Recently, Newsweek featured a headline claiming that “We Are All Socialists Now.” Perhaps it should have featured a picture of Demetrius Poliorcetes on the cover instead. The history of the ancient Hellenistic cities in what is now Arabia and Turkey might provide more useful knowledge about what is happening in the United States than one can find in newspapers, magazines or on television.

Michael Rostovtzeff was a Ukrainian-born archaeologist and professor of ancient history at Yale beginning in 1925. He died in 1952. He was among the first historians to study the ancient world’s economies and to emphasize the role of capitalism in the rise and decline of ancient societies.

I have just started reading Rostovtzeff’s monumental Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire*, one of a number of massive books that he authored. The text runs to 488 pages but there are in addition more than 200 pages of footnotes. Friends of liberty will do well to consider Rostovtzeff’s work.

He starts the book by discussing the history of Greece and the Hellenistic city states that Greeks founded in what is now Arabia and Turkey. He notes that “class warfare” was common in classical Greece proper. “This class-war made the growth and development of a sound capitalistic system very difficult.” In classical Greece there were widespread movements for redistribution of land and abolition of debts. The problem was so widespread that Athens and Itana in Crete required citizens to swear that they would not put redistribution of land and abolition of debts to the vote. It seems that ACORN has precedents.

Rostovtzeff writes:

“Revolution and reaction followed each other with brief delays, and were marked by wholesale slaughter or expulsion of the best citizens…What was lost by the Greek cities of the European mainland and most of the islands was gained by the Hellenistic monarchies and more especially by the Greek cities of the East.”

Unlike the democracies in Greece proper, the eastern Hellenistic kings of the fourth and third centuries BC were anti-libertarian capitalists, much like more recent rulers of Chile and post-Mao China. “The result was that every attempt at a social revolution within their gates was stopped by the strong hand of the Hellenistic monarchs, and that the cities were very rarely involved in external warfare.”

The kings’ anti-libertarian suppression of revolution had a libertarian effect, at least temporarily. “The accumulation of capital and the introduction of improved methods in trade and industry proceeded more freely and successfully in the East than in the cities of Greece proper. Hence the commercial capitalism of the Greek cities of the fourth century attained an ever higher development, which brought the Hellenistic states very near to the stage of industrial capitalism that characterizes the economic history of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

That is mind blowing. In the fourth and third centuries BC Greeks in Asia Minor were attaining 19th century levels of industrialization? In other words, from the year 300 BC until 1900 virtually no consistent economic progress was made? And how easy might it be to revert to the decline that followed the fall of the Roman Empire roughly 1500 years ago? True, these societies depended on slave labour. But recall that the American economy also so depended until 1862.

Rostovtzeff notes that the Greek cities not only had a large internal market and a large, competitive trade, but also:

“They gradually improved the technique of agricultural and of industrial production with the aid of pure and applied science…and they employed both in agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and in industry the methods of pure capitalistic economy based on slave-labour. They introduced for the first time a mass production of goods for an indefinite market. They developed banking and credit and succeeded in creating not only general rules for maritime commerce…but also a kind of common civil law, which was valid all over the Hellenistic world. The same tendency towards unification may be noticed in attempts to stabilize the currency, or at least to establish stable relations between the coins of the various independent trading states.”

These impressive advances, a globalization that occurred nearly 2,500 years ago, very quickly “stunted” and then was “atrophied” by “constant warfare which raged almost without interruption all over the Hellenistic world.” It didn’t take long for the military-industrial complex to assert itself.  ”The wars forced the Hellenistic states, both great and small, to concentrate their efforts on military preparations, on building up the largest possible armies and navies, on inventing new devices in military engineering, and thus wasting enormous sums of money as, for instance, in the case of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes.”

Rostovtzeff notes that this led to:

“Nationalization of both production and exchange, which was carried out in some, at least, of the Hellenistic monarchies, especially Egypt. By nationalization I mean the concentration of the management of the most essential branches of economic activity in the hands of the state, that is to say, of the king and his officials. Profitable at first for the state, this system gradually led to dishonesty and lawlessness on the part of the officials and to the almost complete elimination of competition and of the free play of the individual energy on the part of the population.

