Morning Joe 2/15/2013 -- Limits! Limits! You can't handle limits!

On Morning Joe today the shifting panel started out talking about the Hagel confirmation holdup. Scarborough believes that the GOP is hurting itself by playing games over Hagel because of personal vendettas. McCain obviously doesn't like Hagel and is squeezing him. Morning Joe showed a clip of Obama saying that the need for 60 votes to confirm his nomination for Defense Secretary is no way to govern, and that he needs a Defense Secretary. I wrote on Twitter yesterday that Republicans should say hell no or go ahead and vote for his confirmation. If Republicans say hell no they should present the reasons for opposing Hagel, then stand their ground. Hagel is merely a stooge for Obama, but it's a distraction that needs to be dealt with so that more important issues can be dealt with.

The Morning Joe crew then praised Elizabeth Warren for her excoriation of bank regulators in a hearing yesterday. My problem with this praise is that Warren is not actually courageous, because she's wondering why regulators didn't punish banks, rather than exposing government's complicity with banks that came from the top down -- if top government officials who were complicit in the banks' implosion are not punished, then there's no courage in attacking regulators and banks. With the government/Federal Reserve relationship, and with top level government pressure for banks to lend to unqualified borrowers, and with all the crony relationships running through government, government officials should have been prosecuted along with any bankers who broke the law. No one on Morning Joe brought up the fact the government officials in high positions were just as much to blame for the financial crisis as Big Banks -- they simply blamed government regulators, then said government bailed out the banks, as if bankers are the culprits who possess the power. It's the other way around -- government used banks to achieve their political ends,and the result was a mess of corruption and financial damage that hurt the American taxpayers but not government officials who started and guided it all, or the banks that went along with the plan and profitted from the plan.

Steve Case then came on, and a serious discussion broke out for a few minutes. Scarborough and others on the show, like Ed Rendell and Richard Hass and David Gregory and Eugene Washington, talked about the need for government spending short term to create economic growth, coupled with the need to develope long term plans to deal with entitlement debt. Steve Case said that entrepreneurs are no Golden Retrievers to be petted every once in awhile -- they're vital to economic growth. Then the mongrel philosophies of the political class came out.

Washington praised Obama for his plan to explain to the American people why government is necessary. Washington criticized those calling for limits to government who don't understand the vital need for government actions in times like these. Scarborough and the rest of the gang agreed that government can do things like invest in ifrastructure and education and research and developement. Then Scarborough brought up a poll that showed 51% of Americans don't trust government interventions. Scarborough didn't talk about limits to power, didn't say he promotes limits to power, he just left the poll results hanging. GOP Centrists are trying to combine the public's distrust of government interventions with the need for government to do some things, smartly -- this way they can try to please everyone, but it doesn't work.

As Case said, entrepreneurship is vital, and, although Case didn't say this, if government continues to intervene, entrepreneurs will be repressed or flatout blocked from acting. Government investment, private/public partnership, government subsidies of private industry, government regulation, all these are government interventions in the private sector which eventually cause uncertainty among entrepreneurs and those investors in the private sector who undertand business. Limits on government power mean government hands off the economy -- the mixed economy we've had for decades has failed. Mixed economy is a nice term to disguise the economy-destroying actions of statism.

But no one on Morning Joe discussed these issues of limits-- they simply joined the concepts, limits and no-limits, together as if they solved the problem, then went on to describe how government has to solve our economic problems through more interventions, although our problems are largely a result of prior interventions. If we as a society are determined to trust government to provide a safety net for society, then in order to pay for the safety net, economic liberty is necessary to fund such a welfare state. We can't maintain a statist system which constantly intervenes in the economy plus a strong welfare state, much less the other half,  the warfare part of the State (of course, I'm okay with leaving the mideast). Statist interventions are causing prolonged economic stagnation, and, thus, the welfare state is in danger of falling apart. Obama's Progressive agenda is impossible to achieve, and blaming Republicans won't change anything. More government interventions will only make the economy worse and the welfare state weaker.

Warren for President?

It appears that the Democratic Party is bringing Elizabeth Warren along for a run in 2016. Warren is getting the prized speaking spot at the convention-- the one both Clinton and Obama got before they were elected to the highest office.

HotAir discusses whether the Democratic Party is going hard Left. Uh, yeah. The Left has been left for quite awhile, now. Warren is an anti-capitalist like all the Left has been since Left was created. When the Left bothers to give qualified support to capitalism, what they mean is they approve of a Democrat-controlled government that manages the economy so that they can use the wealth-generating feature of capitalism to fund the Progressive agenda -- orthodox socialism was refuted even by socialist long ago. That's what Warren represents, as does Obama -- America-style socialism, social democracy.

