Backbone Radio, September 5, 2010: Of Maes, Missions and Multipliers

by Rossputin | 8:46 am, September 4, 2010 | Comments Off

Topic 1: Maes (and the state of the 2010 election in Colorado)

Earlier this week, former Senator Hank Brown withdrew his prior endorsement of Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Maes. Brown was soon followed by others, not least Backbone Radio’s own former President of the State Senate and candidate for governor, John Andrews, withdrew their prior endorsements of Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes.  (Other unendorsers included Ken Buck, Mike Coffman, Hear Us Now, Pete Coors, and Bob Beauprez.)

Maes, the gift who keeps on giving (to talk radio) is losing support even faster than Barack Obama is.

Nevertheless, despite intense pressure, Maes decided to stay in the race, dashing the hopes of people (like me) who had hoped beyond hope that we’d get a good last-minute replacement (I was rooting for Jane Norton.)

In our first hour, we’ll talk about the governor’s race with John Andrews, including the implications for Colorado politics on a broad scale.

Topic 2: Mulitpliers (and the cost of government)

When it comes to economic policy, the president and his advisors are full members of the Keynesian cult of big-spending lovers of government power. They only consider the cost of their beloved Nanny State to the extent that it might impact their next elections.

The cost of government is truly massive. Much more massive than most people understand. But the good people of Americans for Tax Reform are trying to remedy that educational gap with their “Cost of Government Day” project.

In the 6-o’clock hour, we’ll speak with ATR’s Mattie Corrao about the project which recently reported that “In 2010, Cost of Government Day falls on August 19. Working people must toil 231 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government - 8 days later than last year and a full 32 days longer than 2008. In other words, in 2010 the cost of government consumes 63.41 percent of national income.” Colorado comes in 33^rd, with 2010’s Cost of Government Day landing on August 21^st.

The freedom of a people should, at least in part, be measured by the cost of its government. Learning just how massive this burden is on Americans is a sobering event. We can only hope that rather than lead to sadness and resignation, this sort of information encourages anger and non-violent anti-government pushback, with citizens reclaiming our republic at the ballot box and returning government, even if it takes generations to do so, to the limited scope and cost which our Founders envisioned.

The concept behind “stimulus” spending, responsible for much of the recent increase in the cost of government, is the fatally flawed idea that each dollar of government spending creates more than one dollar of economic activity. This “multiplier”, assumed by Obama and friends to be more than one, is more likely less than one and perhaps less than zero, meaning that each dollar of government spending probably creates, at best, something less than a dollar of net economic activity and perhaps actually causes a contraction of the economy as the private sector anticipates the future tax increases necessary to pay off the spending.

We’ll discuss the idea of the multiplier in some detail as it represents perhaps the most important and least well understood basis for essentially the entirety of the Democrats’ policy suggestions for helping the economy. The reality of a near-zero multiplier means that the government’s demanding more “stimulus” to pump up the faltering economy is like a medieval doctor who treats a worsening patient by taking even more blood from his veins.

Topic 3: Missions (and a president who views them as distractions.)

On Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama gave a speech from the Oval Office. While the topic of the speech was ostensibly the departure of the last American combat troops from Iraq, much of the speech was focused on the mission in Afghanistan and on the sputtering American economy.

The speech was, in usual Obama style, read from his teleprompter with very few mistakes while delivering a message almost entirely free of substance. With the word “victory” uttered only once, and that in a context of the success of “our partners”, with yet another subtle jab at George W. Bush, and with some of the most meaningless rhetoric yet used to describe the current economic situation and his counter-productive plans to improve it, Barack Obama proved again that, as others have noted, war is to him little more than a distraction on his intended path to “fundamentally transform America.”

We’ll talk about the speech, about the prospects in Afghanistan, and about the American economy.

In the 7-o’clock hour, you’ll hear this month’s installment of Backbone Business by Joshua Sharf. This month’s topic: Entrepreneurs, covered in four segments:
1 – Rolling your own: Shop-at-Home
2 – Franchising
3 – The other side of the coin: VCs
4 – Startup Culture, Startup Nation

Please join me by listening to (and calling in to) this week’s Backbone Radio program from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs.

If you’re not in range of the radio waves, you should be able to listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

I hope you’ll actively participate in the conversation with me: Call the studio at 303 696 1971, e-mail me at ross(at)710knus.com, or instant message from my site at http://rossputin.com or through AOL Instant messenger to screen name Rossputin.

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