News and Views

by Bill Martel

We are in a recession, global markets are suffering, markets are down 35 percent, unemployment is 6.7 percent, and General Motors and Chrysler are bankrupt.

With talk of $1 trillion government bailouts, it is all the rage to blame our economic crisis on capitalism and propose greater government regulation. Our economy thrives because government interference is minimal, but recent events have led some pundits to challenge this basic idea.

Our economic troubles encourage some to blame, without challenge, capitalism and free markets.

No conclusion could be more fundamentally wrong, farther from the truth, or inflict greater harm on our economy, standard of living, and freedom.

In fact, today’s economic crisis was caused by neither capitalism nor free markets – but by failed government regulation of sub-prime real estate mortgages.

Since the 1990s, Washington policymakers forced banks to make high-risk loans. Today’s economic crisis occurred from government regulation of sub-prime real estate mortgages. The culprit is not capitalism and free markets but failed government policies.

Our capitalist, free-market economy is so productive and strong precisely because it generates more jobs, innovation, and freedom.

We lead the world in economic growth, job creation, higher incomes, and productivity because capitalism and free markets encourage individuals and firms, large and small, to create jobs and wealth. Small businesses produce most jobs in the U.S., accounting for three quarters of jobs in New Hampshire.

The only “alternative” to capitalism and free markets is more government regulation, but that created today’s crisis. Do you really want more government regulation, which predictably will harm our economy and reduce our standard of living?

Societies in Europe regulate their economies vastly more than we do, and predictably have fewer jobs, smaller economies, and lower standards of living.

As we struggle with the fallout from Washington’s disastrously failed policy of regulating sub-prime mortgages, keep two rules in mind.

Rule One: we owe our prosperity to capitalism and free markets, these always lead to economic recovery, and the culprit is government regulation.

Rule Two: When in doubt, refer to Rule One.

Be afraid, be very afraid, when critics blame capitalism. What they want is greater government control of our economy and our lives.

To protect the world’s most productive economy and our standard of living, we need free markets – not inept government regulation.

by Stephen A. Poschmann

For the past few years the “reality” of global climate change has been relentlessly shoved in our collective face by every media outlet imaginable.  We are told the “debate is over” and anyone who dares to disagree is tagged as a heretic or denier.  The movement has become so mainstreamed that savvy advertisers have tailored their message to show the green side of the products they are pushing.  Year after year, any legitimate voice speaking out against the global warming crusaders has been suppressed and marginalized.

Funny thing, if one cares to dig just a little deeper one will find cracks in the fragile egg that is global warming theory.

The 2007 British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” which gave independent-minded scientists a chance to voice their beliefs to a larger audience was largely ignored by the rest of the media.  In addition, maverick Czech president Vaclav Klaus has routinely mocked Al Gore and speaks truth to power: “…the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…is not a scientific institution: it’s a political body… It’s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.”

One might notice that Al Gore has refused to debate several whom dared to contradict the teachings of his climate change religion, such as Danish skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg.  Lord Christopher Monckton of England, French Geophysicist Claude Allegre, Northern Irish MP Sammy Wilson, The Weather Channel founder John Coleman, Author Michael Crichton and CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers have all expressed either the belief that global warming is a farce or at the very least voiced skepticism that about it.  There are hundreds of scientists who have publicly signed on as global warming dissenters.

For nearly every study that shows glaciers receding, snow caps melting or polar bear populations dwindling, there is a study to counterweight it.  Yet the studies that do not support global warming barely register a blip on the national media because it does not fit their narrative.

Yet, why do so many government environmentalists, globalists, bureaucrats and scientists sign on to the man-made global warming campaign?  Some are scientists working at universities looking to hype a problem to justify the need for more grants.  Others are big government liberals looking for ways to grow the government adding new departments and agencies.  Still others are globalists and socialists looking to tax prosperous industrialized countries in the form of CO2 penalties and other fees and transfer those funds to the U.N. for redistribution to developing nations.

Now, as we are in the middle of a global economic downturn where companies are laying off employees by the thousands and disposable income and savings for most Americans are dwindling, President Obama is talking about how an the unproven theory of global warming is one of his top priorities.  He has chosen as his global warming czar Carol Browner.  She is a recent member of the socialist Commission for a Sustainable World Society a subsidiary of Socialists International.  There is no Senate confirmation hearing necessary for this appointee.

As if there was any appropriate time for this sort of fools errand, is now any time to be imposing new regulations on free enterprise?  Carbon taxes?  Surcharges?  Any new expenses for a business would merely be passed onto the consumers in the form of higher taxes.  And many jobs will be lost.  This sort of policy is wrong-headed in the best economic times and downright reckless and dangerous in the current depressed economy.