by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n So, fellow critics of Obama, what would we do instead? It is easy to harp, as Obama did in 2007-8, but hard to govern, as Obama learned in 2009. So for all the criticism, let us put up some sample proposals of our own.<\/p>\n Try the following:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0Pay as you go, balanced budget\u2014whatever you wish to call a return to fiscal sanity<\/em>. Conservatives need to stop talking about tolerable deficits in terms of GDP; and liberals should cease the charade that trillion-plus annual borrowing is great stimulus.<\/p>\n The psychological effect on the American people of paying down the debt through annual surpluses would be incalculable. \u201cDecline\u201d is as much psychological as real, and begins with perceptions of financial insolvency. We have an $11 trillion economy, so balancing the books is not impossible. Note how Obama intends to \u201caddress the deficit\u201d only after he has set two budgets that will increase it by nearly four trillion dollars. Note how Bush\u2019s sin of running up large annual deficits is used to excuse Obama\u2019s mortal sin of doubling them. Note how Democrats, after lining up for a trillion-dollar federal takeover of healthcare, are worried about a multi-billion dollar expense in Afghanistan. Cuts in defense, as the later Romans knew, are always the first reaction to profligate domestic spending and entitlement.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0Freeze federal spending at the present rate, and let increased revenues balance the budget<\/em>. The idea that we could ever cut outright the budget seems long ago impossible \u2014 given the culture of complaint and the melodramatic rants about starvation and murder if another entitlement is not granted. Still, some sort of leadership is required to remind the American people that much of what their government does is not just unnecessary, but counter-productive and they would be better off without it.<\/p>\n Apparently, Obama simultaneously believes (a) he can create a permanent loyal constituency of millions who either receive or disperse federal \u201cstimulus,\u201d in the fashion of the old Roman\u00a0turba<\/em>; (b ) he can borrow so much money that higher taxes will be seen as vital and therefore the original intent of income redistribution accomplished; (c) that, having had little experience in the private sector, but much financial success as a community or government employee, he can assume that money comes out of thin air and is to be dispersed non-stop through public benefaction; (d) the upper-middle class, which strives to be as rich as he is, is somehow culpable. A common theme throughout history is a paradoxical hatred of the equestrian, productive class, by both the idle aristocratic and entitlement constituents, who hand in glove need each other.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0Some sort of fair or flat tax that ends the trillion-dollar industry of tax preparation, avoidance, and fraud<\/em>. For about a quarter of the population April 15 is a spooky sort of Halloween. Instead, we need a tax system in which one can complete the necessary preparation in about 2 hours. Whose bright idea was it to excuse nearly half the American households from income tax exposure (Clinton and Bush, and now Obama?) \u2014 a fact that explains why in Pavlovian fashion recently Senators have been saying that we can add on a new war tax, a health-care surcharge, and a new high rate on \u201cthem\u201d? The justification of a 40% income tax, 10% state income tax, 15.3% payroll tax, and new war and healthcare surcharge taxes can only be that one\u2019s income was undeserved, ill-gotten, and thus better \u201crectified\u201d by more enlightened federal redistributors.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0Close the borders to illegal immigration<\/em>, through completion of the fence, biometric IDs, employer sanctions, beefed up enforcement \u2014 coupled with a radical change in legal immigration law that favors education and skill, rather than simply family ties. The present mockery of existing law undermines the sanctity of every law. Those who knowingly break immigration laws, and know that they will not in the future be enforced, naturally assume that other laws likewise will not apply to them, from tax reporting to the vehicle code. We really must ask \u2014 why the national outcry over whether illegal aliens will be included in the new healthcare plan when $50 billion is sent back as remittances to Latin America each year? In rough math, each of the supposedly 11 million illegal aliens sends on average around $4000-5000 per year southward. Perhaps we could tax remittances to fund their healthcare? Something is strange about the attitude of \u201cI must send $400-500 a month home to support my family, but now I am broke and need someone to pay for my care at the emergency room, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0A can-do energy plan<\/em>. Offer tax incentives for development of nuclear power. Promote exploitation of gas and oil reserves in, and off, the United States, as a way to transition over 20 years to next generation fuels without enriching our enemies or going broke in the process. I never understood why nuclear power for electricity and natural gas\/hybrids for transportation \u2014 we could be nearly energy independent through both \u2014 were declared environmentally incorrect when dotting pristine fields, deserts, and mountain passes with ugly wind turbines, acres of solar panels, and miles of access roads was considered \u201cgreen.\u201d Does Obama really think that the truther Van Jones knows more about power production than the head of a natural gas or oil company, or the engineer of a nuclear power plant?<\/p>\n Now the symbolic and randomly odd suggestions:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0For grades 8-12, teachers could choose either the traditional credential or the MA degree in an academic subject<\/em>. Few laws would have wider ramifications in curbing the power of the education lobby and its union partners, and vastly improve classroom teaching performance.<\/p>\n It would cost nothing and do more for educational progress than anything of the last three decades (high school students can sense who wrote a MA thesis on the Civil War and who got a teaching credential taking Bill-Ayers-like courses on race, class, and gender stereotyping). Why can PhDs and MAs in American history walk into a JC classroom, but not a high-school history class? Eliminate tenure for teachers and professors, replaced by 5-year renewable contracts, subject to completion of contracted targets on classroom performance and continuing education. The combination of a therapeutic curriculum, with an increasingly illiterate student, has resulted in a national disaster. Hint: when students arrive ill-prepared from dysfunctional families as was common in the last few decades, they need more math, grammar, and basics, not more self-esteem and \u201cI am somebody\u201d pep courses. Each year I taught, I was struck by the ever more common phenomenon of students ever less prepped in grammar, syntax, and \u201cfacts,\u201d but ever more ready to expound on something \u2014 anything really \u2014 about themselves, usually with the theme of their own victimhood.