Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Book Review: They’re Both Wrong by John Tamny

by

“Let cities and states experiment, after which other cities and states can asses the good and bad of their experimentation. Such an approach is far superior to national solutions that don’t take into account how different we all are. And that doesn’t take into account how experiments most often fail. Local is bliss.”

Review by Steve Parkhurst

John Tamny’s new book, They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers, available next week, is going to make people think, and for the partisans on either side, it will hopefully make them ask questions about their own arguments. I have reviewed Tamny here before, back in 2016 when he published Who Needs the Fed?, and the things I said about him and his writing style then, I maintain those words now. Good prose is my bliss, so I can turn to John Tamny anytime.

John Tamny is a first-rate educator. And if he were a politician, we would all be admiring his ability to “stay on message” and to “control a narrative.” In all his writing, continuing into this work, Tamny has thoughts and phrases that continue to appear, and that is necessary because as soon as the reader starts to deviate from common sense thinking, he reins the reader back in to the central theme.

In his opening chapter, Tamny lays out that our obsessed political culture (my words, not his) was not the vision of the Founders as prescribed by the Constitution, which “as written made it possible for Americans to have very little interest in politics, and particularly national politics.” The Constitution’s “few and defined” powers meant that people could live the lives they wanted as almost all government that actually affected them was local.

Now, Americans almost “care about politics today because they have to.” As Tamny writes, “Americans who can no longer avoid policy errors foisted on them by the political class are understandably more and more political by the day.”

Tamny continues, “My view is that both Democrats and Republicans have turned the Constitution on its head by virtue of both parties presuming to govern us from Washington, DC, as opposed to each leaving us free to choose our policy bliss through our choice of city or state.” Later on in defining all levels of government programs, Tamny further clarifies, “most government and government services should be local, and it will be understood that if these programs are going to be offered by government, they should be offered locally, if at all.” Precisely.

From there, John Tamny launches into critiques of arguments from both major political parties with regard to various issues such as immigration, global warming, taxes, spending, the minimum wage, charitable giving, free trade, school choice, stimulus spending, and more. He does all of this from an economic perspective, looking at what markets recognize and how they function, and how government seemingly fails to realize that individuals are the market, that “economies are just individuals.” Politicians tinkering with the economy is not only unnecessary, it is usually counterproductive. 

There is almost nothing the federal government loves more than trying to prevent failure. John Tamny is slowly but surely educating America that not all failure is bad. “Failure is information that informs the doings of investors in ways that persistently enhance the allocation of capital,” he writes. “Liberals ultimately believe that government is necessary to save economies, but all governments can do in fighting slowdowns is to elongate them. Never forget that economies are just individuals, and the faster individuals realize their errors, the quicker the recovery.” Tamny recalls the brilliant, late Warren Brookes and his book from the early 1980s, The Economy in Mind to remind us that, “To bail out or subsidize those companies and individuals who fail, we must tax, and therefore punish, those who succeed.”

Tamny’s argument can be further boiled down to calling attention to government spending and what the real economy, what he terms the “productive economy,” loses for every one dollar that the federal government spends. The argument is both fundamental and utterly fascinating. This is also not a new concept per se, it is just ignored by the politicians of today.

“Governments only have money to spend insofar as the private sector is creating wealth in the first place. Government spending is an effect of economic growth, not a driver of it, plain and simple,” Tamny writes. “So when the federal government spends, those in its employ are using the money of liberals and conservatives alike to compete with the private sector for access to what’s precious and what businesses cannot do without.”

As already mentioned, Tamny really does use this effort to take aim at government, more so federal than state and city. In fact, a major theme of this work is that we should be seeking to return power and decision making to the states and cities. They’re Both Wrong is not simply a screed against all government, Rand Paul has that market covered. Instead, this book is a hearty defense of more economic freedom, of more politicians doing less, and of people making the best use of their time and talent to achieve their bliss.

Let us be clear on a crucial point about this book: Tamny is not taking opposing sides to the issues of our time and pointing out disagreements among the political parties that currently rule, he is using the issues to show where both sides are wrong in their argument on those issues, especially from an economic perspective. It is a big difference, and an enjoyable one.

Take Tamny’s masterful critique of immigration. He talks about immigrants in America and the value they add to what America is. And just when it appears that his immigration concept is understood, he starts zigging and zagging, and it’s amazing. Tamny notes, “Furthermore, let’s not forget one likely reason some immigrants pursue low-wage work in the first place. Precisely because the pay is slim, they have better odds of hiding themselves and their employment from government officials. Conversely, if their work were legal, immigrants would more comfortably pursue all manner of work at all levels of pay, thus broadening their impact on the job market in general.”

A bit later, in driving home the point about government involvement in immigration, and the lack of a national “fix” to the issue, he points out a truth many of us forget, and one that others want to pretend does not exist when he states, “And as the ever-expensive—and failed—drug war has hopefully reminded everyone, increased border patrol (or worse from a conservative standpoint: more muscular policing of U.S. businesses) will grow government, but not do much to keep immigrants out.”

Finally, in his defining the idea of making work in America legal, he delivers this challenge, “In that case, arguably the best solution is an Athens, Greece-style approach. During its renaissance Greece legalized work, as opposed to citizenship. The ambitious flocked there, and its economy soared. Ideally U.S. legislators would legalize work once again, while requiring new arrivals to announce themselves.”

This country is a great and wondrous place, and it can be even more so, as Tamny opines, “The United States is the place where individuals cure their poverty, and where ideas become global corporations.” “Economic growth has the best track record of all when it comes to freeing people from lives of misery.” Perhaps both sides have been wrong about immigration for a long time now, and clearer thinking beyond platitudes and talking points is required once and for all.

Tamny early on points to the “low quality of national policy decisions” made in Washington. Recent events, typically involving shootings and crazy murderers, always have pundits and leaders looking to legislate, to “do something,” and many will utter that we need a “national discussion” on either mental health or gun rights, or both. This is precisely the idea for a book like They’re Both Wrong and for a writer like John Tamny to address the point that these decisions need to be local, not national.

The nonsense that follows is one side yelling at the other, CNN and Fox News panels (the ungodly ones with four yackers on the same screen) muddy the waters, accusations and insults are launched, presidential tweets are dissected, and eventually people stop talking to each other, then the issue (usually) dies. Rather than the sideshow, get the problem (in theory) solved locally, to the contentment of the people where they live, and if the solution works long term, other states will follow. If the solution fails, at least the failure was limited to that locale, and perhaps the next place can refine the solution until eventually maybe someone someplace gets it right. Markets work the same way, thanks to Tamny I understand better that markets, or economies, are individuals. And whether dollars and cents, or major political issues, we can get both right, locally.

One final point that needs to be made. On the issue of healthcare, Tamny makes a point that caught yours truly by surprise: Nearly everyone has a cell or smart phone, right? Did the government force everyone to buy a cell or smart phone? Did conservatives show up with a plan for cell/smart phone savings accounts? No and no. Instead, the market worked the way markets work and people got to make a choice and almost everyone now owns a phone that they chose and they can add what they want, like extra data or a protective case or a stylus or new earbuds, maybe even cordless ones. Instead of the federal government picking places to intervene and regulating this aspect and taxing or diverting dollars to the other aspect, the federal government should remove itself from the equation and let the states govern. People that are unhappy with their state, can elect new legislators, or they can choose to leave for a place that provides them their legislative bliss.

How do you chase your bliss now? First, read John Tamny, that can happen quickest. Second, choose elected officials that support your ability to chase your bliss. Those that are choosing for you, or those who want to use your earnings to reward someone else so they can build up favors for the future at the expense of your bliss, well, they’re both wrong.

Book Review: The Great Revolt by Salena Zito and Brad Todd

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

If you ever pondered during the 2015-2016 campaign season or even since President Trump’s inauguration, “exactly who are the Trump supporters?” well, The Great Revolt has some answers for you.
 
These people were not hard to find, in fact they were “hidden in plain sight,” a theme that appears throughout The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, which hits bookstores nationally next Tuesday (May 8). First-time authors Salena Zito and Brad Todd have endeavored to understand the Trump victory of 2016, and they went a step further by having a survey conducted to get into the who, what, why and how of that victory. The “where” was a given: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, typically Democrat voting states that flipped to Trump and delivered a victory.
 
I have been familiar with Salena Zito’s writing for many years now. Her writing was invaluable in the 2012 election when many people assumed a Mitt Romney victory. Ms. Zito was in the cafes and the small town mom-and-pop shops in the Rust Belt talking to real people and her writing reflected a slightly different story than the narrative that ultimately played out as President Obama was re-elected. Ms. Zito paints some beautiful word pictures in her writing whether she is sitting at the kitchen table of a mother of five in a city with a population under 8,000 people, or whether she’s sitting across from the Speaker of the House or the Vice President. In that respect alone, this book does not disappoint.
 
