Scotti Hughes - The Fed Reserves Quantitative Easing Policy

The Federal Reserve effectively said, we’re going to keep the punch bowl out, and keep whatever you make of this “recovery party” going.

The hope, of course, is all this buying of Treasury notes and bonds helps already low interest rates, go even lower. This is the third time the Fed has gone to this financial wishing well.

Frankly it’s getting old, but for now, Bernanke and company are the only game in town, and for the markets, the only hope they have. They’re not seeing much leadership out of the White House and Congress.

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PJTV Afterburner - Bill Whittle - Canaries in Coal Mines

What are the canaries in the coal mine that is our global economy? The bank crisis in Cyprus? The election of a socialist president in France? Should American taxpayers expect European policies like bank deposit taxes, and 75 percent tax rates? Find out as Bill Whittle gives you the answers.

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Barack Obama Policies has Delivered 'Despair' Instead of Hope and Change

Former Obama backers have become disillusioned with Barack Obama over the last four years. Instead of 'Hope and Change' - Barack Obama has delivered despair, uncertainty high prices, economic melt-down and high unemployment.

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Star Parker - The Economy is Also About “Values”

Somehow we’ve come to accept, regarding government policy, that there are separate “economic” issues and “social” issues. The former being issues having to do with our pocketbook and the latter being issues touching religious values and behavior.

But this is a mistake. The economy is also a social “values” issue.

It’s about the extent to which we respect private property and it’s protected from politicians.

Respect for private property is disdained in socialist countries. Respecting the sanctity of private property reflects our values as much as does our respect for the sanctity of life and marriage.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees protection from being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law.”

The Ten Commandments demand respect for marriage (honor your parents) and for life and property (don’t kill, don’t steal).

Consider the Obamacare mandate, which went into effect August 1, requiring employers to provide “free” contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs to employees as part of their health care plan.

The uproar about this has been about its violation of religious liberty – forcing employers to provide these services regardless of their religious convictions.

But this wouldn’t be possible without politicians seizing private resources of citizens to pay for this mandate.

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University activist who gained notoriety when she was verbally assaulted by Rush Limbaugh after she testified in favor of the contraceptive mandate, still promotes the cause.

In a recent Huffington Post column, she touts Obamacare as a victory for women’s “health care rights” and the fact that contraceptives are now available “at no cost.”

At no cost? Will contraceptives drop from heaven like manna?

In this case, women's "health care rights" is a claimed right for women to have taxpayers foot the bill for their birth control - to get others to pay for their contraceptives and abortion-inducing pills.

The "right" to transfer to others the costs of personal decisions regarding sex trumps taxpayers right to keep government out of their private property.

When blacks fought for civil rights in the 1960’s, the rights they fought for were equal treatment under the law. Protection of their life, liberty, and property.

It had nothing to do with claiming any so-called right to violate the private property of some and force them to pay for another’s lifestyle choices.

The costs of Obamacare, including paying for Sandra Fluke’s contraceptives, come out of our hide in the higher prices we’ll pay for products, as companies pass on their higher health care costs to consumers. And as wages stagnate, as employers take bigger chunks of paychecks to cover health insurance costs.

The CEO of Papa John’s Pizza recently said that Obamacare will add 11 to 14 cents in cost to each pizza delivered.

University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales notes in his new book “A Capitalism for the People”, “If workers feel poorer, it is because rising health insurance premiums have been swallowing up most of their real wage increases of recent years.” Premiums for family coverage, per Zingales, rose 50 percent from 2003 to 2010.

According to economist Art Laffer, government stimulus spending over the last five years totaled $4 trillion. That’s almost $13,000 for every American man, woman, and child. Our money, spent by politicians, according to Laffer, on “banks and companies that fail, solar energy companies that can’t make it on their own, unemployment benefits, and the like.”

How can we possibly have a functioning economy when politicians can randomly steal from citizens? When, basically, we have legalized theft.

Our economic crisis is also a crisis in values.

At the root of our floundering economy is a loss of respect for the sanctity of private property that goes hand in hand with the loss of respect for the sanctity of life and marriage.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Prager University - Walter Williams - The Power of Profit

Did you ever wonder why anything gets anywhere? How potatoes from Idaho, for example, end up in a supermarket in NYC? Acclaimed economist, Walter Williams, explains why it all depends on one thing -- profit.

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Steve Green - Hair of the Dog: Leak of the Week, Obama Killed Osama bin Laden with his Bare Hands

It's a leak a week in the Obama White House. Will we soon hear that Obama killed Osama Bin Laden with his bare hands? Hear more about the national security leak scandal, plus Obama's reelection chances, as Stephen Green summarizes the Sunday shows on this Hair of the Dog.

