Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

From ABC News:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

The Washington Examiner says that “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

That’s the good part.  The bad part is that both he and Wallach want to combine the two issues - global warming and trade - and deal with them together. That was a recommendation that the Peterson Institute for International Economics made in a study earlier this year. What that would mean still seems a bit vague.  According to the op-ed, this synthesis would involve –

. . . a new code of “best practices” on greenhouse gas emission controls, including establishment of “policy space” for countries to limit emissions without sacrificing the competitive position of their industries. The institute also recommended that countries adopt a time-limited “peace clause” in which pursuit of new trade barriers would be suspended while the negotiations proceeded, and that a global climate accord be linked to a new global trade accord.

The synthesis would seem to involve  countries agreeing to a “code” that would address restrictions on CO2 emissions  and be generally consistent with WTO rules even if some technical rules would be violated.  Countries signing up for the code would agree not to bring those technical issues to the WTO for dispute resolution (the “peace clause”).

Those “technical” issues, in practice, however, are likely to become substantive issues, as countries enact  a broad array of restrictive  measures to protect their own industries.  But, never fear, the Peterson Institute also recommends in its book that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or some international arbiter decide when a code member isn’t in compliance with its international commitments.  Then, if that’s the case, other code members could take trade reprisals against that non-complying member.

Does this sound like a simple plan that would run smoothly?  Not in my book.

The article concludes with a bit of hyperbole — that the “only way to solve our problems is to treat them together.”  Otherwise, we’ll have “paralysis.”

Given the fact that global warming policy prescriptions have been extremely controversial even before the Kyoto Protocol 12 years ago, and the fact that the WTO’s Doha Round for 8 years has been mired down in disagreements among rich and poor countries, does it seem likely that putting these two divisive issues together will produce harmony?

“We must push our trading partners to do their part to curb harmful emissions and we must devise a border measure, consistent with our international obligations, to prevent the carbon leakage that would occur if US manufacturing shifts to countries without effective climate change programs.”

Currently the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, has rushed through its own bill without minority input to try to catch up with the House, which passed its cap-and-trade bill - H.R. 2454 — on June 26, 2009. The House bill contains a border tax adjustment measure, while the Senate bill does not.  At least, yet.  But Baucus’ comments are a strong signal that the Senate bill will also include tariffs or border “adjustments,” i.e., taxes.

This unfortunate idea is gaining greater traction among global warming advocates as a way to maintain U.S. competitiveness for industries, such as steel and cement, that would be facing higher costs if an energy suppression bill to address global warming is passed.  Proponents of “border measures” also see this as a way to curtail so-called leakage of carbon-intensive industries and related jobs to other countries without similar constraints. Of course, the common justification for those who want to hobble their competition is the refrain: “Level the playing field.”  In Washington politics, that usually means bringing your competitors down to your level.  Check out this article for some possible consequences.

These endorsements could portend a carbon tariff push in Copenhagen when world climate pukkas gather on December 7, 2009. Luckily for people in the U.S., it’s not likely that a newly minted global warming bill will be in their pockets.

The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits left behind by the Bush administration from $4.4 trillion to $9.3 trillion. His record-setting budgets flagrantly violate his promise to propose a “net spending cut.”

Obama broke his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year by signing into law a regressive excise tax increase to expand the SCHIP program, and by proposing a cap-and-trade energy tax that could charge up to $2 trillion, a massive cost that Obama himself has said will be passed “on to consumers,” as well as homeowners and motorists. (In 2008, Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that if he was elected, electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his administration, but it didn’t report that.)

He also broke his promise not to raise taxes by backing health-care bills that would impose a laundry list of new taxes on the middle class, including a tax on uninsured people.  Americans for Tax Reform earlier summarized the tax increases in ObamaCare: an individual mandate tax of $900 per individual or $3800 per family (if you don’t have health insurance); an employer mandate tax of $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered; an “excise tax on high-cost health plans”; a “medicine cabinet tax”; capping Flexible-Spending Accounts (FSA’s); abolishing most HSAs; and increasing tax penalties for HSAs.