Ms. Zito was again in the small communities of America during the 2016 election, and her storytelling that year reflected that something different was in the air. Indeed it was.
 
She takes the same approach to introduce us to the coalition that helped elect Donald Trump in what was appearing to be the most unlikely of scenarios. As it turns out, if more elites, and by extension their media representatives, had actually spent time in small town America, they may have picked up on the story, and they may have understood Donald Trump’s appeal better, if at all.
 
The Great Revolt takes an interesting route through America’s Rust Belt region and talks with voters where they live and work. We hear from people who have faced really difficult times. We hear from people who have watched their morals laughed at and mocked. We hear from people who have watched hometowns decline in population as people left to find employment elsewhere. We hear from people who work hard. We hear from people who were just fed up. The list of grievances was considerable as Zito and Todd profile one voter after another.
 
The Great Revolt features what we might refer to as “voters unplugged.” We get to hear their real words and hear how they speak. There is no paraphrasing, which makes for a really interesting, almost conversational read. “To recognize the potential of the Trump coalition, analysts would have had to visit places they had stopped visiting and listen to people they had stopped listening to,” write Zito and Todd. That is important to note. As is the fact that Ms. Zito was in these places throughout 2016, she was there before, she’s been there since. I might be making this sound like a National Geographic special where they go into a vast jungle and attempt to monitor some animal or another in its natural habitat. For some, especially members of the media, reading The Great Revolt will be very much like that.
 
Ms. Zito in her typical writing fashion brings these voters to life on the page.
 
The people of The Great Revolt are classified into catchy categories, which became chapter titles, like the “Rotary Reliables” or “King Cyrus Christians” or “Girl Gun Power.” The voters in The Great Revolt did not share an ideology, or more properly, they were not interested in a shared ideology other than “Make American Great Again” which proved to be more of a cause for the revolt, than a slogan for it.
 
The lack of an ideology on Trump’s part is an intriguing conundrum. He spent a fair amount of time mocking the ideology of the Republican party. Zito and Todd show some cases where Trump openly mocked conservatism and they noted that, “Trump went one short step further, enacting a primary strategy in which outsider credentials were not a veneer for ideological stripes but a replacement for them.” Even against forces like Bill Kristol, whose Never Trump pleadings went unheard by many Republicans, Zito and Todd keenly suggest that there was “an angst that perhaps the voters among the electoral coalition of the Right were suddenly more interested in triumph than tribe.” There needs to be a time when ideology matters though, and the Trump years probably will not be that time. If a realigning of priorities and the role of government takes place and takes hold during the Trump years, and we have a true return to localism, then perhaps we will see the Trump years as “the great reset” on ideology.
 
The Trump coalition was not a pure Trump fan club, we know those people exist, but they are not the feature of this book. There were certainly the voters who said, “I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton,” but their reasons for the way they voted is why The Great Revolt is invaluable. We hear them tell us. The Access Hollywood tape with Billy Bush was mentioned plenty of times as a point of hesitation. Conversely, appointments to the US Supreme Court were also crucially important in deciding. The women who considered their right to keep and bear arms of utmost importance were prominent here. As was the cover provided for then candidate Trump by the National Rifle Association, which micro-targeted women with a strong, repetitive message of women protecting themselves with a firearm, and how Hillary Clinton was the one person standing in the way of that continuing freedom. The NRA was a great unsung hero of the Trump 2016 victory. So for these groups, a lack of ideology was not a deal breaker.
 
Some of the people come from areas where there is no other way than a hard work ethic, in fact, anything else is foreign. And in a country where multitudes of people are encouraged not to work and in some cases actually discouraged from working, well, there comes a point where people find that unacceptable, and they push back. “The whole workforce changed from people who looked forward to going to work, to people who make excuses not to,” notes one voter.
 
In other cases, the raw emotion of some of the people that Zito and Todd spoke with was really breathtaking. For instance, one voter, semi-rationalizing her vote for Trump, made the point about other politicians before him, she said, “but because the other politicians’ faults are so worse. Because their failures were our lives, and that is unforgivable.” “Their failures were our lives…”
 
As Zito and Todd note, these voters shared, “The sense that Trump was looking at the overlooked, and fighting for the forgotten in Middle America.”
 
An equally valuable section of the book is the concluding four chapters which serve as a sort of road map, summation, and conclusion. This is where we understand that just as there are many things that make up a so-called populist revolt, there will be many things that need to happen to sustain the revolt and to change our politics. The media takes some much-deserved heat here. But, instead of an anti-media screed, The Great Revolt is a look at and a challenge to, media and elites alike to do the work necessary to hear everyone. That includes the people who may not live within the New York City or Washington D.C. zip codes. The media, which is always an easy target for conservatives, gets pigeonholed in their echo chambers, where they become sources for each other, and they think the complaints of a New York apartment renter who overpays for a small roach-infested place to live and commutes to work via the subway carries greater weight than the opinion of the small town shop owner or the family that operates a multi-generational farm.
 
What might a change in media look like? Mark Cuban makes a brief appearance and astutely notes that we now follow our news the way we follow our sports teams. He is not far off on that. If you go to ESPN.com today, you can set the website to show you the news and the scores of your favorite teams and colleges across all sports. If you prefer to filter out hockey and horse racing, no problem. What Cuban points to is quite fascinating in our news consumption as well. Even Drudge is complicit to a degree. Look at how often a story is in the news, yet Drudge links to Info Wars or Breitbart as though either is a reliable source for actual news. That filter is what leads to a 2016 and the uprising we saw that year. If we are all choosing our news and want to continue to do that, maybe we should reconsider the sources and the content.
 
The media may think they are doing a great job of destroying President Trump’s presidency and we shall see what happens in the 2018 midterm elections, but the fact is that for the people that had a grievance in 2016, to listen to them post-2016 is to see they are even more upset now than they were then. Zito and Todd note, “Leading national journalists missed the potential efficacy of Trump’s grievance appeal because they exemplified, professionally and personally, the other end of the complaint.” Exactly right.
 
The true test for the Trump coalition might be the midterm elections this November, a chance to see if the voters only wanted a temporary change, or to see if these voters want a peaceful revolution that leaves its mark. The fact that these voters were not devoted Trumpians “no matter what,” means that the coalition could easily fracture for any number of reasons. The Democrats, and the media by extension, have their work cut out for them though. As Zito and Todd correctly note regarding the Democrats’ uphill climb, “This obsession with the redefinition of cultural norms has come at a price for Democrats. Beyond the people it offends, it denies Democratic candidates time to discuss the pocketbook issues that swing voters are more likely to use in guiding their votes.”
 
Where is the gulf between the Trump voters and the members of the media? “When the press picked Trump’s words apart for strict fact analysis, voters assumed he spoke directionally; the press took him literally, but voters…took him merely seriously,” write Zito and Todd. In that context, it is not difficult to figure out how and why the media missed the story of 2016, with one national weekly going so far as to prepare a “Madam President” issue for print.
 
The Great Revolt is not a screed against “the liberal media” or “media bias,” it is instead some of the voices of the people who had stopped being heard until 2016, people who were first given a choice by Donald Trump, and who have now been given a voice by Salena Zito and Brad Todd. This cross-section of people is worth studying, their stories are worth hearing, not all of them came to Trump the same way, but they all got there eventually. Salena Zito and Bradd Todd have done a remarkable job of sharing these stories and showing us how.

Book Review: JFK and the Reagan Revolution

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

A new book will be available Tuesday that examines the beginning of modern supply-side economics, and how the first President to suggest the successful economic policy was actually, a Democrat. Although Ronald Reagan launched an economic revolution in the 1980s, he was not the first president to put supply-side economics into practice. That honor goes to John F. Kennedy.
 
JFK and the Reagan Revolution by Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic takes an experienced and professional look at the policy workings of John F. Kennedy as he sought in his day to turn around a flailing economy and a country that was seeing more people unfit for the labor force every day. This was also a time when top earners were taxed at a rate of 91 percent of their income. Yes, 91 percent, there was a time…
 
JFK and the Reagan Revolution begins with events surrounding Inauguration Day 1961, then ventures backward a bit to set the scene, and then it starts playing out like a daily recap of what was happening. The calendar moved into 1962 and into 1963, and the whole time, the reader knows what’s coming in November 1963, but not so much about what was happening on tax rates and monetary policy as we learn in this book.
 
Most of us are familiar with two things about John F. Kennedy’s presidency, even those of us who were not alive when Kennedy was president: the inauguration on January 20, 1961 in the freezing cold which included Robert Frost reciting a poem, and also included the “ask not” phrase that Kennedy delivered flawlessly; and the tragic end of the Kennedy presidency at the hands of an assassin.
 
