As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, on Wednesday I attended a speech delivered by Senator Barbara Boxer. It's one thing to hear television sound bite mentions of loony interventionist proposals, but I tell you, it is an entirely different experience to hear 30 minutes straight of proposal after proposal for more government intervention in the economy. But that is exactly what I heard during Boxer's talk at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
Boxer started out with an attack on the wealthy and told the Commonwealth crowd, who clapped when she entered the room, that top CEOs make more in one day than a teacher makes in a year.
I thought about this for a moment and wondered if she was proposing raising teachers' salaries to make education even more expensive? Is that her talking point, "Let's make education more expensive."
She then went on to say that there are 400 people in the United States who make more than the combined income of 150 million other Americans. The implication was that something must be done to redistribute the wealth.
There was never any attempt to make a distinction between private sector wealth accumulators who provide goods and services that people desire and those who have gained wealth through crony no-productive deals with government. In other words, a Joe Salerno-type commentary on wealth was sadly lacking (See: Joseph Salerno On Income Inequality)
During her speech, she also babbled Keynesian nonsense and told the crowd that the U.S. economy is consumer driven. Never once mentioning the importance and necessity of production that comes before any consumption.
She then proceeded to throw out the myth that Henry Ford paid his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made (SEE: A Very Confused Obama and His Obsession with Labor)
And from there, Boxer told the crowd that the recent recession was caused by Wall Street "slicing and dicing mortgages." There was no mention of the business cycle or the role of the Fed in creating booms and busts. Instead, she proclaimed that the stimulus helped end the recession but said that the federal government could have done even more. She did not discuss the costs to the private sector of the diversion of money into the crony government sector caused by the stimulus packages .
She then called on raising the minimum wage and said an increase in the minimum wage would CREATE 84,000 jobs! Not even the CBO backs her up on this nutty claim (SEE CBO: Minimum Wage Hike Could Cost 500,000 Jobs)
She also promoted the Paycheck Fairness Act, which she told the audience would help bridge the gap of $11,000 a year between what men earn in a year for the same work as women. Yes, according to Boxer, the same greedy businessmen she referenced at the start of the speech are supposedly also paying men $11,000 a year more for no good reason.
Most scary, she signaled to the crowd that she is all in on crony climate change efforts. "My role is to shine the light on climate change," she said. She is chair of the very crony Committee on Environment and Public Works.
It was intervention after intervention talk from her, not one mention of liberty, not once. Though she did keep on repeating when referencing Washington D.C as "that other place I live," as if she doesn't feel comfortable among her crony, power crazed, colleagues in Washington.
No Q&A?
ReplyDeleteI had to leave to get to the Jack Lew event and didn't stay for the Q&A.
Delete-- Boxer told the crowd that the recent recession was caused by Wall Street "slicing and dicing mortgages." There was no mention of the business cycle or the role of the Fed in creating booms and busts. --
ReplyDeleteI think you made it clear the woman is a complete baboon when it comes to the most basic of economics and a parrot for ideological claptrap. You had me at "Barbara Boxer"
The looney Lily Ledbetter Act was signed into law on Jan. 29, 2009 and was suppose to end pay discrimination. Are they acknowledging that their legislation has been a failure since the greedy chauvinistic capitalists are still paying women less?
ReplyDeleteThis intellectual half-wit has been in the Senate since 1993. Two decades of muddled thinking, complete ignorance, and surely a raft of corruption.
ReplyDeleteIf Barbara Boxer isn't proof that our political system is broken beyond repair, nothing is.
Barbara Boxer is supposedly worth at least $5 million. Does she not think she is part of the elite? She has a degree in Economics, supposedly, but is as clueless as a tree stump.
ReplyDelete