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Elizabeth Cohen, CNN

The post Distilleries that made hand sanitizer to help out during pandemic won’t face hefty fine appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

If Joe Biden can plagiarize with impunity and still win the presidency, then why not his second in command?

The post Kamala Harris’s ‘fweedom’ story strikingly similar to anecdote recounted by MLK appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

'He is on our side for defunding these suckers in blue.'

The post Warnock campaign director: He ‘absolutely wants to defund these suckers in blue’ appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Tyler O'Neil, PJM

The post Biden inauguration to feature ‘virtual parade’ similar to Dem Convention roll call appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Hannah Bleau, Breitbart

The post Hillary Clinton warns: Trump wants to ‘distract people from the fact that he lost’ appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

NBC 4 DC

The post Washington, D.C. mayor calls up National Guard ahead of ‘March for Trump’ appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

NewsTimes (WaPo)

The post Seriously? Proud Boys leader arrested for allegedly burning BLM flag – a month ago appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

AP

The post U.S. Attorney for North Georgia abruptly resigns appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Having a progressive Senator means more crime in your state. That’s because Senators play a key role in picking the federal judges who are appointed in their state, and progressive judges are more likely to order that dangerous criminals be released from prison. In California, progressive judges have ordered that thousands of prison inmates be […]

The post Crime will increase if Democrats win Tuesday’s Senate election in Georgia appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Acosta may find himself in for a surprise covering Joe Biden, who so far has avoided the press as much as possible and displayed inordinately thin skin when asked questions on topics beyond his favorite flavor of ice cream.

The post CNN’s Acosta claims covering Trump was a nightmare, in same breath pledges to go easy on Biden appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Candidates often lose elections despite having more enthusiastic supporters, or bigger rallies than their opponent.

The post Why the election outcome seems like a mystery appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Trump was a big spender before coronavirus and he became an even-bigger spender once the pandemic began.

But the White House generally didn’t add insult to injury by citing Keynesian economic theory to justify the president’s profligacy .

Prior to the pandemic, the excuse was that more money was needed for defense and that required (from a political perspective) more money for domestic programs.

And once the coronavirus hit, the excuse was that people and businesses needed to be compensated because of government-mandated lockdowns.

I thought the pre-pandemic excuse was pathetic and I’ve been skeptical of the post-pandemic excuse (why, for instance, are bureaucrats getting checks when their comfy jobs aren’t at risk?).

Well, Trump in on the way out and Biden is on the way in, which means one big spender is being replaced by another.

But there will be one difference, at least stylistically.  Biden will copy Obama by citing Keynesian theory to justify his spending binges.

Which means heartburn from me because I’ve been trying for years to drive a stake through the heart of this free-lunch concept.

But I obviously need to address the issue again.

To begin, Andy Kessler opines about so-called stimulus in his Wall Street Journal column.

…get ready for the “multipliers.” You know, the idea that a government dollar spent magically turns into multiple dollars in the economy. …Expect more multiplier mumbo jumbo as the Biden administration begins its tax-and-spend fiesta. …during the early days of the Obama administration. The financial crisis team…were “carrying around this list of multipliers”… Every dollar spent extending unemployment insurance benefits would, the fairy tale went, boost the economy by $1.64. …every dollar spent on food stamps would spur a $1.73 increase in gross domestic product. …“bang for the buck”—the proverbial free lunch. It’s more like “dud for the dollar” because it didn’t work. It never does. Multipliers are a canard, a Keynesian conceit. …The theory of multipliers is based on the Keynesian view that poorer consumers tend to spend a large amount of increased income, and the rich less so. But multipliers are half a story. Someone has to put up the original money that allegedly gets multiplied, taking it away from the private sector and negating whatever dwindling chain of transactions are hypothesized.

Amen.

Kessler is making many of the same points I made in my 2008 video about Keynesian economics, so I obviously agree.

Since Kessler’s column poked holes in the theory, now let’s look at some new evidence.

Former Senator Phil Gramm has a column on this topic in today’s WSJ, co-authored by Mike Solon.

The main takeaway is that Obama did a Keynesian “stimulus” and the economy suffered a weaker-than-normal recovery.

Between the start of the subprime mortgage crisis and the end of the recession in mid-2009, net new spending of $1.6 trillion was enacted. In 2009, federal spending as a share of gross domestic product surged by an unprecedented 4.2 percentage points to reach 24.4%, the highest level since World War II. Spending was 23.3% of GDP in 2010. …what happened after 2010? …some six months into the Obama administration, the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office both confidently predicted an economic boom, with real GDP growing an average of 3.6% from 2010-13. …Yet…growth from 2010-13 averaged less than 2.1%, half the 4.2% average growth rates in the four-year periods following the previous 10 postwar recessions. The Obama recovery didn’t falter for lack of sustained stimulus; it was shackled from the beginning by his economic program.

I think it’s especially instructive to compare the economy’s weak performance under Obama with the strong recovery we enjoyed under Reagan.

By the way, I think it’s possible to artificially and temporarily boost consumption with so-called stimulus spending, but increasing consumer spending with borrowed money is not the same as boosting national income.

Anyhow, what’s the moral of this story?

Because Mr. Biden’s proposed program is little more than Mr. Obama’s tax, spend and regulate agenda on steroids, and because his appointees are merely grayer retreads of the Obama administration, it is excessively optimistic to believe that his stimulus will do any more good for the economy than Mr. Obama’s did. …How does it end? …it isn’t a question of if government is going to run out of other people’s money, but when.

For what it’s worth, I think the United States could be profligate for decades before we reach some sort of fiscal crisis.

But Gramm and Solon are correct to cite Thatcher’s warning that statists eventually run out of other people’s money.

P.S. My fingers are crossed that Biden is more like Bill Clinton rather than Barack Obama, but I’m not overly hopeful.

P.P.S. We have a very recent example of Paul Krugman being wrong about Keynesian economics.

P.P.P.S. Even though it’s no longer the right time of year, here’s the satirical commercial for Keynesian Christmas carols.

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Image credit: National Portrait Gallery | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Shaking up the whole world.

The post Trump’s ‘Operation Vote’: Glimmers of the key supporting effort, and the larger strategic context appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

It's unclear whether the inhumane practice was ordered in reaction to the dense hordes of residents who flocked to the city’s Customs House clock tower on New Year's Eve to usher in 2021 with cheering and balloons.

The post Chinese Communist Party welding COVID ‘sinners’ into their homes again appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Allen Zhong, Epoch Times

The post Over 432,000 votes removed from Trump in Pennsylvania, data scientists say appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

The only problem with Cleaver's attempt at political correctness is that it reveals his ignorance.

The post Prayer to open 117th Congress ended with ‘Amen’ and ‘Awoman’ appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Sukyi McMahon, The Hill

The post Biden needs to appoint a secretary of racial justice to the cabinet appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Wash. Examiner

The post Fauci’s ‘noble lies’ catch up to him appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Dom Calicchio, Fox News

The post Iran threatens to avenge killing of Solemani on 1-year anniversary of his death appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Beth Baumann, TH

The post Cruz: Members of Congress have a ‘third option’ in re certifying the election appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.