*Written by Rob Rimes.

I’ve lost count of all the debates that we’ve had thus far but thank god we only have another half dozen or so, unless of course they decide to work more into the schedule somewhere. This one was thrown by Fox News and held in South Carolina as their primary is less than a week away. Fox News gave us Bret Baier and Juan Williams with Kelly Evans and Gerald Seib from the Wall Street Journal as moderators for this round. I should mention that answers in this debate have been expanded to ninety seconds, as the GOP field is now narrowed down to five. Yes, five.

The reason being, is that Jon Huntmsman dropped out of the race earlier in the day. Huntsman, who was great on foreign policy, jumped ship and announced his endorsement for golden boy Mitt Romney. What’s disappointing about that is Huntsman was incredibly critical of Romney even less than a week prior. Huntsman went as far as to call Romney “unelectable” but now he is supporting him as he sees him as the best chance at beating Barack Obama. Huntsman lost a lot of credibility with me due to his blooming Romney love. Maybe it’s a Mormon thing or maybe it’s because they are both actually cousins, which has been ignored by the media mind you. Whatever the reason, Huntsman is out and he’s now on the Romney train like so many other so-called “conservatives” that aren’t able to see their own progressive ways. At least Huntsman can go back to his regular job of walking around on eight legs and scaring the shit out of Australians.

Newt Gingrich gets the first question and he is asked about his ads that attack Mitt Romney’s business record and if he thinks they are justified. Newtie Bootie says that it is important to look at and analyze job creation. He then quickly gets in a Ronald Reagan name drop and follows it up with a second Ronald Reagan name drop when he said that he and Clinton came up with a Reagan-like program for job creation in the 90′s. Newt points to the fact that Mitt raised taxes in Massachusetts and was actually ranked 47th out of 50 states in the realm of job creation. He stole that talking point from Jon Huntsman. Gingrich adds that if Romney promotes his business skills as part of his campaign then he, as a rival candidate, has the right to question it. He is then asked what he thinks about the Wall Street Journal criticizing him and saying that he is “embarrassing himself” with his attack ads against Mitt Romney. Gingrich responds by saying that he isn’t intimidated by the media just because he is asking questions about candidates.

In an effort to respond, Mitt Romney says that he has real experience in job creation due to his time in the private sector. Mitt says that he learned a lot from working in the private sector, as opposed to the other candidates who have spent much of their time in the public sector. He talks about how four of the companies he helped establish have gone on to create hundreds-of-thousands of jobs. Mitt adds that his record is public and available to anyone that wants to analyze his job creation skills. He claims that he has continually demonstrated a record of success. Romney points out that the unemployment rate in Massachusetts when he left was 4.7 percent. He also throws in that he balanced the state budget every year.

Rick Perry, in an effort to make this debate all about Mitt, is asked about his comments where he referred to Mitt Romney as a “vulture capitalist”. Perry is also asked what he would put in place to curb vulture capitalism. Perry says that his record proves that he is a real capitalist. Really? Tweaking the law and protecting a company that you own a stake in from getting in trouble for distributing porn illegally is the actions of a real capitalist? You mean taking money from Merck and then attempting to force young girls to be vaccinated with Merck products is also the action of a real capitalist? Looks like Perry is a fucking vulture too from where I sit. He then goes on to bitch like a liberal about how Bain destroyed jobs. He then tells us that his record and income tax has been public for years and uses that to call out Mitt and then asks him to release his income tax information so that the public can see how he really made his money. Perry then rambles about killing Dodd-Frank and talks about how regulations are strangling America. He adds that he will get rid of some of the financial regulators. He didn’t say “all of them”.

Responding to Perry, as this is the Romney variety hour, Mitt blames the Chinese and their cheating ways for closing down the steel mills Rick Perry was blaming Mitt for closing. Romney says that he agrees with Perry about regulations but never really defends himself in a proper fashion other than pointing his finger at China. Romney, on the regulations issue, claims that he will end all Obama era regulations. I guess the regulations from the Bush era, the Clinton era and all other eras aren’t important.

So just when you think that’s over, Gerald Seib asks Romney a question! Fucking hell! Romney answers the question, which was abut his experience at Bain. He says that they often times consolidated plants and factories and if they closed one down, the workers were free to move to the new plant or factory. He points out though that many workers didn’t move as the new jobs didn’t come with union support.

Ron Paul is asked about his “scathing” attack ads and whether or not such ads should be abandoned. Well, considering he’s running them, I doubt he’ll feel that they should be abandoned, duh! Paul responds by saying that he is exposing voting records and in that case, his “attacks” are proper. He goes on to say that he couldn’t fit everything he wanted to in his anti-Santorum ad as there wasn’t enough time to get it all in. He then goes on to list all the dumb crap that Santorum voted for.

Thin skinned piss boy Rick Santorum says that Paul is quoting Soros-like leftist groups which discredits his facts because leftist groups attack conservatives. Santorum basically says that being attacked by leftist groups is a badge of honor and he’s proud of the distinction. What a stupid fucktard! It doesn’t matter what the source is, the fact is the facts are FACTS! You can’t just ignore your own voting record and try to spin it to the public as leftist propaganda! Santorum who voted for No Child Left Behind says that he would veto it now. Of course he would, he’s pandering to South Carolinians. He then defends his vote against “right to work” as he says that Pennsylvania wasn’t a “right to work” state. Santorum who is outraged over the attacks on himself is then put on the spot by Juan Williams who asks if Santorum’s own attack ads should be pulled. The crowd boos Juan because they are idiot assholes and Santorum goes on to says that his attacks are “positive”. He then gets all bitchy with Mitt about his attack ads while citing the fact that it is Martin Luther King Day to make some dimwitted point. Why do people support this whiney juvenile brat?

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum get in a spat about whether or not people who have committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote. I get bored to tears listening to them bicker as basically each candidate is trying to steal time from the other in order to make their lame ass points. While I’d like there to be some blood in these things, pink ass bitch blood isn’t as cool to see as the reddish bad ass real American blood. I was really just staring in awe waiting for these two Tinas to breakout with some limp-wristed slap fighting. And just when you think it’s over, Rick Perry jumps in the battle over who has the filthiest tampon.