The costly cap-and-trade energy bill supported by Obama would lead to big tax increases, administration officials privately have conceded, even though they publicly claim otherwise.  “Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times” by CEI.  It could raise household taxes by $1761 per year, equivalent to a 15 percent tax increase.   It would also result in “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”  (Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”)

Although cap-and-trade backers claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air, as well as harming forests and water supplies.   It would enrich politically-connected corporations, and result in massive destruction of the world’s forests.   By expanding ethanol subsidies and mandates, it would cause enormous “damage to water supplies, soil health and air quality.” Ethanol subsidies have already resulted in forests being destroyed in the Third World, and by diverting cropland to fuel production away from food production, they have already caused famines that have killed countless people in the world’s poorest countries.

Over and over again, Obama has broken his campaign promise to give the public five days of notice before signing bills into law, including his very first law, the trial-lawyer backed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Obama also repeatedly made false claims about the Supreme Court decision that the Ledbetter law overruled, misstating the facts of that case and how long it gives employees to sue over pay discrimination (the Court did NOT say that employees have to sue even before discovering discrimination).

Obama broke seven campaign promises dealing with transparency and clean government in signing the $800 billion stimulus package, much of whose contents were secret until shortly before Congress voted on it, and whose 1400 pages went unread by most Congressmen who voted on it.  (It repealed welfare reform and contained loads of welfare, pork, and waste, while wiping out jobs in the export sector.)

Obama’s broken promises are part of a larger pattern of dishonesty. Obama claimed his $800 billion stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded before and after its passage that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run. Obama’s budgets don’t add up, either, piling up $9.3 trillion in red ink, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a staggering $2.3 trillion more than Obama claimed.

Case in point: Home Products International (HPI), an American company, makes ironing tables. So does Hardware, a Chinese company. I personally have no idea which firm makes the better ironing table. That’s for consumers to decide.

Or at least it should be for consumers to decide. But it doesn’t always work that way in practice. HPI seems to have already made that decision for us.

At HPI’s request, the International Trade Administration will continue to add anti-dumping duties to the price of the Chinese-made ironing tables. That way HPI doesn’t have to worry as much about competing. Sorry, consumers.

Is this fair? Of course not. But all too often, it is how regulation works.

Between 1934 and 1937—during the heart of the Great Depression—GDP grew at by an average of 9.5 percent annually.  In 1934, GDP grew by nearly 11 percent, but it would be six more years until the depression finally ended.  Clearly, GDP growth alone cannot be taken as an indicator that the economy is on the upswing.

It is also disheartening that the two major contributors to GDP growth in the third quarter were housing construction and auto sales, both of which were propped up by government subsidies.  Auto sales were boosted by the Cash for Clunkers program, and housing construction was driven by the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit.

Combine this with other spurious accounting maneuvers used to calculate third quarter GDP, and it begins to appear that GDP might actually have decreased during this period.

In addition to phony GDP growth, there are other signs that the recession is not yet over.  Employment during the third quarter fell by over 750,000, and it is expected to fall further still.  Employment has been called a lagging indicator of economic health, but when economic health is measured in terms of the financial well-being of the population, employment is not a lagging indicator, it is the indicator.

The recent bankruptcy of CIT Group is another sign that our economic woes are far from over.  A recipient of $2.3 billion in TARP funds—deemed likely unrecoverable—CIT Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 today, seeking protection from $10 billion in debt.  CIT finances close to one million businesses, and conducts business with over 80 percent of all Fortune 1000 companies, so there is enormous potential for negative secondary effects stemming from the bankruptcy.

The CIT Group bankruptcy comes on the heels of nine more bank failures on Friday, which brings this year’s total to 115.  These bank failures came at a cost of $2.5 billion to the FDIC deposit insurance fund.

There is a clear political incentive for Geithner and others to make efforts to convince us that this economic slump is over.  It is unfortunate that these efforts include no actual facts.

“The fight to end hunger is being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops cannot be used in Africa, Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of software giant Microsoft, said on Thursday. Gates said GMO crops, fertilizer and chemicals are important tools — although not the only tools — to help small farms in Africa boost production.”

That’s great news, of course, but not the only good news on the food biotech front.  Today, the UK’s Telegraph reports that a year long investigation into food biotechnology by the Royal Society is expected to conclude in a report issued next week that:

“GM crops should be used in the future to alleviate food shortages. This study is going to move the debate forward. The Government will have to take notice of this. The world is undergoing dramatic change and it won’t be long before people are thinking ‘where is my next meal coming from?’ Where GM has been proved effective at either increasing yields or else resistant to diseases it should be used in the UK. GM crops need to be looked at one by one. They are not the only solution to world hunger but they are part of it.”

