Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Greetings Boomers. There is a movement going on here in my hometown and throughout the nation. I've been speaking extensively to Boomers about their fear of the future. Many believe, as I do, Washington is strapping us with debt which we will not be able to repay. In other words, our freedoms will be under threat. Below is a synopsis of the event:
Dear fellow Citizens and Taxpayers,We are pleased to announce that our April 15th rally/march will be one of 150 events that are being planned on tax day across the country. As this movement has grown organically, we've seen elected officials try to jump on board the movement. This is a great sign as it means that our message is being heard and the pols think it's good to signal their support of our values. I am somewhat concerned that the politicians detract from the grassroots nature of our organization, but in the end, we have to work with the officials to get our preferred policies enacted.
With all that in mind, I am excited to report that Speaker Newt Gingrich has gotten behind the tea party movement. While Newt is a somewhat polarizing figure, he is an articulate and forceful supporter of conservative values. Love him or hate him, he will bring media attention to our movement. I just want to reinforce that our priority as the Cincinnati Tea Party is to advance our values, not to root our team to victory. Elections are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.
March 15 Media Coverage
By now you know the story of the "intimidated" WCPO reporter. While not issuing a full retraction, WCPO has changed the tone of their coverage and has pointed out that only a few people were involved in whatever incident occurred. I've found video of our supporters chanting "lib-eral me-dia" in the direction of the reporter as they attempted to interview the lone Obama supporter. The best suggestion I've seen was an email I was I copied on that recommended they send weather reporters next time since they seem so much braver than Adam Marshall. Regardless, I am pleased they backed off the more negative aspects of their story as I think it is much more reflective of the truth.
Economic Outlook and President Obama
You may have noticed that the tone set by Obama and his advisors about the economy has undergone a sudden shift. He's suddenly become much more positive and he trotted out his top advisors to the weekend news shows to reinforce the message. Both Fed Chairman Ben Bernacke, and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Dr. Christina Romer talked about how the economy was fundamentally sound and that good times were on the horizon. Want to know why? Read on!
Recessions are generally caused by the economy becoming out of balance. Books could be written about the causes of our current recession and why it got so deep so quickly, but I would like to focus on one particular aspect of it.
President Obama and the media "talked down" the economy during the run up to the election. Oddly enough, expectations for the future of the economy can become self fulfilling. If consumers change their consumption patterns because they expect the future to be worse, this change in the pattern may cause dislocation. If there is a sudden and large decline in demand for cars, this will lead to a loss of jobs in that sector. During good times, these workers are easily absorbed elsewhere. If future expectations are bad, businesses may hesitate to hire which means unemployment goes up. That group then changes their patterns based on their job status and the process starts to snowball.
In 2008, Obama and the media did their best to set negative expectations in order to gain advantage in the election. Once we had the failure of Bear Stearns, it finally sunk in for the average consumer and they changed their consumption pattern. This was the proximate cause for the recession. The constantly terrible media reports and the expectations for more government control in the Obama presidency only stoked fears for the future. This caused the recession to become much deeper than it otherwise would have been.
As I said at the Tea Party on 3/15, this is by design. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, stated that they couldn't let a good crisis go to waste. They then used the crisis to continue and accelerate the massive growth of government that began at the end of the Bush administration.
They got their stimulus, mortgage bailout, and pork-loaded omnibus spending bill. But the tea party movement is a sign of a national backlash and they've realized that they've accomplished as much as they can for now. The public is now galvanized and will not tolerate socialized medicine or carbon caps. To them, it's now important that we go back to sleep the way we were before the election. Regardless of what they say, there is a bottom for this recession and we're right at that point. If you drop an object far enough, anything will bounce. By now "talking up" the economy, they are hoping that the recovery will commence sooner, and be more vigorous than it would have been otherwise. While this is unquestionably a good thing, keep in mind that this is political in nature and they expect us to take our eye off the ball.
If and when the recovery commences in full force, keep in mind that government in 2010 will be nearly 80% bigger than it was in 2008 and this will be a permanent drag on economic growth. In addition, the moral case for personal responsibility does not change in a boom. We've had enormous success economically in the last 100 years, but consider how much richer we all could be if we hadn't setup incentives for a large chunk of our population to be unproductive.
Warm Regards,
Mike Wilson
Founder, Cincinnati Tea Party
