President Clinton’s former cabinet member, now professor, Robert Reich hosts a regular “Market Place” commentary on National Public Radio.  (Yet another unfortunate use of my tax dollars.)  He recently explained to the audience that federal oversight and expenditures were essential for returning quality jobs to the United States.

Reich claimed that American business cannot lead the way to economic recovery because businesses are globally focused, not US focused.  Reich explained that their objective is profit, not jobs.  Businesses are cutting jobs.  CEOs are beholden to shareholders, not employees.  Apple employs eight times more employees overseas than they do here.  Reich stated that all of “Asia” now spends more on R&D than does the USA, however, US firms have doubled their R&D investments in China.  Finally, Reich claimed that too many workers are not competitive in the global marketplace.  In short, Reich blamed, decaying schools, not enough R&D, and suffering infrastructure.  Reich finished with a rhetorical flourish, claiming that businesses petition DC for less taxes and regulations, however, no one in America is petitioning for Americans.

What drivel. I thought Americans owned and operated American businesses.  More importantly, more and more federal government is why we have less and less of a manufacturing and high skilled production (or even trade skill production) in the US.

Businesses are screaming to Washington why they’re leaving, but their explanations only make for the chattering class’s rhetorical fodder. In dissecting the collapsing manufacturing and production capacity of the US, Reich ignores the giant white elephant, just like most the rest of his ilk on the political and journalistic ilk.  This despite the fact businesses are pleading with our elected federal officials to remedy the cause for US companies fleeing.  When producing for a global marketplace, the US is one of the least attractive countries in which to manufacture, primarily for two reasons: high taxes and a byzantine network of onerous federal regulations.

Our spending on education is not the problem.  Researchers at USC report that although the US significantly outspends leading industrial nations on education expenditures, we lag toward last place on math and science competency results.  See here and graph below.  The OCLC reported,

The United States spent the most on education in 2001 at roughly $500 billion, followed by Japan, Germany and France at $139 billion, $89 billion and $82 billion respectively. While the U.S. spent the most in absolute dollars, it ranked tenth in education spending as a percent of GDP at 4.8 percent.

See full article here.  As of 2008, we are spending on average over $10,000 per student per year on primary school education.  See here.  We spend close to 5% of our gross national income on education; the Chinese spend less than 2%.  See here.  While we spend close to $15,000 per student, China spends a little more than one-tenth that amount according to the OECD:

In 2008, China spends USD 1 593 per student from primary to tertiary education – the lowest amount of annual expenditure per student among the countries surveyed. In comparison, Brazil spends USD 2 416, Argentina spends USD 3 204 and the Russian Federation spends USD 4 878, all far below the average for OECD countries (USD 8 831) or for EU21 countries (USD 8 702). These figures relate to public institutions only. At the other end of the spectrum, the United States spends USD 14 923 and Switzerland USD 14 977 on public institutions

The Heritage Foundation conducted a study demonstrating that spending on education has increased dramatically over the past several decades in the United States as compared to our historical trends, however, this has not led to similarly improved student performance.  See full report here.

In contrast, the United States competes with Japan for the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world – approaching 40%.  The corporate tax rate on technology companies in China: 15% .

There are approximately 50 federal agencies that regulate every aspect of existence in this country, particularly nearly all aspects of commercial activity.  The laws from these unelected agencies are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations (“CFR”) over 51 titles.  At last printing, the federal regulations ran 200,000 pages.  That’s separate and apart from the thousands of pages of federal statutory law and separate and apart from State statutes and regulation. The US tax code (Title 26) alone is reported to take up over 2,500 pages containing over 5 million words.  It takes hundreds of thousands of highly educated and trained corporate attorneys and accountants for businesses to comply with just the tax code.

The federal register in 2010 (where presidential orders, official agency actions, and new and proposed federal regulations are published) hit over 81,000 pages in 2010.  Think about what that means.  Incidentally, that wasn’t a record.  President Carter’s executive branch published 83,000 pages in his final term.  See here.

Exceedingly high taxes and more regulations than any people in the history of humanity – that’s why businesses are fleeing.  Not surprisingly, those that make their living promulgating, lobbying, and enforcing these laws and earning their living off those tax receipts don’t see it that way.  The problem is those greedy companies, according to taxpayer-funded Reich on his taxpayer-funded radio station.

