Dan Joseph of the Media Research Center pressed members of the Democrat Party to tell him why they are “Ready for Hillary,” but when asked to name her significant accomplishments, they couldn’t come up with a single one. 

Americans are drowning in a sea of debt, paper work, rules and regulations. Yet voters continue to send to Washington a class of political elites with no experience to lead and no desire to stop America’s tsunami-like spending. According to Gallup, 72% of Americans are of the view that big government is a more of a threat to our future than is big business or big labor. In another poll, 61% of Americans think we are headed in the wrong direction.

Here Peggy Noonan explains why American morale is crumpling—from the malaise of O’Care with its barrage of canceled coverage, higher premiums, huge deductibles and lost doctors; to the CBO’s warning that the ACA will provide disincentives to work; to the IRS making it harder for independent groups to resist the constant claims of government. Now America’s most prized liberty—protection of personal privacy—is under grave threat from the NSA. As Peggy writes, “The persistent blues, the lack of faith, the bet that things won’t get better—it just doesn’t sound like America.”

In the dark screwball comedy that is ObamaCare, the Congressional Budget Office revealed last month the law will provide disincentives to work. Don’t worry, said Nancy Pelosi, people can take that time and go become poets and painters. At first you think: Huh, I can do that, I’ve got a beret. Then you think: No, I have to earn a living. Then you think, poor hardworking rube that you are: Wait a second, I’m subsidizing all this. I’ve been cast in the role of Catherine de Medici, patroness of the arts. She at least had a castle, I just get a bill!

The IRS is coming up with new rules making it harder for independent groups to organize and resist the constant messages and claims of government. Meanwhile it warns taxpayers they must be able to prove they have insurance coverage when they file their 2014 taxes or they’ll face a fine (or tax, or fee), which the government has decided to call a “shared responsibility payment.” It is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child to a maximum of $285, or 1% of your household income, whichever is higher. People already enraged by canceled coverage, higher premiums, huge deductibles, lost doctors and limited networks, fume. And the highest-ranking Democrat on Capitol Hill, Majority Leader Harry Reid, goes to the floor of the Senate to say of the ObamaCare horror stories that “all of them are untrue.” They’re “stories made up out of whole cloth” spread by “the multibillionaire Koch brothers.”

Imagine that—you have real problems caused by a bad law, and Mr. Reid tells you that what you are experiencing in your own life is a lie made up by propagandists. He sounded like Lenin. There is no cholera in the new Russia.

The NSA is a real and present threat to your privacy, HHS actually never has to come up with a true number on ObamaCare enrollments or costs, and at the EPA no one talks anymore about why Al Armendariz, a top regional administrator, felt free to brag in a 2010 speech that his “philosophy of enforcement” could be compared with the practice by ancient Roman soldiers of crucifying random victims. When it surfaced, he left the agency. Did his mind-set?

People feel beset because they are. All these things are pieces of a larger, bullying ineptitude. And people know, they are aware.

The Wall Street Journal and neocons and their sympathizers vote yes. Cato Institute’s Chris Preble and Ben Friedman, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich and Dick Young vote no. Mr. Preble’s The Power Problem is America’s manifesto for safety and prosperity. In the past I have provided a series of articles in support of Chris’s The Power Problem (Part I, Part II, Part III), the Pentagon strategy analysis you must read. Chris maintains that a smaller U.S. military focused on defending our core national interests cannot be defending other countries that should defend themselves. Chris adds, the same principle applies to interventions seen as serving a higher humanitarian purpose.

In Cato’s Budgetary Savings from Military Restraint, Chris and Ben Friedman argue, “The United States does not need to spend $700 billion a year—nearly half of global military spending—to preserve it’s security. … By capitalizing on our geopolitical fortune, we can safely spend far less.”

Boston University’s Andrew J Bacevich writes, “Armies are like newspapers. They have become 21^st-century anachronisms. To survive they must adapt. … Nostalgia about a hallowed past is a luxury that neither armies nor newspapers can afford to indulge.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel offers a budget that would shrink the Army (not nearly enough) to pre-World War II levels. In “Review & Outlook,” The Wall Street Journal offers a sharply contrary view.  WSJ writes, “The steep reduction in manpower and equipment is an invitation to unexpected aggression. …The purpose of fielding a large Army is to minimize the temptations for aggression.”

