The View From 1776

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Reader Robert Stapler gives us a picture of the Obama modus operandi in his recent comment to one of my earlier posts.  Let me emphasize one element that Mr. Stapler mentions in passing: Obama’s open declaration of intent to destroy the coal mining industry, throwing thousand workers into the unemployed ranks and greatly increasing the cost of energy for households and business.  At the very moment when our nation is on the threshold of increased abundance of petroleum and natural gas, which makes our industries more competitive with the rest of the world, Obama and his radical left-wing supporters are employing every available device to kill fracking and building new pipelines to transport oil and gas.

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A reader commented:

I am trying hard to remember any ways this administration was hostile toward business, other than perhaps trying to get them to pollute less.

To which Mr. Stapler replied:


I am so glad you asked that question.



Before going into actual evidence of administrative hostility (or abuse), however let’s look at the public perception of administrative hostility. Perception isn’t proof, but it does establish a lack of credibility for your argument. A recent Rasmussen poll (see https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/blogs/profit-minded/most-entrepreneurs-call-obama-policies-too-hostile-small-181032804.html ) found that significantly more than half of those polled agree the administration is hostile. Even a substantial number of Democrats polled agree it is hostile, though I must assume these particular Democrats agreed because they regard his hostility as justifiable in much the same ways you do (i.e., approve of it and too dumb to disguise the fact). Thus it is no secret Obama, his base, and his ideologically driven department heads are openly hostile toward capitalism generally and certain industries specifically. Any president who declares himself in favor of redistribution before he was elected can only be of the opinion ‘profit is theft’ (which is its own justification for confiscation), and that is precisely what hostility-approving Democrats applaud.


[As a sidebar, the poll results indicate voters clearly recognize the extraordinary extent to which crony-capitalism (i.e., corruption, 71%) plays a part in this administration. But, of course, you are in denial of that as well.]



So too, the 2012 election was a Democrat ‘vote of confidence’ regarding his first term, including his harsh treatment of big oil, carmakers, and insurance companies. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement of a couple of years back was a protest against corporations of most descriptions, which (both you and) the President openly supported, is another clear indication of this hostility. His callously dismissive dig against American industries suggesting they had little to nothing to do with creating our many infrastructure achievements was another give away. Therefore (and because you share in this hostility), your apparent ‘surprise’ is bogus and was meant for effect. Or, if not feigned, then you are seriously out of touch with your own party’s collectivized bitterness.



Although he eventually relented, Obama’s 2011-2012 very real threat of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire was regarded hostile by the small-business community. Corporate tax hikes are regarded somewhere between hostile and indifferent by mid-sized companies as well. Yet, it must be recognized the same is not true of many super-sized corporations as give heavily and preferentially to Democrats (see http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2011/05/09/evil,_greedy_ceos_give_heavily_to_democrats ) in 2008, 2010 and 2012; including Obama. This begs a question – why did they do that knowing they would increase burdensome taxes and regulation on them? After all, the effect of high corporate taxes and regulations (oft complained of within these pages) is entrepreneurial discouragement. High tax rates and regulation (relative to some other country or state) tend to drive smaller businesses either into relocating or giving up. Part of the answer may lie in that many large corporations have already relocated offshore or lobbied for loopholes effectively sheltering them from the consequences of these policies. Therefore, it may be they support new taxes and regulations for the relative advantage it gives them over the competition. Thus, it isn’t always obvious why big corporations give lavishly to tax & regulate politicians until you realize how it works in their favor. Also, the subsidies derived from these same hikes wind up going right back to many of the same (highly favored) corporations, partly compensating them for losses. Thus, the whole thing may be rigged in their favor, which is an idea your own party has promoted a long time. I am not saying this is the case, I am merely suggesting the complaint has merit.



You brought up pollution as a justification for hostility, so let’s explore that for a moment. Has pollution gone up or down under Obama, and, even if down, is the decrease attributable to him alone or to some combination of him and predecessors (or Congress or courts, &c)? Putting this another way, if N-presidents make large strides toward a common goal, and president N+1 adds only small amount to it, does all credit accrue to the last president standing? Or do we, in fairness, give credit where it is really due. For the sake of argument, let’s concede it has gone down recently (though there is a great deal of reason to suspect government [especially the current one] of playing fast and loose with data). Accepting EPA’s most recent assessment (see http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/how-smart-growth-and-livability-intensify-air-pollution ), it is down but stubbornly remains far greater in urban than in non-urban areas of the country, and that correlates strongly with mass transit and jammed traffic. This argues for de-urbanization to the extent feasible. Yet, one of Obama’s stated goals is to push us in the direction of greater urbanization and mass transit; which, as it turns out, is counter-productive from the vantage of meeting his also oft stated pollution-reduction goals. Yes, I know you socialist are more impressed by vague promises and lofty intentions than by actual results; but here you are hypocritical because you refuse giving recognition to Republicans who pursue those very same objectives but with far greater success. In fact, it galls you when that happens.