Time monopolizer Mitt Romney is asked about Jon Huntsman’s recent criticism even though he came out and endorsed him. He is also asked how he can convince the voter that he won’t change his views in the future as he has a career as a flip-flopper. Mittens rambles on and on about how he was a pro-life governor contrary to popular belief and that he has always opposed gay marriage. However he adds that he is for equal rights for everyone including gays. Okay, so how is denying them marriage equal? Damn these Orwellian characters! Romney ends his soulless rant by saying that everything he has ever done and will do is about “strengthening America.”

In an effort to make himself relevant again, Rick Perry said that Texas was under assault by the federal government and then added that South Carolina was at war with Obama. The cheap pop attempt works and the crowd goes crazy. Too bad Perry is crazier than the crowd, he’s still deader than shit in this race. Perry talks about how the federal government is taking states to task on voter ID laws and immigration. He then says that Obama is at war with organized religion. Damn, Perry likes throwing the word “war” around. I’m starting to think he either doesn’t know what it means or it is just the answer to everything. “Obama is at war with peanuts! Send troops to the peanut farm! Obama is at war with puppies! Secure the entrance to PetLand!” Perry finishes by saying that Obama is out of control yet he fails to realize that he is foaming at the mouth and tweaking like an infant after two double espressos.

Santorum is asked if he would extend benefits for unemployment. Ricky Boy says that we need a reasonable time table for people to find a job but points out that 99 weeks is just too much. He goes on to say that this should be handled by the states and not the federal government. He calls for a job training program to be a part of unemployment benefits. Okay broski, how much will that shit cost? I’d imagine such a program would be expensive and even if we shortened the time one could collect benefits, the cost of this program could make all that moot. Truthfully, with the government being as wasteful as it is, this may cost us a shitload more than our current dilemma of 99 weeks. Also, when the hell has government done anything well? They certainly can’t offer a jobs program that will benefit anyone.

Gingrich jumps in the mix and agrees with Santorum that there should be a job training program. Okay idiots, what jobs are they training for and what happens when someone is six weeks into a program and decides that whatever they are training for is stupid and they want to get training in something else? Are people allowed to drop out and start over elsewhere and if so, how many times could they do this? Maybe once they start in something they are forced to finish it in order to get their benefits. Realistically, all this will do is waste more money as they will obviously stay in the program, collect the benefits and rack up more debt due to the cost of training them. What happens when they get out of the program? Well, I doubt they’d look for a job in the field they trained in if they grew to dislike it. Essentially this is a lose-lose for everyone but these statist shitcocks are blind to that reality. Newt Gingrich closes his statements on job programs by saying, “I’ll help you if you think helping yourself is good.” I shouldn’t even have to spell out what is wrong with that statement and I’m not going to.

Mitt Romney gives us another soulless rant. In this one he bitches about Obama’s business practices and use of crony capitalism. Romney says that the system of laws we have now work and that we don’t need government regulation. Is he living under a goddamned rock? The system of laws we have now IS government regulation. He adds that we need to open up markets and stop bailing people out. Right, he really wants to have free trade after all the smack he’s talked about China.

The idiot from Wall Street Journal Mr. Seib asks Ron Paul to explain his stance on cutting defense and more importantly on how his military plans would not cost South Carolinians jobs. Really? Is this a real question? Is this the best guy they could find to sit on the moderators’ panel? Ron Paul says that the moderator is confused about his position. He adds that he wants to cut military spending not defense and once again finds himself having to explain to the establishment conservatives for the umpteenth time over the course of these debates what the difference is between the two. Ron Paul says that cutting back on bases overseas would actually affect other countries not the United States. In fact, the U.S. would benefit greatly by bringing our troops home. Paul adds that the idea that this would make us weaker is “absolutely wrong”. Ron Paul is right on this because our presence is spread too thin throughout the world. He then points out that he raises more than twice as much money from the active duty military than all the other candidates combined! Slam dunk bitch! Watching this exchange is like watching Dr. Paul educate ADD-afflicted kindergartners in a college poli-sci class. Ron Paul finishes by quoting Eisenhower who warned about the “military industrial complex”. Paul slam dunks again when says, “We’re supposed to be conservative and that means spend less money!”

All the candidates are asked what the tax rate would be under them. Rick Perry says he will shoot for a 20 percent flat tax rate. Rick Santorum gives a weird answer because he’s probably never thought about this. Romney says that he would get us down to 25 percent but that is still too much. Newt calls for a 15 percent flat tax. Ron Paul then says that he would try to get us down to zero percent! He points to the fact that we didn’t have income tax before 1913 (well, excluding the Civil War era). His proposal is a reflection of how much he wishes to cut spending but the morons in the room can’t put two and two together and probably just think that Ron Paul’s still that crazy kook at the end of the bar. Paul also says that inflation is a tax and if he stopped inflation, we would be freed up from its hidden taxation.

Mitt Romney is asked if he will release his tax records soon. He gargles something about McCain and Bush and says that he hasn’t planned on releasing them. He says that he isn’t opposed to doing it however. He is then asked about his ties to Mexico and the crowd boos at the question. He is asked that if he has close ties to Mexico, why doesn’t he work towards helping Latinos and does he feel like his actions are alienating the Latino voters. Mitt says that Latinos, like all people, are interested in America because it is an “opportunity nation”. Mitt adds that he must communicate to all people that America can be better. He says that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be showed favoritism over those who have been waiting in line legally to enter this country. He then throws in that he would veto the DREAM Act.

Santorum starts pushing some mumbo jumbo about how if people get married before having children it’ll keep them out of poverty. He then blames Obama for everything and bitches about how public schools can’t promote marriage anymore. Santorum says that Obama is “..deliberately sabotaging young girls.” And Ron Paul is the crazy kook?

The moderators then ask Dr. Paul about racial disparities in drug related arrests and convictions. Paul says that it is very clear that racial disparity exists in both those convicted of drug charges and those sentenced to the death penalty. Paul points out that murderers often times get out of jail before drug offenders. He says that the drug war is bringing violence to our border and that it is the real border security issue of today.

