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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Re: PJTV and Notes On Blogospheric Methods
Posted by on 2.21.09 @ 7:02AM
J.P. and Dave have kicked around some criticisms of the PJTV business model which I won't bother to dissect in any detail. I am friends with Roger Simon, Stephen Green, Ed Driscoll and other PajamasMedia people, and have written for PJM. So I have a wee bit of insight on their operation, and I don't want to talk out of school, but here's some background:
PJTV's "Beta" launch was during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where I hung out a lot with the PJ crew (in fact I was crashing at Steve Green's place). They shot a lot of video footage of man-in-the-street stuff, event coverage and "Oh, look, it's another crazy lefty peacenik protest." Then they put a lot of time into editing these into program segments. Then the word came back: "This is not what we want." And so, when they went to Minneapolis the next week for their coverage of the Republican convention, they didn't do any of that stuff, but instead produced sit-down interviews of GOP VIPs.
What I gathered -- and this was really just third- or fourth-hand hearsay -- was that the investors in PJTV did not like the event-coverage type of production. The investors wanted more of a virtual-newsroom-set-with-guest-interviews format. Well, maybe you don't like the talking-head discussion approach that seems to be the basic PJTV model, but what you like or don't like is much less important than what the investors want. "Money talks," and you know the rest of that saying.
On the more general topic of what works and what doesn't work on the Internet, and what role ideology plays in establishing an audience, I have always tried to view journalism through the eyes of the average reader. It's a customer-service approach: What does the reader like? What catches his eye and makes him want to spend 50 cents to buy a paper?
The customer-service approach requires a certain amount of trial-and-error: "Hey, let's see if they like it if we do X." And if they don't like X, you try Y, and if Y doesn't work, you try Z. But once you find what the customer wants -- when something clearly works, and the readership responds -- you do more of that. There is no particular logic evident in Two All-Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese, Pickle, Onions on a Sesame See Bun, but the Big Mac sells, and so McDonalds keeps selling it.
I haven't been blogging as much at AmSpec the past couple of weeks, and I apologize for my inattention, but this past week, my personal blog cleared a major milestone -- 1 million visits -- and so I re-designed the blog and celebrated with a post entitled, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year."
No investors have offered me big bucks, but the readers seem to like it. Or hate it. And the weird thing is, it doesn't seem to matter whether they like it or hate it, so long as they read it. The customer service approach is kind of different in the blogosphere.
Friday, February 20, 2009
President Obama Puts the Fear Of God into the Wastrals
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 9:46PM
All of our fears about waste in the economic "stimulus" bill are over. President Obama has threatened any mayor who wastes the taxpayers' money!
President Obama put the nation's mayors "on notice" that if they spent stimulus money wastefully he would call them out publicly.
Speaking in the East Room of the White House to more than 70 mayors -- four of whom were Republicans -- the president said, "I want to be clear about this: we cannot tolerate business as usual, not in Washington, not in our State Capitols, not in America's cities and towns. We will use the new tools that the Recovery Act gives us to watch the taxpayers' money with more rigor and transparency than ever."
Wow, I now feel reassured!
Burris Overboard
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 7:13PM
Here's a good rule of thumb about political scandals: When a politician is in trouble, it matters less whether the opposition party attacks him than whether his own party decides to circle the wagons or abandon him. Judged by that standard, things aren't looking very good for Roland Burris.
Holder is a coward
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 4:58PM
That headline above is the clear implication of our really tough editorial today, at the Washington Examiner, about Eric Holder's "coward" remarks. The more times I read Holder's speech, the angrier I get. How DARE he say that Americans are cowards?!?!
Tax-Raising Reaganites
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 4:14PM
Echoing Bruce Bartlett, Jonathan Rauch argues in National Journal that "Real Reaganites Raise Taxes." Since the Reagan years, Republicans have managed to keep federal tax revenues at about 18 percent of GDP while Democrats have preserved federal spending at 21 percent. This mismatch produced deficits but also gave the public the programs they liked at the price of post-Reagan tax rates. But if what Rauch calls "the 21 percent era" is over and federal spending is going to be closer to 25 percent of GDP, permanent deficits of 7 percent are unsustainable. The difference is going to have to come from taxes.
Rauch and Bartlett contend that Republicans should do the fiscally responsible thing and try to find the least destructive way possible to raise revenues for the Democrats' spending programs. Whatever the merits of this as policy -- and I frankly don't think there is a way to finance a welfare state of the size we will soon have at an acceptable "cost to the economy and individual liberty" -- it is pretty fanciful to think this would be a good arrangement for the Republicans politically. There isn't much mileage in being the tax collectors of the welfare state, as one former House speaker might put it.
For years, Republicans have tried to run on tax cuts while avoiding any serious cuts in government spending. There were obvious political reasons for that: cutting spending of any size is a lot less popular than cutting taxes. Worse, Republicans have failed -- on the rare occasions they've actually tried -- to reform major entitlement programs. In fact, with the Reagan-era Social Security commission "fix" and the Bush-era Medicare prescription drug benefit, they've tended to make the problem worse. The political risks of cutting spending that benefits the middle class are real. But the failure of the tax-cutting party to cut spending as well will impose the biggest political cost of all: It will leave the Republicans with all vinegar and no honey on fiscal policy. If they give up on keeping spending at something like its current share of GDP or less, they are going end up giving up quite a lot.
Re: The Plight of PJTV
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 3:16PM
I agree with basically everything J.P. Freire says about PajamasTV, but I want to deride the venture by praising other, better Rightosphere web video ventures. For example, reason.tv* does some of the stuff that PJTV does—talk shows, quick takes from employees—but supplements it with actual reporting from events being held by non-libertarians. Eyeblast.tv (terrible name, good people) and CNSNews.com ignore the opinion angle and gives young reporters cameras with which they... interview non-conservatives.
If I click over to reason.tv right now I can watch acidic interviews with dazzled Obama supporters, recorded on the streets of Washington. If I click over to Eyeblast.tv I can watch a reporter ask George Lucas about the stimulus. If I click over to PJTV I can either watch video interviews with conservatives who are already on TV or who want to read their blog posts into a video camera. Who wants to watch that?
It's really unforgiveable that an organization with the start-up capital of PJTV isn't using it to send its cameras out of the studio. Why not hound Rep. John Murtha about his lobbying scandal? Why not show the "monkeygate" New York Post cartoon to actual humans and see if they find it offensive? Even an intra-movement story like the small but rowdy anti-stimulus protests that have followed President Obama would be more interesting than some ill-read rambling by Joe the Plumber.
*Disclosure: I'm a contributing editor of reason magazine.
The Mandate Trap
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 1:55PM
The New York Times reports on a series of regular health care policy meetings that have been taking place in the Senate between insurers, doctors, hospitals and business groups and staffers for Ted Kennedy. According to the article, there is an emerging consensus forming around the need for an individual mandate requiring that all Americans obtain health insurance.
During the Democratic primaries, one of the few major policy differences that existed between Obama and Hillary Clinton surrounded mandating the purchase of health care, and Obama argued fervently against the idea. However, his position was always untenable. Obama's campaign health care plan called for requiring insurance companies to cover everybody who applied for insurance, regardless of risk factors or preexisting conditions. Yet every state that has tried this in the absence of a mandate has seen a mass exodus of insurance companies from the state, because healthy people make the rational decision to exit the insurance market, and insurers are stuck with the oldest and sickest patients.
Obama wants to create a government-run insurance exchange in which individuals are given subsidies to purchase insurance, and given choice among private plans and a government option modeled after Medicare. The idea is to steer people to the government option over time, but in the near term, he needs private insurers to participate in the exchange to give him cover so that he can argue that he isn't imposing government health care, and that consumers will have a real choice. Insurers will not cooperate with him unless he reverses his campaign position and supports mandates. So, he'll likely have to come out in favor of them.