The same is true of Obama’s ill-conceived and supposedly ‘environmentally-friendly’ policies favoring renewable over fossil fuels. One of renewable energy’s big selling points is that it (supposedly) reduces pollution. The reality, however, is that fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel pollute more than fossil fuels; whether as consumed or in production. One of Obama’s major efforts has been push for increases for these two fuels, even if it means certain staple foods become scarcer and costlier. He has also thrown his presidential weight behind solar and wind. But solar/wind represents a far smaller share of the renewable pie than do bio-fuels, which, itself, represents a shrinkingly small part of the energy-supply pie. Moreover, both of these energy sources are so unreliable as to require backup fossil systems, thereby nullifying their primary advantage by causing the associated fossil burners to cycle often. Turning burners off & on simply to gratify renewable’s advocates we are maximizing solar/wind operations is terribly inefficient, and translates into an increase in pollution (rather than a reduction). Therefore, solar/wind in practice increases pollution, and is the tail wagging the dog. Given Obama’s preferential treatment of renewables without sufficient reason to give them such a preference, combined with his open harassments and disparagements of oil, coal and gas companies (and utilities), we can be forgiven thinking him hostile toward the latter.



These two areas (regulation and renewables) represent the largest contributions Obama has made thus far to pollution reduction, neither of which is especially effective. Bush was also an advocate for bio-fuels, renewables, subsidies and the like, but where Bush tread lightly and worked cooperatively with industry, Obama has been almost entirely adversarial and from the very start of his administration.



Both presidents did, indeed, move us in the direction of greater regulation, and that resulted in somewhat less pollution. Yet, it is somewhat speculative as to which of these two presidents should be credited more with this achievement as no assessment has been made regarding their relative contributions, and would, in any case, be difficult to prove. We do have some indications to guide us however. Four major pieces of legislation affecting energy use and pollution were passed and signed into law by Bush. So far, there has been no major environmental legislation either coming from or supported by Obama (the one supposedly more committed to this goal) other than to tweak some earlier laws. However, there has been a massive increase in regulation (i.e., backdoor lawmaking) and prosecution at his and Holder’s specific direction for which there is no real accountability. Therefore, any reasonable approval ought to go to Bush on this score. Moreover, there is no other reasonable interpretation for Obama’s almost exclusive preference for prosecutorial (rather than cooperative methods) of accomplishing his pollution objectives, unless by it he means to punish more than addresses an issue.



I can go on dredging up more and more examples of this hostility if you like, but this should suffice to prove to any casual reader, at least, you were blowing partisan smoke in your last post. If your argument is that Obama’s behavior isn’t hostile given it can be justified, then you are going to have to prove that is the only or best way to get things done AND that it represents a sufficient justification for bullying and lawbreaking; which you haven’t and can’t.



Additional readings:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101576478
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101576478
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/06/top-10-obama-anti-business-anti-job-actions/
http://www.sdbj.com/news/2013/jan/21/are-californias-tax-laws-anti-competitive-do-they-/ 
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/2/gibson-launches-government-series-guitars-tonewood/ - Gibson guitars took its share of harassment in stride and settled rather than fight; but still managed to make a statement its treatment by DOJ was both petty and a cause for alarm. As this additional report shows (see http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/29/gibson-ceo-revives-complaints-over-government-raids-in-wake-irs-scandal/ ), DOJ went after Gibson over some imported wood (which is only a crime in the wood’s country of origin; i.e., illegal to export it, not illegal to import it here). The report further suggests the real reason Gibson was targeted was because its CEO gave money to Republicans, tying this to the IRS scandal.
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See Yellen’s Missing Jobs, an editorial of The New York Sun, March 31, 2014.

Keynesian macroeconomic policies pursued by the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee are the present-day embodiment of ideas crystalized into socialist theory during the first decades of the 19th century.  The earliest systematic work was done by Henri de Saint-Simon.

In Saint-Simon’s socialism, one part of the new ruling group was to be the scientists who, in theory, understand the principles of history and the dynamics of society.  The other was to be professional managers and bureaucrats.  One of the most important tasks of the highest-level administrative councils was to foresee future trends and thus to allocate the state’s financial resources to the most productive future manufacturing and commercial uses.  We see that presumption in Obama’s dogged funding of “green” energy projects and his efforts to kill coal mining and to stall drilling for vastly more energy-efficient petroleum and natural gas.

Beginning in the late 19th century, “progressive” politicians and academics became dissatisfied with the state of American society and looked longingly toward the giant strides of Bismarck’s German Empire in education, chemistry, physics, and medicine.  Progressives attributed Germany’s rapid progress both to its strong collectivized leadership by Bismarck, and to the dominance of the German Socialist party, which was the largest and most influential in Europe.

Liberal-progressivism in this country was an amalgam of socialistic disdain for individualistic capitalism and confidence in the science and engineering that had transformed the United States after the Civil War.  Progressives believed that businesses and government ought to be run by professional managers, a view leading to the foundation of the Harvard Business School in 1908 by the newly-secular Harvard University to train such professional managers for the coming socialist society.