If you want to see real jobs – high technology manufacturing jobs in the USA – it will take time.  If you want to see those cool Apple products built-in the USA again, our tax and regulate culture must change.  Lower the corporate tax rate to a simple 15%, or lower, abolish capitol gains tax, and take an ax to the impenetrable (and grossly unconstitutional) regulatory regime that employs hundreds of thousands of attorneys, lobbyists, accountants, and bureaucrats, but stifles US business and meaningful job creation.  Our federal leviathan could live on more modest means if we had the courage to scale the beast back to something at least faintly resembling our Constitutional parameters.

Compare this incredible legal burden to what businesses in China have to deal with.  Not only is there no such overbearing government intrusion into every nook and cranny of your business, there are no unions, no patent trolls, no regular stream of largely frivolous  lawsuits from your workers and anyone else who might be disguntled, there is effectively no army of administrative overlords.  Is it a panacea there?  Hardly.  But it’s far easier to do business there and in most places of the world not located in Europe.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the substantially lower taxes, per above.  Would you prefer to keep 80% or 85% of your earnings, or 50% to 60%?

Companies worldwide would once again seek to open business here if we leveled the playing field.  Americans are still the hardest working, cohesive, and spirited work force in the world.  We work, pray, and play hard.  We practically invented the middle class.  We still have the best infrastructure and are richly blessed with natural resources.  We’ve invented the lions share of the greatest technology of the past century.  Moreover, investors worldwide will look to invest here if the government doesn’t gouge their returns.  Substantially less federal intervention, the opposite of what taxpayer-funded Reich claims, will lead to a robust job and technology growth for another generation. Real jobs, not baristas and mowing each other’s lawns.

image from the MAT@USC -University of Southern California

A friend recently emailed to ask whether Sapphire Sky would venture an opinion on whether an evangelical Christian should support Mitt Romney in his bid to be president.  My friend admitted reservations about whether a vote for Romney would be an implicit endorsement or validation of Mormonism.

I do not plan on voting for Romney in the primary, but not because of his Mormon faith.  His Mormonism should not be a liability in the view of this evangelical.  To the contrary, in this day, Romney’s devout Mormon faith should be an asset for an aspiring political leader.

To be sure, I strongly disagree with the Mormon religion.  Mormon teaching on the identity of Jesus Christ is heretical to long-held evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox beliefs.  Mormonism is also an apologetics train wreck with peculiar traditions.

While there is much in Mormonism to offend an evangelical, Mormon values or ethics are firmly planted in Judeo-Christian morality.  Mormons believe strongly in the reality and centrality of the God of Israel, the moral laws disclosed to Moses, and that we live our lives before an omnipresent and eternal God who will pass judgment on how we live if we deny his grace. Mormonism departs from orthodox Christianity, not in its view of the law, but in its view of Christ.  Like evangelical Christianity, Mormonism rejects post-modernism and, inherently, rejects secular humanism.  Practically, Mormonism teaches the importance of strong families, dedication, hard work, perseverance and temperance. In this, Mormons share the traditional protestant work ethic, in fact, better than many modern protestant churches.

The moral foundations of Romney’s Mormon faith share the fundamental Judeo-Christian values that gave birth to the western liberalism we take for granted and that led to unprecedented human freedom and prosperity in the West.  Judeo-Christian morality champions the worth of the individual, the objective nature of truth and morality, the importance of justice and the rule of law (Lex Rex), and that our lives should aspire to a higher calling, pleasing to the Creator of the universe, to whom we will all one day answer. As I said above, such a religious foundation is an asset for a political leader in this age.  Our political leaders exist to help craft and enforce effective laws.  They are not tasked nor in this country do we want them to be our spiritual leaders.

But, as I also said, Romney is not my primary candidate.  There is an ongoing moral offense that must be remedied.  Fifteen trillion dollars worth of national debt, and growing, is a moral blight that threatens the very existence of our Republic.  There is no relief in site.  Even if we avoid financial collapse, we’re leveraging our children’s future for our present comfort and to wage foreign wars. The avoidance of financial collapse is not a certainty.  To me, our present course is utter madness.  While I think Romney is a tremendously talented individual, I don’t think he’s the best candidate to address the debt.  The debt is caused entirely by out of control spending, particularly on social welfare and on international defense.  Mitt Romney has been a large government statist his entire career in politics.  As governor, he designed the government healthcare program that was the  blueprint for ObamaCare.  Not surprisingly, Romney’s solution isn’t to dramatically cut spending.  His solution is to implement a more powerful tax – the Value Added Tax.  No thanks.