However, were Obama to propose an individual mandate, it will complicate matters for him from a public relations perspective. For one thing, opponents would have an endless amount of video clips from his debates in the Democratic primaries in which he passionately argued against mandates. Furthermore, an individual mandate is the most controversial and unpopular element of any universal health care proposal, and it makes it harder to argue that you aren't supporting government-run health care when you are having the federal government require that everybody purchase health insurance. It can also be attacked as a giant handout to big insurers, since government is requiring that Americans purchase their product.
The mandate trap may end up proving the most effective way for conservatives to defeat Obama's push for government-run health care.
Illinois Gov. Calls on Burris to Resign
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 1:38PM
How much longer will Roland Burris hang on? Gov. Pat Quinn has just called for him to resign, saying he'd use his powers as governor to appoint somebody to fill the seat temporarily until a special election can take place. This raises the prospect of Illinois having four different people hold the same Senate seat within a matter of months, and it also at least leaves a theoretical opening for a Republican, should the Democrats nominate another troubled candidate.
The Plight of PJTV
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 1:26PM
Conor Friedersdorf and I disagree about a few things, but we do agree that there is something starkly disconcerting about PJTV's online venture, something that speaks to an overall problem of conservative media. Heck, it speaks to a problem in the conservative "movement."
I punctuate "movement" that way because conservatives have become less of a movement, and more of a demographic. As I noted in a piece I wrote for Culture11, there's a strong tendency to market along ideological lines. For conservatives, the lines are far more established than, say, liberal lines, where all you have to do is talk about "fair trade" and "organics" and suddenly you got yourself the yuppie demographic. Conservatives are easier. All you have to do is say, "I'm conservative!" and you're in. See also: Mitt "What socialized healthcare?" Romney.
This isn't a problem for PJTV, particularly Malkin and Reynolds who are, I can't emphasize this enough, admirable conservatives with important contributions. What is a problem is that being conservative is thought to be enough to get by in a harsh, and competitive, economic environment. I just mentioned Culture11 -- which had marketed itself as a "conservative Slate" -- but it's not even in existence anymore. These be hard times, yo, but especially hard times for a venture to limit itself ideologically. If you're going to do it, go the non-profit route, for heaven's sakes.
It's not that such ventures are "anti-intellectual," as has been the favored tag. It's really just that this approach is anti-ecumenical. Given that we have our own media structures now, we've stuck to where we're most comfortable. If conservatives have any hope of regaining political dominance, it will be by converting others to our way of thinking, not by preaching to the choir.
HuffPo Gets the Correction of the Year Award
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 1:19PM
For it's attack on FoxNews. "John Gibson never compared Eric Holder to a monkey with a bright blue scrotum," HuffPo's Alex Leo concedes, correcting its original item that said he did.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 10:33AM
- It hasn't been long, but Obama's already been abused by the rest of the world (Washington Post)
- World's most-blamed man defends his record on deregulation
(WSJ)
- If "green jobs" were so great, they'd just be called "jobs" (WSJ)
- Giving money to people who are idiots (NY Times)
- Prison crowding myths (Slate)
- Capitalism abandoned
(RealClearMarkets)
- MIT, entrepreneurial greenhouse (Growthology)
- Heather MacDonald to Eric Holder: I've got your "frank conversation" right here (City Journal)
- Pork watch -- Harry Reid is bound to feature prominently here (Long or Short Capital)
Specter Confronted by Protesters in PA
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 10:19AM
Arlen Specter, speaking in Pennsylvania, encountered protesters due to his support for the stimulus package. Story here. Video here.
Go Ahead GOP Govs, Accept the Stimulus Money
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 9:37AM
I was as staunchly opposed to the Obama stimulus package as anybody, but I really don't see the point in Republican governors refusing to accept money that the federal government will be handing out to states. Howard Kurtz's column today tries to portray it as hypocritical for stimulus opponents to accept government cash, and there's some disappointment among conservatives that Mark Sanford, a vocal critic of the stimulus bill, suggested he's open to accepting money allocated to South Carolina.
Here's the thing. Yes, in a folk hero sort of way, it would be great fun to see Republican governors refuse to accept the money. But on a practical level, I don't see how it makes any sense. The battle is over. The forces who want to spend more taxpayer money won. If every Republican governor refused to accept the stimulus money, it's not like Congress would go back and reduce the cost of the stimulus package by that amount. Taxpayers in South Carolina will be partially subsidizing all of the stimulus spending no matter whether they like it or not. So, they may as well get what they can out of the stimulus package, and try their best to spend the money as productively as possible.
The theory that those governors who opposed the stimulus package should reject the stimulus money is equivalent to taxpayers refusing to use government programs or services which they oppose. Followed to its logical conclusion, that would mean I can't ever ride Amtrak, because I want it to be fully private, or that I can't collect whatever is left of Social Security when I reach retirement, because I want the option to invest my payroll taxes in private accounts.
And the other idea -- that Sanford should reject the stimulus funds and force the state legislature to overturn his decision -- seems like needless theatrics to me. If a Sanford were to reject funds knowing that he'll be forced to accept them anyway, he may as well just accept them in the first place.
It's Bibi
Posted by on 2.20.09 @ 9:16AM
Binyamin Netanyahu has been given the go-ahead to form a government, making it likely that he'll become Israel's next prime minister. With Tzipi Livni determined to stay in the opposition, it's unlikely that there will be a Likud-Kadima unity government, but instead a government comprised of right-wing parties. Assuming that is how things play out, this will be an early test for the U.S.-Israel relationship during the Obama administration. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are both committed to pushing a peace process, but Netanyahu recognizes that process as the farce that it is given that Hamas controls Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas's grip on power is tenuous and set to expire soon. Also, a Prime Minister Netanyahu would be much more likely to launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, as he has repeatedly referred to the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons as the biggest threat to global security.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Where Are the Photos from the Trip?
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 6:14PM
I've confirmed with Nancy Pelosi's office that, at the Vatican's request, no photos of Pelosi's Wednesday yesterday with Pope Benedict XVI will be released.
So even if the pontiff had no choice but to meet with Pelosi, he wasn't going to allow her to turn it into a press op.
In fact, as George Neumayr related in today's Spectator, Benedict took the opportunity to chastise Pelosi and remind her that there is absolutely no place in the Catholic Church for a politician working hard to undermine core Church teachings. Of course, Pelosi released a report of her own, with a much more favorable interpretation of how the meeting unfolded. But a picture is worth a thousand words (or perhaps a million of Pelosi's tortured emissions), and the spin isn't going to work without a corroborating photo.
Perhaps someone in the Holy See warned the pope that Pelosi is not above playing cheap political games with her religion.
First was her abysmal foray into embryology during the Democratic National Convention, when, in a moment of acute imbecility, she cited St. Augustine in a justification for abortion premised on fetuses not being yet "ensouled." This unprovoked misrepresentation of black-and-white Church doctrine elicited a slew of letters of censure from bishops around the country. Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco, Pelosi's district, publicly requested a meeting to review the Church's stance on abortion. Pelosi publicly accepted, hoping to recoup her Catholic credentials.
Needless to say, that promise to meet with Niederauer was simply a ruse. Although she takes credit for making frequent trips back to her district, Pelosi managed to avoid Niederauer until last week. Even then she only met him in the most furtive way possible, keeping the press from covering what was surely an unflattering moment for her.
This whole episode, which unfolded while she was pulling all the political strings to shepherd the disastrous bailout and stimulus congress, underscores the reality that there is no one Pelosi will not exploit for political gain. Not her Catholic constituents, not her bishop, not the pope, not the unborn.