And Reuters reports that, even European Union Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has given a modicum of support to food biotech, suggesting that “EU countries should look at scientific evidence rather than emotions, as is now the case, when deciding on authorisations for new biotech products.”  Boel said last Thursday that “For the [EU] farm sector, the imbalance in GMO approval between the European Union and the rest of the world is a clear and present financial threat.”

All in all, I’d count that as a good week.

The panel featured H.E. Han Duk-soo, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea; Francisco Álvarez de Soto, Vice Minister for International Trade Negotiations, Republic of Panama; and Ricardo Triana, Director, Colombian Government Trade Bureau.  The speakers pointed principally to the FTAs’ benefits to the U.S., not only in economic terms but in its national interests.  Ambassador Terry Miller, the moderator, noted that the three countries are entering into trade agreements with other major trading partners, while the U.S. holds up action on their trade pacts. That disadvantages the U.S., which can’t yet take advantage of significantly lower tariffs on exports of numerous goods and services that the FTAs include.

Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) rounded out the presentations by emphasizing the benefits of free trade, especially in the current downturn, when increased trade can lead to more vibrant economic growth and job creation.  In his closing remarks, Goodlatte hit the cap-and-trade bills currently being considered for the job losses they will create.  He also noted that the proposed sanctions on imports from countries that don’t enact a CO2 repression regime would be a huge mistake and a blow to the world trading system.

But even a glance at their article shows how little substance there is to any of these promises.   No new nuclear power plants will be built unless there is somewhere to store the waste.  Here’s what Kerry and Graham say about that: “We must also do more to encourage serious investment in research and development to find solutions to our nuclear waste problem.”  In other words, not finish the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada that the federal government has already spent billions on, but which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and President Obama oppose.  Carbon capture and storage technology is more than a decade away from being commercially available.  Even if it works and is affordable, environmental pressure groups will sue to block permits for the pipelines and underground storage sites necessary to transport and store the pressurized carbon dioxide.  Here’s what Kerry and Graham say: “…we need to provide new financial incentives for companies to develop carbon capture and sequestration technology. “  Not a word about limiting lawsuits that would block projects.

Kerry and Graham support a border tax to protect American jobs from products produced in countries that don’t commit to reducing their emissions.  That is an admission that energy prices are going to go up and so are the prices of goods and services that are produced with or use energy.  Consumers will be poorer as a result and hence will be able to afford fewer goods and services.  Bye-bye manufacturing jobs.  They also claim that their as-yet-to-be-written bill will reduce our imports of foreign oil.  That’s plausible, but not exactly correct.  As our economy declines, we will need less oil.  But it will reduce U. S. and Canadian production first because the production costs are much higher here than in Saudi Arabia.

Trade is the ultimate act of peace. If someone has something you covet, you are faced with a choice. You could take it from him by force. Or you could trade for it. The first option is the root of all war. The second is the root of all peace.

Trading with people instead of stealing from them is a sign of respect. It says you honor their rights as an individual. It says you reject the use of force.

If he wants to earn the prize he has been given, President Obama should scrap those tire tariffs against China. Publicly retract his blustery campaign statements about renegotiating NAFTA. Repeal every tariff, every antidumping duty, and every last restraint on trade in the books.

Nothing promotes peace and civility more than commerce. After all, killing the customer is very bad for business.

That’s much higher than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused to pass his $800 billion stimulus package.  The administration claimed unemployment would rise to 8 percent without a stimulus.

Small businesses are finding it more difficult than ever to borrow badly needed money to meet their payrolls.  New financial regulations backed by the administration are contributing to a terrible credit crunch.  Meanwhile, the wealthy Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, perhaps the biggest donor to liberal politicians, received billions of dollars it didn’t even need from the taxpayers’ $170 billion bailout of AIG.

The administration claimed that the stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose very rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.

Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.

President Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office said it would actually shrink the economy “in the long run.”  It subsidizes lots of waste, corruption, and welfare, and repeals welfare reform.   It also contains racial set-asides (which are costly) and prevailing-wage rules (which will waste $17 billion).

The administration claimed that Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.

Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worse in the recession.

Obama claimed his stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from falling into an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly admitted that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package subsidized lots of government waste and corruption.

Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package largely repealed welfare reform.  That will result in lower employment and a smaller economy over the long run.

Earlier this year, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, affecting his access to stimulus money.