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PJTV - Chicagoland Shakedown: Why It's Impossible to Run A Business Without Breaking the Law

Istria Cafe is a small business in Chicago, one of the most over-regulated cities in America. PJTV's Alexis Garcia interviews the Pribaz brothers, the owners of Istria Cafe, to show you how regulations are destroying businesses and jobs. Would you believe that it is almost impossible to run a business in Chicago without violating rules and regulations, and paying extraordinary fines? From utilities, to health care Alexis Garcia tells you why some businesses might not survive in the down economy.

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Austin Hill - “Tire Gauge Politics:” Obama Becomes The Status Quo On Energy

“What do you think are some of the important issues in this year’s presidential election?”

My question was off-topic from the stated purpose of the interview, and my talk show guest seemed a bit caught off-guard. But I was even more surprised by his answer.

It was early in the year 2000. Vice President Al Gore was ramping-up his presidential bid, while a bunch of Republicans were slugging it out for a chance to run against him. And although the dot com economic bubble was looking like it might be headed for a burst, the American economy was still relatively stable – certainly more so than it is now.

“Well, our lack of a coherent energy policy is a huge issue right now” noted the famous automotive revolutionary Lee Iacocca. Gasoline was averaging only $1.50 a gallon at the time, and Iacocca was visiting my hometown of Phoenix to unveil his then-new electric bicycle invention. But he was willing to venture in to a discussion of presidential politics – and “energy policies” were top of mind for him.

“When I was running Chrysler I tried to get Presidents Carter and Reagan to focus on this, but when foreign oil is cheap it’s just too easy to play politics and to ignore the problem of foreign oil dependency” he continued. “One of these days America is going to end up in big trouble if we don’t make some changes…”

That was twelve years ago. And today we are in trouble – have we been “playing politics” all these years? - as yet another spike in foreign oil prices threatens our economy. And, just like in 2008, Barack Obama is once again running a campaign for the presidency in an environment of spiking fuel prices - only this time he’s the incumbent and not the outsider.

The price increases have become so burdensome that the President can no longer ignore them. Last Thursday he stated that “some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity,” and noted a headline from “one newspaper” which supposedly indicated that “Republicans are licking their chops” over rising gas prices. “Only in politics do people root for bad news” President Obama growled to his audience.

And the price surge is happening against a rather bizarre background. After denying a permit in January for the expansion of the TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL Pipeline project - a project that would have presumably expanded American oil refining and decreased America’s foreign oil dependency – the President is now stuck defending his obsession with government funded electric cars that don’t sell, and failed solar energy companies owned by his campaign donors which have “lost” hundreds of millions of our tax revenues.

This confluence of elements has led the President to begin talking about domestic oil production as though it were actually a good thing. Under his administration, the President continued in his Thursday speech, “America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” with a record number of oil and gas rigs. “We’re focused on production.”

This is a dramatic departure from the President’s previous attitude. While campaigning for the presidency during the 2008 price spike, candidate Obama scoffed at the idea of producing more oil at home. “If everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level,” he sarcastically noted in August of that year, “we would actually probably save more oil, than all the oil we’d get from John McCain drillin’ right below his feet… or wherever he was gonna drill…”

Americans need to demand both an end to the “politics of oil,” and a coherent energy policy. Never again should we settle for cynical “tire gauge politics,” or “stimulus dollars” for President Obama’s solar energy friends.

Republican congressional leaders should take the lead now – now, while the President is lacking credibility on the issue - and begin to acknowledge the obvious: the United States is home to its own substantial oil and gas resources.

There’s nothing wrong or “unfair” about this – we’ve got resources right here at home. Yet it iscurrently a violation of federal law to search for oil in the Pacific Ocean, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Atlantic Ocean, and in Alaska. Similarly, it is against the law to search for oil shale in the continental United States.

President Obama is being forced to contradict his positions from four years ago because he’s not campaigning against the status quo. He is the status quo in this year’s election, and the status quo has us, once again, “over a barrel.” Alternative energy development is good, noble and necessary – but oil is our need right now.

Who will take the lead, in the President’s absence?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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THP Videos - Obama's High Gas Prices

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Austin Hill - Do Social Conservatives Care About Capitalism

The Republican primary races are underway, and pundits are abuzz about whether or not religious social conservatives will embrace Mitt Romney.

That’s an interesting and worthwhile question. But here’s another interesting question: do religious social conservatives care about the free market economy, and capitalism?