Luckily the pope picked up on this trait. As the head of the papal state, on some level he is obligated to meet with political leaders. Pelosi is, after all, third in line for the presidency. While honoring this duty, Benedict did not leave Pelosi any room for tricks. He gave her only a 15-minute audience after his daily general audience. Note that when he met with Gordon Brown of the UK today, their talk lasted over 30 minutes. The Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano also carried a front-page article by the prime minister, an unprecedented gesture. All the major publications covering their meeting had pictures of them smiling, shaking hands, sitting together, etc. -- the kind of pictures Pelosi surely had in mind when she trekked to Vatican City. Unfortunately, I don’t think she'll ever learn her lesson.
Take Back NYU, Bring a Receipt
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 5:45PM
Best liveblog line of the day:
"12:45 - Straight up ridick. There is a girl topless outside standing by the barricade. Lots of people. No press conference yet."
That comes directly from the astute, funny, and journalistically intrepid Charlie Eisenhood. He's been embedded with the social activists at NYU who barricaded themselves in an NYU cafeteria with a list of demands and a mean calisthenics regimen. (Part one here, part two here.) There's even a link with topless coeds baring it all for the cause, holding signs saying "Exposure Til Disclosure." Dedication, I tell you.
Colin Moynihan has also been blogging the experience, for the slightly more starched shirt New York Times.
The extent to which those present are concerned with food makes me think this is the Scooby Doo of all campus protests. The concerns the students bring up are classic -- tuition is too high, they want vegan food, Palestinians are being repressed in Gaza -- but I'm most interested in their demand for more transparency in NYU administration. Frankly, I don't care what your political view -- I support the protest on the basis of having the school be more accountable to the people who give it money.
Besides. It's NYU. How likely is it that the school would directly support to the Islamic University in Gaza, as per student demands?
UPDATE: A comprehensive look of the list of demands offered by level-headed class of '08 bloggers here. This sort of reminds me of the People's Front of Judea skit in The Life of Brian.
Paul Ryan on the Obama Housing Plan
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 5:02PM
I just got off the phone with Rep. Paul Ryan for another story I was working on, but also asked for his initial take on President Obama's housing proposal.
"It's a moral hazard," Ryan said. "It's going to viewed as unfair, which is, people who did everything right are bailing out people who spent beyond their means, and cram-down is going to result in higher mortgage rates and refinancing rates for all Americans who want to buy a house. So at the end of the day, I think this may end up doing more harm then good, and it may put a new moral hazard in place that's bad for society. It's going to put more of the kind of moral hazards in place that got us into this in the first place, is what my concern is."
I also asked Ryan about the "fiscal responsibility summit" President Obama called for Monday, which Ryan will be attending. The summit, among other items, is expected to focus on entitlement spending.
"I'm going to take them at their face that their intentions are noble and they want to move the ball forward on this, until I see otherwise," Ryan said. "I'm glad they're doing it."
Falling Into Cayuga's Waters
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 1:24PM
The Ithaca Journal reports that Cornell University's Hydraulics Lab has finally fallen into gorge.
That slice of rock just beneath the green building used to be an entire brick structure. It's not there anymore. Students on the north side of the campus cross a bridge that has the view of this exact photo. Many of us would want to check out what it looked like inside -- thankfully, no one was ever stupid enough to try.
Tall Task
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 12:40PM
I really wonder what the GOP can do to make itself more hip-hop. New RNC chairman Michael Steele seems to have a few ideas, as he intimates in this interview with the Washington Times' Ralph Z. Hallow. He also talks about "off-the-hook" PR, and telling critics to "stuff it."
Read the whole article. Steele comes off somewhat crazy. Is it crazy-like-a-fox crazy, or just old-fashioned crazy?
Fast-tracking Kyoto II
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 12:16PM
One thing on which all parties can agree is that the administration has zero chance of getting two-thirds of the Senate to sign on to any new treaty resembling the expiring Kyoto Protocol on "global warming", as they are expected to accept later this year. The unacceptable characteristics to most Americans will prove to be, again, not just energy rationing but among only a handful of nations, and creating numerous "mechanisms" for wealth transfer to the rest of the world who are indispensable parties to the treaty and the process and must be at the table...just not actually covered.
There is a way around this, in the minds of some, and that is to argue that the Constitution's Treaty Power, as written, is archaic and needs to be...what's the word I'm lookin...ignored. That is, Kyoto isn't a treaty so long as we don't call it one, no matter its design, requirements or what the rest of the world calls it.
Yes, they are that transparent about their arguments, as you'll see. I have a piece just published in the Federalist Society's Engage walking through the weaknesses of this stunt of pursuing "fast track", which requires a simple, bicameral majority in an up-or-down, no amendment, no filibuster procedure, instead.
Immigration and the GOP
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 11:09AM
Over at NRO, Richard Nadler has gotten into an exchange with a whole bunch of people on the subject of whether Republicans are hurting themselves with their immigration stance. Nadler says yes, his interlocutors say no. For the purposes of this post, I'll confine myself to Ramesh Ponnuru's response since he comes closest to my own views: he basically agrees with Nadler that the GOP's immigration position has to some extent hurt the party among Hispanic voters but is closer to Nadler's critics as to what constitutes sound immigration policy.
We're in particular agreement on two points. On policy, Ponnuru writes: "My principal concern about immigration is the extent to which immigrants assimilate culturally and economically. Toward that end I favor a reduced level and more varied sources of immigration." From a political and moral perspective, he writes: "Republicans also should be careful not to let hostility to illegal immigration come across as hostility to illegal immigrants as people, let alone to Hispanics generally." Unforuntately, crafting a political message that takes both points seriously is a lot easier said than done.
Ponnuru criticizes restrictionists for pointing out that most of the victorious Democrats in 2006 and 2008 claimed to support enforcement and oppose amnesty: "But most advocates of 'comprehensive reform' say exactly the same things. President Bush said that he favored enforcement and opposed amnesty, and so did Senator McCain. Opponents of that reform never take those statements at face value - except when they are trying to spin away political defeats."
But the fact that virtually nobody outside of safe liberal districts openly campaigns in favor of amnesty or against immigration enforcement is not politically meaningless. It suggests that the pro-amnesty, or if you prefer "comprehensive reform," position carries its own political costs. Activist restrictionists don't take the pro-enforcement rhetoric of pro-amnesty politicians at face value, but a lot of voters do. Restrictionist sentiment has proven fairly easy to co-opt; harder-core restrictionists have found themselves vulnerable to triangulation by politicians whose rhetoric better represents the nuances of public opinion on immigration.
Almost nobody of consequence advocates mass deportation. Perhaps restrictionists would benefit from using rhetoric that makes that clearer. But immigration enforcement isn't painless: to the employers, friends, and families of any illegal immigrant denied entry or asked to leave the United States, the act of enforcing the law is going to look a lot like a mass deportation. Ponnuru suggests we should worry less about the illegal immigrants who are already here than those who would join them. But the illegal population may be as large as 20 million people. If we do nothing to reduce that number, it will take some time for a reduction in illegal entries to catch up. Second, up to 40 percent of that illegal population came in legally and overstayed their visas. So any serious effort to reduce illegal immigration is going to require some level of interior enforcement. Interior enforcement is not painless or politically cost-free.
Conservatives are thus caught between a rock and a hard place. If Nadler is right, and I think he is, immigration enforcement has the potential to alienate the country's fastest-growing demographic group and push it to the left. But if the restrictionists are right, and I think they are, failure to enact sound immigration policies that better integrate newcomers will also have the effect of pushing the country to the left. It's not an easy dilemma to resolve.
Cowardice in the Eye of the Holder
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 10:39AM
Paul Mirengoff nails Eric Holder for hypocrisy on the matter of racial cowardice. I give Mirengoff points for bravery (and for insight and right reason). But Mirengoff better watch out: Holder sends weapon-waving thugs against those who don't agree with him. It's also worth noting that it doesn't take a lot of bravery to spout off when you are the chief law-enforcement officer in the land. And while Holder talks a good game about bringing races together, he is actually a devotee of racial bean-counting even at the cost of hindering public safety.
