Among the corrupt hypocritical bleeding-heart lefties who like to live high and party up there at the tax-payer’s expense, is Drinker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

From Judicial Watch:

Last year, Judicial Watch made big news by exposing Nancy Pelosi’s boorish demands for military travel. According to the internal DOD correspondence we uncovered the Speaker has been treating the U.S. Air Force as her own personal airline. And not only was her staff demanding, arrogant and rude, but the Speaker cost taxpayers a lot of money by making last minute cancellations and changes to the itinerary.

This week, Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Air Force that shed a bit more light on this ugly story.

According to the documents, which we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Speaker’s military travel cost the Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol. (Lots and lots of alcohol.) The following are highlights from the recent release of about 2,000 documents …

Speaker Pelosi used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at an average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. The average cost of an international congressional delegation (CODEL) is $228,563.33. Of the 103 Pelosi-led CODELs, 31 trips included members of the House Speaker’s family.

One CODEL traveling from Washington, D.C. through Tel Aviv, Israel to Baghdad, Iraq from May 15-20, 2008, “to discuss matters of mutual concern with government leaders” included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. Purchases for the CODEL included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.

According to a “Memo for Record” from a CODEL March 29 – April 7, 2007, that involved a stop in Israel, “CODEL could only bring Kosher items into the Hotel. Kosher alcohol for mixing beverages in the Delegation room was purchased on the local economy i.e. Bourbon, Whiskey, Scotch, Vodka, Gin, Triple Sec, Tequila, etc.”

The Department of Defense advanced a CODEL of 56 members of Congress and staff $60,000 to travel to Louisiana and Mississippi July 19-22, 2008, to “view flood relief advances from Hurricane Katrina.” The three-day trip cost the U.S. Air Force $65,505.46, exceeding authorized funding by $5,505.46. ..

At the heart of the issue of corruption, is a sense of entitlement on the part of our elected officials. Nancy Pelosi clearly believes she deserves special treatment at taxpayer expense. This message comes across loud and clear in the disrespect she has demonstrated towards the U.S. Air Force and the American taxpayer.

The food police, led by First Busybody Michelle Obama, are on the warpath.

Why can’t these obominable people mind their own business? Medium-sized people as we are, we libertarians of this website stand in solidarity (as the left would say) with our large-sized fellow citizens against these interfering bossieboots.

Reuters reports:

U.S. health officials have leveraged the star power of first lady Michelle Obama to roll out a new campaign against obesity, a preventable condition that drains billions of dollars from the economy.

Could someone explain to us how on earth obesity, or for that matter any other condition of the human body, can ‘drain billions of dollars from the economy’?

If there was a nationalized health service in America the government would be sure to claim the right to interfere with what and how much people eat – Fat Panels alongside the Death Panels – but as there is no such thing at least for the present, neither the government nor its henchwomen have any excuse to monitor and complain about individual choices even if they affect those individuals’ health.

[Michelle] Obama, who plans to take on childhood obesity as a cause, headlined the launch on Thursday of Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s blueprint for what can be done at home, school and work to reverse the epidemic.

Hasn’t the First Busybody got anything better to do? Actually no, probably not.

In her first initiative since becoming “America’s doctor,” Benjamin issued a report on the consequences of obesity to start a national dialogue on the subject.

“The number of Americans, like me, who are struggling with their weight and health conditions related to their weight remains much too high,” she said.

Benjamin’s report lists recommendations for preventing obesity. They range from simply eating more fruit and vegetables to adding “high-quality physical education” in schools and bringing more supermarkets to low-income communities.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at the launch that the Obama administration was investing $650 million in economic stimulus money in wellness and prevention programs aimed at obesity and stopping smoking.

Ah, now we see! So the government is going to waste hundreds of millions of tax-payer’s money on this busybodying in order to claim the right to interfere? Waste the money and then accuse those they’re interfering with of being the wasters?

She introduced the first lady as “everyone’s favorite vegetable gardener.”

Charmingly sycophantic. But – everyone’s? Not ours! And wasn’t there something about the soil in the White House garden being too full of chemicals to grow edible vegetables? If so, it’s gone down the official memory hole.