I’ve pondered this question over the years, in previous columns and in various talk radio venues. When I do, I usually get very angry, visceral answers – responses like “of course we do,” and “how do you dare even ask?”

Despite the anger and discomfort, this is an important question to be asking. Religious social conservatives are large in number and can influence the outcomes of elections. And as our nation is currently at an economic crossroads, it remains to be seen what our country and our country’s economic system will be like in the future.

But before we think about capitalism, ponder this for a moment: who are “religious social conservatives,” anyway? According to research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 70 Percent of American adults identify with some form of evangelical Protestant Christianity, mainline denominational Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, or Mormonism.

Obviously, adherents to these various faith traditions do not all think alike on issues of culture and public policy. However many members of these religious groups share common, strongly-held beliefs and values, so it is not surprising that over the past several decades they have often exhibited similar responses to public policy concerns amid America’s changing cultural landscape.

This is to say that not every individual who practices one of these religious traditions necessarily qualifies as a religious social conservative. However, the religious social conservative movement is comprised of members all of these various faith communities, while the movement is most certainly dominated by Evangelical Protestant Christians.

The earliest beginnings of this movement can be traced back to the social upheaval of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s youth culture, and the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision. After decades of non-participation in elections and public policy debates, many devoutly religious Americans became alarmed by a “hippie” generation that was determined to overthrow our culture’s authority structures, and by their government arbitrarily determining that unborn children were not really human beings.

Thus, “social conservatism” emerged as a movement that was focused on the most basic of all social structures – the traditional family. Over the past several decades, concerns about the life of the unborn child, the rights of parents, and the definition of marriage have all taken center-stage among social conservatives, while each of these concerns have been openly regarded as “moral issues” that are worthy of religious peoples’ attention.

While the long-standing concerns of social conservatives remain in-play today, the United States now finds itself at another turning point. Will our country continue as the “most free” among the world’s free market economies? Or will the U.S. devolve in to more of a European-styled, socialistic economy, where private individuals and businesses make fewer decisions with their own economic resources, and politicians and government bureaucrats make more of those decisions?

Given our nation’s economic crossroads, and given that social conservatives are so influential among the American electorate, the religious social conservative movement needs to look within itself and answer this question: should economics be regarded as one of the “moral issues” that is worthy of our attention? And if it is, then which economic system do social conservatives prefer – our free market capitalistic system, or a more socialistic, government-controlled system?

Economic systems and policies are, after all, an expression of how a society regards both its weakest and most powerful members and everybody else in between. Likewise, economic policies often play a key role in determining who “wins” and who “loses” in a society, and they can either encourage or discourage positive, productive behavior.

Social conservatives can begin addressing economic issues by first confronting a very common assumption that is widely held as true – the assumption that capitalism is an economic system built on greed and selfishness, while socialism is a system based on generosity and “fairness.”

Despite its prevalence, this is a false assumption. When properly understood and implemented, capitalism is an economic system that allows every willing participant the opportunity to gain entry into the marketplace; demands that every participant abide by a uniform set of rules; rewards people according to a system of merit; and allows private individuals and organizations the freedom both to succeed, and to fail. Special governmental favors – bailouts and so forth – are an anathema to a capitalistic economic system.

Socialism, however, places in the hands of politicians and governmental bureaucrats the power to take away increasing amounts of wealth from certain individuals (generally the more wealthy in a society), and re-distribute that wealth to people that are believed to be “deserving” of it. In such an economic system, personal responsibility, a system of merit, and one’s freedom to succeed and to fail, are all undermined.

Economics is absolutely a “moral issue,” and our nation’s economic dilemmas are numerous and profound. Will the influential social conservative movement have a voice in setting the course for our nation’s economic future?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Lurita Doan - Harry Reid's Unicorn Problem

If Americans listen to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and once thing is clear--he is a man who is extraordinarily ignorant of basic economics, how jobs are created, and he abhors the free market. Reid has just reminded Americans just how little he knows (and baneful Reid has become) when, on Monday, Reid announced on the floor of the Senate that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns,”, “They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist.”

How silly! How delusional! How dunderheaded! How absolutely wrong!

Thousands upon thousands of jobs have been created by business owners across the United States and, while not all entrepreneurs are so fortunate, many become the "millionaires" that Harry Reid says he can't find. Having a great idea, forming a small business, working hard and watching it grow are, sadly, not part of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s knowledge base.

Reid simply doesn’t believe entrepreneurs exist. Worse yet, he goes out of his way to belittle and ridicule the very entrepreneurial spirit that has built America and made our nation so prosperous that he and his Democrat friends have ample opportunities to loot the wealth that others have created.