Newt Gingrich is criticized about recent comments he made about blacks needing to ask for jobs instead of food stamps. He’s asked if he sees this sort of rhetoric as insulting to blacks, if not all people. Of course Gingrich says it isn’t insulting. He tells some weak story about how his daughter was a janitor at thirteen and how she loved making money and therefore black people should like it too. Juan Williams presses Newt further but gets booed by the South Carolinians in the crowd. What the fuck? Between this and the Romney-Mexico issue, these people are coming off as backwoods bigoted rednecks and people wonder why Republicans have that sort of stereotype! Newt adds that Obama has put more people on food stamps than any other president. While this may be true, it was the Bush administration that really got that ball rolling for Obama. In the end, Newt Gingrich doesn’t explain how his ideas help blacks, he just brushes it off and doesn’t bother dispelling the concerns brought up by the only minority on the stage or on the panel as a chorus of boos continue to be directed at that minority.

Ron Paul is then asked about comments he never made that he supposedly didn’t want to track down Osama bin Laden. Dr. Paul informs the moderators that he never said such a thing and that he voted for the military to apprehend the Al-Qaeda leader. Paul says his frustration was in how the situation was handled as we had the guy cornered before and didn’t go after him, instead we fucked around for a decade and then finally nabbed him almost ten years after 9/11. Paul adds that he wanted a properly executed mission but the whole situation was handled awfully. He then says that we need to respect other nations’ sovereignty and we need to follow proper procedures and not dig bigger holes for ourselves. Bret Baier takes a jab at Ron Paul and says that his stance on taking down terrorists is “to the left of Obama”. Ron Paul points out that we went in and got Saddam Hussein quickly. He then questions why acting quickly, capturing the enemy and detaining them to ask them questions is a bad thing yet waiting a decade and then flat out killing them is perceived as great.

Gingrich is asked if he would go into Pakistan to kill terrorists without getting permission from Pakistan first, even if doing so would end our relationship with Pakistan. Newt doesn’t answer the question, he just immediately attacks Ron Paul and says that Dr. Paul’s stance on foreign policy is “irrational”. Gingrich continues to ignore the question and goes on to just talk shit about Pakistan for continually reaping the benefits of foreign aid but not helping us militarily. Yep, because giving foreign aid apparently isn’t an act of kindness it is a transaction where we buy the countries we “aid”. Gingrich then channels Andrew Jackson and says, “Andrew Jackson had a clear cut idea about Americas enemies…KILL THEM!” This soundbite was met with thunderous applause because just like the establishment dickheads on stage, the majority of the South Carolinians in that building would rather murder someone who doesn’t like us than attempt to work towards a peaceful resolution.

Ron Paul then responds to Newt by saying that if other countries did to us what we do to them, we wouldn’t be cool with it. He then goes on to use the “golden rule” example and the rude crowd starts booing Ron Paul loudly! These people are sick! They are very vocally supporting murder and want to hear nothing of peace. This is the Republican stereotype that will continue to keep sane people away from their party. Paul doesn’t falter like other candidates however. He powers through his points, despite the evil jeers of the scumbags booing. Those of us that don’t condone unjustified cold-blooded murder and imperialism cheer from our living rooms because the oldest man in the room stood strong against the vehement hatred and hunger of hundreds of establishment zombies who only call a man crazy because they don’t have the brain power to understand him. I think it was Dave Chappelle who once said that people use the word “crazy” to describe things that they don’t understand. At this point, it doesn’t matter how many times Dr. Paul tries to educate the idiots, eventually you’ve got to just accept the fact that some people are ignorant and move on. Hopefully Dr. Paul learned this lesson but kudos to him for not faltering before these assholes. Another lesson learned, South Carolinians are rude as fuck.

So immediately after the sane man made his statements, Mitt Romney essentially went on a rant that we’ve got to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and he actually said, “A bullet in the head is the right course of action.” Yep, this also got thunderous applause from the pro-murder sect of the Republican Party. Romney then went on to say that he would build a military so strong that no one would test the United States and thus, it would keep us out of war. He does realize that we go to war with everyone else first, not the other way around, right? I know.. I know, I’m giving this haircut too much credit.

Rick Santorum gets in ”Kill! Kill! Kill!” mode as well and starts bashing Obama for being what he deems as pro-Assad because we put an embassy in Syria. Yeah dude, why reach out and try to build a relationship when you can just shove bombs down their throats?! Santorum spins it into Obama being anti-Israel as Syria is in bed with Iran. Of course the racist “bomb the world” crowd cheers and cheers.

Perry has to get some ”Kill! Kill! Kill!” action too! He says that he wants to send a powerful message to Iran, Syria and Turkey. He takes a little bitch shot at Ron Paul because he’s a pandering redneck dickweed. He then goes on to defend the Marines that pissed on the dead Taliban soldiers which gets the asshole crowd on their feet. I get this feeling in my gut that the Sith have finally come out of hiding. Perry rambles on and on about decapitated soldiers in an attempt to excuse the heinous acts of our Marines. He then tries to explain that Obama is to blame as his bad policies affected the military. Huh? What? Is this dude drinking all the left over vaccinations he couldn’t force into young girls’ arms?

Here’s the kicker of the night however. Mitt Romney was asked about NDAA and he actually says that he would have signed it into law as Obama has! Romney gets a chorus of boos from the asshole crowd but this time I agree with them. Mitt demands more time so he can explain himself; time is granted and then he just rambles incoherently about it and about expanding military power. Okay, so unless you have been in the dark for months, Mitt Romney is for a Nazi-like law that allows the military to arrest and detain American citizens without due process! This guy is leading in the polls people!

Oh wait! Rick Santorum is also on board and he even tries to dispel concerns about the law proving that he is completely ignorant on the subject and incompetent as a decision maker. What does that tell you when a guy who has been a Washington insider, as long as Rick Santorum has, can’t understand a law that he is reading. Then again, the prick never even probably thumbed through the evil bill.

They quickly move over to Ron Paul and change the subject. Paul, who has been a big critic of the NDAA bill, requests time to talk about the issue. Paul is given the opportunity by the moderators. He talks about how the bill is tyrannical and how it destroys the 4th Amendment and our constitutional rights. He says that Americans being held indefinitely without habeas corpus is a horrible thing.