Methinks Holder is not the right one to make the case about racial togetherness.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 10:20AM
- George Will: You got hosed (Washington Post)
- Free speech gets one-sided when one side is known for violence (Reason)
- Why was the Khmer Rouge terrible? Because they were communist (NRO)
- Libertarian litmus test for legitimate government operations (EconLog)
- AmSpec's Robert Stacy McCain lays a trap (which apparently worked) (SpliceToday)
- Dallas gets soaked for more spending, because the stimulus apparently wasn't enough (Crunchy Con)
Blame Bernanke
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 10:07AM
Everything that Ben Bernanke touches turns into excrement. Now he says inflation is no worry. (See the last paragraph in the link.) Be very afraid.
Gearing Up for Card Check
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 9:20AM
The progressive group I Am Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, is gearing up for a major push on the Employee Free Choice Act, and is organizing a petition drive. On its website, it promotes research showing higher hourly wages and better benefits for union employees. What it doesn't show is how unions cripple business with their demands, as evidenced by the problems with the domestic auto industry. The push by progressive groups comes on top of a campaign by big labor for this anti-democratic piece of legislation, which would deny workers a secret ballot election on unionization, thus allowing unions to swell their ranks through intimidation. During normal times, this would be a recipe for disaster, but to bog down workplaces and make it more difficult for businesses to function during a severe economic crisis is utterly insane.
To be clear, when I use the word "intimidation" I don't mean that it has to take the form of some hulking cartoon character meeting workers in the back alley with a baseball bat, but more subtle forms of peer pressure. I was forced to join an AFL-CIO affiliated union when I was a financial reporter at Reuters because it was a union shop, and during contract negotiations I was constantly hounded by union reps to go along with their juvenile tactics, like wearing a red union t-shirt in the office, or participating in mini walk outs in the form of mass 15-minute coffee breaks. If you didn't go along, you'd start getting messages from union-friendly co-workers, or sometimes while you were working, union shop stewards would come by your desk and start lecturing you on the need for solidarity. I happened to be too stubborn to ever partake in their silliness, but eventually, most everybody else in the office went along just so they'd stop being bothered by union reps and co-workers. If unions' only obstacle to organizing is getting 50 percent of workers, plus one, to sign a card, then such workplace harassment will become common. It will likely get much worse, because the stakes will be higher. Anybody who doesn't recognize that either has a vested interest in this legislation, is being intellectually dishonest, or has never been a member of a union.
Obamaflation Watch
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 8:44AM
This morning the government reported that wholesale inflation has taken its biggest jump in 6 months. When I have raised the prospect of inflation on this blog, I have mainly thought of it over a much longer term, considering that President Obama is pursuing an expansionary fiscal policy at a time when the Fed has already slashed interest rates to near zero. In remarks at the National Press Club yesterday, Ben Bernanke said, "At this point, with global economic activity weak and commodity prices at low levels, we see little risk of unacceptably high inflation in the near term; indeed, we expect inflation to be quite low for some time." Sure, this morning's numbers are just one data point, but certainly they should make us pause and consider whether we can continue to open up the spigots at a time of already extraordinary deficits without destabilizing the currency.
Latest Stupid Racism Controversy
Posted by on 2.19.09 @ 8:21AM
So, the NY Post runs a cartoon implying that the stimulus package was so bad it may as well have been written by a chimpanzee, and all the usual suspects are screaming "racism!" And the AP ran the headline, "NY Post cartoon seems to link Obama to dead chimp." This is absurd. President Obama didn't even write the stimulus bil and the cartoon was in reference to an actual news event of a domesticated chimp going nuts, mauling somebody, and being shot.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper but a bang. And Tom Hanks.
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 7:26PM
European scientists have invited actor Tom Hanks be present when they switch on the machine that could (possibly) destroy the world:
Cern's head of communications, James Gillies, confirmed that the facility would be delighted to have Hanks there to restart the collider, which organisers hope will take place in June.
The machine is designed to simulate the "Big Bang", which started the universe 15 billion years ago, by smashing subatomic particles together at energies never before achieved.
Scientists hope this will help them find the answers to big questions, such as what causes mass and whether hidden dimensions exist in space.
There is also a possibility of tiny black holes being created in the Collider. Experts insist that if this happens, they will pose no threat.
You may recall that the Large Hadron Collider suffered, as The Telegraph says, “a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on amid a fanfare of publicity last September.” Hmm, did the “experts” predict that would happen?
To me a “catastrophic malfunction” with my PC, a machine that can run SimCity, is cause for concern; a “catastrophic malfunction” in the CERN, a machine that can run SimUniverse, should make us think twice about turning it on again.
I’m not a scientist (though I have watched a lot of disaster movies) so I don’t know what the effect of creating a black hole in Switzerland will have on the existence of our planet. But I suspect that Tom Hanks presence at the next Big Bang has to exponentially increase the probability of global annihilation.
The Circle of Doom
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 6:32PM
Head on over to Right.org and check out the various visualizations of the bail-out package. The only problem I have is that there may be too many visuals. But what a fantastic way to represent how ridiculous the proposition is.
Also funny? Watching these guys run around to businesses handing gigantic checks out. Brilliant. This is a solicitation for a video contest, so be sure to submit something.
Good on you, mate!
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 6:21PM
The Aussies have formed the world's first political party dedicated to fighting the global warming agenda.
You just knew it would be the Aussies first. As one said to me, "we've never missed a war or an Olympics."
White House Says Obama Opposes Fairness Doctrine
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 5:51PM
FoxNews has some details. I'm sure this won't kill the issue, but the report doesn't strike me as surprising. To this point, President Obama has been careful to avoid expending energy fighting these sort of side battles that rile up conservatives without accomplishing anything, because he'd rather expend his political capital on actually advancing his liberal agenda. We've already gotten a glimpse of this when he urged Congressional Democrats to strip birth control spending from the stimulus package, thus denying Republicans an easy target. That's one key way in which he's different from Clinton, and why he is a potentially more formidable adversary for conservatives. I know that talk radio is all over this issue, but based on everything I've observed covering Obama, I don't think he's going to risk the big stuff to get into a battle over what is ultimately a marginal issue for him. Instead of focusing on the fairness doctrine, conservatives would be better off gearing up for fights on card check and health care, two areas in which Obama will actually attempt to do some very bad things.
An A for effort
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 4:30PM
The New York Times reports today that students think that if they work hard in a class, they ought to be rewarded for it. Consequently, when they receive lower grades, they feel cheated. One professor notes that the students think they should get an A by default, by simply doing all the work required of them. But the default grade, she notes, is a "C."
According to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, 30% of students surveyed said that they expected B's just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
The professor suggests that this could be because of a record of achievement, parental pressure, etc. Another professor suggests that this is possibly because of the hyper-preparedness of students coming to college. They're used to preparing for exams and knocking them out of the ballpark.
In either case, think about it this way. If you did all the work necessary for a class, but showed no growth in the area, and got a "c," would you be likely to stay in college? Or would you go? And would that be for the greater good?
Now think about this: We are bludgeoned with the idea that college is a path to enlightenment, not simply a means to get better employment. Yet the numbers show that students really aren't that serious about the enlightenment part. Just the jobs part. What's with all the pomp and circumstance then? Why do these colleges have seals, and robes, and podiums? Why even bother with campuses?
Colleges have made no effort to counter this, and the faculty is only a part of the problem. Advertising that everyone should go to college has dragged down standards considerably, such that you get credit for "doing the work." But are you paying upwards of $10,000 a year to do the work? Or to learn?