“Hand in hand with this tendency towards state control went the minute elaboration of a highly refined system of taxation, which affected every side of economic life. It was based on the experience of the Oriental monarchies, but it went much farther both in inventing new taxable objects and in improving the mode of collecting the taxes. The burden of taxation lay heavily on the population of the Hellenistic world…

“This disastrous economic system of the Hellenistic monarchies produced ever-growing discontent among the masses of the natives. From the end of the third century onwards the native population of Egypt, for example, rose repeatedly against its foreign oppressors…”

Naturally, the warfare and economic dislocations due to taxes and socialism in the Greek world opened the city gates to a rising new republic: Rome. Might the United States’ ever-expanding government spending; subsidization of corrupt and inefficient financial institutions and corporations; and its military-industrial complex open the door to the ascendancy of a new power, this time from the east?

*All quotes in this blog are taken from chapter 1, “Italy and the Civil War”.

Mitchell Langbert can be visited at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

The Republican Liberty Caucus of California’s Executive Board approved a resolution calling on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature to fix the state’s budget problems by rolling back excessive spending, not by seeking a federal bailout.

The full text of the resolution:

Whereas California’s current budget crisis is the result of more than a decade of irresponsible spending by the state legislature, and also the result of billions of dollars of bonds and other spending requirements approved directly by California voters; and whereas

California would have a multi-billion dollar budget surplus if the rule limiting the growth of spending to inflation plus population growth were still in effect; and whereas

California is already one of the most taxed states in the nation; and whereas

It would be deeply unfair to the taxpayers of other states to send their tax dollars to bail out California, or to burden those other taxpayers with additional debt to finance a Federal bailout of California; and whereas

Hand-waving and vague invocations of so-called “Keynesian economics” are no substitute for honest fiscal discipline; and whereas

It is inappropriate for the great State of California to become dependent on or addicted to injections of Federal taxpayer dollars; and whereas

Governor Schwarzenegger loudly foretold over $9 billion of “deep and painful cuts” if propositions 1A through 1E failed to pass in the May 19th special election; and whereas

The voters heard Governor Schwarzenegger loud and clear and responded by voting nearly 2 to 1 against propositions 1A through 1E; and

Governor Schwarzenegger said, “I heard the message of the people loud and clear, and I’m sure that the legislative leaders and the legislators also heard the message loud and clear”;

Therefore be it resolved the Republican Liberty Caucus of California hereby urges Governor Schwarzenegger and the state legislature to neither seek nor accept any federal bailout, but instead to address California’s budget crisis by reducing government spending to a sustainable level.

Using some of the same survey data that I used last week to analyze a potential shift in Republican priorities in the libertarian direction, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com cites a Gallup poll that claims 80% of Republicans believe Big Government is the largest threat to the country, while just 10% believe big business is the greatest of threats. Just 9% of those surveyed said Big Labor is the largest threat.

In an article earlier this month, libertarian Tim Carney documents how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given low rankings to liberty-minded Republicans as of late.   According to Carney, “Rep. Ron Paul — the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Carney correctly points out that the agenda of big business is often much different than the agenda of liberty-oriented Republicans such as the members of Congress endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus.  According to Carney’s research, eleven House Republicans failed to win the Chamber’s award — a mixture of libertarian/conservative members like Paul and liberal members like then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest.

All but Gilchrest in this group of “business unfriendly” Republicans earned a black mark from the Chamber for voting against the Wall Street bailout twice.  And conservative or libertarian Republicans Paul, Ted Poe of Texas, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Jack Kingston of Georgia, Paul Broun of Georgia, and Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin voted against the college aid bill, while seven of the 11 voted against Bush’s stimulus.

Concludes Carney: “Advocates of bigger government like to assail their opponents as pawns of big business. The Chamber’s shunning of DeMint and Paul will hopefully help put that lie to rest.”

All true.  Unfortunately, only 11 members of Congress had the courage to vote against the Bush stimulus package and only 17 Republicans did not vote for any of the bailouts — including Paul, Jeff Flake, Paul Broun, Jack Kingston, and Ted Poe.

It seems a majority of Republican legislators are corporate pawns when it suits their interests.  There are a few principled outlyers — Republicans with a conscience.  Most of those folks have been endorsed by the RLC for many years.