To properly tell the story, the authors put particular focus on a period in 1962 when John F. Kennedy took the gloves off and really went to work on his tax plans. To do this, Kudlow and Domitrovic focus on three big speeches that Kennedy gave that year. 
 
The first was a commencement address at Yale on June 11, in which none other than Arthur Laffer was in the crowd. The second was a nationally televised speech on the American economy in New York on August 13, which the authors note, “clearly ranks among the most economically sophisticated statements that any president has made on the impact of the tax code on the economy.”
 
The third speech took place at the Economic Club of New York on December 14. As Kudlow and Domitrovic note about this speech, “Kennedy’s case was that the government had gotten too big–this was why the private sector had failed to reach its potential and growth was hobbled.” This speech included a chance for audience members to submit questions, as the questions were asked one-by-one via a moderator. Kennedy “slayed his audience” so much so that the moderator finally said, “Mr. President, I ran out of questions. All I’d like to say is congratulations on your answers.”
 
President Kennedy was a man who knew what he was talking about as he hit his stride in making this case for tax reform, he knew that economic growth was both necessary and achievable. His rhetoric would start to take the shape of legislation early in 1963, so the December 14 speech was a great time to be in top form.
 
The Kennedy presidency ended on its 1,036th day, and with the bookends being January 20, 1961 and November 22, 1963, there was a remarkable development of economic policy in between. This policy would be started by John Kennedy, and it would be passed into legislation after Kennedy’s death by president Lyndon Johnson.
 
The Kennedy tax cut was stalled in the legislative process at the time of his assassination. It took President Johnson and his special way of getting things done to finally pass the legislation and get the bill on his desk for signature.
 
The first downside here was that LBJ himself, like many others on the left, was also not a believer in tax rate cuts, despite the economic growth that ensued because of the rate cuts. Eventually he started to chip away at reversing the tax policy until it no longer resembled what John Kennedy had envisioned.
 
The second downside was that while the tax cuts did achieve their purpose and the economy did improve as people went back to work, the government collected more tax revenues and with Democrats controlling things at the time, government promptly grew. Dollars for D.C. meant spending projects galore. And of course, it was at this time that LBJ’s Great Society was given life.
 
As interesting as anything else revealed in this book, is the care and concern that JFK felt for the poor and those in poverty. The authors point to John Kennedy as being someone that we might least expect to be as concerned as he was about the less fortunate. Given the later actions of Robert Kennedy, perhaps we should not be as surprised as we might be. John Kennedy would recognize, “our cities are being engulfed in squalor.” Kennedy wanted to do something about this, but his solutions deviated from those of other Democrats.
 
The difference between Kennedy and Johnson could not have become more clear. As the authors note, “Kennedy would detail some new achievement that the nation could make if the growth rate jumped, including alleviating poverty, building schools, and enhancing national defense.” In contrast, Lyndon Johnson saw government as the answer. To the surprise of even the most ardent voices on the left, this increase in government spending did not alleviate poverty, it entrenched people in it.
 
It is most instructive to look at the movement on tax rate cuts by the political parties. Here was John Kennedy in the 1960s going against the grain, and going against most of the advice he was getting. More spending was the order of the day, just keep spending money and the economy will recover. Going back in time, Democrats in the 1820s and 1840s had an understanding of the Laffer Curve, well before there was an Arthur Laffer. The Democratic party of the 1800s knew incentives mattered, and that they worked.
 
The economics profession has always felt an embarrassing sting from the success of supply-side economics as it went counter to much of mainstream economic thinking. Worse for the economics establishment, the best advocates were not economists, simply people who understood the concept and were able to explain it: think Robert Bartley, Jack Kemp and Jude Wanniski; and think both presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Even though Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer were economists, they can easily be dismissed. The Laffer Curve can be laughed off as a cartoon on a napkin, rather than a simpler explanation for what the establishment wants to pretend is too complex for the commoners.
 
An argument avoided by the Left of today is an argument that John F. Kennedy made in advocating his supply-side tax policies, that getting our tax rates right alleviates poverty, educates children, puts people back to work and allows for a better national defense.
 
The professional Left is haunted by the success of John F. Kennedy’s tax policies. Their party today does not recognize what Kennedy did. So much so that even John Kennedy’s daughter Caroline and the late Ted Kennedy once requested that John Kennedy’s image not be used when advocating for tax rate cuts. Kudlow and Domitrovic point out the fallacies in these arguments.
 
And speaking of the professional Left, the New York Times is exposed once again, this time by Kudlow and Domitrovic, even if briefly. But the Times’ misunderstanding of economics is important for a newspaper with a readership as large as theirs. They have never understood what worked and why, not in the 1960s or the 1980s, and if they cannot grasp the importance of this, how can they properly convey what is happening today or will happen in the future?
 
The media always fret about recessions. That is because they don’t understand them. The media views any economic anomaly as a chance for the politicians to “do something” which usually means raising taxes on the highest earners to redistribute via government spending. Recessions are a time of markets sorting things out, and sometimes shuffling bad ideas out the door. And to be clear, no one roots for a recession. Kudlow and Domitrovic addressed this point, “it has long been clear that recessions are a good time to start a business. Not only are the odds of a future economic upswing reasonable during a business trough but entrepreneurs can readily assemble labor and capital in the service of their new idea during recessions, because so much is idle.”
 
This comes down to knowing who to trust. The New York Times has been wrong on this issue for over half a century and counting. Why would we believe them now? And they serve as source for so many others, when they get it wrong, all their disciples get it wrong as well. Before we knew it, they had us believing that what happened did not happen, and that what did not happen would have been really scary if it happened. They do not see that two presidents, both of different parties, tried and succeeded in the face of the loyal opposition.
 
Perhaps if President Kennedy had lived, either his bill would not have become law at all, or his longer term success would have been more convincing to the skeptics. President Reagan got his tax rate cut in the first year of his presidency, and he got to tinker and reform and got the mix just right so that he oversaw seven incredible years; the “seven fat years” as dubbed by Robert Bartley. An important part of this book is the latter third that details the years after the John F. Kennedy tax rate cuts went into effect, and this includes the Reagan Revolution and brings us right up to the present.
 
Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic have done a tremendous service to the study of history, as well as economics, by writing this book. JFK and the Reagan Revolution is very easy to read and the storytelling is compelling; it is rare for a book like this to be both of these things. As they reveal, getting things right is not as complicated as some would have us believe. It has been done by both parties in the past. Freedom and prosperity are not opposite ends of the same rope; they are what the next generation of supply-siders can help us achieve by learning from the past and winning the argument.

Book Review: Who Needs The Fed? by John Tamny

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

For the second time in as many years, John Tamny has produced a highly readable, thoroughly enjoyable book. If you have not read Tamny’s first offering, Popular Economics, you should, though it is not a prerequisite for his latest work, Who Needs The Fed?: What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America’s Central Bank. Many of the things that follow here in this review, are the same things that are enjoyable in Popular Economics.

John Tamny is setting himself apart when it comes to writing about economics. He did that a while ago, now he is just verifying his status. His writing is clear. His examples are succinct. He reiterates some of his points often, and this is great. He does it simply and concisely, this is what a good teacher does. In his Foreword to open the book, Rob Arnott says, “In their clarity and depth of insight, Tamny’s writings remind me of Jude Wanniski’s The Way The World Works.” Arnott is exactly right.

Before he begins his dissection of the Federal Reserve, Tamny offers up a simple and profound truth which really starts to lay the groundwork for his argument, “Neither one genius nor a collection of geniuses could ever properly process the infinite decisions occurring in the marketplace every millisecond.” This discussion begins just after a very interesting introduction that involves Uber, a Taylor Swift concert and basic economic principles.

The reader is taken on a trip down memory lane reading about college football and some of the great coaches of recent years. Tamny helps us re-live some interesting eras in the sport, recent eras already pushed out of our minds. All of sudden, there’s a mention of Ludwig von Mises and his book Human Action. Are we still reading a book about money and credit and freedom? Most definitely. The chapter that talked about college football was detailed and specific enough that the points Tamny made, are brought up at various points later in the book. One former football coach at the University of Michigan will not want to read Tamny’s book.

There are good arguments against using pop culture references. According to some, these references may only have a shelf life of a few years, but for the here and now, they matter. In Tamny’s writing, these established baselines are tremendously useful. According to Tamny, these cultural symbols help to “simplify the narrative.” As Tamny aptly explains, “If readers can comprehend what is before them through sports, entertainment, and famous businesses, they can easily understand credit, banking, and the Federal Reserve.”