On sacred cow entitlements, Romney says that he would adopt the Paul Ryan Plan in regards to dealing with the Medicare problem. He goes on to say that he would provide “..higher benefits for lower income people and lower benefits for higher income people.” Yep, he’s not a progressive shitbag. Newt calls for the Chilean model on Social Security and adds that Social Security under his plan would be voluntary.

Rick Santorum is asked if his jobs plan is crony capitalism as it seems to pick winners and losers. Ricky Boy says that he would cut corporate taxes for everybody, so it’s fair. He then rants and raves about foreign competition. When the hell did our leaders turn into such pussies, so afraid of foreign competition? Man the fuck up and compete bitch! He then goes on to whine about regulations. Wait, isn’t he responsible for a lot of those? Baier signals that his time is up and Santorum snaps at Baier like the little Yorkshire lapdog bitch that he is. No one wants to hear your boring rant dipshit! Not even Fox News who has been the only force pimping you out! Santorum’s tantrum then turns over to Newt and they bicker back and forth and I zone out and go to the kitchen for a granola bar.

Juan Williams questions Mitt Romney’s consistency and asks him how he is pro-gun rights when he was the first governor to ever sign an assault weapons ban. Mitt tells Juan that he worked with both pro-gun and anti-gun groups on the legislation and they all agreed on it. He even mentions that he took a picture with the leaders of both groups when the bill was signed. He then talks about hunting elk and pheasants. Wow, you’re a tough cookie Mittens!

Santorum is asked about his anti-gun history and he goes on to say that all his votes were supported by the NRA. He said that they supported him signing certain laws because if they didn’t something worse might come down the pipeline. Oh c’mon! What a crock of shit! So you eat a small piece of poop today because you fear that if you don’t there might be a big piece of poop tomorrow?! No dude, you stand by your convictions and you kick both piles of poop and call it a day. Santorum is such a weak pushover hoe. He lets fear dictate his life, whether that’s fear of hypothetical future legislation or fear of a God he doesn’t even understand. Rick Santorum is of the old establishment mentality that you have to take away some rights in order to protect other rights. This guy is beyond stupid.

This discussion about guns carries over to Ron Paul who says that gun laws should be left to the state. Santorum then has to make it known that Ron Paul tried to do away with the 2nd Amendment! Really? God, doesn’t the Bible talk ill of liars? There goes Ricky Boy disappointing Jesus again! Ron Paul says that he would repeal anything that would ban guns. He then points out that Rick Santorum is just nibbling away at the Constitution for his own means.

Newt Gingrich goes on to defend himself from being accused of supporting China’s “one child policy”. He says that he never, in any way, supported that policy. He and Mitt then get into a pointless quarrel over Super PACs. Mitt days that he would get rid of Super PACs as they are corrupt and wrong. Rick Perry then closes out the debate talking about troops on the border and “aviation assets”. In his funny Texan accent he promises to “..lock the border down within a year after taking my hand off of that Bible.”

This debate was hard to watch. The audience was absolutely awful and even though I talked some shit about South Carolina, I hope that their attitudes and behavior doesn’t reflect that of the rest of the state. I guess we’ll find out as the next debate is also in South Carolina. If the crowd at that one is just as ridiculous, it’ll deter me from ever wanting to set foot in that state again!

In the end, Ron Paul did well, even with the whole world seemingly against him. It wasn’t his best performance but it was solid enough. I believe that Romney walked away weak, especially after his NDAA comments. Plus he just pandered and filibustered most of the debate. Newt did really well despite the Fox News and Wall Street Journal moderators trying to “gotcha” him to death and hang him out to dry. Rick Santorum is going to end up sucking gay dicks in Hell so I don’t care about him. Perry is probably going to drop the fuck out because again, he’s deader than shit in this race.

I tried to keep this one short and sweet but these idiots just give you so much material to rip apart and bash.

Grading Scale:
Grade B-: Newt Gingrich
Grade B-: Ron Paul
Grade D: Rick Perry
Grade D-: Mitt Romney
Grade F: Rick Santorum

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

A new poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal suggests that should Congressman Ron Paul eventually decide to run as a third party candidate, he could completely transform the 2012 election and pose an even greater threat to the establishment than Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign.

“Paul would earn the support of 18 percent of voters in a three-way race with President Obama and Mitt Romney, according to the poll, with Romney earning 32 percent and Obama receiving 44,” reports The Hill.

Paul’s number beats that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who would garner 13 percent of the vote if he ran as a third party candidate.

Such figures are already impressive given the fact that Paul has not even begun to harness the momentum that a third party bid could generate.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from the Layfield Report.

CONTINUED..

My Two Cents: How can you end Donald Trump’s popularity as a presidential candidate? Just get a bigger celebrity to run against him. That’s where this country has gone. End Two Cents.

*Taken from the Wall Street Journal.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appears to be the early front-runner in the largely unformed race for the Republican nomination for president, but real estate magnate Donald Trump may be a surprise contender, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Among Republican primary voters, Mr. Romney captured the support of 21% in a broad, nine-candidate field. Mr. Trump was tied for second with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with 17%. House Speaker Newt Gingrich got 11%, just ahead of former Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s 10%. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, considered a strong contender by political handicappers, remains largely unknown, with just 6% support. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had 5%, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum 3%, and Mississippi Gov.Haley Barbour with just 1%.

Mr. Trump “may be a punch line but when he talks about the way to solve our problems, he makes a lot of sense to the average guy out there,” said Todd Mauney, a conservative Republican in Weatherford, Texas. “I don’t know if people can get over him being the butt of every joke but for me, he can be serious when it’s time to make real decisions.“

In a narrower field of five candidates, excluding Mr. Trump but including Messrs. Gingrich, Pawlenty and Barbour and Ms. Bachmann, Mr. Romney comes out with a comfortable 20-point lead, 40% to Mr. Gingrich’s second-place 20%. Mr. Pawlenty had 12% and Ms. Bachmann 11%. Mr. Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chief and chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has a powerful fund-raising network and a vast Rolodex of contacts, but he has yet to catch on with primary voers. He garnered 3% of the support of those polled.