[Michelle] Obama, who created a White House garden with local school children, said the solution to the obesity epidemic cannot come from government alone. Everyone has to be willing to do their part to end the public health crisis.

Here it is – the community organizing. The mind of the collectivist at work. ‘Don’t make me alone bear this burden of ordering the lives of 300 million people – be kind enough to share it with me by co-operating.’  That, in coy terms,  is what happened in China when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution.

“This will not be easy and it won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen simply because the first lady has made it her priority,” Obama told an audience of children’s advocates [?] at a recreation center in Alexandria, outside Washington.

“It’s going to take all of us. Thank God it’s not going to be solely up to me.”

The United States spends nearly $150 billion a year on obesity and related complications — twice what it cost in 1998 and more than every cancer cost put together, Sebelius said.

Note  – in their minds it is the ‘United States’ that spends this money.

Perhaps the First Busybody, obviously having too much time on her hands, could use some of it to learn some basic Economics.

“The unhealthier we are as a nation, the more our health care costs will continue to rise and the less competitive we will be globally,” she said.

Good grief! What a silly woman!

Although the president said in his State of the Union speech last night that ‘The true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s businesses’, which seems to be a pro-free market view, Erick Erickson at REDSTATE finds convincing evidence in the speech that Obama is against the free market, and probably does not understand how it works.

He quotes this passage:

To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer-subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service. Because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college. And it’s time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs – because they too have a responsibility to help solve this problem.

And he comments: 

Barack Obama wants to create a new entitlement that will drive the costs of collegiate education through the roof. If a student knows that only ten percent of their income will be used to pay their student loans and no matter what those students loans are they will be forgiven after 20 years, neither the student nor the college has any incentive to save money. It is basic free market economics.

That the President of the United States would say such a thing and think it a good, responsible idea suggests the man is truly ignorant of or an enemy of the free market.

Beyond that, note the preference for government work. Job creators are given a disincentive. Job regulators are given an incentive. This is both perverse and noxious.

One cannot read through the State of the Union address and come to any other conclusion than that Barack Obama is declaring war on the free market. It is more and more clear that Barack Obama does not have an American world view.

A transcript of the whole SOTU speech can be found here.

Jerry McConnell’s biographical note in Canada Free Press tells us  says he’s ‘a longtime resident of planet earth’, which seems to us a fair qualification for commenting on what his fellow residents do as they go to and fro on it. We appreciate the righteous indignation he expresses in this article against the evil United Nations. A rant it may be, but we applaud it. There are some things that ought to inspire rage, and the United Nations is one of them.

The Himalayas mountain range is …  famous for being host to some 15,000 glaciers; and that’s where the … Goreacles of un-natural and, a lot of people say fictitious, atmospheric temperatures are zoned in. These wonder wizards of woeful prognostications have been responsible for predicting that these wonderful and majestic mountainous glaciers would be melted away for the year 2035, a mere 25 years from now.

But as most sensible humans have already concluded, those eggheads can now be ignored with the usual amount of guffaws and snorts of derision they so richly deserve. …

According to a January 23, 2010 AP report … “The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists (Rajendra Pachauri) said Saturday he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was hundreds of years off”.

This amazing admission of negligent as well as glaringly faulty information concerning global climate came from the U. N.’s totally unreliable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) …

These frauds will stop at nothing in their quest to milk the taxpayers of the world, not just the United States, although our country pays well in excess of what would be a fair and equal amount of funds as compared to any other country in the world.

The U. N. IPCC head, R. Pachauri, went on to state he “is now working on the fifth IPCC assessment report dealing with sea level rise and ice sheets, oceans, clouds and carbon accounting. The report is expected by 2014.” And, I would be willing to wager that Mr. Pachauri made that statement with a straight face while thousands of skeptics were rolling in the aisles with howls of derisive laughter.

It is mind-boggling to think that anyone from the U.N. and the IPCC in particular could make any further reports on global warming, climate change and be considered credible or even close after their recent records of futility and falsehoods.

This is just one more example of why the United Nations should be disbanded IMMEDIATELY and if nothing else, the United States should remove our delegation and funding for this rotten, corrupt and unbelievably incompetent organization of fools. …

Why should we continue to pour money down this sewer of scheming and illicit panderers for them to plot more invidious actions against our country? Our usurper in chief and his evil elves in our liberal Congress work in unison with this treacherous organization to promote the fallacious “One World” scheme of wealth redistribution.