John Tamny is a serious thinker, along with being a great writer and teacher. He offers a commentary on what traffic would be like if governments got out of the business of road building. Later, Tamny discusses the FDIC and deposit insurance. Tamny’s solution seems so obvious, yet this writer had never heard it before. It is easy to see a theme here of less government and more freedom. Let markets work and do what they do. As Tamny points out, “The free market is infinitely smarter than the wisest collection of Fed minds on their best day.” Tamny even calls the Fed a “barrier to prosperity on its worst days.” This premise leads to some interesting stories and raises many intriguing questions.

Did you know that Citibank has been bailed out five times in the last twenty-five years? Tamny explains. Curious why Citadel, a hedge fund operator in Chicago, would hire Ben Bernanke after he left his post as Chairman of the Federal Reserve? You may think you know, but the real answer will probably surprise you, and probably make you laugh.

Another of Tamny’s themes involves pointing out the most basic of market forces: there are buyers and sellers, and you do not have one, without the other. Tamny states, “There are no buyers without sellers, except in the unreal world inhabited by members of the Fed.”

We seem to hear horror stories about recessions. Recessions sound terrible and the news media has done their part to make us fearful.

First, Tamny tackles the media, specifically the financial press:

“To read the financial press is often to read about what stocks “Wall Street likes” or what “Wall Street thinks.” This speaks to bad reporting. Wall Street’s main function is to match buyers with sellers. Stock market bulls can’t express their optimism unless there’s a more skeptical bear willing to sell to the bull. In bringing together buyers and sellers, the finance industry provides the economy with precious signals about where credit will be utilized best, and of great importance, what to avoid.”

Second, recessions are healthy, they are corrections to an unstable economy. Tamny explains further:

“Recessions are a sign of economic health; they are not situations to avoid. They signal a cleansing of all the ideas that are not economically viable. When recessions are allowed to run their course, the economy naturally benefits as bad ideas are starved of credit so that good ones can absorb underutilized economic resources. Recessions are a wondrous sign of a looming economic revival. No serious economist, politician, or civilian would ever want government to fight a recession short of aggressively reducing the huge economic burden that is government.”

Slamming the door shut on the concept, Tamny writes, “Those businesses that don’t satisfy market demands are starved of the resources they’re attempting to deploy so that someone more skilled can replace them.” Think Friendster instead of Facebook, something he points to on several occasions.

How can all of this help relate the Fed to the “war on poverty”? Tamny explains:

“A more reasoned analysis, one driven by market signals, would strongly conclude that the United States conquered poverty back in the nineteenth century. That’s the case because the most powerful market signal of all-and nothing else comes close-concerns where people choose to live. If the United States had any kind of poverty problem whereby the poor had no means to emerge from poverty, its population would not have grown so substantially since the nineteenth century, nor would foreigners be clamoring to live in the United States to this day.”

Can you see yet what Tamny is doing? He is taking the everyday, all the issues of our time, and showing how even the slightest meddling by the Fed and those who think they know best, often make the problem worse, or it certainly keeps the problem from going away of its own accord.

Most readers here realize that government cannot spend us to prosperity, nor can it spend us out of poverty. Government truly cannot stimulate the economy, as Tamny points out, “Federal spending isn’t stimulative, simply because Congress can only spend what it’s extracted from the real economy first. When Congress doesn’t spend, or better yet, when it spends a lot less, the real economy can allocate what Congress doesn’t consume to all manner of market-disciplined economic ideas.” Tamny later writes, “Governments once again can spend only what they have taken from the private economy first, and they deploy those confiscated resources much less productively. This isn’t speculation or ideology; it’s fact.” If you see a better summation than this somewhere, please point it out.

The “end the Fed” crowd will want to read this book, arm themselves with facts, utilize the simplified arguments and great examples, and consider changing tactics in swaying public opinion. The “end the Fed” soundbites have never been simple enough or short enough. And there are never specific examples of what ending the Fed would mean. There has never been a way to make ending the Fed relevant to the lives of real, ordinary people. This book changes that. Tamny helps make sense of the problems regarding the Fed, in ways that are relatable to all of us. The anti-Fed fighters should use these arguments and facts to further their cause.

Who Needs The Fed? also points out that ending the Fed is not the answer to problems caused by burdensome government, it is simply one of the the answers to how we can live more free and more prosperous. At such a point that the Fed is “ended”, there would still be work to do. For now, the work includes getting this book, reading it, sharing it and putting it to work for us. Ending the Fed starts with asking the question, “who needs the Fed?” Tamny’s answer is thus a fantastic answer to that question.

The alternative? Well, it might include something Tamny mockingly eluded to as the “Central U.S. Hamburger Authority” setting the prices of hamburgers for Burger King and McDonald’s.

Tamny begins his concluding thoughts this way, “The point here is that the federal government is the biggest credit destroyer of all. It’s not just the initial spending on wasteful programs that is so economy crushing; it’s the fact that government programs never die, no matter their worth.” Ever hopeful, Tamny continues later, “There’s so much to be optimistic about precisely because the answers to our prosperity are easy. Reduce the weight on freedom and credit creation that is government, and the quick result of doing so will be immense prosperity.”

Who Needs The Fed? is not a dense economics book like the macro or micro economics of our youth. This book is written much more clearly than those old textbooks, and is actually interesting. The many rather short chapters make their case and then move along to the next. Tamny’s utter disdain for the Fed is both evident, and humorous along the way. But his book is not an angry diatribe, instead it is a fact-filled, example-laden approach to understanding a complex entity.

John Tamny’s credit has skyrocketed upward with this book. Read the book, you will know what that means, and you will learn a lot more along the way.

Book Review: Too Dumb to Fail by Matt Lewis

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

“Conservatism is at a crossroads.”

Matt Lewis does not open his new book, Too Dumb to Fail, with this warning, it shows up later after the facts have been laid out and the suggestions for survival have been made. But it is an important premise that was important throughout Lewis’ new work.

Too Dumb To Fail is a page turner for sure. Given the title of the book, you might suspect the book was written by a vitriolic blonde bomb-thrower from Fox News. Fortunately for those of us who want to win and grow the movement, this is not the case. The subtitle of the book illustrates its true purpose: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots).

Too Dumb to Fail moves at a nice pace because Matt Lewis is an interesting writer. He writes clearly and does not overcomplicate topics that are easy to muddy-up. The difference between Matt Lewis and so many other writers is that he cares about the conservative movement. He is not looking back at 40 to 60 years of activism and then condemning everything about the future. Matt Lewis is as much a part of the future of our movement as he is a part of its past. Some of us campaign-types heard Matt teach sessions at party conventions, some of which included his first book, Teaching Elephants to Talk. Matt’s ability to teach us to talk, is perhaps what makes him such a good writer. He is not a lecturer; he is a teacher.

Lewis walks us through a brief, yet thorough history of the conservative movement, which of course includes Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, an edited version of William F. Buckley’s arrival in the movement, and of course Ronald Reagan’s slow but steady rise to the highest office in the land. Chapter 1, “A History of Brilliant Conservatism,” concludes with a section titled “Conservatism Was Smart.”

That eventually leads us to a really interesting chapter that discusses the hucksters who fleece our movement of dollars, yet produce nothing. Lewis humorously identifies these people as the Con$ervative Movement. For instance, Lewis writes about a group of PACs that spent roughly $54 million, but not quite $4 million of that was actually spent on getting Republicans elected. $50 million in conservative dollars wasted, possibly extorted, just in the 2014 election cycle alone. That story will get your blood boiling. We did well in 2014, but we could have done even better.

Lewis similarly discusses the 2013 Virginia race for Governor where Ken Cuccinelli nobly took on Terry McAuliffe. One group took in over $2 million saying they were going to help get Cuccinelli elected, yet they spent “less than one-half of one percent” on Cuccinelli’s losing campaign. Lewis also briefly touches upon “Joe the Plumber” (a phenomenon I never understood) and his brief stay in the limelight of the Con$ervative Movement.

There are so many great examples in this book that really highlight the problems we are up against, even within our own movement. Lewis points to absurd statistics thrown out by Donald Trump, which is one thing. Then we realize he got the phony statistics from one of Ann Coulter’s books, and the statistics have been thoroughly discredited. Then there is Donald Trump’s lack of understanding that the money that funds Planned Parenthood “is fungible.” Followed later by Ann Coulter declaring, this time via Twitter, in response to Donald Trump’s immigration plan, “I don’t care if [Donald Trump] wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper.”

One more point about Ann Coulter, and this is not covered in Matt Lewis book per se, but this illustrates the deeper point. South Carolina recently held their Republican primary and Marco Rubio finished behind Ann’s guy, Donald Trump. Coulter tweeted, “Could someone please have Marco’s bartender dad make me a mojito? I’d like to toast Trump’s amazing victory.” Marco Rubio’s dad passed away in 2010. This is why sometimes we seem like we’re swimming against the tide, within our own movement.