*Taken from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Nick Ottens.

While red tape is rising under his watch, President Barack Obama promised   recently in aWall Street Journal op-ed to undertake a grand review of economic regulation in the United States and get rid of rules that “are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.”

Yet he has added plenty of dumb regulations himself. The mandates in the president’s health-reform act are among the most blatantly uneconomical of the many regulations enacted during the last two years. The individual insurance mandate is an affront to individual liberty unprecedented in American history. The federal government has never before forced people to purchase any product for their own good — at the risk of a penalty. The fine imposed by the Internal Revenue Service for not buying insurance escalates from $95 or one percent of taxable income in 2014 to $695 or 2.5 percent of taxable income in 2016.

Subsidies are provided on the other hand for people who can’t afford insurance. There will also be an employer mandate, requiring companies that employ 50 people or more to provide health benefits or face a fine of $2,000 per worker. Already major corporations are considering dropping their healthcare coverage because paying the penalty could be cheaper. Small businesses will think twice about expanding because of the massive financial burden imposed on them if they employ more than 49 people.

Both mandates are premised upon the notion that government has not only a right to interfere in people’s health care but also a responsibility to ensure that all its citizens have proper health insurance.

This is not true. In a free society, health care cannot be a right because it requires that others provide it — free of charge, if need be. Granting people a “right” to healthcare invariably negates the rights of healthcare providers. The new healthcare statutes further curtail the freedoms of private health insurers and are a major impediment to competition, prohibiting insurance companies from operating freely across state lines. The law forces insurers to

• Cover everyone, regardless of whether they might have preexisting conditions;
• Cover children up to the age of 26 under their parents’ insurance plan;
• Allocate a set percentage of revenues to patient care.

Starting in 2014, the law will also require insurers to offer a basic plan that covers

• Ambulatory patient services and emergency services and hospitalization;
• Maternity and newborn care;
• Mental-health and substance-use-disorder services;
• Pediatric services, including oral and vision care;
• Prescription drugs;
• Preventive and wellness services and chronic-disease management;
• Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices.

Do you want to insure yourself against medical catastrophe alone? Impossible. Are you male or simply not planning to have children? Doesn’t matter. Are you quite confident that you’ll never have to recover from substance abuse? Too bad!

These insurance requirements violate the rights both of insurance companies and of their clients, who should be free to insure themselves against whatever they like. Similar government-mandated basic insurance plans exist in other countries. While they start out covering “basics,” lawmakers usually can’t resist expanding their scope year after year, driving up health-insurance costs for consumers in the process.

There are many more dumb regulations in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Among them is the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau designed to protect consumers from “unfair, deceptive and abusive” business practices. While the bill does not define “unfair, deceptive and abusive” practices, the bureau will be empowered to create and enforce regulations on all financial products, including credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Although ensconced within the Federal Reserve, the agency will act independently. With potentially far-reaching powers and a troubling lack of oversight, this consumer-protection bureau will add to regulatory uncertainty in financial markets and further undermine the freedoms of banks and their clients.

The Durbin Amendment to the financial reform law will allow the Federal Reserve to regulate the fees that banks may charge for processing debit-card purchases. The amendment prescribes that such fees must be “reasonable” and “proportional” — without defining what that means. In anticipation, major financial institutions are already increasing costs elsewhere to offset the likely expense of “reasonable” prices. Before Dodd-Frank, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 imposed federal restrictions on the terms and conditions of credit-card services, requiring, among other things, that

• Credit-card providers allow for a minimum of 21 days for bills to be paid;
• Credit-card providers lower the interest rates of clients who have paid their bills on time for six months in a row;
• Gift cards and gift certificates remain valid for no fewer than five years.

By restricting the ability of financial firms to cover credit risks, the regulations have already caused higher interest rates and fees. This especially hurts small-business owners and low-income families who heavily rely on credit — the very people supposed to be protected by the law.

There are many more regulations enacted under President Obama’s watch, including new Environmental Protection Agency limits on carbon-dioxide emissions; the Renewable Fuel Standards, which prescribe that a particular measure of “renewable fuels” be blended into transportation fuel; and “network-neutrality” regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission, which infringe upon the rights of private enterprises and actually harm consumers far more than they protect them.

If the president is serious about rooting out “dumb” rules, he doesn’t have to look far to find some.

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Taking the advice of his chief advisor Rahm Emanuel and never letting a good crisis go to waste, Barack Obama’s decision to turn this month’s tragic Tucson shootings into a shot in the arm for his collapsing approval figures has proved to be a resounding success – with the President enjoying a 15 point bounce after a contrived establishment media hoax that linked shooter Jared Loughner with Obama’s political opposition.

“According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Obama’s approval rating has surged above 50 percent; confidence in the economy also has spiked; and the Democratic Party — but not the GOP — now enjoys a net-positive rating from the American public,” reports MSNBC, attributing the swing largely to “Obama’s well-received speech honoring the victims of the tragic shootings in Arizona.”

However, you don’t rack up a 15 point swing from one single speech. The turnaround has far more to do with how the establishment media managed to hoax a significant minority of Americans into believing that shooter Jared Loughner was motivated by the tea party movement and political rhetoric from the right, when in fact he was a deeply disturbed lunatic with a fetish for the occult and cross-dressing who was described as a “liberal” by those who knew him.

The corporate press dutifully managed to keep this under wraps to a large extent by simply refusing to emphasize the fact, while continuing to beat the drum about “toning down the rhetoric,” which was nothing more than a euphemism for intimidating conservatives and libertarians into muting their criticism of the government.

The Obama administration’s zeal for exploiting the tragedy manifested itself as the distasteful spectacle of Obama turning his memorial speech for the victims into a jingoistic, hollering, campaign-style event.

As we reported last week, the administration attempted to turn what was supposed to be a somber occasion into a tawdry political rally, printing t-shirts in the stylized Obama campaign motif with the words, “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America” printed on them.

“Never before in the annals of national moments of mourning have the words spoken been so wildly mismatched by the spirit in which they were received,” wrote John Podhoretz. “There was something about the choice of place, a college arena with the appropriate name of the McKale Memorial Center, that made the event turn literally sophomoric.”

