Barack Obama — VOICES for REASON

In a State of the Union Address that purported to take energy issues seriously, President Obama took an ominous tone toward an indispensable form of energy: oil. Oil is the lifeblood of our economy, the fuel of our engines, the material of our petroleum products—and it is extremely difficult to substitute for.

And yet President Obama bashed oil as ‘yesterday’s energy,’ claiming that much of it can be replaced by biofuels, solar, and wind, if only Americans would consent to subsidizing them even more (they already get upwards of 100 times the subsidy that oil does).

This claim is completely baseless—and, at a time when oil prices are rising and Obama has already clamped down on drilling, incredibly dangerous. Oil cannot be dismissed as “yesterday’s energy,” for it is the energy of the present and will be crucial for the foreseeable future. In attacking oil, the President is not helping our energy future—he is making it far more bleak.

With a new year approaching, we looked back at some of the topics we discussed on VFR since the blog was launched. Here, we highlight a few of our favorite VFR posts that you may enjoy revisiting (or reading for the first time, if you’re a new reader).

Posts by Alex Epstein:

• Google isn’t a threat to competition–but antitrust law is.
• GovernMent propaganda
• Cash for car-wrecks
• Gut the SEC, catch the next Madoff
• Inside the mind of a financial dictator

image: flickr/myobb

In our latest Forbes.com piece, ARC’s Yaron Brook and I examine the ObamaCare individual mandate:

A federal district judge has struck down ObamaCare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional in a case expected to go to the Supreme Court. Judge Hudson is to be commended on his decision, for not only is the mandate unconstitutional, it is also immoral.

You can read the whole thing here.

By the way, Forbes.com has a new format for our column. To follow our latest, just bookmark http://blogs.forbes.com/objectivist/.

President Obama’s latest radio address celebrated the 75^th anniversary of Social Security and promised to protect it against “privatization.”

Seventy-five years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, laying a cornerstone in the foundation of America’s middle class, and assuring generations of America’s seniors that after a lifetime of hard work, they’d have a chance to retire with dignity.  We have an obligation to keep that promise; to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities, and all Americans–today, tomorrow, and forever.

Actually, we have an obligation to retire Social Security as soon as possible. As I wrote in “Don’t Save Social Security,”

Under Social Security, lower- and middle-class individuals are forced to pay a significant portion of their gross income–approximately 12 percent–for the alleged purpose of securing their retirement. That money is not saved or invested, but transferred directly to the program’s current beneficiaries–with the “promise” that when current taxpayers get old, the income of future taxpayers will be transferred to them. Since this scheme creates no wealth, any benefits one person receives in excess of his payments necessarily come at the expense of others.

Under Social Security, every aspect of the government’s “promise” to provide financial security is at the mercy of political whim…

If Social Security did not exist–if the individual were free to use that 12 percent of his income as he chose–his ability to better his future would be incomparably greater. He could save for his retirement with a diversified, long-term, productive investment in stocks or bonds. Or he could reasonably choose not to devote all 12 percent to retirement. He might plan to work far past the age of 65. He might plan to live more comfortably when he is young and more modestly in old age. He might choose to invest in his own productivity through additional education or starting a business.

…

We should be debating, not how to save Social Security, but how to end it–how to phase it out so as to best protect both the rights of those who have paid into it, and those who are forced to pay for it today. This will be a painful task. But it will make possible a world in which Americans enjoy far greater freedom to secure their own futures.

To be clear, ending Social Security would not mean a George W. Bush-style “privatization” in which the government lets us invest our money in a few government-approved ways. It would mean individual ownership, as private property, of all the money Social Security now seizes. Period.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

I am thrilled to announce that ARC’s Yaron Brook and I will now be regular columnists at Forbes.com. The co-authored column will appear twice a month and will focus mainly on issues related to business and economic freedom. The first installment addresses a debate that’s been raging over whether President Obama is anti-business. Our answer: Of course he is–but so is the rest of today’s political establishment.

Quick excerpt:

While Republicans often express admiration for Ayn Rand, the one thing they refuse to rein in is today’s massive regulatory-welfare state. To the extent they oppose Obama, it’s not on the grounds that businessmen have a right to function free from government coercion, but on the grounds that the amount of coercion Obama advocates goes a little too far.

The article’s title: “The U.S. Anti-Business Epidemic”

Finally, Yaron and I would like to thank the fine people at Forbes.com for this opportunity. We’re both excited to be writing for the Forbes audience.

image: Wikimedia Commons

In the Wall Street Journal, my colleague Alex Epstein argues that overreaction to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill left the country dangerously vulnerable. The piece begins:

Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling.

This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon’s reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history.

Read the whole thing.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview has created a scandal–but the real scandal we should be talking about is his Afghanistan strategy and how it needlessly imperils American lives.