I agree with Chris Preble that we cannot be in the business of defending other countries that should be defending themselves. As Chris and Ben Friedman have summarized, America should capitalize on our geopolitical fortune (big oceans and safe borders). America possesses a portfolio of reliable options to a standing army if the goal is minimizing the temptation for aggression. (By the way, a standing army is not supported by the Constitution.) America’s economic dominance can be useful for instant leverage. By example, would China wish to compromise its trade status with the U.S. to satisfy its interest in Taiwan? When considering the defense of America’s shores, do Americans really believe that our Army would come into play? How would any substantial invading army ever reach American soil? Take your globe for a spin to better comprehend the folly of a large manpower invasion.

In upcoming Part II, I will look at a few of the specific issues in the Hagel budget.

While troops on the ground may not be feasible to counter Vladimir Putin and Russia in Ukraine (nor should that be considered), if the powers that be are bent on retaliating against Russia for breaking international treaties by invading Ukraine, Robert Kimmit and Stephen Myrow (both former Treasury officials) point out that America’s best leverage would be economic.

The U.S. is not in a position to confront Russia militarily over Ukraine, nor is it in our interest to do so. But that does not mean America and its allies are without options. If we exploit the full range of national-security tools available, especially economic and financial leverage, Russia may learn that the appropriate historical analogy is not the Georgia crisis in 2008, but rather the ruble crisis in 1998—which led to devaluation and default and marked the beginning of the end for President Boris Yeltsin. In this instance, Mr. Putin may find that trying to maintain his hold on domestic power by fending off a recession is more important than sowing instability among Russia’s neighbors.

With Crimea now front and center in the news, read here how the Crimean War was the incubator for many ideas that resonate today. The telegraph was in its infancy and allowed “live” reporting from the Crimea battlefield to London. Along with the telegraph, the use of railroads for transporting troops and equipment and the development of the conical “Minie” ball bullet incubated in Crimea and mightily influenced our own Civil War. And of course there is fashion—in the form of what today is known as a ski mask. NPR’s Steve Drummond details all that came out of that conflict.

Fashion: Speaking of Balaclava, the Crimean War also left us with a popular form of cloth headgear, also known as a ski mask.

Journalism: A relatively new invention, the telegraph, enabled much faster communications between the far-flung battlefields in Crimea and the homefront in London. This enabled some of history’s first “live” war reporting.

Criticism of military operations reached the British public in relatively real time, and the British government found itself in a predicament familiar to politicians in many modern conflicts: losing control of information from the battlefield. Sir William Howard Russell‘s dispatches in The Timeshelped change the course of the war. Notably, he pointed out the terrible treatment the British provided their wounded soldiers, including the lack of ambulances.

Health Care: Reports of deplorable battlefield conditions spurred Florence Nightingale andMary Seacole to improve combat medicine and military sanitation. Getting shot was in some ways worse than getting killed outright, as the wounded were often left lying in filth and agony where they had fallen or exposed to gruesome treatment in what then passed for military hospitals. In many cases, treatment was simply death postponed, as survival rates were extremely low. And troops who managed not to get shot weren’t out of danger. More soldiers died from poor sanitary conditions and diseases, such as typhus and cholera, than perished in battle.

“It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”–Samuel Adams

Where is the Tea Party? Yes it got the target right in big government as Cato’s Gene Healy points out in his weekly piece in the DC Examiner. But big government hacks still infect both sides of the aisle. And no one seems free enough to call them out for what they are and deliver the message. The Tea Party needs to set more brushfires of freedom. Healy writes:

Half a decade later, that looks like a classic case of “irrational exuberance.” No doubt there’s a lot to be said for a movement that drives genial establishmentarians like Sen.Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to paroxysms of rage: “These people are not conservatives!” Hatch howled on NPR in 2012, “they’re radical libertarians and I’m doggone offended by it. I despise these people!” (Doggone!)

Still, I can relate to the fellow at Thursday’s Capitol Hill Tea Party Patriots anniversary event, a former Ron Paul volunteer who volunteered to the Washington Post that he was “so frustrated talking to these neocons,” he needed a pre-noon shot of Jameson.