Lewis puts great emphasis throughout this book on intellectual thought in the Republican party, more of it in the distant past than in its present. Ours is a movement founded upon solid philosophical and intellectual arguments and principles. Lewis is not writing this to tell us that we are dumb now. He is telling us why this intellectual foundation matters. “When you lose intellectuals, you lose popular culture and, before you know it, you’ve lost the culture war,” writes Lewis.

Why did Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark not really matter to the outcome of the 2012 election? Lewis has an interesting take on this in the wider view of our culture wars.

Lewis challenges us not to simply walk away from pop culture, but rather to influence it and affect it. “Christian conservatives must work to authentically engage the culture, instead of trying to ape what’s already popular.” As Lewis notes later, “By first rejecting the culture and turning inward, and then focusing almost solely on politics, conservatives now find themselves increasingly shut out of major conversations that average Americans are interested in.” Lewis arrives at a sensible and pragmatic solution, “The answer is for conservatives to make good art, not necessarily to make conservative art.”

Do you think pop culture and the conservative movement do not go together? Lewis correctly points out that, “Winning elections means having a tent big enough to attract a majority.” He follows that up later with an entire chapter titled, “Modernize, Don’t Moderate.” He was right to do this because too often the “big tent” concept gets labeled as something it is not, and those in pursuit of a bigger tent are labeled as well.

We have some demographic realities to face. Whether it is race, education, age, location, or marital status, our movement is losing ground in many of the numbers that matter. Lewis writes, “the conservative moment appears to want to keep the GOP a party almost exclusively for older, whiter, more rural Americans.” He continues, “For Reagan-Kemp conservatives, this is a philosophical and mathematical problem.” Rather than “doubling down on cohorts that are losing population,” Lewis is instead suggesting ways that we can grow the movement without dumbing down our principles.

On election day 2012, when Mitt Romney would fall short of unseating an incumbent President, exit poll respondents were asked about four qualities of each candidate, Romney and Obama. Mitt Romney won on three of the four qualities, but it was the one quality that Obama won that made all the difference. On the question about which candidate “cares about people like me,” Obama won in a landslide. Lewis tells us what that number was, and why it matters.

Lewis has a message for talk radio hosts, read the book to see it, it is important. Lewis talks about the faux warnings from some hosts and what he terms “apocalyptic punditry.” If we “never leave the echo chamber,” Lewis warns, we are more prone to believe the “apocalyptic punditry” or even buy into the unbelievable election predictions, like the one Dick Morris made in 2012 about Romney winning 300 electoral votes on his way to a 5 to 10 point win. (Romney got 206 electoral votes, Obama got 332, and Romney lost by nearly 4 percentage points). Lewis humorously notes, “Morris’s predictions were so egregious that Fox News actually dropped him as a contributor.”

So, what should conservatives do today? Lewis writes, “The real answer, I suggest, is to look to the Reagan model-but not in a way that looks backward or assumes nominating a hard-core conservative is a panacea. Reagan looked to the future, and so should we.” This will not be easy, change is tough. But change can also be our missing ingredient. The reality about the Right, is as Lewis notes, “it has to be better, stronger, tougher, smarter.” Too Dumb to Fail can help with all of that.

Finally, readers will get twenty book suggestions at the end. I am going to do what every author wants done and suggest you get a copy of the book and read the list (and the entire book) for yourself. Lewis’ book suggestions are not typical. If you go in expecting to see books by Sean Hannity, Dick Morris or Michael Savage, or any of Ann Coulter’s books, you will be disappointed. This list is deeper than all of that.

There is so much more in this book. For instance, what is pastor Tim Keller doing that is worth replicating within the conservative movement? What are “Ideological Immigrants”? Why are we implored to “Teach Your Children Well”? What about think tanks that are now becoming activists as well? What is “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”? And what is the reality about how to “Appeal to Hispanics”?

This all amounts to a very interesting book at a very good time.

I have intentionally been vague on many of the topics discussed in Too Dumb to Fail because I want to really encourage you to read this book. It is a quick read, it is succinct and well written, it is a critique and not a condemnation, and perhaps as important, it is aspirational. Too Dumb to Fail is a book I will go back to over the next few years and make sure I have properly implemented many of the suggestions that Lewis makes.

As a final tease for Too Dumb to Fail, any book that can recall a scene from the baseball movie Bull Durham, which involves a great scene between Crash Davis and Nuke LaLoosh, and can relate that to political messaging, that’s a job well done. Enjoy.

Paul Ryan For Speaker

by

Paul Ryan American flag

By Ed Hubbard and Steve Parkhurst

By the end of this week, Congressman Paul Ryan will be the next Speaker of the House. Both of us believe that his election will be a great step forward for our party and our country.

Unfortunately, some among us will always be unhappy—even when they get what they want.  They will continue to criticize, fundraise, and write books based on the division they continue to create, including now shooting their rhetorical guns at Ryan, whom many of these “conservative” critics adored just yesterday.  Seriously, with friends like these, who needs the Democrats?

Regardless of the noise these dividers may generate, the truth is that the elevation for Ryan to the Speakership provides us with a rare opportunity to both reform government based on conservative principles, and to then actually govern using those principles.

For his part, Ryan has been offering insights into what he wants to accomplish as Speaker. In an email last week to his House colleagues, Ryan wrote, “I know many of you want to show the country how to fix our tax code, how to rebuild our military, how to strengthen the safety net, and how to lift people out of poverty. I know you’re willing to work hard and get it done, and I think this moment is ripe for real reform.”

For a real understanding of Paul Ryan, look no further than to his 2014 book, The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea. The reality of Ryan’s early life, including the loss of his dad, and his introduction to the political process, are all worth reading in further detail. Understanding Ryan’s family, and his commitment to and appreciation of time with his wife and three kids, is also worthwhile.  All of these life experiences have combined with his commitment to conservative principles to create a coherent conservative reformer and leader.

As for the “real reform” that Ryan spoke of, as a leader in the Republican party, he already has demonstrated his willingness to buck the system as needed, and he has offered roadmaps for economic growth and entitlement reform.

A post last week by the Tax Foundation stated that under a Speaker Ryan, “the prospects for sound, comprehensive tax reform are bright.” This should be no surprise, after all Ryan had his economic and supply-side upbringing at the foot of the master, the late Jack Kemp. This finding was based on the ten months that Ryan has spent as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and the work of that body in those ten months.

And Ryan’s commitment to Reagan’s and Kemp’s visions of the Republican party doesn’t end with tax reform, but extends to their dreams of giving all our neighbors a hand-up out of poverty through the creative use of the free market, the private sector, and local institutions. Fifty years of failure caused by the current model of a “war on poverty” is simply enough wasted time and money, and enough of the loss of dignity, pride and hope for the millions who got swallowed up by the insidious programs and offerings from big government. Ryan points a way for our party and our communities toward a better model.

Paul Ryan released his findings and offered a new plan in the summer of 2014. His plan went nowhere, as is to be expected with President Obama clinging to his pen and his phone. However, what Ryan seeks, a consolidation of redundant services that offer help to the poor and needy, and thus a wiser use of the money so that more of the money being spent is enabling those seeking a hand-up and not a handout, instead of being spent of bigger and bigger government.

Ryan’s embrace of civil society is true to the roots of conservatism. True conservatism is rooted in efforts of individuals and private organizations stepping in where government can be pushed aside. This line of thinking needs a greater embrace from Republicans and from conservatives. If you desire a more constitutionally limited government, this is one way to begin the march toward it.

Therefore, our emphatic support of Ryan should not be confused with an embrace of the idea that conservatives should “compassionately” do more at the federal level. As limited government conservatives, we want power restored to local communities, sooner rather than later. Instead, our support for Paul Ryan is an embrace of a new way forward. It is support for shining a light on problems that get us to stop tinkering around the edges, and instead adopt reforms that really help our neighbors live better lives and achieve their God-given potentials.

One way to gage Ryan’s potential is by the enemies he is already creating—he is the Speaker the Dems have always feared.  According to the likes of the New York Times, Huffington Post, Mother Jones and Slate, the liberals don’t want him as the next Speaker.  In fact, John Hart candidly noted in his editorial for Opportunity Lives, “Ryan is the Speaker conservatives have always dreamed of and liberals have always feared. Let the battle begin.”

Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, wrote for Investor’s Business Daily last week, “If Paul Ryan is speaker, he will have a chance to lead. A chance to show his critics that he can truly unite the Republican Party around limited government principles and make progress in stopping Obama’s agenda.”  We agree.

In his email to House colleagues last week, Ryan stated, “we can show the country what a commonsense conservative agenda looks like.” Again, we agree.  Let’s finally unite to press that agenda.

