Break out the Booze?
by Thomas Fleming

views

Academic Sins
by John Willson

The Uses of a Liberal Education
by Catharine Savage Brosman

news

Okinawa Occupied
by Allen Mendenhall

reviews

An Unfinished Story
by James Bissett
[Srdja Trifkovic, The Krajina Chronicle: A History of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia]

Sustained Magnificence
by Derek Turner
[Max Hastings, Winston’s War: Churchill 1940-1945]

A Legend for Our Time
by Matthew A. Roberts
[Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy]

A Question of Dots
by Gerald J. Russello
[Shane Harris, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State]

correspondence

Hanging With the Snarks: An Academic Memoir
by Clyde Wilson

The Quest for Certitude
by Jonathan Chaves

vital signs

Terminating an Unwanted Parentcy
by Kenneth Zaretzke

columns

Adios, Rio Nido
by Justin Raimondo

Caring in Colorado (and Everywhere)
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Give Me Back My Frock!
by Aaron D. Wolf

Who’ll Stop the Rain?
by Scott P. Richert

The Man Who Won the Revolution
by Roger D. McGrath

The Daughter of Time
by Philip Jenkins

Retreat From Eden II
by Andrei Navrozov

Advertising Himself
[Inception]
by George McCartney

Sympathy for the Devil
by Taki Theodoracopulos

poetry

“Julian at Prayer” and
“A Talisman Against Falling”
by Stella Nesanovich

Polemics & Exchanges

American Proscenium
"The Panic of 2011"
by John Seiler

Cultural Revolutions
—"Manufacturing Bust" (Greg Kaza)

The largest industrial states have recorded manufacturing job losses under President Obama. These include California (121,000), Texas (62,400), Illinois (59,000), Pennsylvania (50,900), North Carolina (50,400), Ohio (46,400), Indiana (29,200), and Michigan (23,900). National manufacturing job losses under President Obama have been broad-based. Durable-goods industry sectors that have recorded job losses under Obama include wood products, nonmetallic mineral products, primary metals, fabricated metals, machinery, computer and electronic products, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation equipment, furniture and related products, and miscellaneous manufacturing. Non-durable-goods sectors that have recorded losses include food manufacturing, beverages and tobacco products, textile products, apparel, leather and allied products, printing and related support activities, petroleum and coal products, chemicals, and plastics and rubber products. No manufacturing sector has yet to record a gain.

Most incumbent Republicans lack the credibility to raise the issue. They were, after all, largely silent on manufacturing job losses under President George W. Bush. Manufacturing contracted by 4.5 million jobs under the Republican Bush, a 27-percent decline unlikely ever to be surpassed. The longest consecutive monthly increase in manufacturing jobs under President Bush was five months (December 2005 through April 2006). Obama has already exceeded that record in 2010, recording six consecutive months of small gains from January to June after monthly declines last year.

Most Republicans have listened for too long to economists who argue manufacturing job losses are unimportant as long as output expands. This argument overlooks countries like China, where manufacturing employment and output have both increased. It downplays the social consequences for families, including a greater government role as good-paying private-sector jobs disappear. It also ignores the political implications of long-term manufacturing job losses in a state such as Ohio, the key to the Electoral College. President Richard M. Nixon, the last Republican to preside over a net national gain in domestic manufacturing jobs, won Ohio’s electoral votes twice, as did Clinton. How will these Republicans assail Obama’s record to date in Ohio when nearly one in three manufacturing jobs (322,400) disappeared there under his predecessor?

Economists who defend President Oba­ma’s economic policies argue he inherited an economy in recession and note that Bush also presided over a net loss of manufacturing jobs. But at some point President Obama’s economic policies, as they apply to the domestic manufacturing sector, will be judged on their own merit. And thus far under Obama, national manufacturing employment has declined to the level of spring 1941 (11.6 million), shortly before U.S. entry into World War II.

This article first appeared in the September 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Deep-sixing the death tax is part of the cancellation of most of President George W. Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. Republicans in the White House and Congress, in their Karl Rovian sneakiness, put a termination date on their otherwise sensible tax cuts. The reason is now clear: The tax increases are being used in campaigns against Democrats who won’t extend the tax cuts.

But wait, there’s more. In 2011, the top income-tax rate will rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The capital-gains tax will jump from 15 percent to 20 percent, an increase of one third, choking off vital capital needed for an economic recovery. And unlike the income tax, the capital-gains tax is not indexed to inflation.

Individuals and businesses are taking profits in 2010 to avoid paying higher 2011 taxes. They will stop doing that on January 1. The tax increases will trigger the Panic of 2011, the second dip of the Great Recession.

Things are going to be worse than they were in the Great Depression. Back then, the country’s moral fiber was stronger. Far fewer people had mortgages. There were no credit cards. Since the 1930’s, the U.S. industrial base, which was still by far the world’s largest, has greatly eroded, and it soon will be surpassed by China’s.

For America’s industrial decline, my Chronicles colleague Tom Piatak blames free trade. I blame the lack of a gold standard, excessive regulations, and high taxes. I especially blame the 1971 “Nixon Shock,” which ended the $35 gold standard, and the ensuing inflation that jammed the middle class into upper-income tax brackets. But both of us want America to have strong producing industries.

By contrast, most politicians, economists, and bankers are happy with an economy based on folks foreclosing on one another’s houses. I’m not joking. One guy I know puts food on a modest table by getting paid one dollar each for pictures he takes of foreclosed houses; 125 pictures per day equals $125, barely enough to survive. Another man I know works for a mortgage company, paying families $1,500 each for not trashing their foreclosed homes before they go and live on the streets.

The economists also tell us that in the summer of 2009 a “recovery” was magically conjured up by President Bush’s $700 billion TARP stimulus, President Obama’s $827 billion stimulus—all of it borrowed money—and Fed boss Ben Bernanke’s doubling of the money supply in 2009.

But the “recovery” money was used to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Having a hard time avoiding foreclosure? Tough. Wall Street not only grabbed your money but ran up trillions of credit in your name. Your grandkids will be paying down the debt.

During the “recovery,” the official unemployment rate has remained close to ten percent. That number is bogus. To make the unemployment numbers look better for his 1996 reelection bid, President Clinton removed people who had despaired and quit looking for work. If those numbers are included, as they are on Shadowstats.com, unemployment is really above 20 percent—a depression level by any measure.

Another major weight on the economy is the Iraq war, with a cost of up to five trillion dollars, as calculated by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz; he includes not just “defense” spending but the cost of VA benefits for wounded veterans and cumulative interest on the money borrowed from China and Japan to pay for the war. As during the Vietnam War, we’ve learned the hard way Sun Tzu’s warning: “There is no instance of a nation profiting from prolonged warfare.”

Meanwhile, Social Security ran into the red in 2010, seven years earlier than expected, piling higher a national debt that is now rising rapidly above $13 trillion. Obama just socialized medical care, 17 percent of the economy, bringing untold inefficiencies and suffering. For the post-election lame-duck session, Democrats are lusting to pass a “carbon-tax” bill to fight a global-warming threat proved bogus by Climategate. And Republicans are pushing Obama to nuke Iran’s alleged nukes, which could send oil prices up to $300 per barrel.

As we saw on September 15, 2008, when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy precipitated the Panic of 2008, a recession or depression starts with a triggering event that detonates thousands of pounds of TNT-infused economic rot. The next trigger will be pulled on January 1. Even if the Democrats running Congress pass an extension of the Bush tax cuts to reduce their losses in the November elections, they will mess it up somehow. The trigger will still be pulled.

I hope I’m wrong.

This article first appeared in the September 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.