Step One

Temporarily cut all income taxes across the board to 15%. This tax cut would last for two years; 2009 and 2010. Since most tax paying entities are realizing massive losses during this time, the effect of drastically lowering the tax liability for these two years has much less of an impact on revenue. It also essentially gives a grant to all companies for two years to help them maintain productivity and prevent layoffs. This temporary flat tax would also prevent tax payers from selling any assets at a loss to take advantage of the tax benefits (it would make more sense for them to hold their assets until the flat tax expires and hopefully by then their assets will have recovered); preventing an asset sell-off which helps stabilize market prices. Compared to the trillions of dollars spent for the current “stimulus”, this real stimulus costs zero to implement, has no bureaucracy to set up, has zero potential for fraud and waste, and can be enacted instantly by simply letting people keep more of their own money. This temporary measure would also serve as a test for future overhauls in the tax system.

Step Two

Reduce capital gains taxes on any asset bought between Jan. 1, 2009 and Jan 1, 2011 to 5%. This reduction in capital gains taxes would last indefinitely for assets bought in that time period and would be paid only in the year the asset is sold. This would essentially create an artificial window in which an asset can be purchased with a front-loaded discount in the form of a future tax break (unlikely to ever be seen again). This would cost us nothing in the form of immediate revenue loss because the reduction in capital gains taxes would be absorbed over an indefinite period of time over which people decide to sell those assets. This would be a huge and immediate investment incentive that would instantly stimulate the economy (and save everyone’s 401k) with a clearly defined finish line, and it would cost the American tax payer nothing.

Step Three

Reduce Spending. This is the step most “conservatives” in congress seem to have had the most trouble with. All non-essential government spending should be reduced or eliminated. Any program that is not vital to maintain commerce, defense, or infrastructure, must reduce their budgets by 30% or be fazed out.

Viola. Now, despite a(n unused) degree in business, I am no economist, but I think we just got ourselves out of a serious pickle and without spending a dime. No trillion dollar deficits, no massive debt to be paid off by our children, no wild bureaucracies, no massive fraud. We kept businesses in business, which allowed people to keep their jobs, which eliminated their need for more government programs, which eliminated the need for business killing tax increases and country killing deficits.

That sounded almost stupidly simple.

Conservatism is my default state. Arriving at this state involved no affirmative actions, no teachings, no coercion, nothing like that; I did not seek it out, it did not find me, it has always been there. When I was a child, like most children, I had a sense of what was fair and what was not, and like most children I did not take “because I said so” as an acceptable answer. I guess unlike some, I never grew out of that. I am twenty six years old, and with every passing year the novelty of my conservatism wears a bit. As a teenager at family parties when the discussion turned decidedly political (as it tends to do), people much older than myself would marvel at my world view and appreciate how someone so young, despite the odds, could see the world with such realism.

I think it is that default nature of conservatism that makes “intellectuals” scoff. Unlike them, I did not have to seek my world view, I did not have to work at it, mine is not borne of academia, rather that of common sense, and there is nothing merely “common” about an intellectual. Their view is superior to mine because theirs is man-made, and man must triumph over nature. Their views have been bridled by wise men, men who in turn have made them wise; theories that have withstood the vigorous of hypotheticals and postulates; awards have been won, medals have been handed out, books written, and editorials penned. My views are not dazzling, perhaps they are even quite mundane; there is nothing particularly exciting about being personally responsible or spending only that which I have (and even being logical can sometimes get in my way, just ask my fiancee). However, I have never been a prude, I am not politically correct, nor do I take myself too seriously. I can watch the Daily Show and laugh or sit through a late night monologue without changing the channel (unless it’s David Letterman). In college, by day, I could be drafting a paper on the downfalls of affirmative action or the illogical position of abortion, and by night I could be organizing a keg race, or scouring the town procuring ping pong balls (all in the hopes of attracting the attention of the opposite sex, of which most would turn a concerning eye toward my Bush ‘04 campaign sign hanging on my wall).

Up until this point in my life I have always looked at liberalism as an illogical curiosity. An oft misplaced yet goodnatured philosophy that inevitably goes awry in Rube Goldbergian fashion. However, today I view it with scorn, before it was little threat, I never imagined the possibilities of my freedoms being so affronted, I never imagined group think en masse; now on the verge of insanity, our government has been overrun with nonsensical philosophy, and this time with the distinct possibility of it showing up on my doorstep; the pendulum has surely swung, and while I wait for Newton’s Third Law to firmly take effect, I can only sit here and make my voice heard, and vow to engage as many as I can in a serious conversation about our future.

