AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

The Contract from America
We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10. Stop the Tax Hikes

1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

Hitler like too many socialists who gain power was corrupted by that power and moved to a murderous dictatorship.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19777&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Capitalism, Democracy and Environmental Quality
Both capitalism and democracy improve a society's quality of life, measured by such things as infant mortality and literacy. Suppose, however, that beyond improving the basic conditions of human life, the most important goal is to improve environmental quality. In that case, asks Michael D. Stroup, professor of economics at Stephen F. Austin State University and a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, which should be more strongly encouraged in other countries: capitalism or democracy?

Data on members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of developed countries, shows that additional income, or gross domestic product (GDP), is linked to lower emissions. Over the period 1985 to 1995:

A 10 percent increase in per capita income reduced daily sulfur oxides emissions per billion dollars of GDP by 7 metric tons.

The income increase reduced nitrous oxide emissions per billion dollars of GDP by 2.2 metric tons.

The higher income also reduced discharges of organic water pollutants by 464 kilograms.

The Fraser Institute's economic freedom index and Freedom House's political rights index can each be used to evaluate the relative impacts on environmental quality from increases in economic freedom and political rights. Using the OECD data on emissions of pollutants in the same analysis as above reveals the impact of an increase in democracy when holding economic freedom constant:

A one-unit increase in the democracy index reduces sulfur oxides emissions per billion dollars of GDP by 42 metric tons per day.

The same increase in democracy reduces discharges of organic water pollutants per billion dollars of GDP by 21 kilograms daily.

However, a one-unit increase in democracy increases nitrous oxide emissions per billion dollars of GDP by 28 metric tons.

By contrast, holding political freedom constant reveals that increased capitalism reduces all three types of pollutants:

A one-unit increase in the economic freedom index reduces nitrous oxide emissions per billion dollars of GDP by 162 metric tons per day.

The increase in economic freedom reduces discharges of organic water pollutants per billion dollars of GDP by 154 kilograms daily.

It also reduces sulfur oxides by 131 metric tons.

Developing countries with limited natural and institutional resources can improve air and water quality more efficiently by increasing the amount of economic freedom in society rather than by expanding democratic control over collective resource allocations, says Stroup.

Source: Michael D. Stroup, "Capitalism, Democracy and Environmental Quality," National Center for Policy Analysis, September 2, 2010

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19780&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Business Leaders Explain How to Create Jobs: Arthur B. Laffer
Columnist Donald Lambro asked America's major business associations, chief executive officers and top economic analysts to name the three best ways to create jobs and expand the U.S. economy. Here's what economist Arthur B. Laffer had to say:

The United States should move toward a true flat tax where taxes on things such as income, corporations, payroll and Medicaid are eliminated in favor of two flat-rate taxes of 11 percent on business net sales (value added) and personal unadjusted gross income (with some deductions). A true flat tax with a rate of 11 percent would be static revenue positive by about 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and would spur enormous economic growth.

Once a flat tax is put into law, America should also have a federal, state and local tax amnesty program to bring tax cheats into compliance with the new tax codes. It is estimated that such a tax amnesty program would raise a one-time amount of somewhere between $600 billion and $800 billion, and $50 billion annually on an on-going basis.

Additionally, the Federal Reserve should do what needs to be done to return to responsible monetary policy. This entails selling upwards of $1 trillion in Federal Reserve assets to contract bank reserves back to where total reserves are approximately equal to required reserves. Such actions will help ensure a stable value of the dollar going forward.
Tax reform, along with spending restraint, sound money, free trade and a rational regulatory policy would lead to a period of exceptional prosperity and asset appreciation.

Source: Donald Lambro, "Business Leaders Explain How to Create Jobs," Human Events, August 5, 2010.

Developing countries with limited natural and institutional resources can improve air and water quality more efficiently by increasing the amount of economic freedom in society rather than by expanding democratic control over collective resource allocations, says Stroup.

A true flat tax with a rate of 11 percent would be static revenue positive by about 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and would spur enormous economic growth.

okie wrote:

You can lead the way and start the discussion if you want. Actually I would like you to make your case, and you can go into as much detail as you like. By the way, I took you off of my ignore list.

Why? This has been researched and documented already by more than one.

I don't really mind of I'm on your ignore list or not - since you responded since some time to my posts that was quite obvious, though.