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Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Welfare Culture
Posted by on 2.14.09 @ 1:59PM
While most 40-year-olds would be fazed by the notion of becoming the grandmother of triplets, Rachel Briggs is beaming. 'People say she must take after me as if that's a bad thing,' she says, casting a proud glance in the direction of her pregnant teenage daughter. 'But the way I see it, I haven't done so badly.'
That, of course, depends on your definition of achievement when it comes to your family. To date, Rachel has six children aged between three and 21 with four fathers, none of whom seems to have been around for long enough to do much in the way of parenting.
Her elder son, Jay, is a father at 21, while her second eldest child, Sian, made headlines this week after it emerged she is expecting triplets aged 17, two years after giving birth at 15 to her son, Jaden.
Jaden's father is no longer on the scene, with the triplets sired by Sian's new boyfriend, 18-yearold Callum. Quite a jumble of fathers, mothers and babies in this residential suburb of Portsmouth then - 11 children by seven men - with not much in the way of employment between them all.
Even by the depressing standards of 'broken Britain', the circumstances of this ever-expanding extended family warrant further examination.
This rather glaring example of multi-generational family breakdown in Britain highlights the universality of the destructive effects of the welfare state. Liberals in America have tried to blame the social pathology of the ghetto on "institutional racism." But as Theordore Dalrymple has shown, the very same pathology is pandemic among the British poor who are overwhelmingly Caucasian (as are the Briggses). It is the cultural impact of the welfare mentality, not race or racism, that underlies this pathology.
Vindication
Posted by on 2.14.09 @ 9:51AM
"John McCain lost the election Sept. 24 and Barack Obama will
be the next president of the United States. . . . On Sept. 24 . .
. the McCain campaign suddenly freaked out. The Arizona
senator
announced that he was suspending his campaign
activity, seeking a postponement of the Sept. 26 debate, and
flying off to Washington to push for the Wall Street bailout
bill."
-- Robert
Stacy McCain, American Spectator,
Oct. 7, 2008
"Probably the most important 72 hours of the campaign ...
were McCain's suspension of his campaign right up through the
presidential debate. . . . He was never really able to
dig out of that."
-- Obama campaign manager
David Plouffe,
Feb. 12, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Mr. Stimulus
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 8:42PM
That title belongs to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who seems all but certain to be the crucial 60th vote in favor of the stimulus package. Ted Kennedy didn't vote, Judd Gregg voted no, and the GOP's three moderates -- Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, and Olympia Snowe -- held firm behind the bill. Feeling stimulated yet?
Why Republicans Are Likely to Vote No
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 1:41PM
Every Republican member of Congress I have talked to during the stimulus debate, whether conversing with the member directly or going through their press secretaries, has said the same thing: their constituents do not support this bill. (Obviously, that means I haven't talked to Arlen Specter, Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe.) That's why "Obama won" and "the last eight years" aren't cutting it as arguments for why Republicans should vote for the spending package. The principled, the unprincipled, the partisan, and the bipartisan among the House GOP all won their elections too and they believe the people who elected them don't want to see their money spent in this fashion.
UPDATE: And indeed, no House Republicans voted for the bill. Seven Democrats voted no, down from 11 with the original version.
The Coming Tyranny of the Paleo Bloggers
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 12:34PM
More has probably been said about Damon Linker's bizarre reading of Andrew Bacevich's approach to conservatism than the contents justify, but it is hard to avoid commenting on a blog entry that sees thrift, sacrifice, and refraining from abandoning one's family obligations as some form of incipient authoritarianism. Suffice it to say that Bacevich and his allies in the blogosphere are more opposed to most state action than mainstream liberals or conservatives; since at least the 1990s, there have been people in the paleo coalition more libertarian than Bacevich or any of these bloggers.
But it is interesting that Linker, sworn enemy of theocons like his former employers at First Things, believes the liberal order is as threatened by a social conservatism that is primarily cultural as by a social conservatism that is primarily political. Even when the former is practiced by people who have almost no connection to practical or electoral politics. Linker's response says more about his inability to make arguments without resorting to theocratic or authoritarian bogeymen than it does about Bacevich's essay.
Gregg's Greatness
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 12:14PM
At his press conference the other night, President Obama was patting himself on the back for all the civility he was showing Republicans:
"You know, when I made a series of overtures to the Republicans, going over to meet with both Republican caucuses, you know, putting three Republicans in my cabinet -- something that is unprecedented..."
Not anymore, Mr. President!
Unless, of course, Arlen Specter agrees to replace Judd Gregg as Commerce nominee. And that's the beauty of Gregg's withdrawal. For all practical purposes, it was a principled resignation, and when's the last time we saw that in American politics? Cyrus Vance? But Vance vs. Brzezinski and Carter was an internal dispute. This one was over fundamental inter-party principles. The lesson to Republicans is that anyone who serves a Democrat administration has to be prepared to defend its policies, much like a vice-presidential candidate has to suspend his own preferences on behalf of the presidential nominee's. A conservative Republican like Gregg obviously had no place in this anti-thetical environment. And so now he's contributed hugely to the Republican relearning of what the GOP is to stand for.
The Gregg affair also confirms how arrogantly fatuous and green this new administration is. Obama throws a few dog biscuits at Republicans and expects they will beg? While, for starters, Rahm Emanuel and Chicago's undertakers take over the U.S. Census Bureau?
Another Tribute to Lawrence Henry
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 11:07AM
Though I have been writing for TAS online for several years now, I found out about Lawrence Henry's death the same way I discovered him, which was as a reader.
How happy I was each week to bring up the Spectator website and see that Lawrence Henry column ready to be savored. Occasionally, I felt so strongly about the value of something he had written, I put my two cents in to reader mail so Wlady could post it. I could have just emailed Larry (which I often did), but I wanted him to see the praise on the site.
In the main tribute to him, some of the writers noted how Larry wrote about the everyday things. He joked with me that he held the "Regular Guy's Chair" at AmSpec. Reflections on regular life? Yes. Regular level of talent? No.
Larry died early, but he lived a broad and full life. Good times, bad times, joy, and tragedy. He knew how to make sense of it all.
Like Larry, I have a hope about eternity. I pray that Larry, like the brothers and sisters of the New Testament, has simply fallen asleep in the Lord and that his next moments are far greater than even a writer like he could imagine.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 10:19AM
- Look no further than the Baltic for clear lessons on freedom and the economy (WSJ)
- What happens when it becomes clear that economists didn't account for pyschology at all? (NY Times)
- Bankers are suddenly dancing to DC's tune. Better not be poor when the music stops (Bloomberg)
- George Washington, entrepreneur (Reason)
- On the family and what social conservatives have right (Atlantic)
- Taxachusetts update: apparently, the state just wasn't spending fast enough (Dan Dunn's Podium)
- "The Stimulus Bill is not as easy to understand as its 15,000 page size might lead you to believe" (LoS Capital)
Blame Game
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 10:15AM
Philip, it's obvious that congressional Democrats and the Obama administration plan to present a two-part argument on the economy. First, as you say, no matter how bad it gets, they'll argue that it would have been worse if not for the "emergency" action they undertook. Second -- and this is the hook -- it's all the Republicans' fault anyway.
This is one of the reasons I have urged that the proper message for opposition is, "It won't work." Rather than get into an argument about what caused the recession, Republicans should stick to the forward-looking theme that the Democrats' plan is flawed and will not produce recovery. This is a "negative" message, but it has the virtue of being true.
Too many Republicans have taken a tactical, rather than a strategic, approach to opposing the stimulus. They quibble that the bill has too much of this or that, rather than questioning the underlying Keynesian rationale. It might be too much to ask that every Republican in Congress talk free-market radicalism like Ron Paul -- who denounces the entire proposal as an exercise in "central economic planning" -- but even if they endorse the interventionist impulse to Do Something, Republicans still have plenty of room to argue that this is not the right thing to do,
Thursday night, I talked to a friend who's in commercial real estate development, and he said banks are now turning down loans for applicants with 780 credit ratings and 20 percent down. How is that problem going to be eased when Uncle Sam's demand for credit (borrowing $780 billion) further drains the supply of available capital? Yet that is what the neo-Keynesians are asking Americans to believe. It would seem easy to debunk that argument -- I'm picturing Ross Perot with his charts and graphs -- but I'm not hearing such a rebuttal from Republicans.
Thanks, Larry
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 10:04AM
Let me add my voice to those here who so eloquently expressed their fond memories and appreciation of Larry Henry, who died earlier this week. He did write like a dream, with grace and spirit and vividness and insight. That was in public. In private, he was a wonderful correspondent with a zest for life undimmed by his inability because of his illness to enjoy some of the parts of life (like golf) that he used to adore. I never met him, to my chagrin, but it was about golf that we wrote back and forth. He loved the game for all the right reasons. And he loved life for all the right reasons. May God grant him greening fairways forever.
Gregg and the Census
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 9:52AM
Late yesterday afternoon at the Examiner, we were putting the finishing touches on an editorial whose opening line was that Judd Gregg should withdraw as nominee Commerce Secretary because of the affront to his integrity represented by the White House plan to take the census away from Commerce and politicize it under the White House. Obviously, events overtook us: Gregg moved before we could publish!
So here's what we said instead:
Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire was absolutely right to withdraw as the nominee to be secretary of commerce, citing “irresolvable conflicts” regarding the stimulus package and the census. It is the latter issue that has the most direct bearing on the job at the Commerce Department. A recent White House announcement on the census amounted to a direct challenge to Gregg’s autonomy and a dangerous politicization of a process that should be scrupulously apolitical.
Please do open the link and read the whole thing.
Ensuring a diverse environment
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 9:51AM
EPA staff have received notice that the Agency will now require prospective grant recipients to complete a "Civil Rights form" before receiving an award, apparently as a result of a "new interpretation" by EPA civil rights lawyers of what the constitution requires of the State.
The staff were told:
MESSAGE
The grants office is no longer making awards without a copy of the Civil Rights form (4700-4). In the past, the grants office could make an award without the form and simply term and condition the agreement. They could also use a completed form for multiple awards for the same recipient in a given year. They can no longer do this. The Civil Rights form must be completed by the applicant before a grant award can be made. Therefore, the grants office is asking that the form be submitted with the other forms and certifications (application, lobbying and assurances) in the funding recommendation.
The form itself asks questions - that is, stakes out new conditions - including, among others:
List all civil rights lawsuits and administrative complaints pending against the applicant/recipient that allege discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability.
Does the applicant/recipient maintain demographic data on the race, color, national origin, sex, age, or handicap of the population it serves?
Does the applicant/recipient have a policy/procedure for providing access to services for persons with limited English proficiency?
In short, "civil rights" lawsuits are now much more likely to also be used as a tool to bully the ever-expanding universe having staked their claim to taxpayer funding in the form of EPA-style government contracting. Nice place you got here, running various pointy-headed compliance workshops, feeding off the beast that is the Superfund black hole, etc. Sure be a shame if a civil rights lawsuit or two were filed...
