Ken Rogoff, just now in a meeting: “The United States is going
through a garden-variety severe financial crisis.” Actually,
that’s what I’ve been saying too — Ken’s
terrific work with Carmen Reinhart (who says the same
thing) has been my bible through this crisis,
and has served me well. But shouldn’t we be doing better?
[emphasis added]
- Jan 4–10 11–17 18–24 25–31
- Feb 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28
- Mar 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28 29–31
- Apr 1–4 5–11 12–18 19–25 26–30
- May 1–2 3–9 10–16 17–23 24–30 31
- Jun 1–6 7–13 14–20 21–27 28–30
- Jul 1–4 5–11 12–18 19–25 26–31
- Aug 1 2–8 9–15 16–22 23–29 30–31
- Sep 1–5 6–12 13–19 20–26 27–30
- Oct 1–3 4–10 11–17 18–24 25–31
- Nov 1–7 8–14 15–21 22–28 29–30
- Dec 1–5 6–12 13–19 20–26 27–31
Saturday, December 5, 2009
'Remember the Rose Bowl We'll Win Then!'
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 7:50PM
The undefeated Crimson Tide just beat the University of Florida 32-13 to claim the SEC football championship. Gator quarterback Tim Tebow was crying on national TV. My dad was a University of Alabama graduate and I was raised up cheering for the Tide. As I explained before last year's Auburn game:
Football tradition runs deep in Tuscaloosa, where the fight song still taunts ancient rival Georgia Tech ("send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave") even though the Tide hasn't regularly played Tech since the Jackets left the Southeastern Conference in 1964. The fight song also urges the team to "remember the Rose Bowl we'll win," despite the fact that Alabama last played in Pasadena 62 years ago.
Ah, but the Bowl Championship Series rotation this year means that 'Bama is Pasadena-bound again.
Dreaming of a White December 4th
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 4:55PM
This is interesting. Watch this short video (not able to embed) from the good guys at AccuWeather and early in the segment they show a map that illustrates the "historical chance of a white Christmas" for the entire continental U.S. If you look carefully you will see that Houston is on the cusp of "none," or no chance.
I guess they should have asked about their chances for snow in the nation's 4th-largest city on December 4th. Of course this is not evidence that discredits global warming trends. After all, it's only a local event, and localized phenomena are only capable of proving global warming, not disproving it.
Nothing Personal
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 4:18PM
A lot of us have more than one email account -- one for personal use, and one for work. We do that for several reasons. We want to keep our private lives separate from our professional activities. We don't want bosses and co-workers to know everything that goes on at home. Employers have the right to know what staff members are doing with their work-time and company resources -- which includes official email accounts -- so those things are subject to scrutiny. If we work for the government (and therefore taxpayers), then we are subject to even greater oversight. So we isolate our personal electronic correspondence and in most cases employers don't bother to ask about it -- and if they did, they'd have some pretty upset employees on their hands.
So here we have Penn State University Climategate-ologist Michael Money-Mann outraged over outsiders viewing his "private" correspondence:
"It's an 11th-hour smear campaign where they've stolen personal e-mails from scientists, mined them for single words or phrases that can be taken out of context and misrepresent what scientists are saying," said Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth Systems Science Center, in a teleconference Friday with reporters.
Unless it's his own employer taking a look:
Mann said he welcomed the inquiry.
"They are just reviewing the facts and (looking) into whether there is any validity to the specious claims, in my view, that are being made," he said in a phone interview Wednesday night. "That's exactly what they should be doing, and I am fully in support of that."
Where's the outrage, Mike? If these truly were personal correspondence, you'd have a right to be upset and insist that no one view your emails. Of course that's not the case -- you work for a public university, and sent messages to public university addresses of other scientists. It's more likely that you are expecting Penn State to cover your rear end. You're probably right.
Let's break down the alarmist-activist-Leftist-scientists' primary line of defense, helpfully parroted by the formerly mainstream media: That "they've stolen personal emails."
1. "They've" -- implies someone from the group of skeptics they disdain was the one to pilfer and expose their messages. But CRU, Mann, and the rest of their cabal have no idea who exposed the records.