“This was more like an Arsenio Hall show than a memorial service,” Doug Lucas, writing for American Thinker, added. “Catcalls, standing ovations, whistling and the whoop, whoop, whoop of the crowd dominated the night. What should have been a somber occasion for reflection turned into another Obama pep rally. It was as if these students had their guy up on stage and by God they weren’t about to let a national tragedy get in the way of them having a good time and cheering on their messiah.”

With the nation watching, the establishment press managed to spin the partisan sideshow as an organic surge of support for Obama, framing the debate around Obama’s excellence in “handling the tragedy,” which in reality consisted of nothing more than reading off a teleprompter and cleverly identifying himself with the heroes who tackled the gunman.

The results of this poll serve as more of a warning than anything else. Having triumphantly seized upon the tragic deaths of six people to reinvigorate the big government agenda, the political machine behind Obama can be confident that future crises can be adeptly contrived and exploited in order to offer some hope that Obama can secure a second term in office – an eventuality that seemed inconceivable before the Tucson tragedy.

But Obama will need to capitalize on an event far bigger in scale and one that provides lengthier repercussions than the Loughner shooting – namely a terror attack on the scale of Oklahoma City that can be blamed on his political opposition – a scenario envisioned by two prominent former advisors to Bill Clinton.

Democrat operatives Mark Penn and Robert Shapiro have both gone on record to candidly state that a new terror attack is the only method through which Obama will regain his popularity.

In July last year, Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs during Clinton’s tenure, was quoted in a Financial Times article in which he lamented Obama’s “growing credibility crisis” and cited the necessity for a new OKC bombing or 9/11-style event.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, adding, “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

Just two months ago, pollster Mark Penn, one of Clinton’s most influential advisors, explained to Chris Matthews’ Hardball show how Clinton “really clicked with the American public” after the Oklahoma City bombing and that Obama needed a “similar defining moment”.

*Taken from Reason.

In the 1990s, it seemed as if individual rights, deregulation, free trade, and sound currency were taking hold in Latin America, a region finally on the rise after decades of coups, repression, and violence.

But in the 21st century, left-wing strongmen have made a comeback: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. Other countries in the region are headed in the wrong direction. Authoritarianism has been on the rise in Argentina ever since the economy collapsed (yet again) in 2002. Mexico’s violent drug war is escalating. In Cuba, the transfer of power from one Castro brother to the other hasn’t helped the economy or stopped human rights abuses.

What went wrong?

Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board and a Journal columnist specializing in Latin America, to talk about the outlook for the region – and how free trade and drug legalization would go a long way to solving Latin America’s problems.

Approximately 6 minutes.

Produced and shot by Jim Epstein and Adam Jensen. Edited by Epstein and Joshua Swain.

*Taken from the Daily Caller. Written by Alexis Levinson.

In January, America will pass another milestone on the road to full equality when Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner becomes the first orange-American Speaker of the House.

Boehner’s unique skin has made him a target of liberal mockery, and talk of his tan has often eclipsed discussion of what he actually says or does. Even President Obama has gotten in on the fun, joking at the 2009 White House Correspondence Dinner that he and Boehner “have a lot in common. He is a person of color—although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

Obama came back to the joke, according to the Wall Street Journal, “at this year’s dinner, where Mr. Obama enumerated a few of what he jokingly said were hundreds of secret provisions in the health care law, including the ‘Jersey Shore-Up,’” which read, ‘the following individuals shall be excluded from the indoor tanning tax within this bill.’ On the list was Mr. Boehner.”

Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York made a similar joke during the health care debate: “I think Leader Boehner is particularly livid about the tanning bed tax.”

In September, Jon Stewart got in on the joke, reporting a supposed Twitter fight between White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Boehner, in which Gibbs tweeted, “@JohnBoehner You are so orange you fart Cheetoh dust.”

When Republicans took back the house on November 2, Twitter was abuzz with orange jokes. “The Orange man cometh,” joked one tweeter (The Daily Caller also used the same formulation as a headline at one point during Election Night coverage). “Orange is the new black,” said another, ironically citing the name of a novel about a women’s prison.

Boehner’s orange skin tone is an issue of national importance, judging by Yahoo! Answers, which features a large number of threads investigating what Time magazine has referred to as Boehner’s “weird orange tan”: “Why is John Boehner orange?”; “Why does John Boehner dye his skin orange?”; “Why does John Boehner have the skin tone of an Oompa Loompa?”

The general consensus among the message board elite seems to be spray tan, since Boehner has insisted (in response to Weiner’s comment) that he has never been in a tanning bed.

But the tan could be a concern in the coming Congress.

The team at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”  has joked about Boehner’s skin tone, calling the color “distracting,” which prompted Joe Scarborough to note: “He was talking about having a discussion about undoing one of the most historic, important amendments, and we’re just looking at the tan. That shade of orange.”

It was meant as a joke, but as Brad Phillips pointed out on Mr. Media Training blog, the distraction factor could be an issue when Boehner becomes Speaker.

“I know an article about Rep. Boehner’s tan may seem superficial, but it underscores a vital truth about communications: Audiences take more meaning from a spokesperson’s vocal tone and body language than they do from words alone,” he wrote. “If the audience is distracted by something in an interview – whether it’s a monotone delivery, a few dozen ‘uhhhs’ or ‘ummms,’ or an overly-tanned face – they are not going to hear what you have to say.”

*Taken from the Wall Street Journal. Written by Mark Maremont.

Two years after the peak of the financial crisis, the federal government swooped in to stabilize a crucial part of the credit-union sector battered by losses on subprime mortgages.

Regulators announced Friday a rescue and revamping of the nation’s wholesale credit union system, underpinned by a federal guarantee valued at $30 billion or more. Wholesale credit unions don’t deal with the general public but provide essential back-office services to thousands of other credit unions across the U.S. The majority of retail credit unions are sound, but they will have to shoulder the losses through special assessments over the next decade.

Friday’s moves include the seizure of three wholesale credit unions, plus an unusual plan by government officials to manage $50 billion of troubled assets inherited from failed institutions. To help fund the rescue, the National Credit Union Administration plans to issue $30 billion to $35 billion in government-guaranteed bonds, backed by the shaky mortgage-related assets.