The Stabilization Bill
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 9:25AM
McClatchy quotes investment analyst Ed Yardeni as saying that "nothing would have been better" than the stimulus package currently being rushed through Congress." He continued, "It's unfocused. That is my problem. It is a lot of money for a lot of nickel-and- dime programs. I would have rather had a lot of money for (promoting purchase of) housing and autos…. Most of this plan is really, I think, aimed at stabilizing the situation and helping people get through the recession, rather than getting us out of the recession. They are actually providing less short-term stimulus by cutting back, from what I understand, some of the tax credits."
The part about stabilization is key to understanding the politics of this bill, and it relates to what I wrote about earlier this week. No matter how bad the economy is when the 2010 elections come, Democrats are going to argue that it would have been much worse had we not passed this $789 billion bill. It's something that's entirely non-falsifiable, since we don't get to know what would have happened without the legislation. That's why Obama keeps warning of double digit unemployment, 5 million job losses, an irreversible economic death sprial, etc. He wants to be able to say that he saved us from a return to the 1930s. I think the key element in all of this, is will Obama's policies be inflationary? In a recent off the record meeting, a Republican lawmaker told me that while Bush will be blamed for the recession, if inflation comes -- a very real possibility given the expansionary fiscal and monetary policies -- then that will become Obama's baby. And inflation wll put him in a very tight spot, because as we know from the early 1980s, the way to kill off inflation is by slowing down the economy.
As Long as It's 'Round Midnight
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 12:31AM
May as well enjoy some Thelonious Monk:
Stimulus Bill Becomes Available 'Round About Midnight
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 12:07AM
It was around midnight Eastern Time when the conference report on the stimulus package went live online, at which time 1,494 pages of documents were dumped here. The House is scheduled to begin to consider the legislation at 9 a.m, with a House and Senate vote expected by the end of the day. There is little time for lawmakers to read the bill or study it, let alone time for the media to pick it apart and for the American people to weigh in. This is an absolute travesty, and a product of a President who promised the most transparent administration in history.
Sen. Claire McCaskill hopes to get the vote on the
$789 billion legislation over with in time to make her plane back
to Missouri.
"Debate starts at 10 in am," Sen. Claire McCaskill writes on Twitter. "Votes late tomorrow aft or early eve. Holding flight home tomorrow night. Hope I make it."
Who was Secretary of Commerce in 1850?
Posted by on 2.13.09 @ 12:06AM
Speaking in Springfield Ill. today, President Barack Obama made light of his inability to find a commerce secretary while envisioning a scene from Abraham Lincoln's pre-presidency where the future emancipator was...
"Possibly in his law office, his feet on a cluttered desk, his sons playing around him, his clothes a bit too small to fit his uncommon frame -- maybe wondering if somebody might call him up and ask him to be commerce secretary."
Readers can judge the quality of Obama's jokes for themselves, but it is worth noting that the Department of Commerce was technically created in 1903 as the Department of Commerce and Labor, which gave way to the modern Department of Commerce in 1913. Either way, the department was created more than half a century after Obama's picaresque portrait of Lincoln would have taken place.
A little detail to be sure, but if Obama insists on using Lincoln to make the case for his own righteousness, he should at least get the facts right.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy.
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 10:48PM
Louis CK explains the primary problem with modern life: "We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots."
(HT: (usually barefoot) meg via No Left Turns)
Pinkerton on Bossie/Gingrich Film on Reagan
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 7:55PM
I've been meaning to do a nice long post on the superb new Ronald Reagan documentary film by David Bossie's Citizens United in conjunction with Newt and Callista Gingrich. James Pinkerton does a fine job of it, though, so for now, read his excellent column.
Dr. Doom
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 7:14PM
Thursday afternoon I received an e-mail from someone up on the Hill regarding the confirmation hearing for environmental activist and longtime (spectacularly failed) prognosticator of disaster, Dr. John Holdren.
Holdren has been nominated to serve as, of all things, chief science advisor to the president. This is odd for a variety of reasons, most of which distill to his history of telling us how the wretched masses - meaning mostly those breeders who he can't see from Cambridge, Mass. but he knows are out there, hatching babies - are trashing the place and will have amazing, Technicolor hell to pay really, really soon.
In short, he's "Population Bomb" and "Population Explosion" Malthusian Paul Ehrlich's Doppelganger, having collaborated with Ehrlich for decades on saying a lot of very stupid things.
Well, old habits die hard. The email I received noted that Louisiana Senator David Vitter had a difficult time simply rolling over for the notion that this guy should stroll into regular access to the president without having to remind everyone, for the record, of just what a Moonbat he really is. Per my correspondent:
Vitter got Holdren to admit (three times) that he thinks 1 billion people will die from Global Warming by 2020.
That's right, one beeellion bodies! Imagine if the recent cooling trend weren't projected even by alarmists to continue until then (by the way, what's "global warming" without the "warming"?). I mean, that's already as many people as Americans who will lose their jobs in two months if we don't immediately pass the Porculus bill, by Nancy Pelosi's math.
You could say I've written about Holdren's kind - in fact, I do discuss him, including his unique path into the National Academy of Sciences as well as his team's increasingly desperate portfolio of tricks, here - so he's not exactly a complete surprise no matter how startling his selection remains.
With the kind of record Holdren trailed in on the heel of his shoe, no wonder Team Soros reports that he was instructed "not to make news" today. Well, the compliant press made sure of that. Heard this anywhere else? Ooh, wait, let me guess: they already knew "global warming" would kill a billion in the next decade. News?
Let this be a heads up, just in case you were wondering whether they really were going to try and pull the trigger on Kyoto-style energy rationing in this administration. I'd say this signals "yes", or the guys with the butterfly nets might get called to the West Wing soon enough to slap a (might I add, well-earned) 44-extra long on a particular gentleman whose ranting escalated beyond its usual, fevered pitch.
The good news is they may actually be forced out into the open on it, what with Kyoto expiring and our European hectors demanding we sign on to its (surely even uglier) progeny this very year. The better news is that John Holdren is the guy we can point to as being behind it, if and when it surfaces.
Just One Night To Review $789 Billion Stimulus Bill
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 5:37PM
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer released the following statement:
"The House is scheduled to meet at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow and is expected to proceed directly to consideration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment conference report. The conference report text will be filed this evening, giving members enough time to review the conference report before voting on it tomorrow afternoon."
If they don't sleep, perhaps the American people will get a window of a few hours to learn what's happening with $789 billion of their money.
Former NH GOP Chairman Reacts to Gregg News
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 4:45PM
I just got off the phone with Fergus Cullen, who until three weeks ago, had been chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, and I asked him to react to the news that Judd Gregg has withdrawn his nomination to be Commerce Secretary.
"This has been a surprising story from the get go," Cullen said. "I had assumed that Sen. Gregg had taken into account his likely disagreements with the Obama administration on policy before he decided to accept the nomination. Judd Gregg is a mainstream conservative Republican who agreed to serve in a liberal administration."
Cullen noted that the Department of Commerce, by its nature, lends itself to ideological differences because it is involved in fiscal and economic policy issues.
"This was an inherent conflict that I thought would have been taken into account," Cullen said.
Cullen was also dismissive about speculation on the liberal blog Talking Points Memo that Gregg may have made the decision to withdraw because he was under fire from the NH GOP. According to Cullen, New Hampshire Republicans were appreciative of the great lengths Gregg took to make sure that his Senate seat remained in Republican hands, at least for two years.
"I don't think there was significant pressure there," Cullen said.
Judd Gregg Withdraws Name as Commerce Secretary
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 4:22PM
In a statement, he announces that:
[I]t has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we [i.e. Gregg and President Obama] had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.
Good for Gregg, but honestly, what took him so long? This conservative Senator just realized that he has too many policy differences with what promises to be one of the most liberal administrations in American history? Did he sleep through the last election?
Something You Don't See Too Often
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 3:54PM
In this case, it's a global warming debate between a well-credentialed skeptic (Dr. John Christy) and a notable alarmist (Dr. William Schlesinger). It happened last night in lil' ol' Hickory, N.C., where at least 250 people witnessed a respectable but spirited exchange. You can read a couple of summaries or just watch it for yourself at the John Locke Foundation blog.
Obama's PR Offensive Gets Results
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 2:57PM
Via Dave Weigel, I see a new Rasmussen poll showing support for the stimulus package jumping 7 points to 44 percent from 37 percent a week ago. Rasmussen's polls have tended to show support for the bill as being weaker than Gallup, but what's important here is the trend. President Obama launched a PR campaign complete with interviews, an op-ed, two town hall meetings, and a prime time press conference, and appears to have boosted support for the legislation. More reason to make sure that as conservatives, we don't get ahead of ourselves.
Reid's Gambling Train
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 2:29PM
AP reports:
In late-stage talks, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for $8 billion to construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday.
The Senate Conservatives Fund has more details:
This of course exposes the little game the President is playing with the public. He tells everyone there are no earmarks in the bill but then turns around and either (a) gives the money to the states, which he knows will fund the earmarks, or (b) instructs his agencies to fund the earmarks directly. It's all very clever, if not deceptive.
Reid's high-speed gambling train not only violates the President's guiding principles for this bill, it also violates American taxpayers.
This so-called MagLev train (magnetic levitation) is estimated to cost $12 billion. Reid earmarked $45 million last year for the public transportation project from California to Las Vegas, which is in direct competition with a private high-speed train company, DesertXpress, which is building a train on a similar route with all private funding. It's not just an earmark, it's a job killing earmark.
I grew up in Atlantic City with a father in the casino business, so I guess that means I have ties to "big gaming," but that doesn't cloud by judgment when it comes to multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded boondoggles.
Credit to NRO
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 2:18PM
I usually read NRO fairly early in the day, but was slammed with work this morning when i wrote my earlier blog post about how conservatives ought to publicize the fact that the stimulus bill kills welfare reform. I just now read NRO, and sure enough, they already, hours earlier (at 4 a.m.), had posted an excellent editorial on the subject. Kudos to them!
The News Biz as Show Biz
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 12:53PM
Juan Williams, persona non grata at NPR?
Williams is controversial among NPR listeners because of his long-standing contract with Fox News, which he had before he joined NPR. Currently, he appears on Fox sometimes with Bill O'Reilly and on Sunday morning with Chris Wallace. ...
Last year, 378 listeners emailed me complaints and frustrations about things Williams said on Fox. The listener themes are similar: Williams "dishonors NPR." He's an "embarrassment to NPR." "NPR should severe their relationship with him."
The most recent "flap" that has NPR listeners' Birkenstocks in a bunch is this video:
Williams rightly notes that Michelle Obama's campaign appearances gathered a fair amount of controversy. Remember "For the first time in my adult life I'm proud of my country"? Or her thesis? There's nothing wrong in suggesting that it would be detrimental to the first lady's influence if she took the same revolutionary tone as she had on previous occassions. It's not just the Politico and the Atlantic, however, that suggested this. Tapper (previously linked) and others have also noted it.
NPR feels uncomfortable, however, with such a statement, or rather, the tone that delivered it:
As a result of this latest flap, NPR's Vice President of News, Ellen Weiss, has asked Williams to ask that Fox remove his NPR identification whenever he is on O'Reilly.