Under his widely acclaimed counterinsurgency strategy, McChrystal “shifted the risks from Afghan civilians to Western combatants,” reports the NYT.  Translation: the rules place the lives and welfare of Afghans —  emphatically including the Islamist warriors we’re supposed to be fighting — ahead of American lives. Consider:

Before the rules were tightened, one Army major who had commanded an infantry company said, “firefights in Afghanistan had a half-life.” By this he meant that skirmishes often were brief, lasting roughly a half-hour. The Taliban would ambush patrols and typically break contact and slip away as patrol leaders organized and escalated Western firepower in response.

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf. [emphasis added]

I’ve argued in Winning the Unwinnable War and in talks around the country that this policy is self-crippling and morally perverse. And the policy is still in full-effect, as the experiences of soldiers on the ground can attest to.

Several infantrymen have also said that the rules are so restrictive that pilots are often not allowed to attack fixed targets — say, a building or tree line from which troops are taking fire — unless they can personally see the insurgents doing the firing.

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight. [emphasis added]

All of which confers an inestimable tactical advantage on Taliban fighters — “making it easier for them to hide to fight, to meet and to store their weapons or assemble their makeshift bombs.” Meanwhile, U.S. troops — with justified indignation — speak of “‘being handcuffed,’ of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency ‘in a fair fight.’” How many more must return home in coffins, because they were purposely hamstrung in combat?

By all means, question McChrystal’s judgment in making derisive comments about his boss, the Commander in Chief. But isn’t it past time to question the propriety of an Afghan strategy that both endorse?

image: wiki commons

ObamaCare included a little-noticed provision that will force restaurant chains with twenty or more stores to list how many calories are in each menu item. My view: The government has no business getting involved here. If we want to know how many calories are in our lunch, we can patronize only restaurants that tell us.

But you might wonder: Who could possibly object to giving people more information?

Well, here’s one man who does. Ken Schelper is a Vice President of Davanni’s, a small chain of pizzerias. He notes that under ObamaCare’s caloric mandate, his company will have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to replace all of its store menus, brochures, and drive through signs–every time it changes a single ingredient.

Information isn’t costless. Whether it involves scientific experiments to discover how many calories are in a slice of cheese or printing new menus, providing customers with information imposes genuine costs on businesses–costs that ultimately get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer options.

Supporters of the menu requirement would have us believe that the only reason a company would choose not to provide certain kinds of information is because it’s trying to put something over on us. That’s simply not true. It’s worth noting, in this regard, that before ObamaCare passed, customers of Davanni’s were able to find out the caloric content of their food. It was on the restaurant’s website.

Image: flickr

Did you notice the irony in President Obama’s eulogy for the 29 coal miners from Massey Energy who died recently in West Virginia? Obama has repeatedly denounced the work of coal miners for emitting CO2 and has said of coal companies that he will “bankrupt them” through “a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.” More broadly, he has shown hostility toward all fossil fuels, speaking of “the tyranny of oil” and proclaiming “the age of oil must end in our time.”

So what could the President say about men who died doing jobs he believes shouldn’t exist? What could he find positive to say? The only thing he could come up with, apparently, was admitting the truth that he denies every other day of the year–that coal miners are producing abundant, affordable, indispensable energy.

From the speech:

Day after day, they would burrow into the coal, the fruits of their labor, what we so often take for granted: the electricity that lights up convention centers like this; that lights up our churches and homes, our schools and offices; the energy that powers our country and the world.

What the President did not admit is that coal (along with other fossil fuels) is indispensable in part because all his favored sources of “green energy,” such as solar panels and windmills,  can produce nowhere near the cheap, reliable electricity we get from coal. What the President did not admit is that he’s part of the chorus demonizing fossil fuels, and that he has called for emissions from fossil fuel use to be cut 80% worldwide by 2050 despite no remotely plausible large-scale replacement.

The most true and most hypocritical line in his whole speech was: “the fruits of their labor, what we so often take for granted.” What do you mean “we,” President Obama? The reason so many people take for granted the benefits of coal is because people like you make them feel guilty for emitting CO2, while completely evading the indispensable positives we get from coal and other fossil fuels. If you really want to do honor to these coal miners, start giving speeches about the value of industrial energy, and about how a combination of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear–technologies that the “green” movement opposes savagely–are the most promising means of providing it.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Obama recently gave a speech pushing for increased regulation of the financial industry in which he said, “Now, what we’re doing, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned.” He then went on to begrudge it: “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Coming from one who is on record advocating “spreading the wealth around,” this paean to egalitarianism is not particularly surprising. But unfortunately that sentiment is common even among alleged defenders of the free market. They’re uncomfortable with the idea that some people are earning tens of millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars a year. Even if they can point out the economic reasons why great producers earn so much, they can think of no admirable motivation that would lead someone who made twenty-million last year to want to earn thirty-million next year. (You can see this in the ongoing debate over CEO pay.)

In the book Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of her Q&A, Ayn Rand addresses a similar issue. Asked why it is to a successful businessman’s interest to continue producing she responds in part: Read the rest of this entry »