Officials said the plan won’t cost taxpayers any money. Still, it marks the latest intervention by the U.S. government into a financial system weakened by the real-estate bust. Bad bets on mortgage-backed securities have now killed five of the nation’s 27 wholesale credit unions since March 2009. The federal government, which now controls about 70% of the total assets at such credit unions, said the surviving institutions will be reined in so that they take fewer risks with their investments.

“Previously, we stabilized the system, and now we’re resolving the problem and reforming the system,” said Debbie Matz, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, the U.S. agency overseeing credit unions.

Members United Corporate Federal Credit Union in Warrenville, Ill., Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union of Plano, Texas, and Constitution Corporate Federal Credit Union, Wallingford, Conn., which had a total of $19.67 billion in assets as of July, were taken into conservatorship by federal regulators.

Wholesale credit unions, also known as corporate credit unions, invest money for retail credit unions and provide them with check clearing and other services. Since the start of 2008, 66 retail unions have failed, compared with more than 290 banks or savings institutions. Credit unions are member-owned cooperatives that act much like banks.

Under federal rules, wholesale credit unions were supposed to invest only in safe, liquid assets. But some chased higher returns by loading up on securities backed by subprime mortgages or other risky loans. Their portfolios were decimated by the mortgage meltdown.

Last year, regulators seized the two largest wholesale credit unions, U.S. Central Federal Credit Union, based in Lenexa, Kansas, and Western Corporate Federal Credit Union, San Dimas, Calif., after finding their losses were much larger than previously reported.

Losses on the mortgage-backed securities held by the five seized credit unions are expected by regulators to total about $15 billion. Wiping out the capital of the failed institutions will cover a chunk of those losses. But the remaining $7 billion to $9.2 billion eventually will be passed along to the nation’s 7,445 federally insured credit unions in the form of future assessments.

The changes won’t immediately affect customers of retail credit unions throughout the U.S. But it is possible that assessments on the industry could result in higher interest rates on loans and lower payouts on deposits, if credit unions can’t otherwise cover their obligations.

Bert Ely, a financial-industry consultant in Alexandria, Va., said regulators share some of the blame for the resulting mess, because wholesale credit unions were allowed to pursue a strategy that was “viable only because of what clearly has turned out to be excessive risk-taking.”

Ms. Matz, the nation’s top credit-union regulator, said the investment losses reflect “unprecedented economic times” and “bad decisions” by regulators, credit-union managers and board members “by heavily over-concentrating in mortgage-backed securities.”

New regulations issued by the NCUA on Friday will make oversight of wholesale credit unions much tougher, she said, and are meant to fix any regulatory shortcomings.

As part of the plan, regulators will eventually wind down the operations of the five failed credit unions.

Together they had about $50 billion in shaky mortgage-backed securities on their books, according to Larry Fazio, NCUA’s deputy executive director.

Based on current market values, those securities are worth roughly half of their face value, representing a potential loss of $25 billion.

In an effort to minimize and spread out losses that must be absorbed by the credit-union industry, regulators said they will move all the battered securities into a good bank-bad bank structure. NCUA officials will manage the $50 billion portfolio, or “bad bank,” of the failed wholesale institutions.

Federal regulators will allow the remaining “good bank” operations at the credit unions to continue for about two years while retail credit unions wind down their relationships with the failed institutions.

Friday’s moves could deepen tensions between regulators and retail credit unions that withstood the financial crisis and resent having to bear financial costs caused by the mistakes of wholesale institutions.

*Taken from the Wall Street Journal. Written by Alex Tabarrok.

Capitalism hasn’t had much good press lately, and when it comes to the movies capitalism never seems to get a fair shake. In the movies, capitalists are almost invariably cast as villains. Has someone been murdered? Are the residents of a small town dying of cancer? Is an environment being despoiled? Look no further than the CEO of some large corporation. Quick, name as many movies as you can that feature capitalists as heroes. “Batman Forever” and “Iron Man” do not count. There are a few (“The Edge,” “You’ve Got Mail”), but it’s a short list. Now name as many movies as you can that feature mass-murdering corporations and corporate villains? That one is easy: “The Fugitive,” “Syriana,” “Mission Impossible II,” “Erin Brockovich,” “The China Syndrome” and “Avatar,” to name only a few.

Even when a corporation is not the primary villain, Hollywood lets its dislike of commerce be known. The most grotesque character in the “Star Wars” films represents commerce, Jabba the Hutt, a literal business worm. And just in case the message in the movie wasn’t clear the graphic novel featuring Jabba is titled “Jabba the Hutt: The Art of the Deal.” “Star Trek,” by the way, is no better. The capitalists in “Star Trek” are also represented by ugly, money-grubbing creatures called Ferengi who make their money by following rules such as “Employees are the rungs on the ladder to success—don’t hesitate to step on them.”

Hollywood’s anti-capitalism is not accidental. It stems from three sources: the rage of directors and screenwriters against their own capitalist backers, the difficulty of using a visual medium to depict the invisible hand, and an ethical framework which Hollywood shares with most of our culture that regards self-interest as inherently immoral or, at best, amoral.

In the big picture, art and capitalism work well together. The greatest periods of art history were often times of relative wealth and economic growth, as economist Tyler Cowen discusses in his book “In Praise of Commercial Culture.” It’s capitalism that creates the wealth that supports artistic creation, and it’s capitalism that provides artists with new technologies and media to work with. But when it comes to making particular movies, capitalism and art stand in conflict.

“Economics,” wrote director Sydney Pollack, “is the most inhibiting factor for a mainstream director making a film.” Hollywood needs capitalists, but with millions at stake the capitalists have little choice but to constrain writers and directors when their vision conflicts with profit. If the public wants a happy ending, then the capitalist will demand a rewrite regardless of whether the screenwriter thinks it violates artistic integrity. (The pressure put on filmmakers to produce happy endings is memorably pilloried by Robert Altman in “The Player.”)

Directors and screenwriters see the capitalist as a constraint, a force that prevents them from fulfilling their vision. In turn, the capitalist sees the artist as self-indulgent. Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has “sold out” has succeeded, but an artist that has “sold out” has failed.