What's so bad, from NPR's perspective, about comparing the First Lady to Stokely Carmichael? Click here for an NPR report interviewing people who felt that Carmichael was just misrepresented. As the story progresses, the legacy of the man becomes clear that it's up for debate, with only one person (David Horowitz, who is called out as a neo-con early on) dissenting from the theory that Carmichael (a black-nationalist and pan-Africanist) was much misrepresented -- even going so far as to criticize the concept of integration as much too "white-oriented."
One example offered is his quip that the position of women in his organization is "prone." His compatriots argue that in context, it was perfectly fine, and funny, even.
Ironic that Stokely Carmichael (a comparison with whom is considered a smear) gets a pass on an out-of-context quote, but Juan Williams, a respected reporter with no doctrinaire approach to his coverage, doesn't.
The People's Stimulus
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 12:18PM
Michelle Lee Muccio of the Acton Institute promotes a Change We Can Believe In:
Anti-Stimulus Petition Grows
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 11:43AM
At last count, 418,665 people had signed a petition, against the stimulus package, organized by Americans for Prosperity. Is it any wonder that the Obamites and Pelosians want to rush this into law before it becomes too incredibly unpopular to pass?
Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves on Obama
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 11:36AM
Joe linked to a Mark Tapscott article in the DC Examiner predicting that Obama will be a one termer because of his free spending ways, writing that, "Growing public awareness of the deeply porkified content of the stimulus package is the chief driver behind the plunge in a mere two weeks from modestly strong initial approval to only a third of those surveyed continuing to support passage."
Reading this reminded me of an article Peggy Noonan wrote for Forbes in 1994 arguing that Bill Clinton was destined to lose in 1996. The title of her piece? "They voted for change. He gives them pork."
In other words, conservatives shouldn't get ahead of themselves.
UPDATE: In comments, Mark Tapscott writes:
If you actually read the column, you will see that it says Obama is "headed" for a one-term presidency if he doesn't change course on pork and earmark related issues, not that it has become a certainty that he will be a one-termer. I remember the Noonan column, too, which is one reason why I didn't make a definitive assertion about a supposedly unavoidable result. But thanks for the link, just the same.
Fair enough. Tapscott hedged a bit more than I suggested when I wrote that he was "predicting" a single term for Obama. But even so, I do think this kind of talk is premature, and the Clinton experience is a worthwhile cautionary lesson for conservatives. From early in the primary season, the right saw Clinton as a transparent phony, and assumed that the rest of America would see right through him. His early stumbles in office confirmed the view that he was utterly out of his depth. After being trounced in 1994, he looked like a lame duck president. But conservatives also underestimated his political skills and his ability to connect with Americans. The same is true with Obama. Many conservatives dismissed him as a fad candidate who would get mowed over by the formidable Clinton machine. Time and again throughout the campaign, when it seemed like he was on the ropes, he lived to fight another round and ended up winning the election comfortably. One thing that I observed about Obama during the campaign is that he's a very fast learner who rarely makes the same mistakes twice. He's demonstrated a willingness to throw people under the bus and abandon policies that cause him political grief. As I've written, I think the events over the past few weeks have cut him down to size and shown him to be mortal. But he's also quite politically savvy, and is already preparing his excuses just in case things don't quite work out as planned.
Two-Faced Libertarianism
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 11:24AM
Austin Bramwell claims that it is difficult to get an answer from libertarians about the current financial crisis. Why? "Libertarianism has two faces," he writes, "which I call the comic and the tragic."One says that markets are flourishing and personal emancipation is proceeding apace, so every day in every way things are getting better and better. The other sees the dead hand of the state crushing individual freedoms with rapid, stultifying government growth.
Bramwell concludes that libertarians "react to circumstances as the mood dictates." Maybe. I'm sure you could find specific libertarians and conservative fellow travelers of libertarianism who, say, in the span of the 1990s went from bemoaning a Clintonian era of big government -- from Hillarycare to Ruby Ridge -- and closed the decade by praising the fantastic growth and innovation of the markets during the Internet-boom economy. I know in over a decade of column-writing, I've had my bouts of triumphalism and pessimism. But for the most part we are talking about distinctly different people here, even if they would all describe themselves as libertarians.
There is almost no overlap between the people who see agree with Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch that this is a libertarian moment and the Rothbardians who believe we never should have junked the Articles of Confederation. Or the libertarians who cheered the Internet boom of the 1990s as a victory of markets over the state and the exponents of Austrian economics who saw that boom as an illusory product of the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policies and artificially low interest rates. Thomas Woods, whose current book on the financial meltdown I reviewed this week in the Washington Times, doesn't look back fondly on the dot-com era.
Saying that these different camps are inconsistent is like complaining that conservatism is contradictory because of a lack of commonality between the Weekly Standard and Commentary on the one hand and the American Conservative and Chronicles on the other.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 10:46AM
- If you can't sway McCain, you must not be very persuasive (Washington Post)
- The costs of protectionism are real, South Korea would like us to know (WSJ)
- Rolling back Clinton welfare reform without delay (Kausfiles)
- Bacevich poses the question, MacIntyre gives the answer (Crunchy Con)
- The finally loyal opposition (Politico)
- Obama has punched himself a ticket out of DC for 2012 (DC Examiner)
Save Welfare Reform. Kill the Stimulus!
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 9:34AM
An observation: Time is short for stimulus opponents. To defeat the stimulus package, at least two senators who voted for cloture the first time around MUST be convinced to change their minds. Only a highly focused message will do. Here's the message that : Save Welfare Reform: Kill the Stiumulus. As is pointed out by Kathrine Bradley and Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation, the stimulus package guts the 1996 welfare reform which stands as both the most successful and the most popular federal government policy reform of the past, oh, 40 years or more. And Rector should know: For all intents and purposes, he was the author of that 1996 reform.
Stiumulus opponents should ask a short series of questions to Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe and anybody who was around in 1996. 1) Did you vote for welfare reform in 1996? 2) Do you think it worked? 3) Do you think we should kill something that worked? 4) If so, why?
Hundreds of thousands of citizens might be well advised to flood senatorial offices with these questions. They are questions that could be game changers.
Reagan Rules
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 9:16AM
Ahead of President's Day weekend, Gallup releases a new poll in which Americans, by a slight margin, chose Ronald Reagan as a greater president than John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington.
Hope Takes A Hit
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 8:31AM
At least one former rank-and-file Obamaican is regretting his decision. From the Union Leader:
Fred Tausch of Nashua is a frustrated, well-to-do businessman who got tired of watching politicians of both parties spending taxpayers' money. And so, spending $100,000 of his own money, he's trying to do something about it.
In full-page ads today in this newspaper and others, in radio advertisements and on a new Web site, the 37-year-old entrepreneur and investment manager emerges onto the political scene to provide an avenue for others upset about the size of the stimulus package and likely more spending measures on the horizon. Tausch is a registered independent who, after voting Republican for most of his life, supported Barack Obama in the last election, even contributing $2,300 to the cause. Tausch said he "got excited about his message. There was not a lot of fiscal discipline in either party, and I thought that when Obama talked about change, he was including that he would be more cautious about how we spend money. And that's just not the case."
Don't worry, Fred, you aren't the only one who got rolled.
Tausch's group STEWARD--Stimulate the Economy Without Accumulating Record Debt--has a pretty fancy website, too.
"Costly" Tax Cuts
Posted by on 2.12.09 @ 8:22AM
Matt Yglesias writes that Jim DeMint's alternative plan contains $3.1 trillion of permanent tax cuts, which he says "would be over triple as costly as the stimulus that will soon be signed" (emphasis mine). Whenever liberals, the media, and fiscal analysts write about "costly" tax cuts, I wonder, costly to whom? When the government cuts taxes (and in this context I am talking about rate cuts rather than government subsidies masquerading as tax cuts), they are allowing taxpayers to keep more of the money they earned. Taxpayers -- who are the ones who finance the government -- are sending away less of their money. In the real world, that's called savings. Sure, government may end up with less revenue as a result, but that's only a problem if you take it as a given that government has to grow at a certain rate every year, rather than shrink.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Never Trust a Babysitter Who Wears a Bob Barr Button
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 10:08PM
It’s no secret that libertarians are bit, well, different. As my libertarian friend and co-author John Coleman once said:
On the negative side, Libertarians are crazy. Most became libertarians because they have some social quirk that disallows them from participation in normal society --picture excessive drug use, Dungeons and Dragons play, or fascination with the word "metrosexual" for instance. They are strange. You can't take them home to your parents, unless, of course, your parents are members of some druid cult. They frighten small children.
Indeed, it turns out that toddlers (and small animals) may have reason to wary of libertarians:
According to the study (pdf), published this Spring in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, conservatives are likely to feel more strongly about social taboos revolving around purity, authority and ingroup loyalty, while liberals feel a stronger sense of obligation around issues of harm to animals and other people. Libertarians, those rootless individualists, scored lower in every moral category.
The researchers selected over 1,500 politically committed volunteers, and subjected them to a range of questions exploring their attitudes to different taboos and trangressions. Asked about impaling a child’s hand, 78 per cent of the conservatives responded that they would refuse to do this “for any amount of money,” compared with 70 per cent of liberals and just 59 per cent of libertarians.
In fact, more of the liberal respondents felt strongly about kicking a dog than about harming a child (75 per cent versus 70 per cent refusal for any amount of money), while fifty per cent of the libertarians would agree to surgery giving them a prosthetic tail if they were paid enough to do so.
Question for our libertarian readers: How much fiat currency would it require for you to punch a baby, slap a puppy, and sew on a tail?
Stealth Care Stimulus
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 7:53PM
A provision in the stimulus package that would authorize $1.1 billion in spending on "comparative effectiveness" medical research has some Republicans worried that it could be aimed at rationing care ahead of President Obama's push for universal health care.
Betsy McCaughey wrote about the issue on Monday, and Rep. John Shadegg now has a column up on Townhall on the subject. Amanda Carpenter also posted video of Shadegg discussing the provision.
Before going into the specifics of the provision, it's important to keep in mind that, philosophically, liberals believe that one of the reasons why health-care costs are so high in America is that doctors authorize expensive medical procedures and write prescriptions for high-priced drugs just to be on the safe side, leading to waste. Liberals argue that government-run health care is more efficient because such systems save money by doing a cost/benefit analysis of medicines and medical procedures and denying some types of treatment if it isn't deemed to be a good value. The flip side, of course, is that you end up with a system in which health care is rationed, and government bureaucrats are making decisions about what type of care is best, rather than doctors and their patients. An extreme example of this is Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which, as the NY Times reported in December, has effectively determined that it's worth $22,750 to extend somebody's life by six months. In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, Obama's former nominee for health-care czar, Tom Daschle called for the creation of a Federal Health Board, comprised of "independent experts" that would perform much the same function.
Now, as part of the stimulus bill, Rep. David Obey, the House appropriations chairman, added a provision, to create a "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research." The new entity, which sounds similar to Daschle's idea of a Federal Health Board, would be tasked with, "assist[ing] the offices and agencies of the Federal Government, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense, and other Federal departments or agencies, to coordinate the conduct or support of comparative effectiveness and related health services research;" and to "advise the President and Congress" on such matters.
