Posted on 09/08/2004 6:11:24 PM PDT by aman_verjee
Thanks to a special invitation from Jim Robinson (Free Republic's founder), World Ahead Publishing is pleased to present Aman Verjee and Rod D. Martin, the editors of "Thank You, President Bush: Reflections on the War on Terror, Defense of the Family, and Revival of the Economy"
Mr. Verjee and Mr. Martin are excited to be here to answer your questions and chat with the Free Republic community. They'll be discussing the reasons they created "Thank You, President Bush," why so many conservative legends (such as Shlafly, Meese, Norquist, and Dobson) were eager to work with them on this book, what it was like being at the Republican Convention to unveil their new title, and anything else that you are interested to know.
So don't be shy - post a greeting to Aman and Rod and learn more about what went into their landmark new book!
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Aman Verjee is the co-editor of Thank You, President Bush (World Ahead Publishing). A Muslim born in Kenya and raised in Canada, Mr. Verjee is the co-founder of "American Thunder," a leading NASCAR magazine, and currently serves as the director of strategy for a Silicon Valley company. He studied public policy at Stanford University and traded bonds on Wall Street before obtaining a degree from Harvard Law School.
Rod D. Martin is also a co-editor of Thank You, President Bush. A conservative Christian from Little Rock, Arkansas, Mr. Martin is Chairman of Vanguard PAC and the author of the political column "Vanguard of the Revolution." He previously served as the Director of Policy Planning & Research for Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Mr. Martin studied at Cambridge University and was elected student body president at Baylor Law School.
Comparison to Reagan
The comparison to Reagan is appropriate in some ways - both men were very crisp, morally precise leaders who identified enemies in very non-statesmenlike terms. Both were unpopular in their first terms because of economic problems, both pushed through big tax cuts to stave of recession, and both presided over military build-ups.
Truthfully, Reagan brought us much farther, from a much worse place, so I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. Bush isn't as good a communicator, and he still has to prove that he can win re-election and can govern effectively in a second term. THEN we can start drawing comparisons. :)
Perhaps.
I once held out great hope for Putin and markets in Russia.
After his UN shenanigans I felt like a jilted suitor.
And I hold a grudge. :-}
"some people compare President Bush to President Ronald Reagan. Would you say that this a fair comparison?"
Matter of fact, we dedicated THANK YOU, PRESIDENT BUSH to Ronald Reagan. The reason is not only that he's fulfilled so much of the Reagan legacy -- from extending gun rights to deploying SDI and withdrawing from the ABM Treaty to expanding IRAs/401(k)s and moving forward on HSAs, etc. -- but also that the seeds he's sewing are such as to finish the job Reagan started. If he can pass half of what he's running on right now -- corporately dubbed "the ownership society" -- he'll have irreparably undermined the Nanny State, and within 20 years, you'll see it all come crashing down as people begin to demand the right (since they'll have the ability) to make their own choices and to force government not just out of the way but off the playing field.
Once again, George Bush has proved far far better than I ever imagined (I was a Steve Forbes supporter in 2000, in case you hadn't guessed).
'The key part of that sentence is, of course, "whatever he thinks", as opposed to what might actually help'
We have been fed the "he is so intelligent" baloney for so long, that I think many of us were stunned to see how transparent and shallow he appears...he definately doesn't seem to think well on the fly, and THAT gives me pause...but makes me start marking the days til the debates!
He also doesn't seem to think of Americans as any deeper than "one needed vote", "2 needed votes"......
The deficit
Yes - in fact, I wrote the chapter on the deficit. (I can send you an op-ed version, if you'd like).
My view is that the major problem facing the American economy is over-taxation, not the deficit. In my article, I compared economic growth and federal fiscal policy in five periods of Us history, and I show how tax policy (not deficit policy0 is the major determinant of economic growth.
Also, remember that the federal debt today is 36 percent of GDP - It bottomed out at 33 percent in 2000. Compare that over 50 percent in the early 1990s, 60 percent in France and Germany and 150 percent in Japan.
The main argument against a deficit is that it Pushes up interest rates - though of course interest rates are near record lows today, and are LOWER in Japan than in the US (the opposite of what deficit hawks would suggest).
So something's wrong with the "Rubin" view.
fyi
"I would like to know if there is any discussion of the deficit in this book. The democrats seem to have a new-found fear of deficits (which they didn't seem to care about for 40 years) and I would like to read some explanations about the danger (or lack thereof) of the current deficit, and also what the President is planning on doing about it. Thanks!"
We do address deficits, and several of our writers probably differ even with each other on the issue. I CAN say this much: don't believe a Democrat on this issue, EVER. To them, deficits are a red herring, a propaganda point to split fiscal conservatives from each other and from other conservatives. And there's only one answer on the Democrat side anyway: tax, tax, tax. Cutting spending never enters the equation.
Now from my personal perspective, I don't like deficits at all, but in the short term, they're irrelevant. The nominally-record deficits we're running right now -- in a time of both war and (earlier) recession -- are actually a far lower percentage of GDP than the deficits of the early 1980s, which came at the outset of a twenty-year boom. And moreover, so long as the dollar remains the world's reserve currency, the normal rules of "crowding out" and such simply don't apply. There's a virtually unlimited market out there both for dollars and for dollar-denominated debt. If we're ever going to run deficits, this is the single best time in history to do it.
