Obama's Excremental EconomicsBy Thomas E. BrewtonAs prolongation of the 1930s Depression and stagflation in the 1970s  demonstrated, Senator Obama's announced policies are a prescription  for economic disaster.Keynesian economic doctrine, not under that name, but in substance,  is back in the news in a truly menacing way.  Senator Obama proposes  to repeat the policies of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that turned  an ordinary two-year recession into an eight-year disaster, with  unemployment rates continuously in the high teens.The key elements of Senator Obama's proposed economic policies, as in  the New Deal and the stagflation of the 1970s, are much higher taxes,  along with a pervasive increase of business regulations and price  controls in healthcare and energy (which sharply depress business  activity and employment rates), full-frontal embrace of labor unions  (which will push up wages and benefits to levels deterring profitable  expansion of industrial production), and massive new government  deficit spending (which will accelerate the already dangerously high  rate of inflation and devaluation of the dollar).  Carried out as he  proposes, Senator Obama's polices will lead us into the swamp of  stagflation.The basic thrust of Keynesianism is the belief that control of the  economy must be collectivized at the Federal level, because private  business is incapable of providing full employment, and because the  proper goal of economic policy must be thwarting greedy businessmen  to attain so-called social justice: equal distribution of income and  wealth, without regard to merit, capability, or hard work.Not surprisingly the New York Times editorial board and the Times's  propagandist Paul Krugman are prominent Keynesian enthusiasts.In practice (in the 1930s Depression and in the 1970s stagflation)  Keynesian economics caused devastating harm to every citizen.  In the  stagflation of the 1970s not only was unemployment distressingly  high, particularly in Midwestern industrial areas, which became known  as the Rustbowl, but inflation wiped out roughly 57% of the  purchasing power of every citizen's lifetime savings.For an eminently readable analysis of Keynesian economics, the  economic bedrock of liberal-progressive worship of the socialist  religion, read Professor Murray Rothbard's 1947 critique, "Spotlight  on Keynesian Economics" from the Mises.org website.  ( http:// mises.org/story/2950# )One caution:  when Professor Rothbard speaks of liberal economists,  he is using the classic terminology of 18th England that referred to  true freedom: laissez-faire economics, free from government  intervention, not to today's American sect of the international  religion of socialism.Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.  The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of  writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.