It sounds benign, but as Shadegg notes:
Just read the words from the House Appropriations Committee's own report on the stimulus regarding this provision: "Those items, procedures, and interventions… that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed." In reaction, 63 patient advocacy groups including the AIDS Institute, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, and the American Association for Cancer Research, have written a letter to Congress, expressing their concerns. They explained that this provision could lead to "restrictions on patients' access to treatments and physicians' and other providers' ability to deliver care that best meets the needs of the individual patient."
It could also pave the way for further health-care rationing if President Obama gets his way in terms of overhauling the entire health-care system. For instance, President Obama's campaign health-care plan calls for subsidies to be given to Americans to purchase health-care from a government run exchange, choosing between a Medicare-like government plan and among private options. The government could mandate that any insurer participating in the government-run exchange must adopt the effectiveness recommendations of the Federal Coordinating Council, and the government could use its increased leverage in the health insurance market to pressure other insurers to go along. Congress could even go further, and pass a law saying that in order for an insurance policy to be eligible for the employer tax deduction, it must follow the same set of recommendations. All of this is spelled out in detail in Daschle's book, which was widely praised by Obama. But more relevant to the current debate, it's another example of how the stimulus package has been used by Democrats as a ruse to achieve some long-standing policy goals that aren't relevant to stimulating the economy.
DNC Chairman Tim Kaine's Biggest Achievement
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 5:21PM
Gov. Tim Kaine, the DNC chairman and celebrated "moderate" governor of Virginia, is mad because the legislature won't ban cigarette smoking in most bars and restaurants. It seems this will be his signature issue. After all, nothing else important is going on in the world!
Reports the Washington Examiner:
Gov. Tim Kaine signaled his displeasure Tuesday with the weakened ban on smoking in restaurants and bars that emerged from the House a day before, urging lawmakers to restore the original bill while stopping short of a veto threat.
The House's final passage of the smoking ban leaves the Democrat-controlled Senate to contemplate a watered-down version of the measure, which may represent the only chance of passing such a ban this year.
The original bill, a carefully constructed compromise between Kaine and House Speaker William Howell, R-Stafford, created exceptions to allow smoking in private clubs and in separately ventilated, closed-off areas.
The House bill passed Tuesday - nine miles from tobacco giant Philip Morris' U.S. headquarters - would allow patrons to light up when an establishment has been reserved for a private function or when minors are excluded. It also would delay the ban's implementation until January and require that a restaurant's smoking area be closed off or separately ventilated, not both.
"We made a deal," Kaine told reporters at a new conference in Richmond. "Folks said we're going to stand up and support a bill that has very defined provisions in it. We need to get back to the deal."
A statewide bar and restaurant smoking ban likely would be considered Kaine's paramount policy achievement during a term that - despite its broad political successes - has seen scant legislative victories. The governor remained optimistic, lauding the ban's unprecedented advancement in the House, albeit with amendments "not to my liking."
More "bipartisanship" from Democratic "moderates"!
The Republicans Started It!
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 4:46PM
Over at the Heritage Foundation's website, Brian Riedl takes apart a tiresome argument that because the Republicans were fiscally irresponsible it is okay for the Democrats to be fiscally irresponsible too:
The logic seems to be that if a Republican President can run up $3.35 trillion in debt, then Obama should be given free rein to run up even greater debt. This is absurd. First, Obama pledged to fix what he considers Republican governing errors – not double down on them. Second, the permanent $1 trillion budget deficits America is currently facing call for a tougher approach than the $150 billion to $450 billion deficits that typified the last eight years. Finally, many Republicans blame themselves for supporting too much deficit spending under Bush, and now believe that spending should be restrained to fix those deficits. Should they be criticized for coming around to this position? Would the President prefer that Republicans continue to argue that deficits never matter?
President Obama is set to more than double President Bush's deficits.
Specter Stimulus Update
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 4:11PM
To update my main page piece from earlier this afternoon:
The just announced agreement between the Senate and House on the stimulus bill puts an exclamation point to the idea of cameras in the negotiations. The answer to transparency is (surprise) no. As in NO!!! Unanswered: is the ACORN money that disappeared from the Senate bill back in -- or out? Senator Specter just appeared on camera with Senators Collins, Reid, and company, saying not a word about this. The answer on tax cuts seems to have dropped from a Rush-like 40-something to the 30ish range. The question on this remains: was there at some point an effort made to jack the tax cuts up to 40-plus percent of the bill -- in effect some sort of silent salute to Rush -- and just not mention the source of the idea? What kind of cuts are they? In other words, are they real? This is a terrible piece of legislation, but since it's there the sooner the details are known the better.
As this is written, local talk radio in the Harrisburg area, (the Bob Durgin Show follows Rush) is pounding the daylights out of Specter. The anger is palpable, many citing Rush as their source for news. One topic: health care and any rules in this bill that would have kept Specter from his cancer treatments had he been a private citizen. Resentment, and the certainty that taxpayers are being robbed blind in perpetuity, is running very high.
Game On In New York
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 3:50PM
The special election to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's seat is set for March 31 with Republican Jim Tedisco--the guy Eliot Spitzer promised to roll over like a "f---ing steamroller"--facing off against Democrat Scott Murphy.
Good Analysis of Obama's Start
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 2:48PM
The ever-thoughtful Pete Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has a good essay in Commentary (online) today. Without vitriol, he says that Obama already has failed the standards Obama himself claimed to abide by. But he warns (between the lines) against too much glee on the part of Republicans: Obama's stumbles are hardly politically life-threatening. But read the essay for yourself. Good stuff.
AFSCME Says Cantor Should Apologize for "Promoting Profanity"
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 2:26PM
A dust up has broken out between Eric Cantor and big labor. It started when the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the liberal group Americans United for Change produced ads featuring Cantor targeting Republicans who opposed the stimulus. As a joke, Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring sent Greg Sargent a parody video that mocked AFSCME, with some choice language.
AFSCME and Americans United for Change are now huffing and puffing and demanding an apology.
“Eric Cantor may think the greatest economic crisis in seventy years is a joke, but we don’t," said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee in a joint statement. "He should talk to the people in Virginia who are losing their jobs, health care and homes.”
Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, added: "Does Eric Cantor believe that peddling profanity-laced filth around the Internet is consistent with the values of the people of Virginia or the country? This is childish, inappropriate and disgusting behavior from someone who is supposed to be a leader in Congress and a role model to others. Eric Cantor’s response to one of the most serious crises facing America in our lifetimes is to spread this filth, denigrate government employees and treat the current economic crisis like a joke. This video has been floating around on YouTube for years – but Eric Cantor’s use of it in this context shows how completely and utterly out of touch he is with the current economic crisis and the lives of his constituents. Eric Cantor should be ashamed and he should apologize.”
Here is the AFSCME ad attacking Republicans:
And here is the parody video (warning, lots of profanity):
Jindal's Big Moment
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 2:14PM
The Republican leadership has just announced that Bobby Jindal has been chosen to give the Republican response to President Obama's first State of the Union-ish speech, on February 24. While conservatives are familiar with Gov. Jindal, this is an oppourtunity for him to shine on a national stage. Jindal will have his work cut out for him, of course, by nature of the fact that he'll have to follow the rousing reception that President Obama will receive from the Democratic Congress. But still, he'll get a chance to introduce himself as a change-oriented Republican who can make intellegent criticisms of Obama while offering alternatives. Conservatives will be wondering, does Jindal have what it takes to succeed in national politics?
Favre to Retire Again
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 12:32PM
We'll see how long this lasts, though it does sound like he is more decisive this time. I am not our resident New York Jets fan, (though I certainly was rooting for them to beat the Miami Dolphins in the final regular season game for my own selfish reasons of playoff math) but I've always liked Favre. I though he diminished himself with his handling of his departure from the Green Bay Packers and his poor performance in his last five games as a Jet.
But there was a run for a while where it looked like his decision not to retire was correct -- beating the New England Patriots, routing the then-undefeated Tennessee Titans, surging to the lead in the AFC East. Had he not torn the bicep on his "rocket arm," who knows what might have happened? As it turned out, his final season at Green Bay -- a 13-3 regular season record, the playoffs, and an overtime loss in the NFC championship game -- might have been a better way to leave the NFL.
Tanenhaus Again
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 11:51AM
The University Bookman has posted a number of intelligent responses to Sam Tanenhaus' "end of conservatism" essay. The New Republic itself has also continued the discussion, most interestingly in my view with Andrew Bacevich's contribution (though I obviously have a more positive take on Ronald Reagan than Bacevich). All this reminds me that I promised to return to the subject and talk about some areas where I think Tanenhaus has a point.
1. The popularization of conservatism as a mass movement has a downside as well as an upside. The upside for conservatives is obvious, so I won't bother to restate it here. The downside is the oversimplification of conservatism: the reduction of conservative principles to slogans that can fit on a bumper sticker, the fact that conservative thinkers have harder time gaining an audience than conservative entertainers, and the emergence of conservatives as a marketing niche. Something valuable was lost in the transition from Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet to Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.
The bumper-sticker problem wouldn't be serious if it merely applied to the conservative rank-and-file, people of conservative inclination who are too busy with real life to think systematically about politics. Pat Buchanan spoke about "conservatives of the heart" who "don't read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke" but "share our beliefs and convictions." The trouble is that some of the oversimplified conservatives are opinion leaders and Republican elected officials. The similiarities between Reagan and George W. Bush that Tanenhaus brings up are superficial, but I have no doubt that Bush thought he was following the Reagan model as closely as Tanenhaus did.
2. The emergence of conservative identity politics. As Republican politicians have done progressively less for various conservative groups, like social conservatives, they've gotten louder in their insistences that they are people just like them red state folks. As 2004 turned to 2008, it became the worst of all possible worlds: conservatives weren't getting anything in terms of government policy but this attitudinal conservatism helped mobilize the other side (and offend some moderate fellow travelers of the right). I like Sarah Palin, but the Republican establishment marketed her in a way that was intended to manipulate conservatives, not heed them.
3. There are ideological conservatives who don't have a conservative temperament. This is a development that would have horrified Kirk, who believed in a conservative cast of mind but also considered conservatism the "negation of ideology." Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and John McCain are just three Republican leaders who might have been better served by having the conservative temperament and not just broad agreements with certain conservative think-tank white papers.
Right, Because We Wouldn't Want Poor People To Have Jobs Or Cheap Goods
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 11:03AM
There are wide swaths of Chicago that look like something out of Mad Max, where people are trying to raise families under very difficult circumstances that should concern us all, but the city leaders apparently have more important things to attend to--like keeping Wal-Mart out of town.
Nothing quite like the compassionate set's principled opposition to real progressive success stories.
Big Government Radio
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 10:42AM
Buried inside Howard Kurtz's report on shrinking mainstream bureaus in DC -- e.g., the three broadcast networks down to 51 journalists last year, from 110 in 1985 -- is that "National Public Radio's Washington staff ballooned from 267 in 2000 to more than 400 last year. But NPR recently cut 64 jobs." Maybe the stimulus package can restore them.
