 million uninsured Americans and President Barack Obama routinely asserts the same number. The Census Bureau estimates, however, do not tell the entire story. The uninsured are a diverse and dynamic population, and the higher frequency of coverage loss is not only a function of the recession, but of the flaws inherent in the health insurance markets, namely the inability of individuals and families to secure and maintain personal and portable coverage. Data released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enables taxpayers to drill deeper into the problem.

• According to AHRQ’s  The Uninsured in American, 1996-2008: Estimates for the U.S. Civilian Nonstitutionalized Population under Age 65 (Statistical Brief #259) the number of non-elderly individuals for the full year in 2007 was 39.9 million.
• That 39.9 million includes 5.9 million children (see Statistical Brief #259) who are either in families wealthy enough to afford health insurance or are already eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
• That 34 million uninsured number includes 12 million illegal aliens s who the proponents of H.R. 3200 swear up and down will not receive a single dime of taxpayer assistance through the legislation.
• Most of those who are uninsured become insured. As most health policy analysts know, the insurance market is unstable; it is constantly churning with people going in and out of coverage. According to the CDC’s Summary Health Statistics for the U.S. Population National Health Interview Survey (CDC, Table 25), nearly one quarter of currently uninsured individuals was due to change in employment. And according to AHRQ’s The Long-Term Uninsured in America, 2004-2007: Estimates for the U. S. Civilian Nonstitutionalized Population under Age 65 (Statistical Brief #258) 55% of individuals ages 18-24 were uninsured for at least 1 month in the period 2006-07, but only 18 percent were uninsured over a two year period and only 11 percent were uninsured over the entire four year period.

The AHRQ data reaffirms there are gaps in coverage. There is nothing new here; it is the problem that conservative health policy analysts have been trying to address for the last two decades. It is a structural problem in the insurance markets. While the millions who lose and gain coverage- the source of middle class anxiety- is not much different now than it was in the last ten years or more, it is well to remember that the number of Americans who are poor, sick, and uninsured for a lengthy period is a relatively small number, about 4 million individuals. This is problem is not hard to resolve.

What Congress should focus on, then, is how to make health insurance personal and portable; something moderates and conservatives in Congress, based on their own legislative proposals, know exactly how to do. Instead what we are getting is just an acceleration of the already fast tracked government control of health care.

Take the SCHIP data from AHRQ. There were 5.9 million uninsured children in 1999. In 2007, there were still 5.9 million uninsured children (Statistical Brief #259). Public coverage went up, and private coverage went down; but overall, coverage remained the same. Consider that the cumulative cost of SCHIP and increased Medicaid enrollment of children has exceeded $100 billion. The data suggests that much of this spending has simply substituted taxpayer dollars for private dollars. It’s called crowd out, and it is profoundly irresponsible public policy. For every two dollars of spending, you get a $1 worth of coverage. This is likely to be repeated if Congress enacts the same, tired, old formula: expansion of public programs. Neither the Administration nor Congress has yet to explain how much of the $1.2 trillion in new spending under the House legislation will go to simply replacing private spending with taxpayer dollars.

Given the apparent political motivations behind so many of the recent decisions at the Department of Justice (DOJ) — from the dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the re-investigation of CIA interrogators after DOJ prosecutors had already reviewed the matter and decided there was no reason for further criminal prosecution — the latest news about the dropping of the investigation against New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Obama’s former nominee to be commerce secretary, raises a lot of questions. The Associated Press report cites a DOJ source saying that the investigation of pay-to-play allegations involving one of the governor’s largest political donors “was killed in Washington” by top DOJ officials.

For anyone familiar with internal Justice Department procedures, this is particularly suspicious. The DOJ has a manual called “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses” (I helped edit the latest edition when I was at Justice) that sets out the rules and procedures for U.S. attorneys when they are investigating these types of public-corruption cases. It is the U.S. attorney in New Mexico who would normally make the final call on a local public-corruption case, not “top Justice Department officials” in Washington.