Getting rid of the United Nations will effectively remove many sores and wounds from our country and much of the rest of the world. It is like a festering sore that keeps weeping its foul juices all over our fair planet.

Its removal should be a commitment for all future candidates for higher office.

The United Nations must be destroyed!

We think this glossary of favorite Obama expressions and how they should be interpreted is both accurate and good fun. It’s from an article by Ben Shapiro writing  at Townhall:

In order to understand what Obama truly tells us when he speaks to us, it is necessary to grab our Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring and decipher precisely what he means when he uses his pet phrases. This, then, is a list of his favorite linguistic flourishes — and just what he means when he uses them:

“Hope and change”: Socialism at home, surrender abroad. Obama uses this talismanic formula when he wants to activate his base, which responds to it like a jukebox when you drop in a nickel.

“False choice”: A very real choice Obama wants to pretend doesn’t exist. He uses this when he puts on his “pragmatic administrator” mask. Instead of facing up to the reality that we sometimes have to choose between scientific advances and morality, or between civil liberties and national security, or between environmental regulations and economic development, Obama pretends he can solve these conflicts through some sort of Hegelian synthesis only he is wise enough to comprehend.

“Deficit reduction”: Deficit increases. Obama suggests that he will cut the rate at which the deficit is growing — something he has never actually achieved — and acts as though this is actual deficit reduction. It’s the equivalent of a woman spending $2,000 on her credit card, then informing her credit card company that though she won’t pay off her debt, she’ll only spend $1,500 next month.

“Let me be clear”: Let me lie to you.

“Make no mistake”: See “let me be clear.”

“Unprecedented”: When he’s doing something beneficial for the American people, Obama claims he is the first to ever think of it; when he’s doing something harmful, he seems to always find a precedent for it in FDR or LBJ.

“This isn’t about me”: This is completely about me.

“Hitting the reset button”: Refusing to learn from the mistakes of the past and acting as though a fresh start requires utter naivete.

“Reaching out to the other side of the aisle”: Totally rejecting all ideas from anyone outside the Obama-approved bubble. Then suggesting that subsequent political impasses are their fault, and that they ought to bend down and grab their ankles to establish a new tone in Washington.

“Failed policies of the past”: Don’t blame me! Blame Bush!

“Teachable moment”: I screwed something up, now I’ll brag about it.

“Tax cut”: Redistribution of money from those who pay a disproportionate amount of taxes to those who pay none.

“Transparency”: Deliberate opaqueness, hiding crucial facts from the American public.

“Accountability”: Don’t worry, I’ll fire someone.

“Stimulus”: Payoffs to friends.

“Shovel-ready jobs”: Jobs that no one wants and that last for two months.

“Green jobs”: Imaginary jobs.

“Saved or created”: Old Obama language used to futz the numbers on jobs.

“Recovery”: Continued economic stagnation.

“Jobs funded”: Jobs Obama will take credit for, even though he has done nothing to either save or create.

“It won’t happen overnight”: It will never happen.

“Progress”: Redistribution.

“Cynics”: Anyone who doesn’t believe in the Obama radical agenda. Obama uses this word to disparage his critics as angry and lacking in basic qualities of human kindness.

Just what sort of socialism for the 21st. century is the Obama administration in favour of? Is it good news, moderately good news, moderately bad news, or bad news to Obama that Chavez’s sort seems to have lost its appeal to Venezuela, and perhaps to most of Latin America?

From the Washington Post:

While the world has been preoccupied with the crisis in Haiti, Latin America has quietly passed through a tipping point in the ideological conflict that has polarized the region — and paralyzed U.S. diplomacy [why? – JB]  — for most of the past decade.

The result boils down to this: Hugo Chávez’s “socialism for the 21st century” has been defeated and is on its way to collapse.

During the past two weeks, just before and after the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, the following happened: Chávez was forced to devalue the Venezuelan currency, and impose and then revoke massive power cuts in the Venezuelan capital as the country reeled from recession, double-digit inflation and the possible collapse of the national power grid. In Honduras, a seven-month crisis triggered by the attempt of a Chávez client to rupture the constitutional order quietly ended with a deal that will send him into exile even as a democratically elected moderate is sworn in as president.