Reid's ignorance certainly explains why he and his fellow Democrats are so openly hostile to the business community and why they think only the government can create jobs. Yet, the real tragedy here is that Reid’s “unicorn” speech went largely unnoticed.

Small business owners create 3 out of every 4 jobs in this country. But, even after achieving success, the growth doesn't stop there. Business owners and entrepreneurs are responsible for helping others achieve business success through venture capital investing and Angel startup investing in thousands of small businesses across the country.

Ted Leonsis is a good example of a unicorn, a man who first worked and made millions (with AOL) then, re-invested those funds in new businesses (such as the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals sports franchises), then re-invested the fruits of those successes in countless small business technology startups, such as Groupon, Zipcar and Living Social. He created thousands of jobs in the process. Nor is Leonsis alone, for there are thousands of other unicorns just like him.

America is blessed with a vast network of 'Angel Investors' , most of whom are wealthy people that are willing to provide an entrepreneur, the capital needed to help launch a business, build a product or service, and get it to market. Over 60,000 new businesses are launched each year in this way, creating millions of jobs in the process and serving as the engine to the American economy.

So why doesn't Harry Reid know this?

Why doesn't Harry Reid understand that what we are talking about is nothing other than the American dream?

It's a dream that has drawn countless millions to this country for centuries and is the reason why countless millions more desperately want to come to this country. It's a dream that with hard work, some tough days, weeks, months, maybe even years, with ingenuity and persistence, any good idea can become a business success.

True, this dream is not for everyone. Not everyone is willing to take risks. Not everyone is willing to sacrifice their time, their treasure, their youth to fulfilling the dream. Not everyone is willing to work fourteen hour days, seven days a week. Because, sometimes, that's what the dream takes. Nor is success guaranteed. And, there are many who try and fail. That's okay too, because the American Dream is simply the opportunity to try for the brass ring. No handouts. No guarantees. But still, Harry Reid thinks the American Dream is a myth.

So what does that tell you?

Yes, Harry Reid seems jaded and is willfully blind to the facts concerning small businesses, entrepreneurs and job creation. Reid is clearly ignorant of all the hundred of thousands of man hours that innovators and business owners have spent growing businesses that create the $14.5 trillion dollars of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for this country annually. And, it is the fruits of these "mythical" businesses that he, President Obama and others routinely shakedown for donations, and threaten, by passing arcane legislation, often in the middle of the night without much thought or debate, to make the job creator’s task even more difficult.

So what does that tell you?

First, that Americans should be concerned that someone so colossally ignorant and dangerous could rise so high in the Senate. Second, Reid's ridiculously obtuse statement shows that he is far more closely aligned with President Obama, and Democrat Marxist meanderings, because Obama doesn't believe in the American Dream either, and ridicules those who do.

Harry Reid believes that only government can create jobs and spur the economy. I know that he is wrong. And "yes, Virginia", you can thank your lucky stars that there are most certainly unicorns in America.

Lurita Doan

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Lurita Alexis Doan is an African American conservative commentator who writes about issues affecting the federal government.

Lurita has been involved in the business community through participation in many trade associations, membership in business organizations including the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (now Entrepreneurs' Organization) and Young Presidents' Organization, and involvement on charitable community activities.

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Austin Hill - Is This What Democrats Want For Our Future?

Terrorist threats are on the rise, government debt threatens the world, and the value of our currency is being questioned almost daily. Is this the “fundamental change” that Democrats wanted from President Barack Obama?

Like it or not, President Obama sets the agenda for the Democrats. And it’s time for every elected Democrat – especially those in Congress – to answer some questions. Is this your idea of the American future? Is this your vision for the United States? We should be asking these questions in light of two broad areas of domestic policy:

National security policies that ignore trends of murderous behavior:

Within the first eighteen months of the Obama presidency, the United States sustained no less than three terrorist attacks on American soil. The first one quickly became known as the “Ft. Hood Massacre,” an inside job wherein Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army Major, a psychiatrist – and a devout Muslim - killed 13 Army service members and wounded 29 others, all within the confines of the otherwise “secure” Fort Hood Army Base in Killeen, Texas.

At the memorial service for the murdered service members, President Obama noted that “no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts” – implying that the Islamic faith had nothing to do with Mr. Hasan’s murderous behavior – this, despite the fact that Hasan himself claimed that he was acting in accordance with his religion.

