The politics of fear

President Franklin Roosevelt once famously stated as he took over leadership of a United States in the throes of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It was an attitudinal shift from the terror that had gripped the nation since the mighty crash on Wall Street just over three years prior. Historians will continue to debate whether or not FDR’s busy-work policies and alphabet soup agencies ended or exacerbated the depression, but one thing is for certain. His presidency set a high watermark for optimism for the country at large and the Democrat Party specifically.

That optimism enjoyed a brief resurgence under John F. Kennedy that his assassination seems to have stripped from the party permanently. Bill Clinton managed to put a happy face on the pessimistic party, but even his rise to power was on the back of a commodity the Democrats have mined and traded now for half a century. That commodity is fear itself.

While Ronald Reagan was restoring the country’s sense of self-worth, a new cult of despair was in its infancy. It was called the global warming movement. Its godfather, James Hansen, was taking a cue from Paul Ehrlich and his wildly successful freak-out, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich confidently and boldly predicted in 1970, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” He took the occasion of the first Earth Day in 1970 to predict that 4 billion people would die sometime between 1980 and 1989 in the “Great Die-Off.”

We’ve had nearly fifty years to assess the utter absurdity of Ehrlich’s predictions, yet he still stands by most of them. That’s what happens when you go all in on fear. There’s no backing down without totally destroying your reputation in the process.

Such now is the fate of the global warming alarmists. They have peddled fear for a demonstrable 30-year period, a time-span that scientists and political observers can assess for its accuracy, or lack thereof. Philip Shabecoff, an environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote in June of 1988, “The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.” While we haven’t reached the middle of the century we are nearly halfway there. On the low end sea levels should’ve risen by six inches. Of course, they haven’t.

Liberals, devoid of positive ideas of their own, have resorted to exploiting not only fear but guilt. You’re destroying the planet so you must do something about it. You have too much and you’re far too comfortable so you must do something about it. All of the great gulit-and-fear schemes from peak oil to global warming to the population bomb have something else in common other than guilt and fear. Redistribution of wealth. If you’ve managed to work hard and produce it’s somehow your fault that others have not.

Now, that’s not to say that misfortune doesn’t befall people for no apparent reason, but history teaches us that misfortune has visited many successful people. It’s how they deal with that misfortune that makes the difference.

The volume of hysteria among the liberals increases with each new bit of economic news. One would think that black and Hispanic unemployment at historic lows would be cause for celebration. It is only if you measure success by the normal metrics of success. It’s bad news if you measure it only by fear.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

It's your economy, stupid

Now that Syria has sort of blown up in President Obama’s face he’s once again turned to the economy.  In a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers the president sought to take credit for anything he could find good in the economy and blame the rest on the Republicans.  Nice try, Mr. President, but the people are no longer buying it.

He bragged about 7.5 million private sector jobs he has created but the facts tell a completely different story.  The fact is there have only been a little over a million jobs created since Obama took office.  This is one of the slowest, if not the slowest, recoveries from a recession in the history of the country.  Why?

Well, for starters, George W. Bush and the Republicans have nothing to do with it.  Consider this.  Obamacare is turning the American work force into part-timers.  There are stories every day of companies that are cutting employee hours so they don’t have to bear the sticker shock of higher healthcare costs under Obamacare.  And the working poor are being hurt the most.  Here’s the reason.  Obamacare mandates that an employee pay no more than 9.5 percent of their income on health insurance.  Of course, health insurance is a fixed cost so, naturally, it’s a bigger percentage of someone’s salary making $30,000 than it is someone making $300,000.  So, if your employer is now paying 60 percent of your health insurance they don’t have to pay more money for the higher-salaried employee but they do for the lower-salaried employee.

Consider this example.  The Kaiser Family Foundation says the average family insurance plan is now just north of $16,000.  For that employee who’s making $300,000 by law they can’t pay more than $28,500 of their salary toward health insurance.  So even if they were footing the whole bill their employer wouldn’t be obligated to pay anything toward their health insurance.