Last but not least, a presidential election in Chile, the region’s most successful economy, produced the first victory by a right-wing candidate since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from office two decades ago. Sebastián Piñera, the industrialist and champion of free markets who won, has already done something that no leader from Chile or most other Latin American nations has been willing to do in recent years: stand up to Chávez.

Venezuela is “not a democracy,” Piñera said during his campaign. He also said, “Two great models have been shaped in Latin America: One of them led by people like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Ortega in Nicaragua. . . . I definitely think the second model is best for Chile. And that’s the model we are going to follow: democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, alternation of power without caudillismo.”

Piñera was only stating the obvious — but it was more than his Socialist predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, or Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been willing to say openly. That silence hamstrung the Bush and the Obama administrations, which felt, rightly or wrongly, that they should not be alone in pointing out Chávez’s assault on democracy. Piñera has now provided Washington an opportunity to raise its voice about Venezuelan human rights violations [but will it? Obama seemed all too friendly with Chavez – JB.]

He has done it at a moment when Chávez is already reeling from diplomatic blows. Honduras is one. Though the country is tiny, the power struggle between its established political elite and Chávez acolyte Manuel Zelaya turned into a regional battle between supporters and opponents of the Chávez left — with Brazil and other leftist democracies straddling the middle.

The outcome is a victory for the United States, which was virtually the only country that backed the democratic election that broke the impasse.

Eventually, yes, but the US Department of State under Hillary Clinton insisted for a prolonged period on the reinstatement of Zelaya. It seems to us that the omission of this fact typifies the pro-Democrat bias of the Washington Post. The technique of the left media is to ignore facts that challenge their prejudices.

Honduras is the end of Chávez’s crusade to export his revolution to other countries. Bolivia and Nicaragua will remain his only sure allies. Brazil’s Lula, whose tolerance of Chávez has tarnished his bid to become a global statesman, will leave office at the end of this year; polls show his party’s nominee trailing a more conservative candidate. …

Then there is the meltdown Chávez faces at home. Despite the recovery in oil prices, the Venezuelan economy is deep in recession and continues to sink even as the rest of Latin America recovers. Economists guess inflation could rise to 60 percent in the coming months. Meanwhile, due to a drought, the country is threatened with the shutdown of a hydroelectric plant that supplies 70 percent of its electricity. And Chávez’s failure to invest in new plants means there is no backup. There is also the crime epidemic — homicides have tripled since Chávez took office, making Caracas one of the world’s most dangerous cities….

Chávez … is ranting about the U.S. “occupation” of Haiti; his state television even claimed that the U.S. Navy caused the earthquake using a new secret weapon. On Sunday his government ordered cable networks to drop an opposition-minded television channel.

But Chavez’s approval ratings are still sinking: They’ve dropped to below 50 percent in Venezuela and to 34 percent in the rest of the region. The caudillo has survived a lot of bad news before and may well survive this. But the turning point in the battle between authoritarian populism and liberal democracy in Latin America has passed — and Chávez has lost.

Attention pro-choice euphemists, environmentalists who want to reduce population, and all ye whinging western feminists!

By Mark Steyn:

As readers may recall, I’ve been scoffing for years at theories of China as the 21st-century hyperpower. It has two huge structural defects — a) an aging population; and b) an ever more male population. This last is entirely owed to the Commies’ disastrous one-child policy which ensured the abortion of millions and millions of girl babies: A woman’s right to choose turns out in practice to be the right not to choose any women. Result: Millions and millions of young men who’ll never get a date. Not a recipe for social stability. A new report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences considers some of the issues:

According to the report, 24 million men reaching marriageable age by 2020 will never marry because of the sex imbalance. Think of it in these terms: what if the entire population of New York City or of Australia was never able to marry. Imagine the social implications in a city or nation that large where no one can marry. Imagine if that city or country is comprised solely of 24 million men; men with no homes to return to at night; men without the responsibilities of a family to keep them engaged in productive pursuits.