Of course, long-term all bets are off. So we need to wean the American public off of big government as fast as we can, which is the whole point of the Ownership Society.
Thank you for your answer. I am not well versed in economics and when liberals start ranting about the deficit I don't have much recourse except to say that we had a large one back in the Reagan years and it seemed to have disappeared without much effort.
Mr. Verjee and Mr. Martin,
Thank you for answering my questions and for writing this book. I'm so sick of being surrounded by anti-Bush books at the bookstore, and I'm sick of my liberal socialist classmates! I hope that this book will give me the intellectual ammo I need straight from our leaders to waste them in arguments. Thanks!
One last question. As a red blooded american young man (I'm in my early twenties) I have to ask: Did you meet Sheri Valera at the RNC?
Do you subscribe to the notion that tax cuts balloon deficits in the short term but act as a restraint on long term spending growth and are thus a net plus in the march toward limited government?
I don't trust them either, on anything economic. I still think the boom of the 90's was at least 50% cooked books in certain companies that seemed to give large amounts of money to the DNC and somehow never got investigated. Funny, that.
One thing you fellas can do to help W in the next 2 months is to get him to understand and then respond to what people are seeing as the squeeze on our dollars. Seems salaries can't keep up with costs -
I am not crying about gas proces, they are lower now then they were, price adjusted, in the Carter years...but look how Bush 41 got pole-axed for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk? $4.00 a gallon! $9.00 lb steak, hamburger #3.99/lb., even bread is $1.50....
He better be warned that many people can't see beyond those prices...
President Reagan stated the we trust but verify but he did it with a twinkle in his Irish eye.
I'm and Irishman and a Reaganite, I know what that twinkle meant.
Islam teaches that rights are endowed by the creator, not by legislative assemblies that can then withdraw those rights. The first and foremost basic right is the right to life. The Qur’an says:
"Whosoever kills a human being (without any reason like) man-slaughter, or corruption on earth, it is thought he had killed all mankind." (5:32)
A woman's chastity is also explicitly protected in the Qu'ran. Islam has categorically forbidden the primitive practice of capturing a free man to make him a slave or to sell him into slavery.
And the Qu'ran lays out rights for the destitute and poor as well, and immediately after the verse in the Holy Qur’an which has been mentioned in connection with the right to life, Allah speaks of a duty to save every human life.
So there is a tension between freedom and duty that the Qu'ran lays out as mandated by God.
Thanks! One thing everyone could do that would really help is to call their local bookstores and ask them for a copy. Obviously we'd like you to buy tons of them, but that's not what I'm suggesting: just make sure they're ordering the things and displaying them. We've got just about the only pro-Bush policy book out there, versus 75 Bush-bashing books (very few of which address any positives concerning Kerry). We have something very unique, and the stores need to be carrying it (but without everyone's help, don't hold your breath!).
Regarding Sheri Valera.
Sadly no, but I have a son who'd have given his left leg to have met her. She's definitely a hottie. :)
"Do you subscribe to the notion that tax cuts balloon deficits in the short term but act as a restraint on long term spending growth and are thus a net plus in the march toward limited government?"
Milton Friedman is the most articulate defender of this view, and it's hard for me to dispute him. I do think the short-term, transient deficits don't impact economic growth, and tax cuts done right can be powerful stimulants to growth. So the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were the right thing to do.
Whether they will limit spending in the long run depends on who wins the next couple of elections. Kerry is running on the platform that "We have deficits, so we should raise taxes back up." Bush says that we should bring spending down.
If Bush wins in 2004, that will be powerful evidence for the Friedman view.
what can we do to encourage our local mosques to make a statement regarding terorist acts? The moslams I see appear to skitter in and out, and are not part of the mainstream of American life - and I am not talking about the club scene, over-sexed youth-directed activities, but the neighborhood library/support the firemen picnic, etc...
Much as I don't trust 'em now, either, I would encourage them to appear more "with us" than they appear now...
"I still think the boom of the 90's was at least 50% cooked books in certain companies that seemed to give large amounts of money to the DNC and somehow never got investigated. Funny, that."
Oh, it was real enough, but the wrong people get the credit (and the discredit too). The Republican Congress forced Bill Clinton kicking and screaming to balance the budget. The Republican Congress passed real welfare reform over several Clinton vetoes. The engine of growth which is Silicon Valley performed real miracles. No doubt about it.
On the other hand, the bust was inevitable, and here's why. Greenspan -- confusing prosperity with inflation -- started hiking interest rates in the late 1990s. This should have immediately killed off the tech boom (and any other debt-sensitive area of the economy), but didn't, because Greenspan was also afraid of Y2K and hence printed an astonishing amount of money in 1998 and 1999 (a simple chart of the NASDAQ will tell you where that money went). Then, despite virtually every sensible person's advice and his own word he wouldn't do it, he sucked all that money back out of the economy in 2000 after Y2K didn't materialize, and did so largely by tightening money even further. Hence, all the highly-leveraged sectors of the economy tanked. Duh.
This is nothing Steve Forbes and I hadn't been saying would happen for years. George Gilder too, although he let himself get a little carried away in 1999 and 2000.
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