The new Alabama affiliate of the Republican Liberty Caucus is off and running!

Members of the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus assisted with the coordination of three Tax Day Tea Parties held in Alabama. RLC Alabama Secretary Shana Kluck and RLC Alabama Media Coordinator Steve Gordon helped secure speakers, provide professional advice, and assisted with other logistical concerns for the Tuscaloosa and Birmingham Tea Parties, respectively. Additionally, RLC supporter Matthew Givens was a coordinator for the Montgomery event while Alabama RLC Chair Scott Boykin was involved in the Shelby County Tea Party logistical efforts.

While crowd estimates vary, approximately ten thousand people attended these three events, with the Birmingham Tea Party receiving national television attention on Fox News.

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Last week, Steve Gordon was on the Rachel Maddow show discussing the Tea Party movement (see above video) and the rift between Big Government Republicans and liberty-minded Republicans. Gordon caught Maddow off-guard and clearly explained that the liberty movement has been working for many years to change the direction of Washington.

According to HotAir.com’s Green Room, Gordon took “hard shots at Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Alan Keyes” which “should suffice to dispel any notion that the Tea Party movement is a ‘neocon/Republican/Fox News’ conspiracy.”  As Maddow explained, Sean Hannity was not welcome at the Atlanta Tea Party — at least not if we had our way!

On Thursday, Alabama RLC Media Coordinator Steve Gordon spent an hour as an in-studio guest along with national political journalist Robert Stacy McCain on WYDE’s Lee Davis Show. Discussing the topic of recent Alabama Tea Parties, McCain stressed a point which Gordon had made to him during Ron Paul’s recent presidential bid: “The Ron Paul movement wasn’t about Ron Paul. It was about a movement.”

It looks like anyone remotely near Alabama needs to join these folks today. They mean business!

According to the latest National Taxpayer Union rankings of Congress, RLC-endorsed Representative Jeff Flake is the top friend to taxpayers in Congress. Representative Flake (R-AZ) has always been a RLC favorite.  In the photo at right, RLC interim Arizona Chair Roy Miller handed a RLC PAC check to Jeff Flake for his 2008 re-election bid.

Flake has earned the top spot in NTU’s ranking for six years in a row, tying Ron Paul’s six-year stint from 1979 to 1985. Drs. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Paul Broun (R-GA) followed Flake closely in the 2009 ranking.

Other RLC-endorsed incumbents also scored well: Jim Jordan (89%), Mike Pence (88%), Ed Royce (88%), Doug Lamborn (88%), Jimmy Duncan (87%), Scott Garrett (85%), John Shadegg (84%), and Dana Rohrabacher (82%).

Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Doug Lamborn (R-CO), in particular, should deserve our support, as they are fairly new members in Congress.  They have found a way to resist the temptations that come along with being a new member of Congress.

That said, Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) and John Shadegg (R-AZ), while still receiving “A” grades from NTU, have fairly low scores for Congressional veterans who are supposed to be champions of less spending.  I would urge RLC members in Arizona and California to build relationships with these members and ask them to hold the line on spending — 82% is not good enough, Mr. Rohrabacher!  And Mr. Shadegg’s bailout vote is simply unacceptable.

As I posted earlier, only 17 members of Congress did not vote for one of the bailouts. RLC-endorsed members Flake, Paul, Broun, Duncan, Royce, and Garrett can be trusted to hold the line on spending and did not support any bailouts.  They are true champions of liberty.

All across the country on Tax Day, Republican Liberty Caucus members will be attending Tea Party Rallies to express dissent to Members of Congress and local officials and encourage sensible economic reforms that will enhance America’s struggling economy.

To see a listing of the Tea Parties in your state, click here. On February 27th, an estimated 30,000 Americans took to the street in 40+ cities across the country in the first nationwide “Tea Party” protest.

So why rally? What is the point? Several reasons: 1) There has not been ENOUGH dissent in this country and the “go along, get along” attitude has plagued us for many years; 2) folks are FINALLY starting to wake up, and public rallies engage average citizens in issues; 3) public officials pay attention to large groups of taxpayers; 4) it provides a coalition-building opportunity with like-minded groups; and 5) it allows the RLC to gain visibility.