2. "stolen" -- CRU, Mann, etc. cannot prove the records were extracted by an outside entity. They may have been exposed by a whistleblower. Those types are often celebrated as heroes when they scandals are revealed.
3. "personal" -- We've already addressed that above and elsewhere.
4. "emails" -- yes, and so much more. They don't even want to talk about the corrupted source code, which a software engineer -- who is not a climate skeptic -- interviewed by BBC said was, let's say, less than professional.
But expect the made-up story of "stolen personal emails" to continue -- at least until they are discredited about that as well.
Co-Pays versus Coinsurance
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 9:36AM
Hoo,
boy. Every day brings more surprises. Reading the House bill I
came across a peculiar provision I haven’t seen mentioned
anywhere. As part of Title II, Subtitle C, “Standards
Guaranteeing Access to Essential Benefits” there is
this
“In establishing cost-sharing levels for basic, enhanced, and premium plans under this subsection, the Secretary shall, to the maximum extent possible, use only copayments and not coinsurance.” (page 108)
For some reason the House of Representatives believes that co-payments are good and coinsurance is bad. It’s not that one is more affordable than the other. All “cost-sharing” is limited to $5,000 per individual and $10,000 per family per year.
Most corporate HR people are trying to move away from co-payments in favor of coinsurance after many years of experiencing each. Coinsurance reveals to the consumer the underlying cost of the services consumed, while co-payments hide that knowledge.
And maybe that’s the point. The legislation is already hiding the cost of the insurance coverage by providing income-based subsidies. What a consumer will pay for coverage has no relationship to the cost of the coverage. It is institutionalizing ignorance.
And now it seems that the cost sharing within the insurance will bear no resemblance to the cost of the service. The “price” people pay will be just what we say it is, no more and no less.
If information is power, this is a deliberate effort to keep citizens powerless and enhance the power of the elite. Only the elite will know the real cost of anything and the citizenry will be dependent on their goodwill for the prices we pay
Defeating the Thieves at Columbia University
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 8:45AM
You would think that Columbia University has enough money so it doesn't have to steal people's property. But steal someone else's land is what it was attempting to do, through New York state. Happily, the good guys won at least one round when the an appellate court blocked New York from using eminent domain to take private property for Columbia's use.
Outside, in the sharp wintry light that makes you squint when the No. 1 train pops out of the tunnel past 122nd Street, the banners were still flying high. Among them was the one that reads, "Stop Columbia! We Won't Be Pushed Out!"
Inside, in the softer, dimmer light of an office that has 10 lights in the ceiling but no windows, Nicholas Sprayregen was working his way through an in-box suddenly filled with e-mail messages from people he did not know. "Thank you for standing up and fighting to keep the American dream alive," one wrote. Another said, "It's like David versus Goliath, and you're David."
Mr. Sprayregen, the self-storage impresario who has been fighting Columbia University's expansion plan, spent much of Friday reveling in a court ruling that had gone his way. It said that New York State could not use eminent domain on Columbia's behalf to clear parcels along Broadway that Mr. Sprayregen owns.
So, after a five-year fight that he said had cost him more than $2 million, was he celebrating?
"I wouldn't say it's a victory dance," said Mr. Sprayregen, 47, who runs self-storage warehouses in squat brick buildings where Columbia wants to build shiny new high rises. "It's more a big sigh of relief."
The ruling by a panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, released Thursday, said the state's condemnation procedure in taking land for the Columbia project, in the Manhattanville neighborhood, was unconstitutional. Justice James M. Catterson, who wrote the majority opinion, was withering in his criticism of way the state agency that approved the use of eminent domain had reached its decision.
The legal battle isn't over and Nicholas Sprayregen could still lose. But the ruling is an important indication that property rights retain legal vitality even in New York, where the government is unreservedly hostile to the principles of individual liberty and limited government.