The stimulus package imposes on state governments wasteful racial set-asides and union-backed prevailing-wage requirements. The prevailing-wage requirements will cost $17 billion. Racial set-asides are very costly.

Economies are like children: they naturally grow, unless they are subjected to especially severe abuse and neglect by the government.  So the U.S. economy will turn around by November 2010, despite Obama’s economic mismanagement and wasteful spending.

But long-run economic growth is likely to be much slower thanks to his harmful economic policies, which will massively increase the national debt even while raising taxes.

This is going to be enormously costly, because federal employees are paid much better than private-sector employees, especially for unskilled jobs and jobs requiring only a liberal arts degree. (On the other hand, there are a few highly-skilled professional jobs that are paid lower in the federal government than in the private sector, but that’s rare).

State and local government employees are even more overpaid.  “More than 40% of city employees In Vallejo, California, had salaries greater than $100,000 in 2008. In May 2008, Vallejo filed for bankruptcy. Taxpayers support some hefty teacher salaries in Illinois. For example: a physical education teacher earning $163,000 (more than 400 earn in excess of $100,000); an English teacher earning $164,000 (more than 300 earn in excess of $100,000); a driver education teacher earning $170,000 (94 earn in excess of $100,000). In New York, state agency workers collected more than $459 million in overtime, with one aide clocking in 2,455 extra hours, nearly tripling her base salary from $38,500 to $110,841.”

Government employees have radically better benefits and pensions than private sector workers. “When wages and benefits are combined, federal civilian workers averaged $119,982 in 2008, twice the amount of $59,909 which workers in the private sector averaged for wages/benefits. The value of benefits for federal civilian workers averaged $40,000/year, four times the value of benefits that the average private sector employee receives. Only 12% of retirees from the private sector have defined benefit pensions to supplement Social Security. Their average annual pension is $13,083, and they are not eligible for full Social Security benefits until their late 60s. But the majority of public sector workers have pension plans that allow them to retire 10-25 years earlier with benefits many times the retirement payout that Social Security would provide. In San Jose, California, 256 retired officers and firefighters and 34 other city workers collect $100,000+ pensions, and all city retirees get free healthcare.”

Pay in the public sector rises faster than in the private sector even during Republican administrations. Pay for federal workers rose 53.7% between 2000 and 2008, compared to 28.5% for private sector workers.

Many of the new bureaucrats are being hired as a result of Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package, which largely repealed welfare reform.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package has since destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, and subsidized countless examples of government waste and corruption.

Earlier this year, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.

The stimulus package also imposes on states racial set-asides and prevailing-wage requirements, which increase the cost to taxpayers of government contracts. The prevailing-wage requirements will increase states’ costs by at least $17 billion. Racial set-asides also are very costly.

The Democratic Party is closely tied to the government employee unions, which consistently endorse its candidates.  This poses a political risk, since the Democrats are already viewed by some “working-class voters” as “the party of the undeserving rich.”

The $9.3 trillion in deficits under Obama’s budgets is twice the $4.4 trillion baseline left behind by Bush, despite at least $1.9 trillion in tax increases projected under Obama.

This question is relevant after the recent summit in Pittsburgh, where the G-8 has sort of transformed into the G-20. And even though the G-8 will be still meeting annually as well as the new G-20 format, the world leaders have announced that G-8 is not capable to solve world economic problems alone anymore. Maybe there is a similar reason for Russia to insist on joining the WTO as a union with Belarus and Kazakhstan? It is still not clear why Russia has taken this course of action.

It looks like WTO membership is an Achilles’ heel for Russia. And recently, the Russian government appears to be searching for new WTO membership obstacles. In June, Prime Minister Putin declared that entering the WTO for Russia is possible only if it were to enter as a trade union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. He pointed out that partnership with neighboring countries has been much more important for Russia than WTO membership. In September, President Medvedev said that his colleague Mr. Putin was misunderstood. Of course, there is no need to enter the WTO as a union.

Whether Russia will ever join the WTO is still a big question. But it is certain that the customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus will take effect in July 2011, which was announced earlier this week.

7-Eleven has fine stores that offer many conveniences to their customers, but in this case, they are trying to force down the throats of American consumers a “big gulp” of big government. If Congress acts on 7-Eleven’s misleading petition to put price controls on interchange fees, consumers will pay the price through the reduction of reward programs such as frequent flier miles, and the possible return of annual fees. Credit unions and community banks will pay the price too in higher costs that will make it more difficult to offer cards to their customers, forcing savers to go to big banks if they want the convenience of credit and debit cards.