The Tea Party movement has been organized to protest the Bailouts approved by Congress, the massive federal debt that continues to grow daily, and the increasing burden on average taxpayers. There is no better day to express your distrust of government than April 15 — Tax Day.

In conjunction with the Spirit of the Founders, RLC members are organizing and speaking at Taxpayer Tea Parties throughout the country. For example, in Melbourne, Florida, RLC East Central Florida Coordinator Matthew D. Nye has organized the Brevard Tea Party.

At its website, Nye features a video from a savvy young lady who discusses the relevance of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged to the current state of the economy. She says:

“The similarities [in Atlas Shrugged compared to] today are striking. In Atlas, we see a world crumbling under the weight of government interventions and regulations. The economy is ground to a halt. Each day, more and more businesses are shutting their doors. The government blames greed and the free market and frantically imposes more government control, but the crisis only deepens. Sound familiar?”

Atlas is currently the Amazon.com “Best Seller” in the fiction category, but it’s RLC member Nye who is educating taxpayers in Brevard County, Florida.

According to the newly chartered Republican Liberty Caucus of Alabama, “Quite a few RLC members are active in the planning of Tea Party rallies to be held across Alabama (and the nation) on April 15th.”  Similarly, RLC Tennessee Officers Gregg Juster, Bryan Haddock, and Joe Dumas are assisting with the Tea Party organizing in Chattanooga.

In Arizona, RLC member Tom Jenney will be a featured speaker, along with RLC State Representative Frank Antenori, at the Tucson Tea Party. Members of the RLC of Pima County, including organize Ken Rineer, are active participants in the Tucson Tea Party.

In northern Virginia, RLC Secretary Aaron Biterman will be addressing the crowd at the Tea Party in Reston, an outer-Beltway suburb of the nation’s capital. Biterman will be speaking about continuing the “Spirit of the Revolution” in 2009 and the importance of eliminating the federal income tax.

These are just some of the RLC members and activists who have taken an active role in the Tea Party Movement.  Look for a full report post-April 15.

In addition to attending your local Tea Party, the RLC is encouraging its members to take the following five steps to promote local Tea Parties:

• Make signs with legible slogans that send a clear message to the public and the media;
• Call local talk radio hosts to ask them to announce the location, date, and time of your local Tea Party on the air for a few days leading up to the protest;
• Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper announcing the rally;
• Write a press release and e-mail, mail and fax copies to the local TV stations, radio stations and newspapers; and
• Call the reporters that cover local events or politics and leave messages on their voice mail.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) recently wrote one of his constituents a response letter that included the names of 17 courageous members of Congress who voted against all of the bailout proposals in 2008 and 2009.

According to Forbes, “I will continue to urge my colleagues to stop the practice of quickly passing bailout bills and instead embark on a serious and earnest debate on how we can best address the economic challenges facing our country. As a conservative member of Congress, my goal is always to ensure the taxpayer gets the absolute most for each tax dollar, and I will continue to do everything I can to eliminate wasteful spending.”

The following a list of members that have continued to oppose the bailouts and a list of final votes that have been taken on bailouts:

Rep. Paul Broun* (R-GA)
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA)
Rep. John Linder** (R-GA)
Rep. Ed Royce** (R-CA)
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX)
Rep. Scott Garrett* (R-NJ)
Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA)
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Rep. Ron Paul* (R-TX)
Rep. John Duncan Jr.* (R-TN)
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)
Rep. Jeff Flake* (R-AZ)
Rep. Jack Kingston** (R-GA)
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)
[Note: The Congressman mistakenly listed David Price of
North Carolina instead of Tom Price of Georgia.]

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The bills with links to complete votes:

- Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus for the American People Act of 2008, H.R. 5140, Vote Results

- Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, H.R. 3221, Vote Results

- Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, H.R. 1424, Vote Results

- Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, H.R. 7321, Vote Results

- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, H.R. 1, Vote Results

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*RLC-endorsed in 2008
**RLC-endorsed in previous year, but not in 2008

Efforts in more than half of the state legislatures to assert state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution and prevent unwanted impositions by the federal government are now facing serious partisan opposition.