Israel's Shift Right
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 9:33AM
Going into the elections, the most critical issues to Israel were dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat and the conflict with the Palestinians. On the Iranian issue, there is a broad consensus among Israelis that if there were a choice between military action and Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, that the Israeli government should take action. On the Palestinian issue, there's far less agreement. The basic debate is over peace talks, which is quite relevant given President Obama's determination for the United States to play a more active role in negotiating peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. While, in my view, a two-state solution is the best of all possible outcomes to the conflict, it isn't realistic to think that such an agreement can be reached at this time, with Hamas in control of Gaza, and Mahmoud Abbas's position as president of the Palestinian Authority unclear. Right now, there's simply nobody to negotiate a sustainable peace agreement with on the Palestinian side.
The danger to Israel of having Tzipi Livni's Kadima the helm, was that Livni was more likely to pursue peace talks even if there were no chance to achieve real peace, potentially placing Israel in a perilous position. Going into the election, Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud argued --correctly, from my perspective -- that peace talks at this time were futile. Likud is more likely to resist efforts by the Obama administration to pressure Israel into a peace agreement, as Netanyahu did when President Clinton was in office. It was Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, who gave away the store to Yasser Arafat, at Clinton's urging, only to have Arafat reject the deal and launch a campaign of terrorism instead. So what do yesterday's election results mean in this context?
Right now, Kadima leads Likud by a single seat, but the right-wing parties have an 8-seat advantage overall 64-56, with 61 seats needed to form a government. Livni will have a tricky time putting together a coalition government, because she needs to bring in support from the right while maintaining support on the left. See the chart below, which I grabbed from the Jerusalem Post.
Kadima is in talks with far-right Avigdor Lieberman of Yisreal Beitenu, whose late surge most assuredly siphoned off enough votes to deny Likud a plurality. Lieberman has already said he wanted a right-wing government, but even if Livni convinces him to join her, she risks losing the support of Arab parties that Lieberman unsuccessfully attempted to have banned from the Israeli Knesset for undermining the legitimacy of Israel. Lieberman's party controls 15 seats, while the Arab parties (United Arab List, Hadash, and Balad) have 12. The math doesn't work in Livni's favor. In fact, Livni tried to form a government back in October and failed, even though the left had far more seats than they do now.
So, without getting further into the weeds, there are two main possibilities. Either Livni fails to form a government, and Netanyahu becomes prime minister. Or, alternatively, she somehow manages to form a fragile coalition, but only after winning over support from right-wing parties that can collapse the government at any time if they are unhappy with the policies that she's pursuing. That will likely make her much more likely to govern from the right, and much less likely to sign agreements that endanger Israel. So, even if Israelis denied Netanyahu the type of mandate he was seeking and that seemed achievable a few months ago, they still showed a lot of skepticism about the so-called peace process.
They Never Learn
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 7:42AM
Just when you hope the Republican politicians understand the urgent need to resist more wasteful spending, they lead the charge to put more money into the most inflated part of the economy, the housing market.
Seeking to jump-start the housing market, the Senate added new tax relief for homebuyers to its $900 billion economic stimulus bill yesterday as the legislation moved toward a final vote.
The amendment, offered by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), represents a significant victory for Republicans. GOP lawmakers have complained that the package includes few of their priorities for easing the economic crisis, including more help for the housing sector, which has been devastated by foreclosures and the frozen credit market.
The Isakson provision would offer a tax credit of up to $15,000 for any home bought as a primary residence, for one year after the stimulus bill is signed into law. It would add $19 billion to the plan.
The best that can be said is that this isn't as stupid or costly as Sen. Mitch McConnell's proposal for Uncle Sam to hand out a four percent mortgage to anyone who wants--which would have run a couple hundred billion dollars annually--and Sen. John McCain's truly nutty, and even more expensive, idea for the federal government to buy up every bad mortgage in America at face value.
The housing market bubble burst. It cannot be reinflated. The bust will be painful, but dumping more money into the market in an attempt to inflate prices will only slow the adjustment process. The pain is unfortunate, even tragic for some people, but inevitable.
More Tax Challenged Obama Nominees
Posted by on 2.11.09 @ 6:21AM
According to a member of the transition team that oversaw recruitment and initial vetting for undersecretary and deputy undersecretary positions at the Treasury Department, the Obama White House is attempting to slip "at least two" nominees through the process who have "serious tax issues."
"The White House is trying to get the issues settled ASAP with the tax authorities, and to keep it quiet, if they can," says the source. "We tried nixing these candidates, but they keep coming back on us."
At least one of the nominees would have a hand in setting U.S. tax policy, said the source.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
America's Secular Challenge
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 8:55PM
I've been reading America's Secular Challenge by NYU professor and president of the Hudson Institute Herb London. The book is essentially an extended essay about how elite, left-wing secularism undercuts America's traditional strengths of patriotism and religious faith during a time when the nation can ill afford it. The assault on public religion and love of country comes in a period when America faces enemies who have no such crisis of identity and lack the degree of doubt that leaves us in semi-paralysis.
The best compliment I can pay the book (by a Jewish social critic) is that it reminds me of the outstanding work of John Courtenay Murray (the great Catholic church and state scholar) who wrote:
And if this country is to be overthrown from within or without, I would suggest that it will not be overthrown by Communism. It will be overthrown because it will have made an impossible experiment. It will have undertaken to establish a technological order of most marvelous intricacy, which will have been constructed and will operate without relations to true political ends: and this technological order will hang, as it were, suspended over a moral confusion; and this moral confusion will itself be suspended over a spiritual vacuum.
Maybe Republicans Shouldn't Tweet More
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 7:07PM
Jim Geraghty has the story about how Twitter isn't always the way to a Republican majority.
Inconclusive Israelis
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 6:14PM
The exit polls are in for the Israeli elections, and the winner is...well, it depends on who you ask. Tzipi Livni's Kadima, according to polls, has a 2 seat lead over Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud, but when you add the smaller parties into the mix, the right wing bloc performed better overall, dealing a blow to the left.
Both Kadima and Likud are claiming victory. "Israel has chosen Kadima and we will form the next government," Livni said, while Netanyahu chimed in, "I will be the next prime minister of Israel."
To form a government, a party must reach 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The exit polls show Kadima with 29 or 30 and Likud at 27 or 28. But the right-wing party Yisrael Beiteinu, conrtolled by Avigdor Lieberman, jumped to 15 seats, while the liberal Labor fell to 13. Overall, the breakdown has been projected at 64 seats for the right-wing parties and 56 seats for the left-wing.
Haaretz cautioned that, "some analysts noted that soldiers, whose votes could account for a couple of seats, had not been counted in exit polls and that could favor Netanyahu as tallying continues through into Wednesday."
Either way, it was a huge comeback for Likud (which was at 12 seats in the current government elected in 2006) and a massive defeat for Ehud Barak's Labor (which had won 19 seats in 2006).
The inconclusive results could be the worst possible outcome for Israel, as the lack of mandate by any party could mean in a muddled policy.
Geithner's Debut
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 6:03PM
Tiny Tim's appearance before the Senate Banking Committee did not receive rave reviews as he explained a "dramatic loss of faith" in the American financial system but failed to specify what he as Treasury Secretary planned to do about it. As he spoke, the Dow Jones Industrial AVerage slipped below a negative 400 points, recovering slightly at the close to a minus 382.
61-37
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 2:49PM
That was the Senate's final vote against your children's future, er, I mean for the current version of the stimulus plan.
Obama to the Rescue
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 1:10PM
A few moments ago, during the Ft. Myers, Florida town hall meeting, President Obama called on a woman who was fighting back tears.
"I'm grateful for you, and I've been praying for you," she said, pausing to collect herself. "I have an urgent need."
The woman, who identified herself as Henrietta Hughes, said she was unemployed and homeless, and living with her family in a very small vehicle. "The Housing Authority has two years waiting list. We need something more than a vehicle and parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom."
She pleaded, "Please help."
President Obama walked over to her, and said, "We're going to do everything we can to help you. I'll have my staff talk to you after the town hall."
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has video. And Hughes has been offered a home by a representative from Florida.
Bad Faith Pelosi Democrats
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 12:10PM
Senior House Democrat leadership staff, on orders from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are working with the Obama Administration to restore many of the cuts made by Senate negotiators last weekend.
"Both the White House and us think we can get those funds back into the conference bill. At that point, the Republicans in the Senate have some cover," says a House Democrat who began working with White House Legislative Affairs yesterday morning.
Republican Senators, who believe they were negotiating in good faith with the White House, were not notified of the House/White House moves.
Market Drops as Geithner Speaks
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 11:27AM
The Dow is down about 300 points right now, and if you look at this chart, it shows that the market dropped like a rock when Treasury Secretary Tim Geither began to speak, a little after 11 am.
UPDATE: Among Geithner's proposals were a "stress test" for banks to determine their need for capital support , a "public-private" investment fund of up to $1 trillion to help with troubled assets, and up to $1 tillion to support consumer and business lending.
He said that the $700 billion bailout plan that was approved last fall, while it saved us from even greater catastrophe, wasn't comprehensive enough and it was poorly implemented. He said that right now, we needed fast action because, there is "more risk and greater cost to gradualism than agressive action." The lesson of the New Deal and Japan in the 1990s, was not that government action failed, but that government, "applied the brakes too early." He vowed that the Obama administration would "bring the full force of the United States government" to bear on the financial crisis.
"I Won"
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:57AM
Since "I won" is a fixture of Barack Obama's approach to bipartisanship and the powers of persuasion, since that phrase is his manifestation of a new birth of civility in our nation's capital, it seems that it also should be the solution to his problem with those nasty revisionist Republicans. Obama won and so did his party, with large majorities in both houses. He even got just enough Republican defectors in the Senate to avoid a filibuster on the legislation he says we so desperately need. So pass the damn bill already and stop pointing fingers.
Instead Obama wanted LBJ-style bipartisan supermajorities for his biggest legislative victories, without doing the LBJ-style work of actually cobbling them together. But guess what? Obama won. Most of the Republicans who would pay a political price for standing up to a Democratic president have already been voted out of office. Most of the surviving Republicans come from states and districts where Obama isn't The One, where the sound of his voice doesn't send a thrill up the leg. And guess what? These Republicans won their elections too. Did Obama decide to shelve his opposition to George W. Bush's policies after Bush won re-election? No, in part because he won election in his own right in Illinois while campaigning against those policies. Opposing them was his right.
The onus is entirely on Obama and his party. The Republicans can do little more than force him to defend the merits and contents of his stimulus package. But what did Obama expect? He won. Congratulations. Now he's got to show he can do something besides hold a rally and flap his gums.
Obama and Japan, Continued
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:42AM
During last night's news conference, I noted that President Obama erronously cited Japan in the 1990s as an example of a government not acting in the face of economic crisis, when in reality the opposite is true. Now that the transcript is available, I thought I'd offer some more context. The question comes from Jennifer Loven of the AP:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse. Can you talk about what you know or what you're hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent, when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no -- I think that what I've said is what other economists have said across the political spectrum, which is that if you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the "lost decade" where essentially for the entire '90s they did not see any significant economic growth.