Contrary to the spin of the 7-Eleven and other big retailers, interchange fees, also called “swipe fees,” are only levied on merchants, and none of major legislation before the U.S. Congress would require that retailers pass on one penny of their resulting savings on interchange fees to consumers. And Australia’s recent experience with interchange price controls resulted in no tangible benefits and plenty of added costs for consumers down under.

John Simon, a top regulator at the Reserve Bank of Australia, recently told a conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, that there was no evidence of retailer savings being passed on to Australian consumers, according to the Credit Union Times. Yet the Australian credit card holders faced plenty of costs to “make up for” the retailer costs in terms of higher fees and fewer rewards such as frequent flier miles, according to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Community banks and credit unions, which have lower profit margins on their credit and debit card offerings, would also lose out. In Australia, the Credit Union Times reports, “a cap on card interchange similar to one promoted by some U.S. retailers has turned Australian CU card programs from being contributors to their bottom lines to net money losers.” Similarly, Mike Clayton, head of Champion Credit Union in the small town Canton, North Carolina, says price controls on interchange fees could “put us into a deficit on that card program.”

There are a variety of options for retailers in credit card payment services, such as new online methods of payment, to ensure competitive pricing. CEI also supports expanding the ability of retailers to form their own affiliated banks, or industrial lending companies, to do their own card processing if they so choose.

But lawmakers should also realize that credit and debit card processing is not free, and retailers would not be accepting cards if they did not lead to more purchases in stores and reduce the costs of alternatives such as carrying cash. Before credit cards were so prevalent, expensive armored cars hauling cash from retail stores were a common fixture.

In short, there is no such thing a free lunch, and lawmakers should not enable 7-Eleven and other retailers to soak consumers with more lunch fees.

In the case of our automotive industry — and most of the complex industrial activities where we have seen bottom-up monopolization — we can choose between two ways of making these systems once again financially and physically stable.

One is to treat these industries as the semi-monopolized utilities they now are and create a single sovereign body to regulate them from the top down, in a way that ensures their physical and financial stability. Such a regulator can be public (the government) or it can be private (a cartel of leading firms tasked with ensuring that all players share all costs fairly).

The alternative is to reform the various legal regimes (including trade and corporate governance as well as antitrust) that determine how corporate managers structure the industrial systems on which we depend, in order to ensure real “competition” both among giant lead firms like Ford and Toyota and among the companies that manufacture components for them. The immediate goal would be to guarantee that no group, either a private business corporation or a nation state, can ever seize control of any industrial activity on which we depend, no matter how small. The natural byproduct of such a system would be redundancy and resiliency.

Nowhere does Lynn mention how consumers can benefit when firms take advantage of economies of scale, the unsustainable labor contracts endemic in the U.S. auto industry, increased barriers to entry resulting from government regulation, the steadily declining relevance of domestic industry concentration and antitrust law in a globalizing world; all things that should be addressed before tackling this complicated issue. Instead, he proposes “we” either create new stringent and arbitrary competition regulations that would likely drive more U.S. industry overseas, or attempt to implement an incredibly politically-infeasible and economically-disastrous trade regime.

Moreover, his flawed analysis ignores the historical correlation between monopoly/oligopoly industries and government protection (e.g., telecommunications and commercial air travel), that antitrust laws which penalize firms for efficiency gains are counterproductive (and just plain stupid), and that these firms rarely sustain their market power in the long-run without government protection.

Lynn also fails to note how difficult it is to determine the optimal level of competition within a given industry, let alone the global economy. Take, for example, an insurer, which requires a large risk pool to operate in an actuarially sound manner. Given that generating the initial financing for said pools is a significant natural barrier to entry, it follows that industry concentration would likely be higher than those industries with less entry friction. This determination would need to take place for every industry, and be constantly re-evaluated given market dynamics. Those who didn’t sleep through their introductory econ courses should see how ridiculous Lynn’s “solution” is.

Lynn does dance around an important point: that the Big 3 have been failing miserably at efficiently managing their production processes for decades. But how this suggests that the United States (and the rest of the world) should rewrite the law and increase protectionism for their benefit is beyond me.