Most of the bills have been introduced and are supported by Republican legislators and Democrats are doing everything they can to block them and make sure that their states comply with federal mandates issued by a national Congress dominated by their party. They seem more concerned with profiting from their control of the federal government than in protecting the rights of their citizens and being fiscally responsible.

In the last week, three states with Democrat dominated legislatures have rejected state sovereignty resolutions. The Arkansas state sovereignty resolution was defeated in Committee along straight partisan lines with a 10-8 vote. In Washington, the Democratic chairman of the committee on Government and Tribal Affairs killed the bill by refusing to put it on the agenda. In New Hamphire, Representative Dan Itse’s radically-worded sovereignty resolution was one of the first entered and one of the most widely supported. Yet last week, with hundreds protesting in the snow and freezing temperatures outside the New Hampshire State House, it was defeated in a 216-150 vote along party lines. The enthusiasm of the citizens of New Hampshire (shown in the video at right) for their Constitutional rights was not enough to wake up Democratic legislators and convince them to vote against unfunded mandates and federal attacks on citizen rights.

In addition to these three states (where sovereignty has been blocked), two states (Ohio, Florida) are long shots for passage of sovereignty because they are trying to do it through petitioning their state legislatures. That still leaves 23 states with resolutions in some stage of development or consideration. Of those states, 12 have at least one house of their state legislatures dominated by Democrats, including Oklahoma — which has been one of the leaders in the movement. The current trend suggests that none of these states will be able to pass a sovereignty resolution until the composition of their legislatures changes, though there might be a slim hope for Oklahoma and Louisiana, where some of the Democrats are more conservative, and in Kentucky, where the bill has bipartisan support.

That means we’re down to 12 states with a reasonable chance of affirming state sovereignty this legislative session. They include Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. Of these, South Carolina, and Texas are the farthest along towards passage and Virginia is probably on the fence, based on the past history of Republicans in its legislature.

It has become clear that there is a coordinated Democrat campaign to oppose the sovereignty movement on a nationwide basis in the state legislatures. Although sovereignty remains on the agenda in more than 20 states, with partisan opposition passage in more than a dozen states is very unlikely. If that many states do pass sovereignty measures it will be mostly symbolic, because with barely a quarter of the states on board, it isn’t a big enough accomplishment to send a message which the federal government cannot ignore.

With the economic crisis worsening, federal spending out of control, and the Obama Administration targeting gun rights and raising taxes, popular opposition to overreaching government is growing stronger and stronger. Sadly, the power of the ascendant Democrats both at the national level and in so many state legislatures is too great to challenge effectively through legislating state sovereignty or with a few governors taking a stand against excessive spending. It is becoming increasingly clear that if we are to restore government which serves the best interests of citizens and protects their rights, the people will have to demand change from the grassroots on a nationwide basis with a movement so strong that it cannot be ignored or suppressed by the dominant political establishment in the states or in DC.

It is time to put an end to the politics of partisan greed and the ongoing erosion of our rights by whatever means are necessary. If that cannot be accomplished on the grounds of state sovereignty and by state governments it must be done by individuals in the streets of the nation, in the corridors of power, and at the gates of the enemy. As the economic crisis intensifies and the enemies of liberty use it as a pretext to expand their power, we can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and hope for the best any longer.

In a short and insightful article on Blogcritics, Kenn Jacobine has uncovered something which the media and all the blog pundits seem to have missed. There is a report from economists led by Timothy Kehoe which was commissioned by the Federal Reserve and uses solid historical research to show very convincingly that government overreaction with things like bailouts and massive stimulus spending is directly responsible for turning recessions into depressions.

Working with examples going back to the 1980s these economists show how countries like Mexico and Japan which followed the Keynesian model and responded to recessions with the same kind of panic spending our government is currently engaging in, prolonged recessions and turned them in to long, slow economic depressions. In contrast countries like Chile and Finland which responded in ways which were harsher in the short term but more fiscally responsible, which shut down businesses and banks and let people go bankrupt, ended up recovering quickly and having much stronger long-term economies.