Weeks later Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was permitted to board a Northwest Airlines jet in Amsterdam and fly to Detroit on Christmas Day, despite repeated warning signs that the passenger intended to do harm in the U.S. While the explosives that the now-famous “underwear bomber” was able to smuggle on to the flight did not detonate to their intended extent, they did nonetheless cause an in-flight explosion.

After the attack – and after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that “the system worked” (she admitted a day later that our air security system had failed), we were to learn that the man about whom repeated warnings were ignored was a “devout Muslim” and claimed to be operating at the direction of Al-Qaeda.

On May 1st 2010, NYPD officers were able to disarm an ignited bomb planted in a parked vehicle in Times Square. Two days later federal authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad in connection with the attack, whereupon federal agencies rushed to point out that Shahzad was an American citizen and that the attack was “home grown.” The authorities also tried to downplay the fact that Shahzad had only been a U.S. citizen for 14 months, was originally from Pakistan, and was also a self-described Muslim.

While seemingly ignoring the proliferation of terrorist attacks carried-out by people who call themselves Muslims, President Obama and members of his Administration have largely refused to acknowledge the pattern. Even this past week the Obama Administration officially classified the Fort Hood Massacre as merely a matter of “workplace violence,” as though the immense security breaches of a military compound were to be taken no more seriously than an angry outburst at any other business establishment.

Economic policies that encourage dependency and malign productivity:

President Obama’s speech at Osawatomie high school in Kansas last week is being heralded by some as his most profound speech thus far. But few of the President’s supporters have bothered to question if his rhetoric bares any resemblance to reality.

Prior to his inauguration, he claimed, America had been a nation where “those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments…but everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t.”

Really? Do the President’s supporters realize that over half of the American population has private investment and savings accounts, and that such items are not merely luxuries afforded only to those “at the top?”

Elsewhere in the speech, the President noted that the upcoming election will be, in part, about “whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.” Yet the very fact that any of us can even hope for these things demonstrates the functionality of American-styled capitalism over the past many decades.

The President, of course, ignores these economic realities. Instead, he insists that our pathway to prosperity is higher taxes, and more governmental spending of our resources – in short, more of his control over our nation’s wealth. Policies of these sorts have been painful failures for years in Venezuela, Indonesia, and his father’s homeland of Kenya. Yet the President who has positioned himself as a de facto CEO of huge chunks of the economy – with authority over everything from banks to car companies – is still vying for more control. Is this what Democrats envision for another four years – an economy that revolves around the selfish needs and desires of one man?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Chris Edwards - Infrastructure Projects to Fix the Economy? Don't Bank on It.

In a recent television ad for her network, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow stands below the Hoover Dam and asks whether we are still a country that can "think this big" — Hoover Dam big. The commercial is built on the assumption that American greatness is advanced by federal spending on major infrastructure projects.

If I had my own television commercial, I'd stand in front of the wreckage of Idaho's Teton Dam,which, like the Hoover Dam, was built by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. The Teton Dam was based on shoddy engineering and a flawed economic analysis. It collapsed catastrophically in 1976, just a year after it was built.

Increased infrastructure spending has bipartisan support in Washington these days. President Obama wants a new federal infrastructure bank, and members of both parties want to pass big highway and air-traffic-control funding bills. The politicians think these bills will create desperately needed jobs, but the cost of that perceived benefit is too high: Federal infrastructure spending has a long and painful history of pork-barrel politics and bureaucratic bungling, with money often going to wasteful and environmentally damaging projects.

For plenty of examples of the downside of federal infrastructure, look at the two oldest infrastructure agencies — the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. Their histories show that the federal government shouldn't be in the infrastructure business. Rather, state governments and the private sector are best equipped to provide it.

The Corps of Engineers has been building levees, canals and other civilian water infrastructure for more than 200 years — and it has made missteps the entire time. In the post-Civil War era, for example, there were widespread complaints about the Corps' wastefulness and mismanagement. A 1971 book by Arthur Morgan, a distinguished engineer and former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, concluded: "There have been over the past 100 years consistent and disastrous failures by the Corps in public works areas ... resulting in enormous and unnecessary costs to ecology [and] the taxpayer."

Some of the highest-profile failures include the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. That disaster dramatically proved the shortcomings of the Corps' approach to flood control, which it had stubbornly defended despite outside criticism. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was like a dreadful repeat. The flooding was in large part a man-made disaster stemming from poor engineering by the Corps and misdirected funding by Congress.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Reclamation has been building economically dubious and environmentally harmful dams since 1902. Right from the start, "every Senator ... wanted a project in his state; every Congressman wanted one in his district; they didn't care whether they made economic sense or not," concluded Marc Reisner in his classic history of the agency, Cadillac Desert. The dam-building pork barrel went on for decades, until the agency ran out of rivers into which it could pour concrete.