If that sounds like some futuristic dystopian thriller, there are more immediate problems:

While the number of baby girls being born has declined, the number of kidnappings and trafficking of young girls has risen. According to the National Population and Family Planning Commission — that’s right, the very organization responsible for the one-child family policy — abductions and trafficking of women and girls has become “rampant.”

Young girls are being kidnapped within China and also from neighboring countries (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand) by organized gangs who sell them to families with boys of a similar age. The girls will be raised by the families and given as brides to their sons as soon as they reach marriageable age. Others are shipped to brothels within China for a life as sex slaves.

In his schoolgirl paeans to totalitarianism, has the China-smitten Thomas Friedman of the New York Times ever addressed these structural defects? Or any of the ecopalyptic warm-mongers expressing barely concealed admiration for Beijing’s population-control measures?

And what a vast army China will have that will need to be put to use. To what use? Shouldn’t the leftist-pacifist  governments of the West be thinking about this?

Socialism grows government and shrinks the market, including the job market.

From Analects of a Skeptic:

The fatter the government, the thinner the people

The more generous the government, the more robbed the people

The more secure the government, the more threatened the people

… which provides an apt comment on this news.

From The Heritage Foundation:

Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office, the U.S. economy has shed 3.4 million jobs and the unemployment rate has risen to 10%. But not all sectors of the economy have been suffering equally. In fact, the sector of the economy most supportive of President Obama has not only avoided contraction, but has actually managed to grow instead.

According to a report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last Friday, in 2009 the number of federal, state and local government employees represented by unions actually rose by 64,000. Coupled with union losses in the private sector economy, 2009 became the first year in American history that a majority of American union members work for the government. Specifically, 52% of all union members now work for the federal, state or local government, up from 49% in 2008. Or, to better illustrate these statistics: three times more union members work in the Post Office than in the auto industry.

So what? Why should Americans care if unions are now dominated by workers who get their paychecks from governments, instead of workers who get their paychecks from private firms? There’s one simple reason: private firms face competition; governments don’t.

Collective bargaining, the anti-trust exemption at the heart of a union’s power, was created to help workers seize their “fair share” of business profits. But if a union ends up extracting a contract from a private firm that eats up too much of the profits, then that firm will be unable to reinvest those profits and will lose out to competitors. But when a union extracts a generous contract from a government, the answer is always higher taxes or borrowing to pay for the bloated spending. And make no mistake: unionized government worker compensation is bloated.

As Heritage fellow James Sherk notes “[t]he average worker for a state or local government earns $39.83 an hour in wages and benefits compared to $27.49 an hour in the private sector. While over 80 percent of state and local workers have pensions, just 50 percent of private-sector workers do. These differences remain after controlling for education, skills and demographics.”

Unionized government employees not only want to keep their bloated compensation packages, but their leaders are desperate for more members and more union dues. That is why public-sector unions have become a fierce lobbying force for higher taxes and more spending across the country. Organized labor once fought against taxes and regulations that impeded the economic interests of their employers, but now they are in alliance with environmentalists pushing private sector and economy-crippling cap-and-trade legislation.

It’s worth noting that the BLS did not count the United Auto Workers working for General Motors and Chrysler as unionized government employees. But perhaps they should have. Our country will share their fate unless something is done about unionized government power.

And the greater the number of people working in government jobs, the more voters there are whose interest lies in keeping the Party of Big Government in power.

It’s hard to reverse socialism.

We are against law-breaking, but we accept that civil disobedience can be an effective weapon in liberty’s arsenal.

We’re also non-smokers and would avoid the Crow Bar spoken of here, but we’re more against interference with freedom, whether in the name of health or anything else …

… excepting always, as a British judge once said, ‘The freedom of your fist ends where my nose begins.’

From Mike Devine at examiner.com:

DeVine Law called for civil oil drilling disobedience even, B.O., or Before Obama.

Social conservatives and other defenders of the First Amendment issued the “Manhattan Declaration” this year, in Year One, A.O., or Annos Obamani, vowing to defy any federal mandates that would require religious or other institutions to aid and abet anti-life or anti-traditional marriage policies.

Now comes a “Chicago Declaration” of civil disobedience related to the right the Founders considered most essential to big “L” Liberty, i.e. private property rights:

CHICAGO — Smoking in bars has been banned here since Jan. 1, 2008, but Crow Bar, a cozy spot on the city’s far southeast side, is still a haven for people who want to light up.