Clinton wasn't as overt about his support for government management of the capitalist system, but he was just as statist. It's not just the Left, though -- it's more like the establishment in DC. Bush managed the capitalist system for his purposes, too. We have no free marketers in influential government positions. There are a few free-marketers in the Republican Party who seem to be rising in influence, but it's not certain they can make a difference. It will take a real opposition party to stop the likes of Warren. A strong populist on the Left can create a winning alliance -- just look at what Obama has done. Obama ought to be far behind in the polls, but he has made enough dependents believe they can continue to get more and more social benefits from government to keep the race tight. Warren is even a better populist than Obama. I've predicted that Americans will come to their senses and reject Obama, but who knows? If Romney turns out to be another Bush, then none of it matters, we're screwed. It's a shame that Presidents have so much power, but they do -- or at least they represent statist power. We need one who will voluntarily begin the process of transferring power back to the people -- that might be expecting too much. More realistically, the American people will have to demand that power be transferred back to the private sector -- then, maybe, government officials will listen.

If Obama wins in 2012, Warren will win in 2012, and we can accept that America has given away freedom with a whimper.

Morning Joe 6/14/2012 -- Get government out of the way

On Morning Joe today the crew appeared surprised recent polls show that the public has very little confidence in either Obama or Romney when it comes to turning around the economy. Maybe media will understand soon that Americans are moving beyond dependence on government interventions. Most people, before 2007, didn't even know how much the government was managing the economy. Now that many Americans understand just how much government intervenes in the economy, and just what Obamacare and Dodd-Frank entail that will strangle business activity, they're calling for government to back off, to leave the economy alone so that it can recover.

Those who are dependent on the safety net are not concerned with jobs so much as they are strengthening benefits, but they are a minority. Those looking for good jobs don't believe that a President will create the jobs. Those who work in the private sector know where jobs originate, and it's not from DC. The Morning Joe crew believes that infrastructure schemes are needed, and they had Elizabeth Warren on the program to support this government-centered solution to joblessness. American workers don't want dirty highway jobs. Yes, there are Americans who will welcome the temporary work, if their unemployment benefits have run out, but, if they are on unemployment, they will not give up those benefits for a temporary job sweating on the side of the road. Most of the unemployed don't know much about building roads, and they aren't really interested in hard labor jobs.

Americans need good jobs, challenging jobs, production jobs, brain-work, engineering jobs, hi-tech jobs, skilled labor jobs. The Left talks about building highways, as if the unemployed are a bunch of  laborers standing in line for the next ditch-digging job. Building highways will likely help immigrants who can't find better work, but highway work will not help the unemployed looking for something that's not a highway job.

The other idea is for the federal government to give more money to states to hire more teachers, firemen and police -- is there a shortage of teachers, firemen and police? This also is a smoke screen to hide the fact that statist interventions in the economy have caused stagnation, and until the uncertainty is removed, investors won't invest. Americans are telling Washington DC that they want government to get out of the way, allow them to keep more of the money they make, remove job-killing regulations, and let the private sector do what it can do -- create wealth and jobs.

Morning Joe 5/3/2012 -- I'm an analyst not a politician

Joe Scarborough says he is a political analyst, so when he says LBJ was a powerful President who got things done and that Elzabeth Warren is a great politician and will be good for Massachusetts, he's just analyzing. Scarborough, who calls himself a "small" government conservative, fails to analyze the negative effects of LBJ's statist legislative achievements. LBJ, in his war on poverty, is probably responsible for creating more poverty and keeping more people stuck in poverty than any President we've ever had. LBJ was the architect of the modern welfare state which was fatally flawed from the start. I think Scarborough was probably analyzing LBJ's ability to bully congress into doing what he wanted to get done, and "small" government conservatives like Scarborough are impressed with such talent.

With Elizabeth Warren, Scarborough was surely anaylyzing his friendship with Warren and assuming that any any friend of his will be good in the senate. This is brilliant analysis, but it seems a "small" government conservative would have a major problem with a progressive like Warren in the senate.

Scarborough, since he's not in politics anymore, said he can say straight out that Romney doesn't excite him. Yes, it's all about the analysis. Brilliant.

Morning Joe 4/20/2012 -- Bashing Romney in Boston

This morning there was a little more Romney bashing and lots of praise for Fenway Park, where they held the show, and there was the opportunity for Elizabeth Warren to show how loving, compassionate and warm she is on the campaign trail. When asked about our economy, Warren said that the US has cut spending over the last thirty years on education, infrastructure and research. Warren basically said that the middle class can be helped only by more government spending, and if government will only spend more money on education, infrastructure and research, the economy will take off, and the middle class will be back to work. No one on the panel challenged this ridiculous statist position -- they were too busy fawning over Warren's warmth and connection to people.

Surely Warren didn't mean to lump education in her claim of spending cuts, but one finds it difficult to understand what she's talking about regarding infrastructure, also. Spending on research has pretty much remained stable over the last 30 years. After the wasted trillion dollar stimulus effort, it's amazing Warren can make such statements, and it's truly amazing that Morning Joe just lets it slide. Well, not that amazing considering the Morning Joe hosts, but amazing that these types of shows are so superficial. Warren is the typical liberal/progressive who thinks the middle class should now become dependent on government -- it will then be complete, and the State can take as much wealth as it needs from the creators of wealth until wealth runs dry. I'm feeling all warm and cozy. I mean, who really cares if Warren is promoting policies and a direction that will collapse our nation, Joe and Mika are her friends and it's all just politics. It's a game like baseball -- nothing to get serious about. How about the Green Monster?