Roll Call: "Baucus Nominated Girlfriend for U.S. Attorney"
Posted by on 12.5.09 @ 12:21AM
Roll Call reports:
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Explaining the GOP's $2.5 Trillion Health Care Cost Estimate
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 5:57PM
Throughout the ongoing health care floor debate, Republican Senators have been repeatedly saying that the real cost of the health care bill is $2.5 trillion rather than the $848 billion frequently cited by Democrats and in media reports. Brian Beutler of the liberal site Talking Points Memo wrote the GOP estimate “seems to have been made up entirely out of whole cloth.” As it turns out, the number was not simply made up, but was generated by the office of Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, based on an analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office. You may be wondering how both estimates could rely on CBO data, and yet the Republican figure is triple the figure used by Democrats. Well, the difference arises from starting the estimate on a different year, and then applying a different definition of “cost.”
Much of the discrepancy can be explained because the Democrats delayed the enactment of the major spending provisions of the bill until 2014 so that it would appear cheaper over the CBO’s 10-year budget window. The Senate bill only spends $9 billion from 2010 to 2013 on measures to expand coverage, while the remaining 99 percent of the $848 billion cost comes over the next six years. Simply by shifting the start of the cost estimate to 2014 – when the key components of the bill go into effect – the 10-year cost of expanding coverage swells to about $1.8 trillion. (The CBO noted in a letter to Sen. Harry Reid last month that “cost is growing at about 8 percent per year toward the end of the 10-year budget window,” so Republicans used the 8 percent growth rate to estimate costs in the years from 2020-23).
To be clear, the $1.8 trillion figure represents the cost of expanding Medicaid and S-CHIP as well as offering subsidies and tax credits to individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance through the government-run exchanges. But keep in mind that the cost of expanding coverage, while accounting for the bulk of the cost of the bill, does not represent the total cost.
For instance, there are a number of measures in the bill to increase the benefits offered by Medicare and Medicaid, which Gregg’s office estimated, based on CBO figures, would cost $169 billion over the 2014 to 2023 period.
There are also a number of spending measures that have not been counted as costs because they have dedicated offsetting revenue streams, but in preparing their estimate, Gregg’s office took the position that all outlays should be considered when calculating the amount that the bill spends.
For instance, the bill requires insurers who have managed to obtain a disproportionate amount of healthy beneficiaries with lower medical costs to pay into a fund, from which the government will make payments to insurers that have had a sicker pool of beneficiaries. These “risk adjustment payments” would total $235 billion over the ten years beginning in 2014, according to Gregg’s office.
There’s also a program known as the CLASS Act, initially pioneered by Ted Kennedy, in which Americans could pay premiums into a government-run long-term insurance plan. Gregg’s office estimates that $43 billion would be spent on the program over 10 years.
And then there’s the government-run plan itself, or so-called “public option.” As currently described, the government plan would be offered on the government-run exchanges along with privately administered plans. At least in theory, beyond the start-up costs, the government plan would be financed by the premiums it collects, just like any other insurer. But when a private insurer files an earnings report, it lists its premiums collected, and then the medical costs it pays out. (See, as an example, UnitedHealth’s most recent earnings release.) Similarly, the Republican estimate includes a line item called “government run plan payments,” which is the cost of providing benefits through the government plan – a cost of $274 billion.
When you add everything up, you come to the $2.5 trillion cost estimate that’s being used by Republicans. And as it turns out, even the Democratic Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (see video).
This table below, taken from a fact sheet (PDF)
released by Gregg’s office, breaks down the numbers
further.
Spending Increases From Senate Health Care Bill from
2014-23
Medicaid/CHIP (coverage) $807 billion
CLASS Act Spending $43 billion
Exchange subsidies $747 billion
Government Run Plan Payments $274 billion
Risk Adjustment Payments $235 billion
Other Medicare/Medicaid Spending $169 billion
Small employer tax credits $31 billion
Exchange Premium Credits $225 billion
Total Spending $2.53 trillion
If you click on the PDF, you can also see the offsetting tax increases, revenue streams, and Medicare cuts that make the bill reduce the deficit by $176 billion if enacted. Liberals argue that this makes the whole discussion of the bill’s actual cost moot, but of course any money spent as a result of this bill could have been allocated somewhere else.
Who's CRU's Daddy?