Unless other customers object, owner Pat Carroll usually allows smoking. He keeps a “smoke jug” in view for $5 donations to offset fines.

“It’s good business to allow smoking. It’s a free country,” says Carroll, owner of Crow Bar for 28 years. It’s near the border with Indiana, which allows smoking in bars. He says his customers would patronize bars there if he forced them to smoke outside.

After all, if second hand smoke was really about health and not aesthetics, wouldn’t the smoking banners insist that waiters wear masks like coal miners? And if the global warming acolytes sought planet health and not political power, wouldn’t they be converting to agnosticism in the wake of a decade of global cooling?…

Hopefully the remnant of freedom-lovers in the Chicago home of Alinskyite thuggish liberalism will inspire a Dixie Declaration next year that will lead to a Declaration of Independence from ObamaDems that have moved to D.C., on Election Day next year.

We agree wholly with the opinion we quote here, though the author does not seem to believe as we do that Obama does not want America to be free. He is a collectivist, a redistributionist, a socialist. To reduce individual freedom, to replace the free market with centralized control of the economy, to expand government is what he is about.

From the Washington Times:

Consider our recent economic policy. In late 2008, the specter of a financial meltdown triggered dangerous decisions under President Bush. He approved an unprecedented intervention in the financial sector – the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program – which actually fed the crisis. Instead of changing course, President Obama not only doubled down on those decisions, but went even further, in the belief that only bigger government can “lift us from a recession this deep and severe.” …

In December, the U.S. economy lost an additional 85,000 jobs. Despite all the bailouts and stimulus spending, the economy shed 3.4 million net jobs in 2009. But while employment has shrunk, the federal deficit has ballooned. One year after Mr. Obama took office, the deficit has grown to $1.4 trillion. His 10-year budget will add $13 trillion to the national debt by 2019. …

The bad news is that the United States is falling behind. The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, released Wednesday, finds that the U.S. experienced the most precipitous drop in economic freedom among the world’s top 20 economies (as measured by the gross domestic product). The decline was steep enough to tumble the U.S. from the ranks of truly “free” economies. We are now numbered among the ranks of the “mostly free” – the same as Botswana, Belgium and Sweden. Canada now stands as the sole beacon of economic freedom in North America, getting a higher score on the economic-freedom Index than the United States.

On the index’s 100-point scale of economic freedom, the U.S. fell 2.7 points. Canada’s score dropped, too, but only one-tenth of a point. Meanwhile, countries such as Germany, France, Poland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia managed to maintain or even improve their scores, despite the economic crisis.

Why? In large measure, it’s because of the way Washington has exacerbated the financial and economic crisis since 2008. By June of last year, when we cut off data collection in order to begin our analysis, Washington’s interventionist policies had already caused a decline in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom we measure. Particularly significant were declines in financial freedom, monetary freedom and property rights.

Conditions attached to large government bailouts of financial and automotive firms significantly undermined investors’ property rights. Additionally, politically influenced regulatory changes – such as the imposition of executive salary caps – have had perverse effects, discouraging entrepreneurship and job creation and slowing recovery. On top of this, we had massive stimulus spending that is leading to unprecedented deficits….

We are heading the wrong way. The index, co-published annually by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, has become a “leading indicator” of economic vitality, but other surveys also show that when economic freedom drops, falling opportunity and declining prosperity follow. Unless Washington takes steps to reverse the poor decisions it has made, Americans can expect a long and difficult time ahead.

The good news is that we’ve been here before, and we’ve turned things around before. There’s no reason we can’t do that again. Poll after poll demonstrates that the American people understand this, even if their politicians don’t. They clearly want Washington to gather up the political will to do things such as lowering taxes and reducing regulation and massive spending that feeds the federal debt. We need to unleash the power of the market to create jobs and to reclaim our competitive edge in the global economy. …

The less government intervenes in our lives and our economy, the freer and more prosperous we can become. The choices Mr. Obama takes in the future will determine whether America remains a land of opportunity and can reclaim its international reputation as “the land of the free.”

View the Index of Economic Freedom list here.