A Moth Springs From Sullivan's Wallet
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 3:32PM
Andrew Sullivan remarks on an emailed fundraising message from our publisher:
I hope the AmSpec survives and prospers. But really: I'm sure that some on the far left would love the AmSpec to die and I can understand why fear and hysteria can drum up funds ... but who actually is proposing to use the power of government to shut down a website?
Blah blah blah. Let's focus on that first sentence. "I hope the AmSpec survives and prospers." Okay. I'm looking for your donation... it's gotta be in here somewhere... In case it's not, though, Andrew, the donate page is here. Or you can just link to us more often. Just sayin'.
Much, Much Too Soon
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 3:21PM
So it seems Eliot Spitzer feels comfortable enough in his Slate environs to criticize Obama's $500,000 pay cap as not being draconian enough. I guess he must be thinking that the fewer rich CEOs in NYC, the lower the prices at the Emperor's Club.
He is not anywhere close to being ready for public consumption, in my opinion. You would think he would have the decency not to comment on any public figure's conduct, giving his gross misdeeds, and yet he is getting on his high horse to decry CEOs' use of bailout money as "outrageous." No Eliot, using taxpayer money to rent hotel rooms for trysts with prostitutes is outrageous.
Also, it's hard to listen to him propose solutions for problems he himself helped author. AIG, specifically, would likely be in a better place if Spitzer hadn't, in a similarly self-righteous fit, forced out Hank Greenberg. I think a lot of AIG's shareholders would have made do with Greenberg's "outrageous" behavior in order to avoid their current dire straits.
Spitzer obviously hasn't learned his lesson. If he really wants to be a "reformer" again, he should be thinking about decades, not months, before his public comeback.
Is Obama Already Lowering His Expectations for Stimulus Package?
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 1:52PM
During last week's primetime press conference, President Obama made it abundantly clear how we should judge whether the economic stimulus plan is successful:
...that is why the single most important part of this Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is the fact that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs....
...it's important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs....
My bottom line is to make sure that we are saving or creating 4 million jobs....
So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs....
But my bottom line is, are we creating 4 million jobs, and are we laying the foundation for long- term economic growth?...
I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs.
But, the day after signing the bill into law, he seems to have already scaled back expectations. Speaking in Arizona earlier today to announce his housing plan, Obama said:
Yesterday, in Denver, I signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which will create or save three and a half million jobs over the next two years – including 70,000 in Arizona – doing the work America needs done.
What happened to the other 500,000?
Obama Unveils Homeowner Bailout
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 12:54PM
President Obama just spoke in Arizona to officially announce his plan to stabalize the housing market. Based on his remarks, it's pretty clear that he will use the same basic playbook to sell the new plan as he did to sell the stimulus package. In other words, explain that we're in the midst of a significant crisis that will only be made worse if we don't do what he says.
"In the end all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis and all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to continue to deepen," Obama said. "But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, then every American will benefit."
The plan will be comprised of several parts.
The first part will allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance so-called "underwater" mortgages in cases in which the value of a home has declined below the value of the mortgage.
The second part will encourage mortgage lenders to reduce interest rates on subprime mortgages by requiring those institutions requesting government assistance to do so, and the federal government --i.e. taxpayers -- will subsidize the gap between the old interest rate and the new, lower, one.
The third part would use up to $200 billion of existing Treasury funds to purchase mortgage backed securities from Fannie and Freddie so that they can help lower mortgage rates for new borrowers.
In addition, the plan would alter bankruptcy rules so that judges can allow mortgages to be renegotiated based on "fair market value."
Obama didn't mention the price tag in his speech, but the cost has been pegged at $75 billion (excluding the $200 billion) in Treasury capital.
The problem is that we got into this mess as a result of housing values that were artificially higher due to actions on the part of federal government, mortgage lenders, and borrowers. The only way to truly recover from this mess is to break the habit, and allow housing values to crash to a level that would entice those who sat on the sidelines while housing values skyrocketed to enter the housing market. That would be a long and painful process, but a necessary one. What the Obama plan does is repeat the same mistakes that got us into this mess -- by using government subsidies and Fannie and Freddie to prop up housing values and artificially lower mortgage rates.
Furthermore, Obama suggests that he can bailout deserving homeowners while avoiding helping those who do not deserve it.
"I also want to be very clear about what this plan will not do," Obama said. "It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans. It will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell. It will not help dishonest lenders who acted irresponsibility, distorting the facts and dismissing the fine print at the expense of buyers who didn’t know better. And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford."
However, by providing subsidies to subprime homeowners who can't
afford their mortgage payments and putting more money at risk
with Fannie and Freddie, by definition, he's thowing taxpayer
money after bad loans. In addition to homeowners, mortgage
lenders --some of them the unscrupulous ones -- will benefit if
less of their bad loans default if the Obama plan works as
intended. Any plan that props up housing values will benefit
speculators who bet on the prices going up. And furthermore, how
does the government determine which homeowners "knew from
the beginning" that they would not be able to afford their
homes?
We *all* know the private sector is the problem
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 11:51AM
So says Gail Collins:
As to the banks — and the automakers — so far our problem has been too little faith in government rather than too much. We got into this mess by presuming that the private sector was inherently smarter than pointy-headed bureaucrats. But over and over during the past eight years, from Iraq to prescription-drug pricing, we’ve seen that the private sector is frequently both dumber and less efficient than government.
Collins manages to name the most government heavy "private" sector items imaginable. Private contractors in Iraq? Government spending without the oversight. Drug research? Heavily government subsidized.
The point Collins misses is that the market may have just as many inefficiencies as government, but when private enterprises *are* inefficient, they fail. Then smarter competitors learn a lesson and have a success. Government isn't allowed to fail, because it is a monopoly. This means more failures, rather than more learning. It gets worse when government bails out failing industries. The auto industry, the airlines, healthcare, all of these have been insulated from market pressure to the point that the "market" is completely distorted.
It's not about "pointy-headed bureaucrats" versus the profit-seeking businessman. It's about government getting in the way of innovation.
Anyway, dear commenters, let's have a little competition. The first person to nail what's wrong with this next sentence gets a free March issue:
The private sector got us into the savings and loan crisis during the ’80s, and who got us out of it? Was it … the government?
Jerry Taylor's Immutable Laws of the Universe
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 11:29AM
Prevent him from enjoying Michael Gerson's columns.
Presto, You've Got A Liberal Polemic
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 10:49AM
Liberal pushback in the popular press against "right-wing revisionism" concerning the New Deal has begun. Scott Lehigh of the Boston Globe accuses the "revisionists" of cherry-picking data: citing unemployment figures that exclude public-works employees, quoting FDR's treasury secretary saying all the federal spending hadn't produced a recovery, and using misleading years as benchmarks for unemployment. Lehigh argues that unemployment actually dropped between 1933 and 1937, only spiking again once federal spending was cut.
There are a few problems with all this -- some long-term public works jobs are actually included in the unemployment figures, for example -- but let's start by looking at Lehigh's own cherrypicking. Here are the unemployment figures from 1930 to 1939:
1930 8.7%
1931 15.9%
1932 23.6%
1933 24.9%
1934 21.7%
1935 20.1%
1936 16.9%
1937 14.3%
1938 19.0%
1939 17.2%
Awfully convenient to cite 1937 as a benchmark year, isn't it? True, the numbers do show a "steady decline" in the jobless rate. But unemployment was over 20 percent for most of the period Lehigh cites and never drops below 14 percent after 1930. Some of the New Deal revisionist arguments may well be overstated -- as are some advanced by the counter-revisionists.
Next Step: Housing Bailout
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 9:59AM
Having just signed the $787 billion stimulus package, President Obama is set today to unviel his plans to bailout homeowners. The official announcement is scheduled for Phoenix later in the day, but the White House blog already has some details up in the form of a Q&A. The bailout would apply to two different sets of homeowners. One group is up to date on their mortgage payments, but their house has declined in value to the point where the money owed on their mortgage is greater than the current value of their house. The other group is comprised of those who fell behind on their mortgage payments and are in danger of losing their homes.