As we see it, Paul Ryan is the best choice for Speaker of the House. He is the right man at the right time.

Review: Jack Kemp by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes

by

By Steve Parkhurst

Finally! It may have taken six and a half years after his passing, but there is finally a book decidedly about Jack Kemp. Due for release in bookstores and online this coming Tuesday, Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes, offers readers a fresh recap of the life of “the most important politician of the twentieth century who was not President.” A sentiment I agree with fully.

Any reader of Big Jolly Politics knows of the regular mentions of Jack Kemp on this website, primarily by Ed Hubbard and myself, but not limited to the two of us.

While Jack Kemp is not an authorized biography, this is the first attempt to explain a man and his legacy that deserves understanding and studying. Jack Kemp is well documented and it reads fairly well as it never gets bogged down in mush the way some political narratives can.

The authors rely on news reports of the day and official documents to back up plenty of fresh interviews with those who worked with Jack Kemp over the course of his days as a football player, a Congressman, a Presidential candidate, a Vice-Presidential candidate and finally as a think tank entrepreneur.

Kondracke and Barnes spend a lot of time weaving their way through the two biggest domestic legislative accomplishments of the Ronald Reagan presidency: the Economic Recovery and Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Jack Kemp was crucial and necessary to both.

The supply-side economics which were the basis of the large tax rate cuts voted and signed into law in 1981 are but one part of the success story. The 1986 Tax Reform Act was at least equally as important, though seemingly less talked about in political writing. Much has been written about the supply-side economics movement on the 1970s and 1980s, but the 1986 story is told less often.

Both stories are shared in Jack Kemp in great detail, with Jack Kemp not necessarily playing the hero, but showing true leadership, much of it based purely on principle. And readers are offered a play-by-play for both, and for good reason.

The twenty-five years of prosperity that the tax rate cuts engineered are impossible to argue against, though many on the Left are still trying to debunk. And the tax reform was so monumental it garnered “the largest audience for a bill signing during the Reagan presidency.” And as Kondracke and Barnes note, “Reagan called the measure “the best anti-poverty bill, the best pro-family measure, the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.”

The authors also editorialized, “The 1986 tax reform stands even now as a model for leaders of both parties who hope to make the tax code simpler, fairer, and more economically efficient.” Reading Jack Kemp makes this statement clearer, and valid.

These were stories worth reading. For some, the play-by-play will be too much minutiae to digest. For students or researchers, there can never be enough. It is a fine line to tread with a book such as this. Congressional and policy battles can be that way. And the policy fights are not limited to economics, but also reach into foreign policy and matters related to the defense of the nation.

Jack Kemp offers much in the way of campaign reporting on Kemp’s campaign for President in 1988 and his campaign to be Bob Dole’s Vice President in 1996. But compared to the policy battles of the day, the campaigns were given considerably less space.

One disappointment in Jack Kemp, is the lack of focus on Kemp’s work in what we would call “civil society,” though there are many differing views on what that actually refers to. Yes, there is an entire chapter titled “Poverty Warrior” which recounts Kemp’s years as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). But this chapter really does not do justice to what Jack Kemp wanted and what he was actually fighting for.

During the years of the first Bush Administration, 1989 and 1993, there was only one point where a Kempian approach to things could have really changed perceptions and reality for President Bush. That point came in 1992 when Los Angeles erupted into riots after the Rodney King jury verdict. Jack Kemp was probably the last best hope to save the Bush administration and earn it a second term in office.

But, it was too late to save the Bush presidency. The work that Kemp had pursued could have changed history, had there been a more receptive audience, both in the White House and around the country. By the time the Bush administration cared about what Jack Kemp wanted to address, Bill Clinton had already told audiences he felt their pain, and he was on his way to unseating an incumbent President. The riots earned a mention on parts of 6 pages, total. For a book that consists of 327 pages of content, this is a real shame.

Jack Kemp spent plenty of time and political capital fighting for community-saving ideas like urban enterprise zones and parental choice in education. Kemp was indeed a “poverty warrior” wanting to offer a light at the end of the tunnel for those in the worst of despair, and refusing to turn his back on “the least of these.” Kemp saw economic growth as a vital element to turning the tide, or in the “rising tide” that would lift all boats. While he could be long-winded, as Kondracke and Barnes point out, and Kemp could talk more than some audiences were willing to listen, he never stopped believing in or advocating for economic growth as the ultimate solution.

The authors record their ultimate conclusion this way, “The full Kemp model—“bleeding heart” and “conservative”—is what the nation needs. Politicians who are principled, dynamic, positive, cheerful, inclusive, bipartisan, optimistic, unorthodox, disposed to compromise, committed to courting minorities, urban oriented, pro-growth, and antibureaucratic—and interested in ideas and action, not political tactics or personal attack. Idealistic. Visionary.”

We can quibble about these words until the end of time, and we probably will. Though it is hard to argue against them and remain true to them at the same time. But, the vision that a “Kemp model” (as the authors see it) offers, is the possibility of a return to greatness.

The reason to seek the “Kemp model” again now is rather simplistic in its nature, especially from a political point of view. In their interview with Norman Ornstein, he told the authors, “if Kemp had prevailed, we would be looking at a majority Republican party today” and they put forth, “because a Kempian GOP could win 40 to 50 percent of the Hispanic vote and 15 to 20 percent of the African American vote (versus 27 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for Mitt Romney in 2012).”

It is hard to argue against that math.

There are many reasons why the Kempiam model did not succeed in the ways that it could have. Some of these reasons are covered by Kondracke and Barnes, other reasons will have to wait. What Jack Kemp makes clear, is that it can be done. It just cannot be done alone. Whether is a single politician who takes up the mantle against the D.C. machine, or by a society that sends elected representatives to Washington and just hopes for the best. Jack Kemp needed Ronald Reagan, and vise versa. But even then, they were two men against the world.

What we need will require a team.

Leaders, whether church, business or political, cannot make themselves the things that make up the “Kemp model.” Not overnight anyway. But we can nurture these things in our young people and in our next generation of leaders. To not do this, to not pursue these ideals, is to witness more of the same that we have watched since the day Ronald Reagan boarded Marine One for the last time and waved goodbye.

The price for such inaction is way too high.

Finally, there is a Jack Kemp story beyond the Washington D.C. area code waiting to be told. That story will be told. This narrative is not offered in this noble work by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes, but this book is an important first work in the telling of the Jack Kemp story and I highly recommend it.

As the title states, Jack Kemp “changed America”, it was not the other way around. To see the real possibilities that America can achieve, start with Jack Kemp add some Ronald Reagan, and begin the real work from there.

Book Review: The Modi Effect by Lance Price

by

By Steve Parkhurst

On May 16th this year, I happened to be in my local Barnes & Noble, not really looking for anything in particular, just looking. I noticed a book with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the cover, and I picked it up. The book, The Modi Effect: Inside Narendra Modi’s Campaign To Transform India by Lance Price very quickly piqued my interest just enough.

I had followed Narendra Modi’s rise and his election victory in May of 2014. So I was familiar with him as a leader and candidate, but I did not know much about him as a man and how he actually got to where he is today.

I opened the book to page one, you know how that goes. The very first sentence opens like this, verbatim, “On 16 May 2014, India’s new prime minster, Narendra Modi, enterered the record books…” Pondering that date, I checked my phone, the day was May 16, 2015. Modi was declared the winner on May 16, 2014. Are you kidding me? I happen to pick up this random book about a foreign leader a year to the day he was declared the winner and the next prime minister of India? This was beyond a mere coincidence that I happened to find this book on that day.

So, I kept reading. And I kept reading.

I found The Modi Effect to be incredibly easy to read, despite many people, states and cities that I was not absolutely familiar with. Beyond being easy to read, author Lance Price tells a good story.

Narendra Modi is a man who in one election, got more than 171,000,000 votes. President Obama, in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections combined, received 134,000,000 votes. Yes, India is a bigger country than the United States, I get that, but 171,000,000 is still a staggering figure.

How did Narendra Modi get 171,000,000 votes? Well, that is what Lance Price set out to share with us.

The Modi Effect is not a biography, though there are sections that play out that way. The Modi Effect is a detailed, thorough chronicle of the things that helped Narendra Modi get to where he was before the election, then how he won the election, and concludes with where India stands in the world as of early 2015. I guess you could say this is mostly a campaign book, but it is not the nuts-and-bolts minutae of a political campaign, instead it is an overview of several years of the rise of a man and a movement.

I came away from The Modi Effect realizing that Narendra Modi is a fascinating man. He is detail oriented, but not a micro-manager. He is certainly a multi-tasker. He is also a man not afraid to delegate authority and empower others to get real things done. He is a master-marketer. And though he was labeled negatively by his opposition as a “showman,” he is a showman in every positive way.