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 5:31PM
Oh, that Anthony Watts! He beat me to the punch (wouldn't be surprised if others did too -- at this point it's almost impossible to track all the bloggers working this) on the "Big Oil funds alarmism" theme that shows up in several of the Climategate emails. As he notes:
One of the favorite put-downs from people who think they have the moral high ground in the climate debate is to accuse skeptics with this phrase: “You are nothing but a shill for Big Oil.” Who amongst us hasn’t seen variants of that pointed finger repeated thousands of times? The paradigm has shifted. Now it appears CRU is the one looking for “big oil” money.
Watts -- the wonderful manager of the Surfacestations.org project which shows heat bias in the positioning of many weather stations -- then reproduces three of the emails in which alarmist scientists nearly wet themselves over the prospect of getting money from Shell, BP, and Esso (Exxon).
Here's a portion of another one that I also found in which the University of Edinburgh's Simon Shackley gets excited about BP dollars (and the CRU's Mike Hulme shows interest also):
From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: barker,vira
Subject: Fwd: BP funding
Date: Sat Nov 4 16:45:25 2000Any idea who at Cambridge has been benefitting from this BP money?
MikeFrom: "Simon J Shackley" <Mcysssjs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Organization: umist
To: m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 14:44:09 GMT
Subject: BP funding
Reply-to: Simon.Shackley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
CC: robin.smith@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
brian.launder@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12a)
dear TC colleagues looks like BP have their cheque books out! How can TC benefit from
this largesse? I wonder who has received this money within Cambridge University?
Cheers, Simon
17) BP, FORD GIVE $20 MILLION FOR PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
EMISSIONS
STUDY
Auto.com/Bloomberg News
October 26, 2000
Internet: [1]http://www.auto.com/industry/iwirc26_20001026.htm
LONDON -- BP Amoco Plc, the world's No. 3 publicly traded oil
company, and Ford Motor Co. said they will give Princeton
University $20 million over 10 years to study ways to reduce
carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. BP said it will give
$15 million. Ford, the world's second-biggest automaker, is
donating $5 million. The gift is part of a partnership between the
companies aimed at addressing concerns about climate change.
Carbon dioxide is the most common of the greenhouse gases believed
to contribute to global warming.
London-based BP said it plans to give $85 million in the next
decade to universities in the U.S. and U.K. to study environmental
and energy issues. In the past two years, the company has pledged
$40 million to Cambridge University, $20 million to the University
of California at Berkeley and $10 million to the University of
Colorado at Boulder.
"TC" in the message is the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, a collective effort among global warmists to promote their cause. Several from CRU were among its founders. With Climategate, the alarmists have neutered themselves from employing this strategy any longer against the climate realists.
Thune Amendment to Strip New Entitlement Program Fails
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 5:00PM
Sen. John Thune's attempt to block the CLASS Act, a government-run long-term care insurance program, was just defeated. Though Thune's measure won the support of a majority of Senators by a 51 to 47 margin, it failed to reach the 60-vote threshhold required to alter the bill.
The CLASS Act, a program envisioned by Ted Kennedy, is essentially a new entitlement program contained within the larger health care entitlement bill. Should the health care bill become law, Americans would be enrolled in a governement-run insurance program in which they would pay premiums that would enable them to collect long-term care benefits down the road, though people would be allowed to opt out.
The program would start collecting premiums immediately but wouldn't begin paying out benefits until 2016, so it would initially run a surplus. But the Congressional Budget Office said last month that, "In the decade following 2029, the CLASS program would begin to increase budget deficits."
Even some Democratic Senators have had harsh words for the bill. The Washinton Post reported that Sen. Kent Conrad called it, "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of."
Conrad voted for the failed Thune amendment, along with nine other Democrats, and Joe Lieberman. Here's the full roll call.
Stimulus Meets Climategate
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 2:38PM
Yesterday's White House Jobs Forum included a "green economy" component, in which "East Coast urban entrepreneurs" sought to ingratiate themselves with the Obama Administration so as to obtain government subsidies for products and services that nobody wants. Watch for the deals to be consummated in the next stimulus bill.
Another excuse for eco-conscious job
creation is in the field of research.