Under the new proposal, called the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, the Obama administration would help the first group by enabling them to refinance their home loans if their mortgages are part of securities owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As for the group that is at risk of foreclosure, the Treasury Department would help by " providing mortgage lenders with financial incentives to modify existing first mortgages."
Boy Clinton's Hypocritical Silence
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 9:58AM
Peter Ferrara is absolutely right that the gutting of welfare reform is a big, BIG deal and one that should play well politically to the advantage of Republicans if they will only have the guts to point out that the Dems just gutted it. (I noted the subject in a column of mine yesterday, and named names.) But one interesting development, or rather non-development, has gone unremarked: The utter silence of Bill Clinton.
In 1992, of course, Clinton campaigned on a platform of "ending welfare as we know it." He then gave the lie to his promised by fighting against Republican attempts at reform, actually vetoing two welfare reform bills. Then, told by his aides that his only remaining real vulnerability in the 1996 re-election campaign would be if he continued to block reform (thus handing an issue to the flailing Bob Dole), he signed the GOP's third attempt at reform -- and then spent the next dozen years claiming credit for welfare reform, which proved to be a phenomenal success, as if it were all his idea and the GOP had just gone along for a ride.
So, if he were so proud of it as one of his greatest legacies, wouldn't you think he would be out front in the past two weeks denouncing the stimulus provisions that completely undo the reforms? Wouldn't any normal person with such a legacy try to defend it?
Not Clinton. He never really cared about anything but the credit. He never really supported the reforms. So it is no skin off his back to see those reforms utterly undermined.
Just one more example of the shameless hypocrisy of the mendacious and corrupt former president whose wife now is busy undermining American foreign policy.....
Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 8:56AM
A Swedish friend writes to inform us [with links in Danish] of "some remarkable statements from the Danish government.
The Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedergård [of the] ‘conservative party' compares the break down of the US capitalism with the fall of Soviet Union.
The Danish foreign minister and Party Chairman of conservative party says that conservative party is a mix of socialism and liberalism."
Knowing that Europe's social democracies are faring equally poorly -- and that some, notably Spain, Germany and the UK actually led the global recession -- this simply proves that old habits die hard, such as the Euro-instinct of blaming the U.S. for everything [this instinct being a constant sore spot to those many U.S.-admiring Europeans, such as my Danish wife and in-laws].
But let us not ask too much of dear Connie. You may remember her. She's the lady with a colorful history. For example, she obstinately refused to apologize or even correct the record when caught dragging other poseur pols to a "galloping glacier" whose gallops she falsely blamed on global warming.
More pompously, she "claim[ed] that she and her ilk ‘are getting a bit impatient, not on our own behalf but on behalf of the planet.' The condemnations of the US included ‘unusually blunt language' about how the rest of the world are waiting for the US to act, and that it is the US resistance to adopting a particular approach to addressing emissions that jeopardizes the climate. Not China, India, Mexico, and 155 countries representing the vast majority of emissions seeing theirs skyrocket; certainly not the EU."
One might think that such insight is mighty tough talk from Europe's biggest Kyoto violator, whose sole emission reductions all seem to have come from deciding one year to import electricity instead of producing it, despite a massive suite of taxes designed to price discretionary energy (and automobility) out of the reach of most.
That's not exactly what their neighbors to the south would call a Wirtschaftwunder. Hmm, given Europe's absurd bluster, maybe they would call it that, given some EU nations are now calling Eastern Europe's economic collapse "early action" toward Kyoto compliance.
Yes. We have many things to learn from our European superiors on this issue. For example, why didn't we just call the Fannie/Freddie - inspired financial meltdown our stab at being green, and put a happy face on things? It would, at the same time, have accurately presented the truth about the phrase, "green jobs", which is to say, making jobs disappear.
Burris on Thin Ice
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 8:44AM
The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune both call for his resignation.
The Looting and Pillaging Has Just Begun
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 7:46AM
Now that the "stimulus" bill has been signed into law, the looting and pillaging will really begin as the interest groups swarm government agencies. And federal agencies are preparing to respond by opening their doors and putting out welcome mats.
Passing the economic recovery bill may turn out to have been the easy part: The sheer size of spending increases in the $787 billion measure threatens to overwhelm the agencies that administer the money and the government watchdogs who keep the agencies in line.
Two chief examples are the Transportation Department, whose 2008 budget of $68 billion will be augmented by an additional $43 billion over the life of the bill, and the Energy Department, with an annual budget of $25 billion, which is slated to disburse $42 billion for grants, loans and other programs under its jurisdiction.
"This is a lot of money going out, and we want to make sure the money it's going out for are projects that have economic merit," said David M. Walker, who was the nation's comptroller general for a decade before leaving last year to become president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. "It's going to be challenging for them to be able to do that, especially in the procurement area."
President Obama on Tuesday signed the stimulus bill in Denver, calling it the "beginning of the end" of rough economic times while saying more work remains on stemming the tide of housing foreclosures and shoring up financial institutions. Mr. Obama's spokesman even left the door open for still more emergency spending to pump money into the economy, though he said there aren't specific plans right now.
Some federal agencies have only begun to determine how they will spend their windfalls. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be getting $1 billion in extra spending under the stimulus bill, including a $2 million boost in the inspector general's office.
Well, you really didn't want that savings you pain-stakingly accumulated, did you? Washington can put it to so much better use than you can.
Afghanistan Becomes Obama's War
Posted by on 2.18.09 @ 7:33AM
Whatever happens in Iraq, President Barack Obama can point to the late and unlamented Bush administration. But now he is making the Afghanistan war his own. Observes Mark Thompson in Time magazine:
Afghanistan became President Obama's war on Tuesday, when he ordered two more U.S. combat brigades into the fight. He will send 17,000 combat troops to join the 36,000-strong U.S. force already in the theater. The fact that the units now ordered to Afghanistan had originally been slated for Iraq underscores the new Administration's shift in priorities.
The reinforcements include about 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., who should be in Afghanistan by late spring, and a 4,000-strong Army brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., which should arrive in the summer. Those units will be joined by about 5,000 more Army "enablers" to provide logistical support. (See images of Afghanistan's mean streets)
If things work out well, which seems an increasingly unlikely possibility, then President Obama can claim victory. But if the war worsens and there are calls for more troops, the issue may begin to consume his presidency like Iraq did George Bush's administration. Then the change that Obama's allies may begin demanding could be for a new president.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Writing on the Wall for Burris?
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 5:08PM
With the new revelation that Sen. Ronald Burris attempted to raise money for Rod Blagojevich, the AP is already starting to float "resignation" as a possibility. If Burris is forced to step down, it will be the latest embarrassment to Democrats over this Senate seat. But I'm sure some Republicans are hoping Burris sticks around a bit longer-- at least until the next election.
No-Bid Solar Contracts?
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 4:44PM
At the Denver signing ceremony of the stimulus bill, President Obama was introduced by Blake Jones, the president of Namaste Solar Electric, a Colorado-based company that installs solar panels. Jones, chosen to highlight the importance of so-called "green collar jobs," spoke of how his company grew from 3 employees to 55 in a matter of a few years, but now needs handouts from the government given the weak economic climate. Ironically, Jones cut his teeth in the engineering field working in the Middle East for the most evil of evil corporations, serving under the devil himself. According to Namaste's website, "sarting in 1996, he worked for many years as a civil engineer and project manager at Halliburton/Brown & Root, an international oil services company. During this time, Blake spent 2 years working in Egypt where he honed his project management and engineering design skills." KBR, if you recall, was the Halliburton division at the center of the left's hissy fit over no-bid contracts in Iraq, and back in 1996, none other than Dick Cheney was CEO of the company.