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0Transfer the U.N. headquarters<\/em>\u00a0to an African or South American capital closer to the problems of hunger, disease, and poverty. I suggest either Lagos or Lima. Global elites could not walk from five-star hotels to the CBS studios to grandstand about U.S. pathologies. But delegates could match their solidarity rhetoric by concretely living with the other. We would get away from the \u201cU.S. did it\u201d. U.N. forces could ring U.N. headquarters when a nearby Chavez or Mugabe was rumored to be saber-rattling and crossing borders. When the Kofi Annans of the world got upset stomachs from their luncheon salads, perhaps they could address world sanitation and government corruption rather than Israel.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0An end to affirmative action based on race<\/em>. If \u201chelp\u201d is needed, it should be based on class and income. Why should Eric Holder\u2019s children be classed as in need while someone from the Punjab (of darker hue) or Bakersfield (with less capital) is considered ineligible? Why should a Carmel female at the corporate level be seen as progress, but not a son of Appalachian coal miners? The entire corrupt system is redolent of the 1\/16 laws of the Old Confederacy, as almost every American is conning some sort of Ward-Churchill-like heritage to pull off what Ward Churchill did \u2014 get some edge over the competition for something that they otherwise might not obtain. Whether intended or not, affirmative action has become the pet project largely of elites, who feel their own capital and insider connections will ensure their own do not suffer from the unspoken quotas they impose on others \u2014 as a sort of cheap psychological penance for their own guilt over their own privilege.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0Return of the U.S. Homestead Act<\/em>\u00a0and expand it to urban areas. Instead of redevelopment for wealthy insider grandees who tear down neighborhoods for convention complexes, state and local government should be encouraged to deed over idle properties to individuals willing to build homes and stay 10 years on the property. Shedding, not adding to, government land-owning makes more sense. Who knows, one might find self-help recolonization projects in downtown Detroit. Maybe Californians and some of their industries might move to the empty top third of their state, rather than families paying $1 million for an 800-square-foot bungalow in congested Menlo Park.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0Outlaw the naming of federal projects after any living politicians<\/em>. Don\u2019t laugh. Without their names on highway stretches, bridges, and \u201ccenters,\u201d most of these projects would not be built. Once a senator or congress-person accepted that there would never, never be \u201cThe Hon. Tadd Burris Community Center\u201d or \u201cMt. Bud Jones Wilderness Area,\u201d much of the earmarks would cease. What is the logic behind the notion that we immortalize a senator or congresswoman who uses someone else\u2019s money to build a bridge, or lobbies for an earmark for his district, or, at best, simply does his job? Should carpenters get every fourth tract house named in their honor for their work? Should teachers have their classrooms forever emblazoned with their own names (Instead of \u201croom 11,\u201d we would get The \u201cSkip Johnson English room\u201d?)? Should doctors have surgery rooms with their own names on the door? People who give their own money have a right to eponymous monuments, but not those who do it as part of their job descriptions and with someone else\u2019s capital. Our political class, not content with being increasingly corrupt, is now buffoonish as well. The career of the court-jester John Murtha is emblematic of the age.<\/p>\n There! \u2014 some modest suggestions for change we can believe in.<\/p>\n Vero possumus<\/em>!<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media So, fellow critics of Obama, what would we do instead? It is easy to harp, as Obama did in 2007-8, but hard to govern, as Obama learned in 2009. So for all the criticism, let us put up some sample proposals of our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[631],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-xY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2530,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/st-obama-and-the-debt-dragon\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":0},"title":"St. Obama and the Debt Dragon","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cReckless Fiscal Policies\u201d Why did Obama only enumerate George W. Bush\u2019s big spending as responsible for the out-of-control $14 trillion-plus debt, while not mentioning his own contribution of $5 trillion? Why is there a debt limit standoff now, rather than, say, in 2009 or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economic Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Economic Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/economic-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-un-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":1},"title":"The Un-Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama\u2019s favorability in the polls fell when he acted like himself \u2014 overexposed, hard-left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion. Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "First Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"First Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/first-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1809,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-too-little-too-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":2},"title":"Obama–Too Little, Too Late","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3024,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/try-a-little-honesty-in-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":3},"title":"Try a Little Honesty in 2009","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The country is still divided over the government bailout of the Big Three automakers. Mostly Democratic supporters cited the need to save jobs and ensure that a hallmark manufacturing industry remains healthy and American. Mostly Republican opponents complained that taxpayers were asked to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/american-mob-rule\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":4},"title":"American Mob Rule","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In the last three months, we've been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob \u2014 with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already angry public. The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes once described how screaming politicians \u2014 posing as men of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2590,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychology-of-debt-obamas-rendezvous-with-political-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":2106,"position":5},"title":"The Psychology of Debt: Obama’s Rendezvous with Political Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Debt Matters Over the last two decades it became an article of popular faith that budget deficits did not matter that much. Conservatives began to talk of annual red-ink in vague terms of percentages of the gross domestic product rather than in real billions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}