But this was an odd example for him to use, since the reality is the exact opposite of what Obama suggests. The Japan experience actually is a prime example of the futility of using government spending to stimulate the economy.
That arch right-wing rag, the New York Times reported last week:
Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery....
In total, Japan spent $6.3 trillion on construction-related public investment between 1991 and September of last year, according to the Cabinet Office. The spending peaked in 1995 and remained high until the early 2000s, when it was cut amid growing concerns about ballooning budget deficits....
In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.
President Obama and liberal intellectuals continue to perpetuate the textbook Keynesian theory that increased government spending is the best way to revive the economy, but they do not cite one real-world historical example in which such policies have been successful, and they brush aside countless examples of such policies being an abject failure. Last night, Obama added a new twist by citing an example to make his point, when in reality the example undermines him. Either he's ignorant of what happened in Japan, or he correctly thought he could slip one past an ignorant press corps. Neither possibility is encouraging.
Hurting Patients, Helping Ambulance Chasers
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:32AM
My latest on how the ABA (in support of Ted Kennedy) has become a lapdog of the lefty plaintiffs' bar, at the expense of patients who need life-saving new technology.
One E-Book to Rule Them All?
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:25AM
I've been following the progress of the Amazon Kindle. The sales alone suggest that this may be the e-reader that finally makes digital reading a serious contender to the book. Not satisfied with pure market data, I've been keeping up with friends who have purchased the device to see what's happening with their habits and usage.
Interesting thing is that they are all still using it. Not just using it, but loving it. It appears the Kindle is not one of those nifty devices that ends up in your drawer (How many Palm Pilots experienced that fate?). I can only imagine how great it would be to embark on a series of flights with only one thin device covering all my reading needs.
Now, the new, improved Kindle is out with no price increase. Check it out here. I'm saving my pennies, fondly gazing upon it like Mike Meyers in Wayne's World yearning for his dream guitar. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will . . . be . . . mine.
And Wlady, Jim, J. Peter, etc.? Make sure we Kindle buyers can get our AmSpec fix through Amazon's service.
Volcker Advisory Fix
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:22AM
As just posted on our main page:
The 16-member Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which President Barack Obama announced late last week, was selected almost exclusively by Obama White House advisers, and features only two members that the board's chairman, former Fed chief Paul Volcker, was allowed to pick.
More troubling: one of Obama's personal selections has raised a red flag at the Department of Justice. Robert Wolf is chairman and chief executive of UBS Group Americas, an entity that, according to a DOJ source, is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
"The White House never checked, and when we raised the issue, we were told it rose above our pay grade," says the source. "This is highly irregular."
Further, another Obama friend, Penny Pritzker, chairman and founder of Pritzker Realty Group who was also the finance chair of Obama's presidential campaign, comes from a family with extensive tax issues, including off shore tax shelters.
"She has no business being on a presidential policy advisory board," says a Treasury Department source, who has worked in the department's counsel's office. "We advised that for a number of reasons she not be placed on that commission.
Volcker, who was touted as a bipartisan pick to head the commission, was only allowed a say in two picks on the board, and when he opposed several to be named, according to a source close to Volcker, he was ignored.
Obama's Illogic
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 10:01AM
Barack Obama's most bizarre argument is that "the policies of the past eight years," SPECIFICALLY the big deficits and debt, are responsible for getting us into this mess, so the answer is to add far more to the deficit and debt. This isn't "hair of the dog that bit you," it's "the bite of a pit bull (to cure) the dog's hair that made you sneeze."
Of course, Philip also has it right in noting that Obama's definition of "rigid ideology" is anything that doesn't agree with him, while his definition of bipartisanship is for Republicans to do exactly what he wants merely because he deigns to be in their presence.
I have a lifelong friend who went to Dartmouth and, after a few years there, told me how it was that he decided he certainly wasn't a modern liberal. He told me he was walking across campus with another guy, a lib, and they were dicussing their attitudes about various issues. "Well, you are open-minded about XXX," the other guy would say, "but you are close-minded about YYY. Then again, you are open-minded about QQQ, but I don't understand why you are so close-minded about SSS, TTT, and UUU." [Obviously, fill in the letters with whatever issues were current at the time.]
"It suddenly occurred to me," my friend told me, "that on anything where I agreed with him, he said I was open-minded, and wherever I differed, he said I was close-minded. And I decided then and there that to be liberal was to be so close-minded that you see all disagreement as being close-mindedness."
Obama is a perfect stand-in for that Dartmouth liberal. Except that he's worse: He consistently makes promises he can't or won't keep, consistently refuses to acknowledge his own errors even while changing his stance (and thus tacitly showing that his past stance was wrong), and consistently fails, ALWAYS, to actually act in the bipartisan spirit that he talks about embracing. He has no record, none whatsoever, of compromising, ever, ever, ever, on actual policy. He was, by actual measurement, the most liberal member of the Senate, and he is the most leftist president ever. Just six months ago congressional liberals were talking about a $60 billion stimulus. Now Obama, fresh off of an Inaugural where he said we should stress our hopes but not our fears, is saying that unless we pass a stimulus 15 times as big, we're all doomed, doomed, doomed.
This, even though even the Congressional Budget Office says the package will actually slow long-term growth rather than adding to it.
Obama is a menace, and his policies must be defeated.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 9:55AM
- Debunking free lunch economics (WSJ)
- Obama's reach for the census may run afoul of the Constitution (Michael Barone)
- Would Thomas Jefferson advocate radical measures to save newspapers? (American Scene)
- Unimpressed with Obama's first big media roll out (The New Republic)
Scaremongering Continued
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 7:43AM
Just spend money, lots of money, is the president's message on the "stimulus" package. Failing to act "could turn a crisis into a catastrophe," he said yesterday. "The Republicans who have been blocking action are courting disaster," intoned the New York Times. Right. This liberal wish list, with much of the money unlikely to be spent for months or years, is necessary to save the economy.
Of course, this was the same con used by the late and unlamented Bush administration. When the House rejected the TARP bail-out, the stock market fell. So the administration prophesied disaster if Congress didn't act. Congress passed TARP, and the stock market fell. Oh, never mind ... Since then it has been obvious that no one knew what they were doing with all of that money.
Now we are doing the same thing all over again. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the essence of the Obama program:
This will sound ridiculous, but the fact is that the details of Obama's plan don't matter that much.
It is ridiculous, but that's what the legislation is all about. Just open the financial floodgates and hope that something good happens. Don't bet on it! At least, that's the lesson of past government boondoggles.
Not Your Daddy's Virginia
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 7:30AM
So much for individual liberty. Virginia is following the trend of banning smoking in restaurants and bars.
The Virginia House of Delegates approved a plan for a ban on smoking covering most of the state's restaurants and many of its bars Monday, marking a significant political and cultural shift for a state whose history has been intertwined with tobacco for centuries.
Virginia has repeatedly resisted efforts to curtail smoking in public places, even as health concerns over secondhand smoke prompted 23 other states and the District to start enacting prohibitions.
The vote Monday makes it likely that a ban in some form will become law. The Republican-controlled House has been a choke point for years because of the strong influence of rural lawmakers who consider tobacco a critical ingredient in the state's economy, and because of their resistance to imposing limits on personal freedom. In Virginia, where one in every five adults is a smoker, government restrictions on smoking in private establishments have been limited to day-care centers, certain large retail stores, doctors' offices and hospitals.
Currently, individual bars and restaurants impose their own smoking rules. This bill for the first time puts the government into that mix and covers almost all dining rooms and bars in the commonwealth.
As a non-smoker, I like the smoke-free environment, but I don't see why that gives me the right to force owners and customers to follow my preferences. So much for such venerable values as "choice" and "diversity," about which we hear so much these days.
Qualified for the Obama Cabinet!
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 7:20AM
Former Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry has propelled himself to the front ranks of candidates for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He hasn't filed his taxes!
Not that this is unusual. He was convicted of violating the tax law and has been on probation. But, too busy doing the people's business, he's now violated the law (and his probation) again.
For the second time in two years, frustrated federal prosecutors took aim at Marion Barry's chronic failure to file his tax returns and urged a judge to put him in jail.
The move by authorities is the latest act in a long-running tug of war between authorities and the D.C. Council member over his tax status. In all, prosecutors say, Barry has failed to file his returns on time in eight of the past nine years.
...
Barry's office issued a statement last night saying he hasn't seen the prosecutor's motion. "I don't have any idea as to what the motion says," he said. "I'm busy doing my work on the Council helping people get jobs and find affordable housing."
HHS remains open. Can Barry's selection remain far behind?
The Buck Stops Here Only Because I Inherited It
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 6:50AM
In the post-post-partisan era, President Obama likes to emphasize that he inherited the deficit and the economic crisis. He doesn't like the "revisionist history" of Republicans who doubled the national debt but are now opposing his stimulus package and other big-government plans.
Well, Mr. President, I opposed almost every large spending item of the Bush years -- the highway bill, both farm bills, the energy bill, all the earmarks contained therein, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, No Child Left Behind, the Wall Street bailout, the Big Three bailout, the increases in foreign aid, the post-Katrina waste, and even the Iraq adventure. Am I allowed to criticize your even bigger spending items?
Un-reason and Non-reproduction
Posted by on 2.10.09 @ 12:14AM
Playing off Joe's title, here is the bizarre obverse of that strange coin:
"You think the economy is bad now -- wait a few years... Wait until we're almost completely out of oil and food and water and available land ... we need to lose 4.4 billion people and we need to lose them fast."
That bit of Malthusian gloom from Psychology Today's Steven Kotler got "Quote of the Day" honors at HotAir.com, and illustrates the profound misanthropy of environmentalism, which sees humans only as parasitcal consumers of resources, not as creative producers of wealth. This goes back to economist Julian Simon's famous wager with Paul "Population Bomb" Ehrlich.
In 1989, when I was making $300 a week and living in a roach-infested $250-a-month rental with my wife and our newborn daughter, my father said, "Well, son, if you wait to have children until you can afford to have children, you'll never have children."
Indeed. We've now got six, our oldest is in college, and we still can't afford 'em, LOL.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Reason and Reproduction
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 11:24PM
On the new Secular Right blog, Heather Mac Donald comments on the cost of Nadya Suleman's excessive fertility:
Meanwhile, the backlash against Nadya Suleman, the mother of six artificially-conceived children who gave birth to another eight two weeks ago continues. The nine-week premature octoplet’s delivery required 46 doctors, nurses, and assistants; in twelve days, their care has likely cost at least $300,000 and counting. Here’s a possible rule of thumb: If you are a radical pro-lifer and believe that every artificially-conceived embryo must be brought to term, no fertility treatments for you unless you are prepared to bankroll all the resulting medical costs yourself. Either accept your God-given condition of infertility or accept a human condition on the man-made science for overcoming that infertility: use within reason. [emphasis added]
On the most basic level this appeal to reason seems entirely reasonable, though I think the wording fails to convey what Mac Donald intends. The same form could be stated: “If you are a woman and believe that every pregnancy must be brought to term, no sex for you unless you are prepared to bankroll all the resulting medical costs.” But presumably Mac Donald doesn’t have a problem with woman having sex, getting pregnant, or allowing their medical insurance to pick up the tab for obstetric procedures.