Flashback: Obama on Bipartisanship
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 12:42PM
Via Mark Hemingway, I see that Bill McGurn notes this old Obama quote:
In a passage from his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," he sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. "Genuine bipartisanship," he wrote, "assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.
"If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'
I'm actually not a fan of bipartisanship. If Americans elected a conservative president and a conservative Congress, I'd be urging them to ram through as many conservative policies as they could, without regard to editorial pages lamenting their tactics. Therefore, I can't fault liberals from wanting the same thing from Obama. But what I absolutely cannot stand is this phony strategy of Obama to force his agenda through Congress without making serious concessions to Republicans, releasing a 1,073 bill under the cover of midnight on the day of the vote, while claiming to be transparent and bipartisan.
The Wit and Wisdom of Bristol
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 12:31PM
Bristol Palin has hit the airwaves. Whatever the merits (or lack thereof) of abstinence-only sex education, does anyone really believe that she was insufficiently educated about sex? Or that she is the best person to ask about how unmarried teenagers can avoid unplanned pregnancies?
The Huntsman Test
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 12:08PM
David Frum writes that anti-Mormon sentiment in the American electorate "presents a special problem for Republicans. Two of our most plausible candidates for president in 2012 are leading Mormons: Mitt Romney and Utah governor Jon Huntsman." The groups who take the dimmest view of Mormonism are secular liberals, who aren't likely to vote in large numbers for a Republican candidate anyway, and evangelical Protestants, an important GOP voting bloc. It's taken for granted that Romney lost the Iowa caucuses because he is a Mormon and Mike Huckabee is an evangelical.
Except in Romney's case, it is very difficult to isoloate the Mormon problem from his Massachusetts problem. To be elected in a liberal Democratic state, he had to take positions on abortion and some other social issues that did not endear him to evangelicals. Though he flipped on abortion and was vocal in his opposition to both same-sex marriage and cloning even in Massachusetts, his past positions -- difficult to escape in the age of YouTube -- caused social conservatives of many religious stripes to distrust him. To what extent was Romney's Iowa meltdown due to this distrust and to what extent was it due to Mormonism?
It's hard to say. That's why Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has always been pro-life, might be a better test of evangelical willingness to support a Mormon presidential candidate than a formerly pro-choice, pro-gay rights governor of Massachusetts. On the other hand, Huntsman might have even bigger problems among secularists. Romney's Massachusetts residence and Bain background gave him some distance from anti-Mormon stereotypes that will be difficult for a Utah governor to achieve.
Being for Something
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 11:46AM
Building on what Jim wrote below, I'd note that the idea of being for something is a bit overrated in purely political terms. When it's an election year, sure, it certainly helps to have a positive agenda that you can argue in favor of, but that's always easy to roll out during a campaign. When it's the legislative season and you don't have the numbers to see your alternative proposals become law because you're in the minority party, it's much better to concentrate your fire on picking apart the proposal that may actually get signed, because you can always present alternatives when the political climate is more favorable. At least two examples come time mind. One is when the Republicans defeated the Clinton health care proposal in 1993/94 without presenting a true alternative plan and waited until six weeks before the 1994 midterm elections to unveil the "Contract With America." In 2005, Democrats purposely did not present a serious alternative to President Bush's Social Security reform effort, but instead kept beating the drum that he wanted to destroy Social Security until public support for the proposal cratered. It wasn't until the following summer, about three months before the 2006 elections, that Democrats rolled out their "Six for '06" agenda. The bottom line is that most Americans hardly have time to examine the dominant piece of legislation, let alone pay attention to various counter-proposals floating through Congress. The only time "being for something" matters is when the public is fed up with the ruling party and eager for change, and thus open to the argument that a different approach would be better.
Good for Cheney
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 11:39AM
I spent eight years wishing the Dick Cheney had been president rather than George W. Bush. Here's another example where Cheney was right and Bush was dead wrong: Cheney really fought to get Bush to pardon Scooter Libby. Libby wasn't guilty of perjury. At worst, he had a bad memory. But based on Tim Russert's own flagrant "memory lapses," there is every reason to believe that it was Russert's memory, not Libby's, that was faulty. Either way, Liby deserved a pardon. Bush didn't want to take the heat for such a pardon. Either that, or else his refusal to pardon was a passive-aggressive move to punish Cheney's team for supposedly embarrassing Bush or at least causing unwanted controversy one too many times. Shame on Bush. Cheney was far more loyal to Bush than Bush was to Cheney. I sat in on two private lunches (about ten people at each lunch) with Cheney that had plenty of chances for off-the-record comments and at which Cheney was pressed, even off the record, to put some distance between himself and Bush -- but Cheney wouldn't do so.
On the record, two weeks before the end of the Bush administration, I asked Cheney directly what he thought about whether Libby should be pardoned. Even then, as he privately was pressing Bush to do so, he was circumspect, saying that he had a very high admiration for Libby. Then silence. Pressed, he would NOT go farther, would NOT be disloyal to Bush by publicly giving journalists sympathetic to Libby any fodder with which to further pressure Bush for a pardon.
Cheney is a good man who surrounded himself with strong people. Bush is a man who liked to be surrounded with sycophants. The result of the latter was that Bush was one of the most unsuccessful presidents in decades. The refusal to pardon Libby is symptomatic of a larger illness: Bush's inability to reconsider original decisions.
Bush's failure to issue the pardon was a disgrace.
Republicans and the Stimulus
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 10:32AM
Some conservatives have been critical of the Republicans' handling of the stimulus debate. Sure, Republicans would have been better off uniting around a plausible alternative to the stimulus package. There's a reason the polls showed more people turning against the stimulus as a result of Republican attacks than turning toward the GOP. Republicans will eventually have to have their own solutions to win again.
The much-maligned Jim DeMint plan contained some sound policies, but it was vulnerable to the same criticisms as the Democratic stimulus: it was just a bunch of stuff its supporters already wanted to do anyway traveling under the name "stimulus." (It also would involve its fair share of large-scale borrowing in the absence of spending cuts.) The House Republicans' line about their alternative plan creating twice as many jobs for half the money got caught up in debates about the details. It also never broke through the president's rhetoric insisting that all his critics wanted to do nothing about the recession.
But overall, I can't fault the Republicans' approach to the stimulus too much. Let's get one thing out of the way: they were never going to have much influence over the final product. President Obama may have wanted more Republican votes, but the underlying policy differences were simply too great for him get them. The Democratic congressional leadership didn't even want that many Republican votes -- they were content to do only what little it took to woo enough liberal Republican senators to get to 60 votes for a stimulus package in the Senate. Once they had Collins, Specter, and Snowe, there was no more dealmaking.
Nor did the Republicans stand a chance of prevailing legislatively once their unanimity was broken in the Senate. The Democrats have the raw numbers and political power. All the Republicans had was the filibuster and various other points of order that require 60 votes to waive. Once the Democrats counted to 60, the bill was going to pass no matter what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor or Rush Limbaugh had to say about it.
No, the marsh mouse wasn't the biggest thing at stake in a bill that moves the country toward government-run health care and away from welfare reform, among other problems. But it seems a better use of pork-barrel spending -- taking an absurd example to illustrate the absurdity of an undesirable piece of legislation -- than the disproportionate crusade against earmarks undertaken by John McCain.
This is the first time the Republicans have taken a political risk in opposing a large, misguided spending item since Bill Clinton was president. (The only arguable exception is the Republican resistance to SCHIP expansion, though Republican votes were crucial to the creation of SCHIP itself). Whatever can be said of their sincerity, their consistency, their timing, or what kind of buffoonery they'd now be engaged in if McCain were president, if commentators who thought the stimulus was bad policy criticize Republicans for voting against it, who is going to praise them?
A coherent Republican plan for governing isn't going to flow out of the anti-stimulus campaign anymore than the Contract with America was the direct product of the Republicans' unanimous opposition to the Clinton tax increase in 1993. But it's a step in a better direction than the party has traveled in recent years.