Painters don’t resent the capitalists who sell them paint, because they don’t need their backing. But filmmakers need capitalists for financial support, and so their resentment toward capitalists is especially strong. University of Illinois law professor and movie analyst Larry Ribstein has written a paper arguing that filmmakers enter “a Faustian deal” in order to produce their art. Filmmakers see themselves as selling a part of their artistic soul to make their movies, and naturally they rage against the devil doing the buying. It doesn’t take a Freud to see that some of this rage comes pouring out on the screen.

Consider the two highest grossing films of all time: James Cameron’s “Avatar” and “Titanic.” The former features a genocidal corporation and the latter a capitalist who sends more than 1,000 people to their doom by demanding speed over safety in the name of profits. In fact, despite his commercial success, Mr. Cameron is a notorious corporate basher. In “Aliens,” for example, a corporation sacrifices people in an attempt to profit from the alien monster. Mr. Cameron is also notorious for his hatred of the studio system and the executives who try to constrain his artistic vision or his budget.

Although Hollywood does sometimes produce leftist films like “Reds,” it has no deep love for socialism (check out the Porsches in the Hollywood Hills). Hollywood’s communist and socialist period was based on the promise that in the socialist paradise artists would be liberated from the yoke of capital and freed to fulfill their visions. Even in Hollywood, however, few people take this promise seriously today.

But Hollywood does share Marx’s concept of alienation, the idea that under capitalism workers are separated from the product of their work and made to feel like cogs in a machine rather than independent creators. The lowly screenwriter is a perfect illustration of what Marx had in mind—a screenwriter can pour heart and soul into a screenplay only to see it rewritten, optioned, revised, reworked, rewritten again and hacked, hacked and hacked by a succession of directors, producers and worst of all studio executives. A screenwriter can have a nominally successful career in Hollywood without ever seeing one of his works brought to the screen. Thus, the antipathy of filmmakers to capitalism is less ideological than it is experiential. Screenwriters and directors find themselves in a daily battle between art and commerce, and they come to see their battle against “the suits” as emblematic of a larger war between creative labor and capital.

A second and surprising reason that Hollywood fails to understand capitalism is rooted in its tried-and-true manner of telling a good story. Movies focus on individual character, choice and action because that’s where the drama lies. It’s true that entrepreneurs are a key aspect of capitalism, and a handful of movies such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker” do focus on entrepreneurs. But to really understand capitalism we must transcend the level of character to see the hidden forces that coordinate the actions of millions of individuals across the world.

The production and delivery of even the simplest products involves the efforts of thousands of people dispersed around the globe, none of whom may understand but a tiny portion of the entire process. It’s not the hand of any single entrepreneur, but rather the “invisible hand” that delivers a rose from the fields of Colombia to the great flower markets of Aalsmeer, Holland, and on to the Chicago florist who sells it to a young romantic who gives it to his sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

It’s hard to present the profoundly nuanced and intricate latticework of capitalism in two hours, which is one reason why one of the few works to attempt this is the five-season television series “The Wire.” As with so many other movies and television shows, the capitalists are vicious murderers. “The Wire” simply makes the stereotype more realistic by making its entrepreneurs drug dealers. But although it uses character, “The Wire” is ultimately about how character is dominated by larger economic forces: drug dealers come and go, but the drug market is forever. “Capitalism is the ultimate god in The Wire. Capitalism is Zeus,” says David Simon, the show’s creator.

Over its five seasons, “The Wire” shows how money and markets connect and intertwine white and black, rich and poor, criminal and police in a grand web that none of them truly comprehends—a product of human action but not of human design. It’s the invisible hand that’s calling the shots, as Mr. Simon subtly reminds us in the conclusion to the third season, when Detective McNulty wondrously pulls a book from the shelf of murdered drug dealer Stringer Bell, and the camera focuses in on the title: “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith.

Smith’s metaphor of the invisible hand, like Mr. Simon’s invocation of Zeus, tells us that to understand the world we need to look beyond the actions of individuals to see the larger forces at work. But Zeus is an arbitrary and capricious god whose lightning bolts fall out of the sky without reason or direction. Smith’s “invisible hand,” however, is that of a kinder god, a god that cares not one whit for individuals but nevertheless guides self-interest toward the social good, progress, and economic growth. So Mr. Simon understands that the Baltimore dockworkers lost their jobs because of the relentless change that capitalism brings and not through any fault of their own. But Adam Smith sees what Mr. Simon does not, namely that it was capitalism that brought the Baltimore stevedores their high wages in the first place and it is the relentless change of capitalism that slowly raises wages throughout the world.

Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it’s clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren’t very virtuous. As a result, the one Hollywood defense of capitalism that everyone knows is Gordon Gekko’s speech from “Wall Street”: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.” But even if Gekko’s defense has an element of truth, it’s uninspiring, which is why Gekko remains the villain of “Wall Street,” and not the hero.

A better defense of capitalism is to focus on capitalist virtues. In “The Pursuit of Happyness,” for example, Chris Gardner, a struggling salesman played by Will Smith, confronts adversity with hard work, creativity, ambition and intelligence. “The Pursuit of Happyness” is syrupy at times, but the story of Gardner’s rise from homelessness to a successful job as a stockbroker is full of drama and uplift, which makes it all the more surprising that more films don’t use the business world as the setting for great cinema.

Lots of movies feature people in soul-destroying jobs who finally escape to realize their true selves, but how many feature people who find their true selves in productive work? Not many, which is a shame, since the business world is where most of us live our lives. Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It’s about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production.

Michael Moore didn’t have to worry that anyone would misinterpret the title of his film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” because in Hollywood no one loves capitalism. That’s too bad because Hollywood is one of capitalism’s greatest successes. Hollywood brought high quality entertainment to the masses in the same way that Henry Ford brought high quality cars to the masses. Hollywood is great at telling stories but it has yet to tell one of the greatest stories of them all, the story of capitalism, the most humane and productive economic system the world has ever known.

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and director of research for the Independent Institute. He writes regularly at the economics blog, MarginalRevolution.com