Still, Mac Donald's point is one that “radical pro-lifers” (like me) should find unobjectionable: reproductive technologies should be used within reason.
Naturally, we shouldn't dismiss the pain and suffering caused by infertility, a problem that affects thousands of potential families. (After one year of sexual relations, 15% of American couples are unable to conceive a child.) But the cost of fertility treatments– both financially and morally – should be borne primarily by the potential parents.
IVF is an extremely expensive procedure, often costing between $10,000-30,000 per treatment, and the likelihood of success is dismally low. Even the best of techniques offers less than a 50% chance that a live birth will occur. Because of these obstacles, couples may be tempted to set aside the ethical concerns in order to take steps -- such as the creation of multipile embryos -- that increase the chances of fulfilling their desire for a child.
But there are ethically acceptable ways to use such technology. Indeed, when all the possible configurations and therapies are considered, there are at least 38 ways to make a baby. Some methods, such as gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and even in vitro fertilization, do not even require the creation of multiple embryos, which are often either frozen, discarded, or "selectively reduced."
Infertile couples should never be willing to unnecessarily sacrifice an innocent human life, even for such a noble purpose as expanding their family. The extra expense required for ethical fertility treatments may be substantial or even prohibitive. But the cost of destroying a human life is even higher.
Got Malaise Yet?
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 10:55PM
Just
in case the Doomsayer-in-Chief's
nationally-televised gloomfest didn't totally bum you out,
allow me to add more
dark clouds to obscure whatever hint of a silver lining you
might imagine you glimpse:
Suppose a pipe-dream hypothetical: Somehow, this "stimulus" actually produces a sort of dead-cat bounce in the economy, so that unemployment is down around 5% again by 2012. Is that good? No, not really, because government will have produced that bounce by borrowing massively against the future in a society that's about to sustain a serious demographic shock.
The first Baby Boomers turn 65 in 2011, and every year after that will see more and more retirees going onto the Social Security and Medicare rolls. Even if we raise the retirement age, there is still the net drain of productive labor. The average 67-year-old can't produce goods and services as efficiently as the average 38-year-old and (due to certain legal decisions circa 1973) after 2011, we'll have a growing shortage of 38-year-olds and a growing surplus of 67-year-olds.
We are on the verge of a taxpayer shortage, you see, and what the Democrats want to do is take out a massive loan that will have to be repaid by a shrinking pool of taxpayers, who will be expected to support a burgeoning population of increasingly sickly Baby Boomer retirees.
Just call me Mister Sunshine!
How Stimulating
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 8:35PM
It turns out that the Senate stimulus bill will cost $18.7 billion more than the House version, according to CBO numbers obtained by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). How expensive will it get when some of the Nelson-Collins spending is restored in conference?
Obama and Japan
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 8:15PM
President Obama, scrambling to explain his alarmist statement that if we don't pass the stimuls package "our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse," said what he really had in mind was the experience of Japan in the 1990s, when a failure to act led to a decade of stagnation. In reality, the reverse is true. The Japanese government did act, and pursued some of the same infastructure spending policies that are now being touted by Obama.
Centrists and the Stimulus
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 6:25PM
Since the Senate bill, despite being larger, eliminates a chunk of spending from the House bill, what do the centrists do if negotiations lead to a final bill that's larger than both current versions?
The Stimulus Bill Moves Forward
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 6:10PM
It easily cleared the Senate's cloture vote, 61 to 36.
The Center Doesn't Hold
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 4:42PM
Ross Douthat is making sense about the centrists. There is an economic theory behind massive public spending in the face of a recession of this magnitude, even if I think the evidence overwhelmingly suggests this theory is wrong. There is an economic theory behind the idea that this amounts to pouring gasoline on an open fire, the view I incline toward. But what's the theory behind the idea we need an $800 billion stimulus package rather than a $900 billion one? It can't be that we don't have the money for $900 billion, because we don't have the money for $800 billion either. The only reason can be the mindless centrism Douthat identifies: "Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory."
Here's the trouble (besides the fact it will lead to the enactment of this mess): "But thanks to the centrists, we're getting the cheapskate version of the gargantuan version: They've done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right - but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right. This means that if the damn thing doesn't work, we won't even know whom to blame. But it wouldn't be crazy to start by blaming the centrists." I'd change the "if" in his penultimate sentence to "when," but it seems about right to me.
Obama Says Tax Cuts "Most Effective" Way to Stimulate Economy
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 3:41PM
Speaking in his town hall meeting earlier in Elkhart, Indiana, President Obama said, "Tax cuts targeted to working families are the most effective means of stimulus that we can provide to the economy."
That was a shift for Obama. Just a few weeks ago, when he was under criticism from liberal Democrats for not having enough spending in the package, the argument that he made was that spending was the best way to stimulate the economy, and the only reason there wasn't more spending in the bill was that there weren't enough worthy projects that were ready to go. Tax relief was described as the next best approach once all of the viable spending options were exhausted.
Yet, if Obama has now come around to the idea that working-class tax cuts are the "most effective" means of stimulus, the best way to accomplish that would be to use the stimulus package to actually reduce payroll tax rates, a policy that I have advocated before.
One of the primary liberal arguments against a payroll tax cut is that individuals would use the extra income to pay off debt and build up savings rather than spend it, thus it wouldn't be as stimulative as direct government spending. But Obama, perhaps inadvertently, rejected that argument today.
"When you give a tax break to working families who are struggling, they will spend it on a new coat for the kids, or making sure that they get that car repaired that they use to get to work," he said.
President Obama's signature tax proposal, a form of which made it into the stimulus package, has been touted as a payroll tax cut, but it's something quite different. Rather than actually cut payroll tax rates, the government will write checks of up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families to theoretically refund a portion of payroll tax contributions.
There are several disadvantages to this approach: cutting tax rates is more effective than a lump sum payment, a rate cut could be implemented more immediately than the time it would take for the federal government to cut checks to taxpayers, and also, if a payroll tax rate cut were the centerpiece of the stimulus package, it could be much more substantial than Obama's current tax refund.
More on Sending Checks to Mailboxes
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 3:30PM
I mentioned this earlier, but I went back and transcribed the entire question asked by one man in Barack Obama's Elkhart, Indiana town hall meeting. I did so because I think it's representative of the entitlement mentality that has spread as a result of decades of liberalism, and reflective of the type of sentiment that will make it particularly difficult for conservatives to fight the growth of government during economic crisis:
"I also just want to be very thrilled to be in the presence of you, because we've been looking for a change. We are truly tired of the economics that we have been getting, that has gotten us into the position that we're in. That theory has been a trickle down, we need to trickle up. So I would hope, in your philosophy, of trying to kick-start the economy, that the money is directly to the people that have homes that have foreclosed, the people that have lost jobs. To try to give it to a bank, and give a low interest rate, and the person whose home is being foreclosed don't have a job, don't help anybody. It's a sale that nobody can take advantage of because they ain't got no money. So, I would hope, and I pray, that you would support the people that got you into the office, we the people, not the fat cat. We the people, whereas the money is directly in the hands of the people who are hurting. Whereas we don't have to worry about going to the state, going to the federal government, standing in line somewhere. Send that check to our mailbox."
It's scary, but I heard this sort of thing in town hall meetings all across the country last year.
A-Roid Finally Fesses Up
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 2:53PM
He tells ESPN:
"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure ... I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. "Back then, [baseball] was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.
"I did take a banned substance. For that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."
A-Rod now says he did steroids until 2003.
I've always been an A-Rod critic, and rooting for the Yankees has never been the same since he joined the team. Aside from his bad attitude, he's consistently choked when it's counted in the post-season. This phony PR stunt doesn't do anything to change my impression of him, since he repeatedly denied using steroids before he was caught, when it actually would have demonstrated character to come clean. Below, I've posted the video of him going on '60 Minutes' in 2007 and telling Katie Couric that he never did steroids and wasn't even tempted. He's a liar, a complete disgrace to the sport, and an absolute embarrassment to the Yankees. They should have stripped him of his pinstripes when they had the chance.
Obama Said He Wants Education Spending Put Back In Stimulus Bill
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 1:07PM
President Obama said at the town hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana that he hoped Congress would restore some of the education funding that was stripped from the stimulus package to reduce its cost as part of the effort to win support of moderates.
"I'll be honest with you, the Senate version cut a lot of these education dollars," Obama said. "I would like to see some of that restored, and over the next few days as we are having these conversations, we should talk about how we can make sure we're investing in education."
Woman Confronts Obama on Nominees' Tax Problems
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 12:43PM
A questioner identifying herself as Tyra (sp?) said, "You have come to our county and asked us to trust you, but those that you have appointed to your cabinet are not trustworthy and cannot handle their own budget and taxes."She also added, "I'm one of those people who think you need to have a beer with Sean Hannity."
She was heckled with boos by the pro-Obama audience, propting the president to hold up his hand to quiet the crowd, say, "This is a perfectly legitimate question.
Obama replied by saying that he's made lots of appointments, but a few of them had problems before they were asked to serve in his administration. And he made a mistake. "We are changing the culture in Washington, it takes time," he said, referring to all of the ethics rules.
As for Hannity, Obama said he's always up for a beer, so he'd take it under advisement.
"Send That Check to Our Mailboxes"
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 12:36PM
One questioner at President Obama's town hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana just said that money should go directly to the people who are hurting. The man said people shouldn't have to go to the federal or state government to ask for money, and they shouldn't have to wait in line. "Send that check to our mailbox," he advised Obama.
Uncharitable Thoughts About Arlen Specter
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 12:24PM
Sen. Jellyfish takes to the op-ed page of The Washington Post to declare that he loves him some stimulus. His office number is 202-224-4254, in case you want to share the love.
Daniel Seligman, RIP
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 11:48AM
I was an avid reader of Daniel Seligman's work in Fortune and then Forbes during the 1980s and '90s. He was a rare journalist whose mathematical abilities matched his way with words. Consequently, he was always skewering the bogus statistics that get passed around in the media, left and right. Unfortunately he died late last month.
VIDEO: Gingrich on the 'Stimulus' and the GOP's Future
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 11:46AM
At Friday's premiere of Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny, I caught up with the former House Speaker and asked him about the future of the GOP, Sarah Palin, and the current "stimulus" proposal in a brief interview captured by Kerry Picket:
"Isn't there a lot of pork in this bill?"
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 11:33AM
Mary Katherine Ham reports from some Obama economic stimulus house parties in Northern Virginia, and finds lots of cynicism.
The Republicans' Missing Keystone
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 10:17AM
Over at his site the New Majority, David Frum points to a fascinating new survey (pdf) of Pennsylvania voters who have recently switched their party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. It's not an insignificant number of people: The Democrats' advantage in voter registration in the state leapt from 550,000 in May 2006 to 1.2 million by November 2008. Why did these 650,000 ex-Republicans become Democrats?
Demographically, these Pennsylvanians look very much like the voters the New Majority is worried the GOP is repelling. Almost half (49 percent) have at least an undergraduate degree and more have graduate or professional degrees (24 percent) than just high school diplomas (21 percent). Less than 1 percent of the Republican defectors are high school dropouts. These allegiance-switching voters also skew toward the financially comfortable: 37 percent report incomes above $80,000 a year and the largest single group earns more than $100,000 a year (25 percent).