Obamaflation Watch: Gold Hits 7-Month High
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 10:31AM
Bloomberg quotes one analyst who cites the stimulus package as one reason why investors are flocking to gold as a hedge against inflation. In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, Paul Ryan had a smart op-ed in the NY Times on the dangers of stagflation.
Boy Clinton Says Don't Blame Me
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 8:50AM
Bill Clinton is steamed about his inclusion on Time magazine's list of 25 people who contributed to the current economic crisis. Though Clinton is in good company, with Alan Greenspan and George W. Bush, he rejects the dubious honor and makes a rather audacious claim of his own: "My question to them is: Do any of them seriously believe if I had been president, and my economic team had been in place the last eight years, that this would be happening today? I think they know the answer to that: No."
Really? It was Clinton who "reformed" and stepped up enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995. This loosened lending requirements for low-income borrowers who could not afford their mortgages, helping to build up the housing bubble. As Steve Sailer and others have pointed out, CRA dollar commitments climbed from $8.8 billion from 1977 to 1991 all the way to $4.2 trillion from 1992 to 2005. Clinton also adopted a CRA-like stance toward government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, presiding over a fourfold increase in their balance sheets in 1997 and 1998 alone. Finally, Clinton was a fairly reliable booster of loose monetary policies throughout the 1990s.
Clinton arguably does get a bad rap for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act through signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999. Without that legislation, it would have been illegal for J.P. Morgan Chase to have bought Bear Stearns or for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch. The probable result would have been even bigger taxpayer bailouts. Also, the Boston Consulting Group and other analysts have argued that diversification wasn't the main thing that got banks into trouble and was in some instances helpful. All that said, it is nice to be reminded that Clinton played a bigger role in the deregulation of banking than any recent Republican president.
While Greenspan's legacy has been taken down a peg by the financial meltdown, there has been greater reluctance to reassess Clinton's economic management. He is remembered, especially by voters, as an architect of economic growth, low unemployment, and huge budget surpluses while the name Bush is often associated with recessions, lost jobs, and big deficits. But Clinton has taken a lot of credit for bubbles that have only burst under his successors' watch and deserves his share of criticism too.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 8:42AM
- Beyond the stimulus politics of fear (WSJ)
- Jim Crow, AKA big government (Boston Globe)
- Steele comes out with no guns blazing (NRO)
- Giving more credit to Ivies than they are due, a continuing theme (American Scene)
- Paul Krugman, a case study (RealClearPolitics)
The Never Ending Campaign
Posted by on 2.17.09 @ 8:17AM
Barack Obama has now been president for a month, and yet the link to the You Tube video of the Obama-Biden whistle stop train tour on inauguration weekend still hasn't been removed from the front page of the official White House website. Look at the bottom right corner. I mean, that was so long ago that it was back when Joe Biden was still allowed out in public.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Our Esteemed Senate Intelligence Committee Chair
Posted by on 2.16.09 @ 3:48PM
Dianne Feinstein can't keep her mouth shut about sensitive anti-terror operations in Pakistan. Geez.
DeFazio Disses Tax Cuts
Posted by on 2.16.09 @ 2:52PM
Here is the video of the speech by Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) I quote in my column today. To listen to him, you would think the stimulus package was a combination between Calvin Coolidge's last round of federal budget cuts and the Kemp-Roth tax cuts. Though he does have a point about the borrowing well potentially running dry, even if he doesn't think that applies to massive spending increases too.
Les Miserables
Posted by on 2.16.09 @ 2:34PM
What is it with the liberal obsession with Republicans? Saturday Night Live opened the other night with a lame, utterly unfunny parody of congressional Republicans talking up their opposition to Obama and the stimulus bill. (You can actually hear nobody laughing!)
Now in a seemingly more serious vein we see E.J. Dionne in hero worship mode as he accompanies the president to Chicago aboard Air Force One. Already in the second sentence of his writeup we get this:
"He … is not bitter about how little help he is getting from Republicans. But he will never again let bipartisanship become the defining test of his success." (Translated: You had your chance, pigs, but you blew it.)
Then, after Dionne spells out the glories of Obama's vision (he loves Sweden), there's a return to that favorite subject: "And where might Republicans fit into all this? Obama still thinks he'll win their support someday on some issues.…"
What is it with these people? Do they need counseling? Has defeating the Republicans left them lonely? Can they not give up the fights of the last eight -- or is it 14, or make it 28 -- years?
Get used to it, guys. You won, however bitter the aftertaste.
The Right is Complicated and Multifaceted in Israel, Too
Posted by on 2.16.09 @ 2:32PM
Interesting analysis by Bradley Burston in Haaretz:
Avigdor Lieberman, the hands-down success story of the election, has repeatedly outraged the far-right by suggesting in the past that some heavily Arab-populated East Jerusalem neighborhoods and refugee camps be ceded to an eventual independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. He has consistently alientated the ultra-Orthodox - an essential building block of any right-wing dream coalition - by demanding civil-marriage and modified Jewish conversion legislation favored by Lieberman's ultra-secular constituency.
Netanyahu's Likud, the anchor of a potential rightist coalition, has been on record for years as favoring an eventual Palestinian state in the territories, as long as strict security guarantees were met. The Likud is also the only party ever to have headed a government which dismantled established settlements.
Only two parties, representing just seven seats in the 120-seat Knesset, still argue for a Greater Israel. Not even the fringe-right National Union with its frankly pro-Kahane wing, dares come out in public for a return to permanent Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, stating in its platform only that "There will be no uprooting of Jewish communities and no surrender of parts of the Land of Israel in any subsequent Israeli government led by the party."
Of course, if the "Greater Israel" idea is so marginalized, it's
not clear why Burston elsewhere refers to it as a "bedrock
right-wing principle."
(Via Jeffrey Goldberg.)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The Fiscal Trap of Hope
Posted by on 2.15.09 @ 11:11AM
The
Washington Post reports on the fiscal bind into which we
have been led by the neo-Keynesian "stimulus" approach to the
recession:
The nation can't sustain trillion-dollar deficits without driving up the debt owed to private investors to dangerous levels that could undermine the nation's global economic dominance. That debt now stands at nearly $6 trillion.
A tax hike to pay for all this "stimulus" would certainly make matters much worse, yet the bond market -- a subject I referenced this morning -- must calculate the likelihood of repayment, and it's not just "global economic dominance" that is at stake, but rather the fundamental integrity of the federal government's "good faith and credit."
The Post article goes on to cite the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, and Jennifer Rubin comments:
The president and his spinners declared this all to be a "long term" problem that had to take a back seat to the short term "solution" for the recession. But little they have done in the short term will improve the economy, which by their own calculations would have begun to bounce back on its own by the end of 2009.
The "long term" problem is now. The first act comes with the next major auction of Treasury debt. Are we going to start printing dollars ourselves to buy up Treasury paper? Raise the interest rate on bonds to keep Chinese and other investors in the game?
Rubin hits the nail on the head. The fiscal fantasies of Hope are about to slam head-on into the economic realities of the bond market. Economic reality is an unmovable object, and liberals are about to discover that Hope is not an irresistible force.
Or, in fewer words: It Won't Work.
(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)
The View From Manhattan
Posted by on 2.15.09 @ 2:40AM
Even in tragedy, the N.Y. Times can't help but look down its nose at such places as Buffalo:
"It was perhaps not the most glamorous of destinations, or the most luxurious of flights: a turboprop plane pushing through wind and snow and fog to an ailing Rust Belt city."
Reminds you of Tina Brown initially reacting to Prince Diana's death in late August 1997 by commenting that no one goes to Paris in August…
- Michael Ledeen on Iran and Democracy
- Losing It
- Obama's Vision Through History