Climategate scientist
Michael Mann, the
discredited "hockey stick" chart creator whose $6 million in
government grants I listed
in this space on Wednesday, was one of those who seized the
opportunity when Congress and the President enacted the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February. In June he
obtained a
National Science Foundation grant of $541,184 for a
three-year project titled, Toward Improved Projections
of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing: Combining
Paleoclimate Proxy and Instrumental Observations with an Earth
System Model. You can read the scientific jargon that
explains the project
at the Recovery.gov Web site.
Here's what three of my scientist friends -- definitely not in the global cooling denier camp -- had to say about the grant and Penn State University's investigation of their high-profile climatologist:
- Think PSU's "investigation" will find anything wrong with Mann? Their conflict of interest is massive. Stimulus...climate change...Mann...egad!! The proposal looks like straightforward crank-grinding that Mann has used for years.
- This it total unadulterated [BS], which they fund automatically because MANN IS THEIR MAN.
- Mann is swallowing an ever bigger chunk of money these days. This is why he will not be removed from his position at PSU -- he is the cow with the milk. All these mentions of investigations are a joke to all of us, since I am sure of the outcome already. Mann is so covered...
In keeping with the spirit and expectations of February's jobs stimulus, Mann held up his end of the bargain for taxpayers by using the half-million dollars to create 1.62 jobs. His (or PSU's) description of the jobs created:
A Principal Investigator, one Research Faculty (Co-PI), one faculty senior personnel, one part-time graduate student, one part-time Post-Doc scholar, and one under-graduate student were assigned to this research project. This will provide an opportunity to expand experiences and work-study for the students, while facilitating the objectives and the project.
Considering the high regard that science bureaucracies and PSU hold for Dr. Mann and his ginned-up "research," and the $334,064-per-job value he provides for taxpayers by stimulating our economy, you might think he could tap the Obama-logic for an even greater sum:
Harry Reid Still Smells Like Toast
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 2:08PM
The poll numbers back home in Nevada don't look too encouraging for the Senate majority leader. The latest Mason-Dixon survey has Reid losing 51 percent to 41 percent in a head-to-head matchup against Republican Sue Lowden and trailing 48 percent to 42 percent against Republican Danny Tarkanian. Reid had recently taken to the airwaves to make his case, suggesting that he might have a Jon Corzine problem where the voters aren't persuadable anymore.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 2:07PM
And, verily, there came to "O" an epiphany at the Jobs Summit and again to the northeast in Allentown (near Bethlehem) in Pennsylvania.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!
By Asher Embry
Here's Obama's jobs plan -- and he’s not spoofing:
He'll cure unemployment with … weatherproofing!
Be not surprised; last year he told the nation
His energy fix was … proper tire inflation.
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
Pelosi: Not So Sunny After All
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 12:50PM
Before getting too excited about Nancy Pelosi's new policy of disclosing lawmakers' personal spending online, read the Washington Examiner's rain dump on the sunshine parade. It turns out that line-item expenditures in the 3,404 page document are on the cryptic side — to put it charitably — and that Congress made it that way on purpose.
If Americans care to fight their way through Washington, D.C., traffic and examine the hard copy disbursement records, they'll get lots of specifics on the items, often down to the product code. But the online version lacks those important details.
Thus, citizens can track that their congressman spent thousands on "office equipment" without knowing whether that he means he bought a pricey Persian rug for his office or a necessary computer to help with constituent services. And despite what some elitist lawmakers might think, there is a difference between those two.
What blew the lid off the spending spree scandal among MPs in Great Britain were the specifics on purchased items. We need the same here.
"This Time Is Different": Not a Living Document
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 12:31PM
Last week I suggested that the kinds of things Paul Krugman has been writing about the debt could not have been the work of someone who has read Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's new book, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.
And yet on his blog today, Krugman writes:
Just the usual disaster
What? Did we read the same book? I wish I knew exactly what Rogoff was saying in that meeting, because in the context of his book that sentence would mean that the US is now as susceptible to a debt crisis as any of the other debt-laden countries that have suffered such crises in the past were just before their demise. I wonder if Krugman is interpreting Rogoff's words as Rogoff intends them, or whether he has a more liberal interpretation.