The biggest surprise for me this election cycle is the realization that statists and neo-cons dominate the Republican establishment.  This should have been clear from the party standard bearers over the past two decades: George Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and then John McCain.  Republicans and Democrats have largely shared in contributing to our national debt.  Romney, Gingrich and Santorum appear cut from the same statist cloth.  (Leaving one candidate that is not. See here and here.) More war and more federal programs will not turn this Republica around. In any event, in answer to the inquiry, I don’t view Romney’s devout Mormon faith as a reason to vote against him.

I remember as an officer in the US Army, I regularly took the following oath:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.

My oath was premised on the promise to support and defend our Constitution.  I must admit, however, I had not really studied the document.  Aside from high school civics, it just was not a topic of discussion or of particular interest.  It said what it said.  When I first took the oath in 1986, as a cadet, I knew then it meant at the very least I was promising not to be a communist.

From the Army I went to law school.  We studied Constitutional law our first year (and second and third), and did I ever feel like a rube.  I studied that document.  I read it and knew it.  It did not take me long to realize that the document I had promised to defend, and as an infantry officer that inherently meant pledging my life, had been mutilated, distorted and twisted to mean whatever the political branches in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, wanted it to mean.  Military officers pledge their lives to defend a document without realizing that our highest judges and political leaders ignore and distort that same document to allow them whatever largesse and grant of power they want.  While we defended the document from foreign threats, it appeared to me that the document was ravaged from within.  Books have been written on the topic of how far we’ve strayed from the Republic laid out in our Constitution.

It was not until recently, however, that the consequences of this domestic dereliction of duty have become apparent.  Perhaps the most pressing and obvious, our 15 trillion dollars of debt and intractable social disputes are due directly to our abandoning the fundamental checks, balances and limits on our federal government that were established by our founders in what is allegedly our foundation legal document that our Armed Forces swears to uphold and defend.

Please review the Constitutional grant of powers below.  Curiously, there’s no federal power for establishing a national health insurance, healthcare, or prescription drug coverage; there’s no basis for a national education policy or for “No Child Left Behind”; there’s no federal authority for protecting the environment, building housing for the poor,  or for assisting urban development. There’s no mention of administrative bureaucracies controlled by the President that pass thousands of laws each year and then adjudicate those laws a.k.a. regulations.  There is no mention of the President having the power to send troops into combat operations for undeclared war.  Only Congress was given the power to declare war.  How many wars have we now fought since the last declaration of war? These powers were not given to the federal government through the Constitution.  Instead, federal politicians take or vote these powers unto themselves and the federal judiciary condones them.  These policies were nice and/or important, so aside from a few cranks and loons, the vast majority of the body politic did not care, for decades.

If we’re not a Constitutional republic, what are we – besides bankrupt? Does it matter?  In this election cycle, this issue is of central relevance. Unfortunately, only one candidate sounds the alarm.  The four other Republican candidates and our POTUS plan on more of the same.  We’ve largely abandoned the system of government on which this nation was founded. The federal government has completely exploded past the limited powers granted to it, denying itself hardly anything.  Now, like many a glutton, we find ourselves bankrupt.  We’re also politically gridlocked and largely ruled by an unelected extra-Constitutional federal administrative state.  Both the so-called left and the so-called right participated in creating this mess.  An incompetent and grossly ideologically biased press corp and educational establishment enabled decades of federal misconduct.  We all now share in paying the consequences.  Our future generations will also be paying the consequences, literally, presuming our Republic persists.  We’re broke and we’ve broken the system of government handed down to us.

THE ENUMERATED POWERS OF CONGRESS

U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENT

Article II

Section 2 – Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3 – State of the Union, Convening Congress

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT, THE NOW-IGNORED POST-SCRIPT: THE TENTH AMENDMENT

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

(which means that the only prerogatives of the Congress (as well as the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch) are limited to those granted by the Constitution of the United States)