This faith in technocrats remains a prominent feature of liberal-progressivism in the United States.  Liberal-progressives, impervious to real-world experience, remain convinced that government planners always can do a better job for society with class-based programs and regulations than private individuals can do in managing their own lives. 

Note that fiscal policies are expressed in government’s taxes and so-called stimulus spending, usually of borrowed money.  Monetary policy affecting interest rates and the money supply is under the Federal Reserve’s purview.

The Federal Reserve Board today, as well as the officers and staffs of the Fed’s twelve regional banks, are almost entirely from academic, theoretical backgrounds, without practical experience in the business or financial worlds.  Fed technocrats maintain steadfast faith in their theoretical doctrine and believe firmly that gaining effective control over the entire economy is just a matter of fine-tuning their computer models.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that today’s Keynesian macroeconomics theories, in both fiscal and monetary policy, reprise the failed practices of the 1930s Depression era New Dealers, who had placed similar reliance upon the presumed intellectual superiority and foresight of academic theorists.  During the Depression, Harvard economist Alvin Hansen (Keynes’s chief promoter in the United States) and independent analysts like Stuart Chase (who coined the term New Deal) declared that private business never again would be able to regain the level of production reached in 1929.  The private business economy having permanently stagnated, declared Hansen, unemployment would remain at cripplingly high levels unless the Federal government undertook a permanent role to employ those out of work and to fund new technology and industry.

In monetary policy the Fed’s major move during the Depression was creation of the Federal Open Market Committee to control interest rates and the money supply among banks.  The Fed, between 1914 and 1927, had flooded the banking system with a five-fold increase in lendable reserves, leading to an artificially induced expansion of productive capacity funded excessively with debt.  In 1928 and 1929 the Fed recognized the inflationary effect of its money supply expansion and reversed course.  Rapid contraction of business ensued, and the stock market notoriously crashed in 1929.

This pattern was essentially the same as that of the housing market bubble that burst in 2007 and 2008, for exactly the same reason: the Fed’s loose money policies had encouraged and supported debt-financed over-expansion of business.

President Roosevelt took office in 1933 avowing his faith in state-planning and declaring that the old system of government based on Jeffersonian individualism had failed.  There were, of course, only two varieties of socialistic state-planning in existence at that time — Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia.  Liberal analysts of the day made it clear that what the new President had in mind was former Democratic Presidential candidate Al Smith’s prescription that “the Constitution should be wrapped up and put away on the shelf for the duration.”

The New Deal tried dozens of academically-designed programs intended to end the Depression, none of which worked.  As we entered World War II in 1941, the Depression was still with us, after eight years of Franklin Roosevelt’s tinkering. Economic conditions in 1937 and 1938 were worse than in 1933 when Roosevelt took office.  President Roosevelt, in his budget message of January 3, 1940, acknowledged that in the 1930’s, “…fiscal policy was exceedingly simple in theory and extraordinarily disastrous in practice.”

For the past five years, Federal Reserve monetary policy has blindly followed the same expansionary Keynesian macroeconomic policies, with the same lack of effectiveness.

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With respect to narcissism, columnist Michael Barone echoes my recent posting.

Read Obama Mistakenly Believes Others See World As He Does

With respect to gnosticism, the other radical left deformation of reality, I outlined the problem in The Liberal Jihad - The Hundred-Year War Against the Constitution:

Eric Voegelin addressed the persistence of gnosticism in Science, Politics & Gnosticism, based on his 1958 University of Heidelberg lecture. He wrote:

“The more we come to know about the gnosis of antiquity, the more it becomes certain that modern movements of thought, such as progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, are variants of gnosticism… The death of God is the cardinal issue of gnosis, both ancient and modern. From Hegel to Nietzsche it is the great theme of gnostic speculation, and Protestant theology has been plagued by it ever since Hegel’s time. In recent years, it has been taken up by American theologians who are faced with the pressing phenomena of urbanization and alienation.”

Conditions became even worse after 1958. In the 1970s, President Johnson’s socialistic Great Society of welfare entitlements led to student anarchism, anti-Vietnam War hysteria, riots, burning, and looting in cities. Many Christian churches effectively abandoned Christianity. Many urban ministers became supporters of paganism within the walls of their churches, opting for the flower-child spirituality of drugs and sexual promiscuity. Christianity was degraded into a feel-good association in which moral standards were rejected as offensive to people’s sensitivities.

Professor Voegelin continued:

“[In the gnostic world view], The world is no longer the well-ordered, the cosmos in which Hellenic man felt at home; nor is it the Judeo-Christian world that God created and found good. Gnostic man no longer wishes to perceive in admiration the intrinsic order of the cosmos. For him the world has become a prison from which he wants to escape… the aim always is destruction of the old world and passage to the new. The instrument of salvation is gnosis itself— knowledge.”

Foreseeing the effect of American liberalism’s gnosis, Voegelin concluded:

“Self-salvation through knowledge has its own magic, and this magic is not harmless. The structure of the order of being will not change because one finds it defective and runs away from it. The attempt at world destruction will not destroy the world, but will only increase the disorder in society.”

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