That this study could have been commissioned and published by the Federal Reserve and be for sale on their website while they utterly ignore its findings and continue to advise more deficit spending and bailouts is the height of stupidity and incompetence. To remind them of this, the authors have just released a short version of their report which is a must read for anyone concerned about our economic future. Their conclusion really says it all:

“Studying the experience of countries that have experienced great depressions during the twentieth century teaches us that massive public interventions in the economy to maintain employment and investment during a financial crisis can, if they distort incentives enough, lead to a great depression.”

That we should have spent trillions and are preparing to spend trillions more on a policy which history demonstrates is dead wrong, is inexcusable and unforgivable.

In the past I’ve been a supporter of the moderate element in the Republican Party. I even blog occasionally for the Republican Leadership Council. They’re the heirs of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and their socially liberal and fiscally conservative positions are at the heart of Republican tradition. I lean more libertarian, but I’ve always seen Republican moderates as natural allies with a lot in common with the libertarian wing of the party.

When there has been disagreement between moderate Republicans and the more ideologically extreme wings of the party, the main thing which has redeemed the moderates in the eyes of doubters and justified party unity is that they have remembered the importance of fiscal responsibility, an essential Republican value which some other factions within the party seem to have lost track of in recent years.

But now, faced with an unprecedented economic crisis and a Democrat-dominated Congress running out of control, it looks like some of the moderates in the GOP are going to fail the party and fail the country by supporting the ill-conceived “stimulus” bill in some sort of misguided fit of irrational bipartisanship.

The latest news reports suggest that Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Susan Collins (R-ME) may vote with the Democrats to give them the 60 votes they need in the Senate to pass this massive spending package. Collins argues that their cooperation is justified because of $110 billion in cuts which have brought the cost of the Senate version of the bill back down to about the $800 billion total of the House version.

The problem is that, despite the name which has been attached to it in an effort to provide positive spin, this is anything but a “stimulus” bill. The bill creates far fewer jobs than has been claimed, at a ridiculous cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per possible job, and most of those jobs are short-term with no lasting positive impact. The tax cuts it contains are misdirected and will have very limited stimulus value. There’s still a great deal of pork and earmarked spending on pet projects. But that’s really all beside the point.

The country is in the middle of a fiscal crisis which was to a large extent precipitated by overspending and over extension of credit, not just by the big banks but by the federal government. To spend almost a trillion dollars which the government does not have does nothing but compound the fiscal irresponsibility which created the crisis in the first place. It will further devalue the dollar, increase inflation and likely create more business failures and greater unemployment.

Last week Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, made observations on the likely effects of the bill. He suggests that the beneficial effects of the bill will wear off quickly after about two years, and that the long term effect will be a reduction in available capital and ultimately a long-term reduction in GDP of between .1 and .3 percent. Elmendorf’s concerns are mild compared to those of prominent economists on both the political left and right who are increasingly unified in opposition to the bill. Over 200 of them took out an ad opposing it in the New York Times, saying that:

“It is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policy makers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”

Relatively moderate Harvard economist Martin Feldstein who had initially supported the bill came out unequivocally against it in an editorial where he calls it “An $800 Billion Mistake” and specifically faults it for gross deficit spending with too little stimulus. In an article in the Wall Street Journal economists Alberto Alesina and Luigi Zingales sum up the problem with the bill succinctly: “Tax cuts have a much better effect on job creation than highway rehabilitation.”

Given all of this, it would be a terrible mistake for Republican moderates to adopt a misguided “go along to get along” attitude and vote with the Democrats when standing firm on their belief in fiscal responsibility might be just what’s needed to find a better solution. It’s quite likely that doing nothing at all would be better than this bill. But at the very least, Republicans in the Senate ought to hold out for a bill which has less unnecessary spending and more genuine stimulus in the form of tax cuts for individuals and businesses.

I’ve always believed that moderate Republicans had remarkably good sense and the best interests of the people at heart. Like many others in the party, I’ve put my trust in them over the years to balance out the voices of extremism because they could be counted on when it really mattered.

But if these three are going to betray the fiscally responsible traditions of the GOP and vote to support this disastrous bill, then they have clearly lost their way and will have failed as Republicans and as stewards of the best interests of their constituents and the nation.

You may want to contact these Senators and encourage them to develop some spine and remember their values. You can e-mail them with these links: Specter, Snowe, Collins. These are alternate links because their Senate contact pages are being crashed by the volume of emails.