For as much hype as Barack Obama and his digital gurus have received for their efforts in both 2008 and 2012, I would suggest that what Narendra Modi did over the course of his campaign was much more impressive. Especially given the diverse nature not only of India’s population, but its geography. Of particular interest was the use of hologram machines, where Modi would speak in one location, a secluded room someplace, but he would “appear” live in 3-D form in hundreds of other cities and villages at the same time, looking like he was actually there for the audience to hear. The project name for this, “Modi’s arrival is imminent” is both “messianic” as Price labeled it, but it is also just tactically brilliant.

Then there were the plastic Modi masks that made their way around the country. Actual 3-D costume-like masks that looked like Modi. People wore these and they identified Modi, and they would think about the good things, the hope and opportunity, that Modi was offering if elected prime minister. You have to read the book the understand the level of detail that Modi demanded for these masks, his personal appearance was as much a brand as his party or what he was offering the voters.

Modi took to new technologies very quickly, which is very interesting given his age. Modi was a blogger before all the modern social networking came along. He did not hesitate when it was suggested to him that he start a YouTube channel, replying to the person making the suggestion, “I want it it two days.” He made enormous use of WhatsApp, a personal instant messaging app. And of course, he was a huge factor on Facebook and Twitter. All these things are even more interesting when you think about the populace, voting and otherwise, that occupies India. Some people have never seen a television. Some people still do not have electricity.

One thing that shines through over and over throughout this book is Narendra Modi’s diligent, steady, constant work ethic. Frankly, he operates like a machine. He needs very little rest, and he is up by 5am every morning. As Price notes, “When he does do something that isn’t directly work-related – as with his daily yoga and meditation routines – it is simply to make him more productive and effective for the rest of the day.”

I also found great humor in Narendra Modi’s personality, or at least some of his personality.

In a campaign speech, Modi asked the crowd how many hours a day they get electricity. One of the responses back, noted by Price was, ‘We don’t get power.’ Think about that for a minute. At that point, Modi told the crowd that in his home state “there was 24-hour electricity.” Modi then took to mocking the current leader of the state government by saying that he would be unable to accomplish the electricity accomplishments that Modi had achieved, and Modi concluded, ‘You need a 56-inch chest to do that.’

That quip about his “56-inch chest” is just funny to me. I hope that in 2016 we will hear a presidential candidate say something like that, but I won’t hold my breath. But of greater importance, and interest, is the fact that we’re talking about a country where some people and villages still do not even have electricity. Along came Narendra Modi, offering hope, along with solutions. But unlike our current President, Mr. Modi also has accomplishments to speak of, not hollow platitudes or sleazy payoffs to campaign donors using taxpayer dollars, like Solyndra. And for however cheesy that “56-inch chest” quip might appear, if you can back up the rhetoric with results, cheesy is just fine. And sometimes, voters award cheesy with 171,000,000 votes.

Will Narendra Modi be able to do what he said about electricity? As I learned in The Modi Effect, nothing would lead me to believe he cannot deliver on his words. Lance Price tends to make us think that Narendra Modi is a one man operation. And while much of the marketing might be about Modi, instead of being about Modi’s party and other legislators, Modi has a dedicated, talented team of people working in his administration carrying out his goals and plans.

As Price pointed out, in a speech after becoming prime minister, “Modi said he didn’t plan incremental changes in India’s development. ‘We are planning to take a quantum leap.'” Narendra Modi is a man who thinks big, and works big. And as Lance Price notes later, “The most successful politicians are those who keep their eyes fixed firmly on the future, and that is exactly what Modi has always done.”

The Modi Effect as a book has so many interesting facets to help tell the story. Lance Price went to great trouble to detail for the reader the way things are done in India to make something like a political campaign, and even the election process itself, work out logistically.

India is a place where among other vehicles, elephants, camels and boats are used to get voting equipment where it needs to be so that all the people of India have an equal opportunity to cast a ballot. And because of distance and residency rules, as Price points out, a lone temple priest living in a forest was catered to by election officials by having a complete voting machine and ballot delivered to his hamlet so he could vote.

During the campaign to lead India, Narendra Modi was challenged to offer more than just sound bites and quick retorts to the challenges put to him by the opposition party leaders. Modi gave a speech called the “Idea of India”, which of course immediately reminded me of the late Jack Kemp and Congressman Paul Ryan, both advocates for the “American Idea.” Like Kemp and Ryan, Modi delivered prose that was optimistic and full of hope and promise, especially for those wanting to achieve through work and sacrifice.

“And he identified seven key priority issues that he would address as prime minister: the family, agriculture, women, the environment, youth, democracy and knowledge. He set out some detailed proposals for all of them and declared that a vote for each was a vote for India.”

As it was intended to, “The speech added weight and substance to Modi’s offer to the electorate.”

Also of particularly interesting drama was Narendra Modi’s campaigning in the home territory of his campaign rival, Rahul Gandhi. For several reasons, this sort of thing is rare. It goes without my telling you that the Gandhi family legacy is huge in India, and especially in the home territory of Gandhi. But, Modi went in there anyway. I could tell you the result of that, but I’m sure Mr. Price would rather you get a copy of the book and find out what happened.

Price finally comes to the conclusion that the one word that best sums up Narendra Modi, is “Determination.” As you work your way through The Modi Effect, you can see that as well. Modi’s work ethic shows a man unwilling to quit and too driven to want to slow down.

I find myself rooting for India. Not that I ever rooted against the country, but it is different now. I want Narendra Modi to succeed. If Narendra Modi’s India is doing well, the rest of the world benefits from that.

Early in The Modi Effect, Lance Price notes, “My politics has always been left of centre and my instincts liberal.” So I continued to read, slightly skeptical of a British liberal writing a book about a conservative, free-market oriented Prime Minister of India. I must admit though, my initial skepticism was wrong. I think Lance Price took great care to tell a story that needed telling, and he did it factually, with little if any bias. For that he is to be commended, and his book should be read.

Reaganomics and Arthur Laffer’s Supply-Side Wisdom

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

The-Pillars-of-Reaganomics-by-Brian-Domitrovic

“It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.”

Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century philosopher, may have been the first person to summarize supply-side economics, some 600 years before Congressman Jack Kemp’s Jobs Creation Act was introduced as legislation and supply-side economics was given its name.

The Pillars of Reaganomics: A Generation of Wisdom from Arthur Laffer and the Supply-Side Revolutionaries, edited by Brian Domitrovic, represents a stellar addition to the supply-side economics library. What Brian Domitrovic has done here is he has taken monumental statements, monumental documents, and he has added some context and some history around them, and he has presented them in pretty much their entire original form.

This deeper, modern day context is really enlightening. And invaluable.

From a title that includes the word “pillars,” this book is exactly what you would expect it to be: Foundational documents that outline supply-side economics. What the title doesn’t tell you is that the commentary included in the book spans time from before Reaganomics (in the form of the Kemp-Roth tax bill), to the early days after passage and implementation, to the post-Reagan Presidency era of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

The content is most interesting because it is taken from papers prepared by Arthur Laffer or his staff from 1978 to the present. These papers consist of material not commercially available, even online in this day and age. I tried to Google some of the materials, and that proved a fools errand. For many years, other than in the Laffer archives, these papers may only be readily available because of the work of Brian Domitrovic in reproducing them.

The Pillars of Reaganomics includes original content from Arthur Laffer, Bruce Bartlett, Warren T. Brookes, George Gilder and Stuart Sweet. These writers, in the course of their scholarship, all offered great wisdom from others in the history of tax policy.

For example, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon had this to say in his 1924 book, Taxation: The People’s Business:

“The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.”

And there is this gem from Ludwig von Mises in his 1949 book, Human Action:

“Every specific tax, as well as the nation’s whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates.”

Somewhat billed as a “running commentary” of the supply-side revolution, this volume does prove to be a running commentary, but it’s also a historical document full of historical context. Even saying that could possibly do it injustice in the sense that this is not just commentary, it’s a substantive, well researched, well put together, contextual volume that helps relay what was happening, why it was happening, and how it was happening. This all plays out like a novel at times, even a novel where you know the end of the story, but you forgot about this person or that incident.

Any book about the Ronald Reagan presidency includes timeless quotes from the Gipper, and this book does not disappoint on that score. Bruce Bartlett recalls a classic early-1981 quote from President Reagan in describing the nations economy:

“There were always those who told us that taxes couldn’t be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.”

And Milton Friedman wrote this in Newsweek in 1978 to make a similar point:

“I have concluded that the only effective way to restrain government spending is by limiting government’s explicit tax revenue – just as a limited income is the only effective restraint on any individual’s or family’s spending.”