The Wall Street Journal criticizes Obama for seeking to force Honduras to accept the return of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya, a demand backed by left-wing Latin American dictators. “Mr. Zelaya was deposed and deported this summer after he agitated street protests to support a rewrite of the Honduran constitution so he could serve a second term. The constitution strictly prohibits a change in the term-limits provision. On multiple occasions he was warned to desist, and on June 28 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. Every major Honduran institution supported the move, even members in Congress of his own political party, the Catholic Church and the country’s human rights ombudsman. To avoid violence the Honduran military escorted Mr. Zelaya out of the country. In other words, his removal from office was legal and constitutional, though his ejection from the country gave the false appearance of an old-fashioned Latin American coup. The U.S. has since come down solidly on the side of—Mr. Zelaya.”

The Weekly Standard criticizes Obama for blocking travel to the U.S. by Hondurans, even while inviting to the White House, and giving a visa to, an official of Burma’s genocidal government, which has used mass rape and massacres against ethnic minority groups, and used torture and murder against Buddhist monks protesting oppression. The Obama Administration earlier imposed travel sanctions on the people of Honduras to punish them for their Supreme Court’s ruling refusing to allow the return of Honduras’s ex-president dictator to office.  Michael Barone, the dean of American political commentators, chides Obama for undemocratically “opposing the elected Congress, courts and civil society of Honduras.”

The Washington Times calls it “the worst foreign policy ever.” It notes that Obama has bullied “Honduras, which is desperately trying to stave off a socialist takeover by an anti-American autocrat whom the State Department has concluded is worthy of full U.S. support. This has delighted Cuban dictators Raul and Fidel Castro and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who are very willing to let the United States carry their water. Venezuela, meanwhile, has signed a major arms deal with Russia, continues to build the anti-Gringo “Bolivarian” bloc, bullies U.S. ally Colombia and plans to launch its own nuclear program.” (Obama’s actions have also emboldened Nicaragua’s corrupt, bullying President Daniel Ortega to behave dictatorially).

The Washington Times reports that “President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission” has praised Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his crackdown on independent media, in remarks in which he “described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela as ‘an incredible revolution.’” (Chavez recently closed 240 radio stations in Venezuela, and his regime has shot unarmed demonstrators).  Other Obama appointees have Marxist roots or sympathies.   Obama’s green jobs czar was the race-baiter Van Jones, “a self-avowed communist” who remained in office for months, desite controversy, until revelations that he was a Truther who believed that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 attacks. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

The Times also criticizes Obama’s congressional allies for moving to unionize airline security screeners and authorize collective bargaining at the TSA, making it more difficult for lazy or careless employees to be fired for incompetence.  The unions have “urged TSA Acting Administrator Gale D. Rossides to suspend use of the agency’s skills test for screeners. Failure rates this year reached more than 50 percent and were as high as 80 percent at some airports. The skills test shows that large numbers of airport screeners are failing at jobs that are intrinsic to keeping our airports and commercial airplanes secure, and the union’s response is to get rid of the test. The government employees union is also pushing to have failed screeners’ records cleared because pay and bonuses are tied to performance and unsatisfactory employee records prevent those who were fired for poor performance from being reinstated. So much for worker accountability.”

Obama also wants to introduce union-backed collective bargaining at the TSA. (A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.)

The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.  Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO).  Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with ”alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.

Earlier, the Obama administration ripped off taxpayers and retirees in the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts, in order to enrich the left-wing United Auto Workers union, in unnecessary bailouts that have cost at least $70 billion, drawing criticism even from the liberal Washington Post.  Many commentators argued that the auto bailouts were illegal, such as the Heritage Foundation and Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

In the Washington Post, George Will criticizes Obama for caving in to demands by left-wing unions for protectionist policies like tire tariffs that will harm consumers without saving jobs.   The stimulus package passed earlier this year contained protectionist provisions that backfired, destroying thousands of U.S. jobs by triggering massive retaliation against our export industry while doing little to reduce imports.

The Obama administration has now ordered a private provider of Medicare Advantage services to remain silent about how the Obama health-care plan would destroy the Medicare Advantage programs relied on by millions of seniors.  Eugene Volokh, a leading expert on First Amendment law, says that this violates the First Amendment.

Obama’s congressional allies have decided to conceal the exact language of their health-care bill until after it is voted on in committee, preventing the public from learning about controversial provisions buried in it.  (Earlier versions of ObamaCare have contained lots of provisions that do nothing to enhance health care, like racial preferences that were criticized as unconstitutional by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights).