I hope someone is listening.

originally posted on cannedjam.com August 2nd, 2009

Under the program, people who trade in their old “clunkers” get a $3500 to $4500 cash incentive to purchase a brand new car. The catch is the new car must get four miles per gallon more than the “clunker”; saving the planet one trade-in at a time. The only problem is, in order to qualify for the program the dealers who accept the trade-ins must render the engines permanently disabled, utterly destroying the value of the scrapped car.

What this does is make the car’s value so low that most scrap yards have little incentive to take in the disabled autos. See, most wreckers make their money by refurbishing the engines and selling them on the used market, you know the “reuse” part of that whole recycling motto. Since the amount of energy it takes to reclaim the metal from a working engine, melt it down only to turn it back into another working engine, is significantly greater than say just keeping the engine working in the first place, this program does little to reduce net energy usage (it would seem quite obvious to me that the most efficient way to recycle a car would be to just keep it a working car in the first place). What it also fails to do is make it affordable for low income people to purchase working used automobiles. With a sudden decrease in the supply of used cars and used car parts it makes it incrementally more expensive for poor people (you know Obama’s voters) to repair or replace their existing automobiles. What it also does is spike the output of nasty polluting factories that must now create, from scratch, cars to replace the demand for the cars that if not for the interference of the government were in perfect working order to begin with.

This program also directly competes with charities who accept used working cars to either sell to the used market or donate to needy families. So here we have a plan that does little if nothing to reduce net energy usage, takes money directly out of the pockets of charity organizations, makes it harder for low income people to maintain or replace their current cars, and renders thousands of otherwise working cars completely useless. Oh wait! What it does help to do is to re-inflate that car buying bubble (you know the kind of bubble that when it bursts causes the federal government to make billions of dollars in loans that will never be repaid) by encouraging people with “clunkers” (hmm who most likely owns clunkers?) to go into debt to finance a brand spanking new shiny car. Seems to me this program was primarily designed to increase output for the car companies while conveniently destroying their competition (the surplus they unwisely created themselves), all bankrolled by the people whom it eventually screws over, under the guise of saving the planet. With legislation like this, if the government was smart they would get into the car manufacturing business themselves. Oh wait second!

Well, President Obama is at it again, yesterday he gave yet another superfluous speech on the “torture issue” steeped in contradictions and false conclusions. Who knew Obama took the Constitution so seriously? If you have been keeping score thus far in this young president’s tenure, the blaring fact that he has completely thrown out the rule of law, the Constitution, and years of legal precedent while dealing with the economic crisis, may leave you with the conclusion that he is a giant hypocrite for evoking (falsely I might add) these same principals as the justification for ramping down our intelligence apparatus. Unfortunately, consistency of thought is lost on Obama and his supporters. His address yesterday was complete nonsense (as a speech on “torture”), yet not all was lost; in the spirit of Joe Biden, I took large portions of his text, slightly retooled it and was able to assemble a fine speech for our next president to give as a rebuke of Obama’s own reckless unilateral and illegal economic policies. The bold text are my additions, surprisingly not much editing was required. (While reading keep in mind Obama’s recent policies of violating private citizens’ property rights in the restructuring of Chrysler by seizing secured collateral and giving it away to the UAW (5th Amendment, ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation), his subversion of the legal process, his hastily voted on economic recovery package, and all the political rhetoric, fear mongering, and dishonesty to justify his unilateral seizure of the American economy. Enjoy)

[...] I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this economy strong unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world. [...] I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never – ever – turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake. [...] Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world. [...] It is the reason why we’ve been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism, outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free people everywhere in common cause and common effort. [...] Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain economic threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent. [...] There are no neat or easy answers here. But I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo. As President, I refuse to allow this problem to fester. Our economic interests won’t permit it. Our courts won’t allow it. And neither should our conscience. [...] And we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I’ve heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country. We are launching a review of current economic policies by all of those agencies responsible [...] to determine where reforms are possible, and to assure that the other branches of government will be in a position to review executive branch decisions on these matters. Because in our system of checks and balances, someone must always watch over the watchers[...] [...] There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions [...], we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term. By doing that, we can leave behind a legacy that outlasts my Administration, and that endures for the next President and the President after that; a legacy that ensures economic prosperity. [...] Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people [...] don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our economic security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our economic security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense. That, after all, is the unique genius of America. That is the challenge laid down by our Constitution. That has been the source of our strength through the ages. That is what makes the United States of America different as a nation. [...] The Framers who drafted the Constitution could not have foreseen the challenges that have unfolded over the last two hundred and twenty two years. But our Constitution has endured through secession and civil rights – through World War and Cold War – because it provides a foundation of principles that can be applied pragmatically; it provides a compass that can help us find our way. It hasn’t always been easy. We are an imperfect people. Every now and then, there are those who think that America’s economic success requires us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building. We hear such voices today [...] And though we have made our share of mistakes and course corrections, we need to hold fast to the principles that have been the source of our strength, and a beacon to the world.