Looking at the Corps and Reclamation, the first lesson about federal infrastructure projects is that you can't trust the cost-benefit analyses. Both agencies have a history of fudging their studies to make proposed projects look better, understating the costs and overstating the benefits.

And we've known it, too. In the 1950s, Sen. Paul Douglas (D-Ill.), lambasted the distorted analyses of the Corps and Reclamation. According to Reisner, Reclamation's chief analyst admitted that in the 1960s he had to "jerk around" the numbers to make one major project look sound and that others were "pure trash" from an economics perspective. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter ripped into the "computational manipulation" of the Corps. And in 2006, the Government Accountability Office found that the Corps' analyses were "fraught with errors, mistakes, and miscalculations, and used invalid assumptions and outdated data."

Even if federal agencies calculate the numbers properly, members of Congress often push ahead with "trash" projects anyway. Then-senator Christopher Bond of Missouri vowed to make sure that the Corps' projects in his state were funded, no matter what the economic studies concluded, according to extensive Washington Post reporting on the Corps in 2000. And the onetime head of the Senate committee overseeing the Corps, George Voinovich of Ohio, blurted out at a hearing: "We don't care what the Corps cost-benefit is. We're going to build it anyhow because Congress says it's going to be built."

As Morgan noted in his 1971 book, these big projects have often damaged both taxpayers and ecology. The Corps, Reisner argues, has "ruined more wetlands than anyone in history" with its infrastructure. Meanwhile, Reclamation killed wetlands and salmon fisheries as it built dams to provide high-cost irrigation water to farmers in the West — so they could grow crops that often compete with more efficiently grown crops in the East.

Taxpayers are double losers from all this infrastructure. They paid to build it, and now they are paying to clean up the environmental damage. In Florida, for example, the Corps' projects, along with federal sugar subsidies, have damaged the Everglades. So the government is helping to fund a multibillion-dollar restoration plan. In the West, federal irrigation has increased salinity levels in rivers, necessitating desalination efforts such as a $245 millionplant in Yuma, Ariz. And in a large area of California's San Joaquin Valley, federal irrigation has created such toxic runoff that the government is considering spending up to $2 billion to fix the damage, according to some estimates.

When the federal government "thinks big," it often makes big mistakes. And when Washington follows bad policies, such as destroying wetlands or overbuilding dams, it replicates the mistakes across the nation. Today, for instance, Reclamation's huge underpricing of irrigation water is contributing to a water crisis across much of the West.

Similar distortions occur in other areas of infrastructure, such as transportation. The federal government subsidizes the construction of urban light-rail systems, for example, which has caused these systems to spring up across the country. But urban rail systems are generally less efficient and flexible than bus systems, and they saddle cities with higher operating and maintenance costs down the road. Similar misallocation of investment occurs with Amtrak; lawmakers make demands for their districts, and funding is sprinkled across the country, even to rural areas where passenger rail makes no economic sense because of low population densities.

When the federal government is paying for infrastructure, state officials and members of Congress fight for their shares of the funding, without worrying too much about efficiency, environmental issues or other longer-term factors. The solution is to move as much infrastructure funding as we can to the state, local and private levels. That would limit the misallocation of projects by Congress, while encouraging states to experiment with lower-cost solutions. It's true that the states make infrastructure mistakes as well, as California appears to be doing by subsidizing high-speed rail. But at least state-level mistakes aren't automatically repeated across the country.

The states should be the laboratories for infrastructure. We should further encourage their experiments by bringing in private-sector financing. If we need more highway investment, we should take notes from Virginia, which raised a significant amount of private money to widen the Beltway. If we need to upgrade our air-traffic-control system, we should copy the Canadian approach and privatize it so that upgrades are paid for by fees on aviation users. If Amtrak were privatized, it would focus its investment where it is most needed — the densely populated Northeast.

As for Reclamation and the Corps, many of their infrastructure projects would be better managed if they were handed over to the states. Reclamation's massive Central Valley irrigation project, for example, should be transferred to the state of California, which is better positioned to make cost and environmental trade-offs regarding contentious state water issues. Other activities of these two agencies could be privatized, such as hydropower generation and the dredging of seaports.

The recent infrastructure debate has focused on job creation, and whether projects are "shovel ready." The more important question is who is holding the shovel. When it's the federal government, we've found that it digs in the wrong places and leaves taxpayers with big holes in their pockets. So let's give the shovels to state governments and private companies. They will create just as many jobs while providing more innovative and less costly infrastructure to the public. They're ready.