Early on, Beltway hawks were terrified that the movement would exercise “the scariest kind of influence” on American foreign policy, shrinking defense budgets and ending America’s globocop role. Yet “Tea Party Republicans hold about the same views as non-Tea Party Republicans about America’s role in solving world problems,” according to the Pew Research Center. And when polls show that ”tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security ‘unacceptable,’” we’re not talking about a particularly “radical” form of libertarianism.

More frustrating still, as Conor Friedersdorf has pointed out, too often, Tea Partiers have been suckers for “some of the most obviously irresponsible charlatans in American life.” If you’re a GOP pol who lacks the chops to become president of the U.S., Michael Brendan Dougherty observes, you may have “enough talent to become President of Conservatism.” The responsibilities are minimal and the speaking fees are sweet.

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The Tea Party used to be laser focused on calling out the big spenders in Washington. But the TP lost its way in the rat’s nest of social issues. The TP would be better served if it focused first on fiscal responsibility. There’s plenty of ways to cut up that pig. Cato scholar Michael Tanner writes at NRO:

But there is also a more fundamental issue at play here: Is the Tea Party still the Tea Party?

Sparked by outrage over the Wall Street bailouts, the original Tea Party was motivated by an opposition to Big Government. The motto of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest and most influential groups, was “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.” The Tea Party’s core issues were the skyrocketing national debt and opposition to Obamacare.

Social issues were not part of the platform. In fact, Jenny Beth Martin, leader of the Tea Party Patriots told the New York Times, “When people ask about [social issues], we say, ‘Go get involved in other organizations that already deal with social issues very well.’ We have to be diligent and stay on message.”

In an April 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll, barely 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said social issues were more important to them than economic issues.

As a result, the group was able to build a broad coalition of economic conservatives — traditional Republicans, of course, but also libertarians, and fiscally conservative socially tolerant suburbanites who had drifted away from the GOP in recent years. In national surveys, roughly 40 percent of Tea Party supporters once described themselves as libertarian or libertarian-leaning.

Related video:

Put the Swiss bank, visa and IPO screws to Russia’s 140 oligarchs. Former Russian world chess champ Kasparov knows of what he speaks. Use the pressure of banks not tanks to stop Putin’s Ukraine charge.

As I have said for years, it is a waste of time to attempt to discern deep strategy in Mr. Putin’s actions. There are no complex national interests in a dictator’s calculations. There are only personal interests, the interests of those close to him who keep him in power, and how best to consolidate that power. Without real elections or a free media, the only way a dictator can communicate with his subjects is through propaganda, and the only way he can validate his power is with regular shows of force.

Inside Russia, that force comes with repression against dissidents and civil rights that only accelerated during the distraction of the Sochi Olympics. Abroad, force in the form of military action, trade sanctions or natural-gas extortion is applied wherever Mr. Putin thinks he can get away with it.

On Monday, the markets plummeted in response to the news that Russia had invaded a European nation. Just a few days later, as cautious statements emanated from the White House and the European Union, most markets had rebounded fully. This was due to an illusion of a resolution, as if it matters little to the fate of the global economy that a huge nuclear power can casually snap off a piece of a neighboring country.

Thanks to their unfettered access to Western markets, Mr. Putin and his gang have exploited Western engagement with Russia in a way that the Soviet Union’s leaders never dreamed of. But this also means that they are vulnerable in a way the Soviets were not. If the West punishes Russia with sanctions and a trade war, that might be effective eventually, but it would also be cruel to the 140 million Russians who live under Mr. Putin’s rule. And it would be unnecessary. Instead, sanction the 140 oligarchs who would dump Mr. Putin in the trash tomorrow if he cannot protect their assets abroad. Target their visas, their mansions and IPOs in London, their yachts and Swiss bank accounts. Use banks, not tanks. Thursday, the U.S. announced such sanctions, but they must be matched by the European Union to be truly effective. Otherwise, Wall Street’s loss is London’s gain, and Mr. Putin’s divide-and-conquer tactics work again.

The post Garry Kasparov Says Use Banks Not Tanks appeared first on RichardCYoung.com.