The DOJ manual sets out the consultation rules for U.S. attorneys, who are required to “consult” with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington. But only consultation is required; the Public Integrity Section does not make the final decision on whether an investigation should go forward. (Attorney General Eric Holder should not have forgotten this, since Public Integrity was the first place he worked at Justice.) So if the AP is correct in reporting that “top” officials in Washington killed the investigation, then political appointees within the department did not follow normal DOJ procedures.

Now, I will be the first to tell you that I think the attorney general should have the final authority on all actions taken by the Justice Department. But that is not the rule set out for public-corruption cases being investigated by U.S. attorneys. So did top political officials in Washington make the final decision to dismiss this case against a Democratic officeholder? Have they changed the rules in the prosecution manual that only require consultation? I seriously doubt that Eric Holder will provide any answers to these questions, or that the lack of a response by the Justice Department (or the validity of the response if it makes one) will be investigated by Congress. By comparison, the Bush administration was castigated for supposedly firing U.S. attorneys for not pursuing such investigations vigorously enough, and its officials were the subject of endless congressional investigations and subpoenas. Yet the Obama administration has ended such an investigation and received nary a word of criticism. There will certainly be no congressional investigation of its actions. This double standard is depressingly familiar, but its rank hypocrisy still amazes me at times.

Cross-posted at The Corner.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced today that the Deposit Insurance Fund has dipped to a low of $10.4 billion at the end of June — that’s a decrease of 77 percent from a year ago when the fund, which covers deposits in a bank failure, had $45.2 billion.

The FDIC report also found that one in four financial institutions are currently unprofitable.

Subsidyscope.com, a joint project between the Sunlight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, has been keeping track of failed banks as as well as its effect on the deposit insurance fund.

Source: FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile

The fund is dangerously close to being depleted — it’s reserve ratio, a measurement of the fund against insured deposits, was .22 percent at the end of June. By law, the fund is supposed to remain within 1.15 percent and 1.5 percent of all insured deposits. If the ratio falls below the lower limit, the FDIC must raise assessment rates on covered financial institutions.

In May, Congress approved an increase in a line of credit at the Department of Treasury to the FDIC, should the fund be depleted. The line of credit was increased to $100 billion with temporary borrowing authority of $500 billion. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said today that they do not expect to tap that line of credit “at this point in time.”

The only time that the fund was depleted was during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, when the FDIC borrowed $15 billion from the Treasury Department.

Political Math, the guy that puts together some really neat videos explaining economics, is taking on a recent column by Paul Krugman.

Krugman is carrying the water for the Obama Administration over news that budget projections were off by $2 trillion. Of course, the CBO predicted this months ago. Krugman compares the current budget to the economy during World War II.

On this, Political Math writes:

First of all, the national debt in WWII was initiated by an existential threat to the very continuation of our country. Mr. Krugman does not make even attempt to make the case that we have a similar crisis that justifies this kind of debt.

Second, implicit in his observation is the concept that since we did fine after WWII, we’ll do fine now. But the years after WWII saw drastic reductions in the inflation-adjusted debt driven by drastic reductions in spending. Mr. Krugman points to no similar possibility in the post-Obama world.

Third, we have something now that we didn’t have in the 1940’s. Back in the 1945, at the height of the spending that saw our national debt rise so dramatically, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt made up a meager 5% of our total budget.

By the end of President Obama’s term (if he runs two terms) we’ll be looking at a federal budget that is 70% mandatory spending. (I assume for the purposes of consistency that mandatory spending includes interest on the national debt because we don’t really have a choice in not paying it.)

[…]

My problem with Mr. Krugman’s “How big is $9 trillion?” is that he is aware of all the problems I pointed out. He didn’t explain how much $9 trillion is; he obfuscated it. By comparing the debt load in the heart of a world-shaking war to a debt load that was accumulated in (relative) peacetime, he has misled his readers to the real significance of the data.

By the way, the Washington Post called for President Obama and Congress to scrap the current health insurance overhaul and start-over because of the new deficit projections.