Yet their main reasons for leaving the Republican Party don't entirely comport with the reasons the New Majoritarians tend to give for the GOP's decline. President Bush himself drove many of them from the party of Lincoln and Reagan (68 percent). The Iraq war was cited as a major factor by 54 percent. That's followed by the GOP's positions on foreign policy more generally (49 percent), environmental issues (45 percent), and taxes and spending (44 percent).
Even though 67 percent of these voters self-identified as pro-choice, only 38 percent of them agreed that the Democratic Party's positions on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage were closer to theirs than the GOP's. Only 34 percent agreed that the religious right's influence led them to leave the party. Those aren't insignificant percentages of people turned off by social conservatism, of course, but it is less than the number of people who said they were more Democratic in their views on taxes and spending (46 percent). Majorities did agree that the Republican Party was too extreme in its positions (53 percent) and that George W. Bush's presidency sent them heading for the exits (52 percent).
Now, I'm not sure that self-described moderates (37 percent) and liberals (27 percent) who disagree with the Republican platform almost across the board represent the most auspicious set of recruits for a new Republican majority. But it's not clear that every "extremist" who turned people away from the GOP was a social conservative or that socially liberal hawks for the flat tax are necessarily the best people to win them back.
You See, He's Not A Machine
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 10:15AM
Conservatives should be encouraged about how the stimulus package debate went down, even though President Obama will inevitably sign some legislation, perhaps within a week. Just a short while ago, the stimulus was supposed to be a lay-up for Obama -- there was talk of Congressional Democrats passing something that President Obama could sign on his first day in office, and hopes that it would get 80 votes in the Senate. But everything ended up being much more difficult than expected. President Obama didn't get a single Republican vote in the House, and had to cut down the size of the bill even to attract moderate Democrats in the Senate. As McClatchy reported, it also turned out that Obama has not had much success tapping into the mass movement he built during the campaign to help him push his agenda now that he's in office. "A lot of people, once Obama got elected, thought, 'Well, we're done now,'" said one organizer of an economic stimulus gathering in Tacoma, Washington. Add the tax problems of his appointees to the list and the resignation of Tom Daschle, and Obama has had a tough time of it sooner than most people would have expected.
I'd compare it to to the scene in Rocky IV, when Rocky draws blood from the indomitable Soviet giant Ivan Drago. "You cut him, you hurt him," Rocky's manager hollers in the corner between rounds. "You see, he's not a machine, he's a man!"
Obama, the mythic hero who was sworn into office before well over a million people, has been cut down to size. He hasn't been defeated, but he's started to look mortal. This is encouraging news considering the upcoming battles on issues that are much more difficult for Obama, including card check and universal health care.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 9:50AM
- How to incite a financial panic, government edition (WSJ)
- Academic freedom and professors who think it means they get to run a circus (NY Times)
- Citibank has some explaining to do when their gov't money goes to the Mets (Bloomberg)
- Adventures in public transit: how complicated do you want your subways? (Wired)
- Lisa Jackson and Carol Browner prepare to mock science and common sense at the EPA (NRO)
- Jayson Stark goes overboard in this article, but he does make the point that A-Rod is a horrible person (ESPN)
- Rod Dreher on faith and the slippery path of self-deception (USA Today)
Paying the Price for their Perfidy
Posted by on 2.9.09 @ 7:50AM
Some conservatives curiously seem to regard GOP politicians as new-found fiscal heroes since most Republican legislators oppose the Dems' boondoggle "stimulus" bill. Thankfully the GOP remembers partisanship if not principle. But the Republicans are paying a price for their political perfidy. After all, the Dems are cheerfully pointing to the shameless and irresponsible behavior of most of the same Republican members, including leaders, during the Bush years, when the GOP did its best to bankrupt America.
As senators prepare to vote Monday on an $827 billion stimulus plan, Democrats turned arguments against the former majority party, chastising Republicans on Sunday's talk shows for presiding over six years of "bloated spending."
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, responded to charges of overspending from Sen. John Ensign, Nevada Republican, by reminding him of the Republican record during the Bush administration.
"On the bloated spending, this comes from a man whose party controlled the federal government - House, Senate and White House - for six years," Mr. Frank said on NBC's "Meet The Press." "The spending that we have now was set by six years of Republican spending."
Too bad congressional Republicans didn't worry about the protecting the Treasury when they were in power. If they had, maybe they would still be in power.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Hope Shrinks in Office
Posted by on 2.8.09 @ 9:04PM
Jennifer Rubin calls our attention to the exasperation of New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin:
Who is this guy? Where is the Barack Obama who charmed the country and challenged it to greatness?
Campaigning is tough, but governing is infinitely harder. Remember when first Hillary Clinton, and then Republicans, tried to point out that Obama had no executive experience, had never really shown leadership in his legislative jobs, et cetera? Now his deficiencies are hurting him every day. The White House has many advantages, but it's not a very good place to hide.
Stimulus: It (Still) Won't Work
Posted by on 2.8.09 @ 3:37PM
Everybody's saying it now, but just in case someone missed it the first time around:
Announcing the compromise Friday evening, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said: "I think no one could argue with the fact that the situation would be much worse without this bill."
Really, Senator? "No one could argue"? Many certainly will argue with you, especially with your apparent assumption that "this bill" is the only possible response to the current economic crisis, and that we must either pass "this bill" or suffer the catastrophe about which the president has so direly warned.
The real problem with the stimulus bill is not that it is too big (although it is too big) nor its various objectionable ingredients (although many are objectionable), but rather that it is based on a false economic theory.
"The American people...did not vote for the false theories of the past," Obama assured his listeners Thursday. Yet the "economic recovery plan" pushed by Pelosi and other Democrats is nothing but Keynesian theory in postmodern drag, elegantly costumed by the Orator-in-Chief with a lot of glittering generalities about "modernizing our health care system...21st century classrooms...and end[ing] the tyranny of oil in our time."
This plan is not a Change We Can Believe In and, as I wrote two months ago, before Obama was inaugurated, it won't work.
Peter Schiff says the stimulus will make us "a nation of paupers":
It's didn't work in communist China, it didn't work in the Soviet Union, it's not going to work in Washington, D.C.
The pricetag on this legislation is $1 billion per page.
'Rendezvous With Destiny' Premiere
Posted by on 2.8.09 @ 12:40PM
Friday's premiere of the new documentary, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, was a standing-room only affair.
Produced by Citizens United in association with Newt and Calista Gingrich, directed by Kevin Knoblock, Rendezvous With Destiny features interviews with Jack Kemp, James A. Baker III, William J. Bennett, Linda Chavez, Edwin Meese III, Mari Maseng Will, Richard Perle, Michael Reagan, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Natan Sharansky, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, historian Douglas Brinkley, newsman Sam Donaldson and many more.
All of these people appear in the movie, but the star of the show is indisputably Ronald Reagan. The film footage and photos of Reagan in the movie are the highlights. His star quality carries the film. Here's the trailer, and below that, some photos from the premiere.
David Bossie, president of Citizens United, at left; American Spectator publisher Al Regnery, at right.
Newt Gingrich talks with Seattle talk-radio king Kirby Wilbur, a member of the board of the Young America's Foundation, which gave filmmakers access to the Reagan Ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif.
Me with Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.
Philip Klein and J.P. Freire of the American Spectator with Ericka Andersen of Human Events.
Former Virginia Sen. George Allen talks with friends.
Cato Institute vice-president of communications Khristine Brookes and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton.
Fox News producers L.A. Holmes and Lee Ross.
Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator and me.
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and Jena Lenz of George Washington University Young America's Foundation.
Former Virginia GOP chairwoman Kate Obenshain and Pete Parisi of the Washington Times.
Why’d You Have To Go And Make Things So Complicated?
Posted by on 2.8.09 @ 12:49AM
In his latest book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, David Frum relates a story from the 1950s about an ex-Communist who got into an argument with a young man newly infatuated with Marxism. The older man retorted: "Your answers are so old that I've forgotten the questions."
In many ways we conservatives are like the young Marxist. Often we are more familiar with the proper answer than with the questions they address. For example, we consider "limited government" to be one of the first principles of political conservatism. But what does the phrase really mean?
Too often we make the error of using the phrases "small government" and "limited government" as if they were interchangeable. But the modifiers "small" and "limited" are not synonymous for, when applied to governments, one refers to size and the other to function. A governmental body could be large in size and still be limited in function just as it could be unrestricted in function and small in size.
Of course, size does matter. The larger the government the more resources it will command and the more likely it will usurp its proper roles. But framing the debate in terms of big/small implies not only that there is an ideal size for government (which we conservatives might agree on) but also that we know what that size should be (something most of us have no clue about).
However, the biggest problem with this approach is that it leaves the question open to debate. Some Americans – even some conservatives – have no qualms about government being "big." So before we can even convince them to accept our solution we have to convince them there's a problem.
Instead of talking about size, perhaps we should be framing the debate in terms of complexity. After all, the problem is not just that government is too big, but that it's too complicated. No one -- not even the people in power -- really understand how the system works or what is going on. This allows us to present a common-sense standard for when the government has become too complex: When the average citizen can't understand what is going on, government has become too complicated.
Governmental complexity makes people feel dumb, and American's don't like to be made to feel dumb (that is one of the underlying causes of the populist-elitist divide). They rightly believe that if they can navigate Windows Vista or follow the story line of LOST they should be able to understand what is going on in their nation's Capitol.
But they don't. And even those who live in the fever swamps of DC politics don't really understand it either. How many of us truly understand what is going on with the stimulus? We may know that the tab is nearly a trillion dollar but how many of us (without resorting to Google) can even say how many zeros are in a trillion?
"You're not dumb, government is too complex," is a winning sentiment. Indeed, this simple framing device is one of the reasons that the flat-tax and FairTax movements (whatever their merits as policy proposals) were able to gain such traction with heartland conservatives. The tax code is harder to understand than quantum physics. Even the liberal elites who built it don’t understand it, a fact that can be effectively exploited. But while most DC-based pundits were using Obama's tax-scofflaws to mock the administration as hypocrites, the FairTax's Ken Hoagland was effectively arguing that the problem is not just the people but the monster they created:
But when the chairman of the congressional committee that writes federal tax laws, the man responsible for running the IRS as the secretary of the Treasury and the nominee to head the agency responsible for Social Security and Medicare say they failed to pay owed taxes because they misunderstood our tax laws, where does that leave the rest of us?
This is a message – and a model for debate – that resonates with Americans. And it fits the conservative goal of limiting government (it's difficult for bureaucracy to be both average-voter simple and liberty-infringing powerful). Rather than Quixotically attempting to convince our fellow citizens that government is too big we should simply point out that it is too complex. The goal of conservatism should be to restore a modified Lincolnian standard: a government of the people, for the people, and understandable by the people.
(By the way, thanks to editor extraordinaire for inviting me to blog on AmSpec. It's a true honor. And I promise in future posts not to be so long-winded.)
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