Obama’s Energy Secretary likens the American people to unruly “teenage kids” who don’t know what’s good for them, and need to be told what to do.  (The cap-and-trade bill he backs to fight global warming would be devastating for the economy and do nothing to protect the environment).

Obama’s health care plan would raise taxes, break promises, harm people with insurance, explode the budget deficit, destroy many inexpensive health-care plans, and take away important freedoms.

The middle class is facing big tax increases thanks to Obama and Congressional Democrats. Even the trimmed-down version of Obama’s health-care plan recently announced by a ranking Senate Democrat contains lots of tax increases for the middle class (see below). And the costly cap-and-trade energy legislation passed by the House and supported by Obama would lead to big tax increases, Administration officials privately have conceded, even though they publicly claim otherwise. “Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times” by CEI. It could raise household taxes by $1761 per year, equivalent to a 15 percent tax increase. It would also result in “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs,” as jobs migrate overseas to countries which have fewer environmental protections than the U.S. does.

Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just the way Herbert Hoover’s excise tax increases were in 1932, aggravating the Great Depression. Although the tax’s supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air, as well as harming forests and water supplies.

Americans for Tax Reform summarizes the tax increases in the trimmed-down version of ObamaCare revealed by its principal drafter, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana). Here are just a few of those tax increases: an individual mandate tax of $900 per individual or $3800 per family (if you don’t have health insurance); an employer mandate tax of $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered; an “excise tax on high-cost health plans”; a “medicine cabinet tax”; capping Flexible-Spending Accounts (FSA’s); abolishing most HSAs; and increasing tax penalties for HSAs.

Financing expanded health-care coverage requires a growing economy. But the President is undermining the economy through trade policies that destroy jobs and drive up costs for consumers in order to satisfy the demands of left-wing unions — while sharply contradicting his own “free trade” rhetoric. That includes what the Washington Post calls a “regressive tax” on tires, a “tax on tires” demanded by union leaders.

Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package, which the Congressional Budget Office says will shrink the economy “in the long run,” destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in America’s export sector. It contained poorly-written “buy American” provisions that were too weak to cut imports much, but explicit enough to trigger broad retaliation from countries that buy much of our exports, like Canada and Mexico, cutting our exports and increasing our trade deficit.

The reality is that without the U.S. leading by example, the world trading order is likely to deteriorate into every country for itself. This is especially dangerous amid a global recession in which world merchandise trade volume fell by roughly 33% from the second quarter of 2008 to June 2009. Reviving trade flows is crucial to restoring global growth.

Mr. Obama may not intend to start a trade war, but then Hoover didn’t set out to pick one either. His political abdication is what made it possible, however, and trade passions once unleashed can be impossible to control. On his present course, President Obama is giving the world every reason to conclude he is a protectionist.

The Chinese have said they may retaliate on the tire tariffs by restrictions on U.S. chicken and auto parts.  That indeed could escalate to the detriment of U.S. manufacturers and producers and the jobs they maintain.  But U.S. consumers, especially lower-income consumers, could face immediate and substantial increases on lower-cost tires, many of which come from China.  Some tire distributors estimate that the cost of a $50 tire could rise to $85.  Since U.S. manufacturers mainly produce higher-priced tires, this protectionist move will do virtually nothing  for U.S. jobs in the tire industry, except perhaps appease the trade unions, especially the United Steelworkers, which have been clamoring for more protection.

1: Make better tires for less money. Give consumers a reason to buy American tires rather than Chinese. Compete, in other words.

2: Don’t compete. Too much hard work. Instead, persuade some politicians to place a 35 percent protective tariff on competitors’ tires. Price them out of the market. Then keep making the same old tires that people don’t want. If the tariff is large enough, you may even be able to raise your prices, even without raising quality.

This is a choice between raising the bar and lowering it. Unfortunately, U.S. tire firms and allied politicians have chosen to lower it. China, by putting up its own barriers to retaliate, is lowering the bar even further.

The really audacious part is that tire tariff supporters think they are really helping the economy. Raising that bar. Saving American jobs!

There is something very unsettling about the notion that an American job is intrinsically more valuable than a Chinese job. We are all human beings, are we not?

This is an ugly, ugly mindset. And it is one that politicians and tire companies have explicitly adopted. The burden is on them to explain why they think people who live in one country are more deserving of economic opportunity than people who live in another.