Putting the sheer content of this volume aside for a moment The Pillars of Reaganomics is an outstanding addition to a library simply because of the work involved on the cover, which has an etching of a Ronald Reagan caricature holding a drawing of the Laffer Curve, and the interior of the book covers contain the tiled, gold-colored logo of The Laffer Center which published the book. This is just a really good physical object to hold and will make a great addition to the library of any Ronald Reagan fan or student of supply-side economics.

Because several authors are represented in this book, there are changes in style and wording, but that’s not only because of the writers involved, it’s because of the changes in our language over time. I found that refreshing.

The Pillars of Reaganomics serves as a great place to start an education on what supply-side economics is, how the concept was implemented in various decades, how the numbers stood the test of time, and how the world is looking at the economics policy now. This book is an enjoyable read, it’s not wonky. Let us hope there is more of this to come.

I will conclude this review with the words that open The Pillars of Reaganomics, on the dedication page, because after reading them, you may be as convinced as I was that this book, and potentially this series, is headed in the right direction:

In Memoriam Jack French Kemp.

Paul Ryan and The Way Forward for America

by

Review by Steve Parkhurst

Paul Ryan The Way Forward

Congressman Paul Ryan’s first book hit the market back in August. The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea, on its face, the name may not mean much. Inside, there is much to be learned and even more to be explored. This book is a serious, important work. By a serious, consequential leader.

First, a note: I can’t hide my admiration for Paul Ryan. In fact, Google his name and mine, and you will see the lavish praise I have heaped on him over the years. I think Paul Ryan is the right man at the right time, and this book has helped me solidify that thought. I wanted to guard against fanboy-like admiration for Paul Ryan, and so I held back my review for a couple of months.

I wanted to see what others would say about the book, which allowed me a sort of distance from the instant review I could have written. I wanted to see if others read what I read. I was somewhat surprised at what I saw in that period. Interesting voices from the Left, were kind to the book. Put your RINO attacks back in the holster. That’s not the reason for the kind book words toward Ryan. The kind words stem from real solutions put forward by a serious man who did legitimate research, interviewing and witnessing.

As it turned out, my review is the same regardless of whether it was written two months ago, or today.

As mentioned earlier, I am an admirer of Congressman Ryan. I wanted to read The Way Forward to see what new things I would learn and to see what really drives this man, this leader. On that score, I was not disappointed.

That begins by understanding what “the American idea” really means, what it really is, it is after all, mentioned in the subtitle of the book. Ryan lays this out consistently and frequently: “The American Idea is a way of life made possible by our commitment to the principles of freedom and equality – and rooted in our respect for every person’s natural rights.”

From that premise, the journey begins to unfold and The Way Forward becomes real.

When Paul Ryan got to Washington DC as a young man, he ended up working for and with Jack Kemp, at Empower America. This was the type of a relationship from which a great history springs forth.

In 1992, while Jack Kemp was HUD secretary, he made a trip to Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King riots. Ryan recounts this Kemp response to a reporter’s question about making home ownership possible to people with no money.

“Well,” Jack replied, “the way to get money and capital and credit into the inner cities of America and the barrios and ghettos of America is to do something radically different than just transferring wealth through government bureaucracies. It is to empower people directly.”

In one short answer, Jack conveyed the power of the American Idea—and the hard limits of liberal progressivism.

Much of the value of The Way Forward as a book or as a policy prescription, and of Paul Ryan as a leader, can be found in Chapter 7, A Virtuous, Not Vicious, Cycle. I would suggest to you, that if you were only going to read one chapter of the book, read Chapter 7.

Chapter 7 is where we are introduced to Bob Woodson, founder of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. It is where we are introduced to Paul Grodell in Cleveland. It is where we are introduced to Outcry in the Barrio and Jubal Garcia in San Antonio. It is where we are introduced to Bishop Shirley Holloway and her House of Help City of Hope, and to Bob Cote and his Step 13.

I have been to Outcry in the Barrio, I have witnessed what Paul Ryan witnessed. As Ryan conveys his thoughts about a ministry like Outcry, and he displays his belief and understanding that the healing being done in such a place is real, having seen that for myself, I have to believe that every one of the places Ryan has mentioned is not only true, but it is the way. When Ryan says he saw a man named “Tony” who had just arrived at Outcry that morning, I’ve been there, I’ve seen that. I have recounted my first visit to Outcry where I saw two men who had arrived that morning.

What Ryan is seeing and saying is real.

These people and each of their operations, or ministries, are examples of what good people can do when they see a need, or a void, and they go after the solution. These neighborhood healers, each in his or her own part of the country operate as the “little platoons” that Edmund Burke once described.

Chapter 7 is where we are re-introduced to Alexis de Tocqueville, and his poignant observation:

“Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types – religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immediately large and very minute. Americans combine to give fetes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape that way.”

Ryan writes:

Robert Putnam noted that “American history carefully examined is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement, not just downs-a story of collapse and of renewal. Putnam doesn’t believe that just because civic engagement is waning it will forever be receding. He thinks we can rebuild civil society and get the engines of social capital going again.

Ryan goes through a policy prescription where he suggests some ideas, reforms and solutions to many issues of the day. Ryan offers, “Truly helping those in need means recapturing a sense of the dignity of work.” Then he sums up his policy prescription this way:

The point of reforms like these is not to suggest that government has no role in combating poverty, or that some ideal of pure volunteerism can replace the need foe concrete assistance to the Americans in greatest need. The idea, rather, is to get government pulling in the same direction as the grassroots groups that our citizens run-and the way to do that is to infuse the welfare system with the same incentives, priorities, structure, and accountability that are at work in our communities.

Right on!

Ryan concludes the chapter with three compelling paragraphs, which include these thoughts:

Today we’re trapped in a vicious cycle. Too many people are stuck in the poverty trap. Our communities are isolated from one another economically and culturally. We’re seeing stagnation and unemployment, little opportunity for upward mobility and low labor force participation rates. And one of our key assets for turning things around-the associations and institutions that make up our civil society-is being eroded by government overreach rather than reinforced.”

Americans are a generous people. We care about our neighbors when they are in need. But it’s time to start measuring our compassion not by how much we’re spending, but by our results.

My goal is to turn our welfare programs into a bridge instead of a trap, restoring the prospect of upward mobility. Doing so is not just the smart thing economically; it is the right course for a good-hearted country.

Throughout The Way Forward, you can’t help but identify and relate to Ryan’s optimism. For as bad as things got and for as bad as things can be on occasion, Ryan is an optimist until the end. Maybe Paul Ryan was always an optimist. We know Ronald Reagan was an optimist. And Jack Kemp could have distilled his eternal optimism into Ryan during those Empower America days. Optimists reign in the universe of opportunity and prosperity, growth and achievement, freedom and liberty. Our modern day econo-optimists like Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, they never stop believing that the right people, the right ideas, the right policies, are all within our grasp. But in order to grasp those things, you have to reach out your hand.

Whether Ryan learned to be an optimist or was just born with the gift, maybe he’ll mention that in his next book. For now, I’m more interested in his understanding (and warning) of our moment in time, both as a movement and as a party:

We need to get back to our message of opportunity, upward mobility, and economic growth, the American Idea, and its promise for everyone. We need to make the case for greater freedom instead of ceding personal choices or responsibilities to the state. We need to emphasize the dignity of work and the primacy of civic institutions. And we need to explain how that vision is relevant and meaningful for every person-no matter their color, creed, occupation, or station in life.

For the Republican Party, this is a matter of political necessity. Preaching to the choir isn’t working, and by the way, the choir is shrinking. But, for me, it’s about a lot more than that. It’s about our common humanity, and the duties we owe to one another. I am inspired by Jack Kemp’s example that we shouldn’t isolate people; we Republicans should include them. That’s the only way those same people, when they vote, will start to include us.

Paul Ryan is not simply saying these things, he is living them out as well. Paul Ryan is looking at problems like poverty, addiction and homelessness and addressing issues Republicans rarely want to touch. As the old baseball axiom goes, “you can’t hit a homerun if you never swing the bat.”

Paul Ryan is proving himself to be a leader for our times, for this moment and for this movement.

I wanted to end this review with the paragraph that Paul Ryan ends the book with, mimicking Ronald Reagan’s farewell address in 1989:

This will not be easy. At times, it will certainly be messy. But when all is said and done, I want to be able to say, “It was tough, but we did our part. It’s what my parents did for me, and when our moment came, it’s what my generation did for you. And that’s why the American dream lives on.”

But I feel the need to return to the night Jack Kemp accepted the 1996 Vice-Presidential nomination in San Diego (this is not mentioned in the book). In that speech, Kemp extolled this truism, worth remembering as you read Ryan’s book:

The purpose of a truly great party is to provide superior ideas, principled leadership and a compelling cause.

Paul Ryan has provided you, provided us, The Way Forward.