Chris Edwards

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Chris Edwards is the director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and a top expert on federal and state tax and budget issues. Before joining Cato in 2001, Edwards was senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee examining tax, budget, and entrepreneurship issues. Previously, he was a consultant and manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers and an economist with the Tax Foundation. Edwards' articles on tax and budget policies have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Investor's Business Daily, and other newspapers. He is the author of Downsizing the Federal Government and co-author of Global Tax Revolution. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in economics.

Visit Downsizing The Federal Government Website

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Austin Hill - When Will the Economy Become a Moral Issue

“I only care about the moral issues.”

If I’ve heard that phrase once, then I’ve probably heard it a few hundred times in recent years. It’s a common response I hear when I’m among socially conservative faith-based groups and individuals, and questions about our economy arise.

As a writer and talk show host I covered the last presidential election cycle in detail. Hosting daily talk radio in Washington, DC back in 2008, it would become apparent when I was speaking with a faith-based or socially conservative caller to my show because such callers would frequently express concerns over some specific issues with the candidates. “I don’t think McCain is really pro-life” was a common concern. And “Obama says he opposes gay marriage, but I don’t believe him” was another.

To these types of statements about abortion and the definition of marriage, I would often respond with questions about economics, just to see where the discussion would go. “But what do you think of Senator Obama’s plan to raise taxes on rich people and to cut taxes for others – is that fair?” I might ask. Or “Do you think John McCain is right about the stock market crash when he says that it’s all because of ‘greed on Wall Street?’”

Generally speaking, my economic questions would bring these brief talk show conversations to an abrupt end. “I only care about the moral issues” was the response I’d usually hear – as though economic issues are morally neutral or of no moral significance at all – and then the caller would say goodbye.

That was in 2008. And today, as we close-out the year 2011 and prepare to elect a President again next year, I’m wondering if socially conservative faith-based America is now ready to regard economic matters as “moral issues.”

Given what has happened over the course of the Obama presidency thus far, it should be apparent that America is now in the midst of an economic policy revolution. Faith-based individuals and groups can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and pretend that economics is not a moral issue, nor can they assume that the various economic policies that get implemented at the federal, state, and local levels of government are all morally equivalent with one another.

Considering the severe mismanagement of private sector financial markets that helped lead to President Obama’s election in 2008, and the selfish and wasteful handling of tax-payer assets in Washington during these first three years of his presidency, the need for sound, moral understanding of the economy is as great as it ever has been.

One of the most important things that socially conservative faith-based Americans should be doing right now is thinking seriously, and critically, about people’s concerns and rejections of American capitalism. For example, one of the main reasons Americans cite for their dislike of capitalism is that they believe it is an idea based entirely on “greed.”

Just as Republican presidential candidate John McCain claimed back in 2008, there are many people today who still believe that our economic malaise was brought about simply by “greed on Wall Street,” and the solution to this all this greed is to simply empower politicians and government bureaucrats to place more governmental controls over bankers and “rich people.”

Faith-based Americans can respond to this by noting, first and foremost, that greed is a problem that impacts human individuals, and not specific institutions or economic systems. It is a “people problem,” and not a systemic problem.

From there, we can deduce that simply handing-over more control of economic resources to politicians and other government employees is not the solution to greed, because government employees are human beings and subject to being greedy as well (note the government entanglements with General Motors, Chrysler, Solyndra, and other for-profit corporate entities, and how in each of these cases public money is spent to advance the personal political interests of the politicians involved, the President’s included). Indeed, when employees of our government have the ability to control increasing portions of our wealth, along with the force of law on their side, their own greed flourishes, and we’re all worse-off for it.

Instead, faith-based Americans should be thinking more in terms of how we preserve our free market economic system, while at the same time exercising our freedom within that system more responsibly. “Greed” can be curtailed in the midst of our economic activities when businesses truly have to compete with one-another for clientele (and are thereby incentivized to treat their customers respectfully), and when each of us is truly free to both economically succeed AND to fail.

When people are allowed to experience the consequences of poor economic choices – they lose customers, homes, and so forth – rather than having their government “bail them out,” then they have an incentive to behave more wisely. And that makes for a better culture, and economy.