Now let’s take the employee making $30,000.  By law they can’t pay more than $2,850 toward their health insurance.  If their employer is now paying 60 percent they’re paying $9,600 of that $16,000 health insurance tab.  Under Obamacare they’ll be required to pay $13,150 or 82 percent of that person’s health insurance.  Now do you understand why lower-paid employees are getting cut back to under 30 hours?  If you’re employed under 30 hours then your employer isn’t required to pay a dime of your health insurance.

We also have far more people trapped on welfare since Obama changed the standards during the recession.  More people on welfare means fewer people working.  Obama’s EPA has waged war against the oil and coal industries, killing tens of thousands of jobs in the process.  At a time when there’s an oil boom going on in North Dakota, primarily on private land.  Were the president to open up public land to oil development experts say we could be energy independent in five years, only having to import a little oil from Canada.  Imagine that.  No more entanglement in the Middle East over oil.

Between the president stubbornly standing in the way of getting at our energy resources and blocking the completion of the Keystone Pipeline millions of potential jobs go unfilled.  The way to economic recovery is through a booming economy and that comes from allowing the private sector to create jobs, not by killing them.  Unfortunately, the recession is still real for most Americans.

This is your economy, Mr. President.  After nearly five years at the helm there’s simply no one left to blame.  It’s time for you to own it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Stop encouraging laziness

A story came across the news wire and my senior research analyst brought it to me in the studio while I was on the air.  It was an AP story out of Atwood, Mich. about how farmers were complaining they wouldn’t be able to bring in the cherry and apple crops without illegal aliens.  American workers, they claimed, were either not available or not willing to work.

George W. Bush was fond of saying that illegals are doing the jobs Americans just won’t do.  The truth is illegals are simply doing some of the jobs Americans won’t do for the money.  Americans won’t live 15 to a room just so they can find employment.  There’s not a job in America that Americans didn’t used to do before the illegal aliens came in, undercut them and stole their jobs.

That’s not to say that the American worker is blameless.  Atwood, Mich. is about four-and-a-half hours from Detroit where the unemployment rate is 16 percent, more than double the national rate.  One would think that Detroit and Atwood might be a great match.  Farmers are looking for workers and Detroiters are looking for work.  So why are farmers in Atwood still resorting to hiring illegal aliens?

Part of the problem is some of the farmers are lying.  The unemployment rate in Michigan is 8.4 percent.  Detroit may be driving that number higher than it would normally be but there’s no doubt that workers are available for the farmers of Atwood.  Some farmers would rather deal with illegals because they can pay them low wages or even lower wages if they pay cash under the table.  But part of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the workers themselves, or, should I say, the government that encourages them not to work.

Before the sequester, unemployment benefits had been extended so that many unemployed workers could draw unemployment benefits for 99 weeks.  That’s nearly two years!  As a result of the sequester the number of weeks was cut back.  Total benefits vary by state but in Michigan you can still conceivably stay on unemployment for 67 weeks.  That’s almost 16 months!  Granted, unemployment benefits are substantially less than what one was making while employed but you’re also not working.  There’s something to be said about doing nothing and getting paid.

I’ve never drawn unemployment.  I don’t begrudge anyone who has.  I’ve just chosen not to do it and I’ve been unemployed a number of times.  This is radio, after all.  The worst time came when I was program director of a station and got washed out in a format change.  I was let go with no severance pay.  I worked on straight commission for an ad agency and made a whopping $100 in three months.  It never even occurred to me to file for unemployment.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t.  It was my lack of success in sales that prompted me to pack up everything I owned and move to Nashville without a job.  Within two days I had a fulltime job selling memberships at a health club and a part-time gig at a radio station.  Within three months I was back in radio full time.

The point is, poverty is a great motivator.  As long as we’re paying people not to work, they won’t.  Time was when Americans would do what needed to be done to put bread on the table.  Nobody’s going to drive four-and-a-half hours if they’re getting paid to sit at home but they’ll drive a lot further than that if it’s the only way they eat.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.