This is only one of many concerns that Americans face regarding our economy, and our economic system. Is the faith-based community prepared to begin addressing them?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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The Top 100 Statistics About The Collapse Of The Economy That Every American Voter Should Know

The U.S. economy is dying and most American voters have no idea why it is happening. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and most of our politicians are not telling the truth about the collapse of the economy. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, and we have completely wrecked it. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have left us drowning in an ocean of corruption, greed and bad debt. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs have left the country and poverty is exploding from coast to coast. We are literally becoming a joke to the rest of the world. It is absolutely imperative that we educate America about what is happening. Until the American people truly understand the problems that we are facing, they will not be willing to implement the solutions that are necessary.

The following are the top 100 statistics about the collapse of the economy that every American voter should know....

#100 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#99 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#98 Since Barack Obama was sworn in, the share of the national debt per household has increased by $35,835.

#97 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

#96 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.

#95 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

#94 In 2010, the U.S. government paid $413 billion in interest on the national debt. That is projected to at least double over the next decade.

#93 According to one new survey, one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

#92 State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.

#91 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.

#90 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#89 According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#88 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#87 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#86 The cost of a health insurance policy for the average American family rose by a whopping 9 percent last year, and according to a report put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, the average family health insurance policy now costs over $15,000 a year.

#85 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#84 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.

#83 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#82 Average yearly tuition at U.S. private universities is now up to $27,293.

#81 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.

#80 In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

#79 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

#78 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

#77 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees.

#76 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.

#75 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#74 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.

#73 It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.

#72 U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year. They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government.

#71 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.

#70 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#69 The U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#68 Today, the United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#67 China has surpassed the United States and is now the largest PC market in the entire world.

#66 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in "advanced technology products" of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#65 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China was "scrap and trash".

#64 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#63 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#62 If you can believe it, more than 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed down since 2001.

#61 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#60 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#59 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.

#58 If you gathered together all of the workers that are "officially" unemployed in the United States today, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.

#57 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States right now than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#56 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

#55 Only 55.3% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year. That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.

#54 Today, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.

#53 The economic downturn has been particularly tough on men. According to Census data, men are twice as likely to live with their parents as women are.

#52 According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.

#51 Incredibly, less than 30 percent of all U.S. teens had a job this summer.

#50 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#49 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#48 In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.

#47 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#46 According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20 percent of all employed Americans are making $10.65 an hour or less.

#45 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#44 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

#43 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.

#42 The all-time record for fewest number of new homes sold in the United States was broken in 2009. Then it was broken again in 2010. It is on pace to be broken once again in 2011.

#41 At one point this year, U.S. home prices had fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.

#40 U.S. home values have fallen approximately 6 trillion dollars since the housing crisis first began.

#39 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

#38 Historically, the percentage of residential mortgages in foreclosure in the United States has tended to hover between 1 and 1.5 percent. Today, it is up around 4.5 percent.

#37 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are currently at least one month behind on their mortgage payments.

#36 According to a Harris Interactive survey taken near the end of last year, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. In 2007, the same survey found that only 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.

#35 Starting on January 1st, 2011 the Baby Boomers began to hit retirement age. From now on, every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.

#34 According to a new poll by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about "maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement". Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.

#33 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

#32 In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#31 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

#30 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#29 According to one study, the 50 U.S. state governments are collectively 3.2 trillion dollars short of what they need to meet their pension obligations.

#28 A different study has shown that individual Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#27 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#26 According to a shocking AARP survey of Baby Boomers that are still in the workforce, 40 percent of them plan to work "until they drop".

#25 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans dropped into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

#24 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.

#23 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#22 More than 45 million Americans are now on food stamps.

#21 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.

#20 Approximately one-third of the entire population of the state of Alabama is now on food stamps.

#19 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#18 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#17 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.

#16 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.

#15 In Washington D.C., the "child food insecurity rate" is 32.3%.

#14 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#13 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.

#12 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#11 According to a recent report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.

#10 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

#9 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#8 The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.

#7 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

#6 According to one recent poll, 90 percent of the American people believe that economic conditions in the United States are "poor". To put this in perspective, only 11 percent of Americans rated economic conditions in the U.S. as "poor" back in January of 1999.

#5 According to another recent poll, 80 percent of the American people believe that we are actually in a recession right now.

#4 Our dollar is being systematically destroyed by the Federal Reserve. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $116.78 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $457.67 today.

#3 The Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis.

#2 The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine. Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 4700 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

#1 According to a new CNN/ORC International Poll, 27 percent of all Americans have never even heard of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

We need to educate America.

Please share this with as many people as you can. Time is running out for America, and 2012 is going to be an absolutely pivotal year in the history of this nation.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline that is rapidly accelerating. If dramatic changes are not made very quickly, we will soon witness a full-blown collapse of the economy.

Wake up as many people as you can.

We are running out of time.

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