Evil People of the Day: Sussex Square Homeowner's Association
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 12:20PM
A Virginia homeowner's association is refusing to let Colonel Van Barfoot, a 90 year-old Medal of Honor winner, fly his American flag.
90 year-old Colonel Van Barfoot has until Friday to remove the flagpole from his yard.
Since this saga began, it's been played out on the radio from Washington D.C. to Boston, but many believe what is happening to this true American hero is tarnishing the image of Richmond.
Barfoot lives in the Sussex Square community in western Henrico County. He moved there in July, and was ordered to remove the flagpole from his front lawn when he flew the flag on Labor Day, and again on Veterans Day.
The homeowner's association doesn't explicitly forbid flagpoles but they must be "aesthetically appropriate".
Unbelievable. These people have no sense of proportion. Talk about the letter of the law.
Meanwhile, the Sussex Square Homeowner's Association issued a statement saying in part, "This is not about the American flag. This is about a flagpole... We are a neighborhood of patriotic Americans, many of whom have served our country in the military as Col. Barfoot has done.."
The homeowner's association also says Barfoot knew from the beginning that he wasn't supposed to have a flagpole without permission.
Oh, well, if you told him beforehand, then it's ok. Feel free to ignore anyone you told beforehand.
Unless, of course, the person you'd like to ignore, during an attack in Italy during WWII, did this:
With his platoon heavily engaged during an assault against forces well entrenched on commanding ground, 2d Lt. Barfoot (then Tech. Sgt.) moved off alone upon the enemy left flank. He crawled to the proximity of 1 machinegun nest and made a direct hit on it with a hand grenade, killing 2 and wounding 3 Germans. He continued along the German defense line to another machinegun emplacement, and with his tommygun killed 2 and captured 3 soldiers. Members of another enemy machinegun crew then abandoned their position and gave themselves up to Sgt. Barfoot. Leaving the prisoners for his support squad to pick up, he proceeded to mop up positions in the immediate area, capturing more prisoners and bringing his total count to 17. Later that day, after he had reorganized his men and consolidated the newly captured ground, the enemy launched a fierce armored counterattack directly at his platoon positions. Securing a bazooka, Sgt. Barfoot took up an exposed position directly in front of 3 advancing Mark VI tanks. From a distance of 75 yards his first shot destroyed the track of the leading tank, effectively disabling it, while the other 2 changed direction toward the flank. As the crew of the disabled tank dismounted, Sgt. Barfoot killed 3 of them with his tommygun. He continued onward into enemy terrain and destroyed a recently abandoned German fieldpiece with a demolition charge placed in the breech. While returning to his platoon position, Sgt. Barfoot, though greatly fatigued by his Herculean efforts, assisted 2 of his seriously wounded men 1,700 yards to a position of safety.
Bernanke Goes Conservative All Over the Senate
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 11:57AM
Ben Bernanke is sounding too conservative for the left.
John B. Judis at the New Republic is afraid that Bernanke wants to destroy Medicare and Social Security.
Echoing the charges of economic conservatives and Wall Streeters like investment banker Peter Peterson, Bernanke took aim against what these folks call “entitlements,” but which are known popularly to be social security and Medicare. Republicans can be expected to cite his comments in the current debate over the Democratic health care reform bill.
...
Why would someone seeking to be confirmed by a Democratic majority go out of his way to promote starkly Republican concerns?
The relevant words:
MR. BERNANKE: And on the spending side again, you know, Willie Sutton robbed banks "because that's where the money is," as he put it. The money in this case is in entitlements. Those are the programs which are growing. At the rate we're going in about 15 years the entire federal budget will be entitlements and interest and there won't be any money left over for defense or any of the other activities. So clearly we're facing a very difficult structural problem in that we have an aging society and rising health care costs, and the government has very substantial obligations.
I'm not in any way advocating unfair treatment of the elderly who have, you know, have worked all their lives and certainly deserve our support and help, but if there are ways to restructure or strengthen these programs that reduce costs, I think that's extraordinarily important for us to try to achieve.
In a post titled "Bernanke's Plan for Unemployment: Do Nothing," Matt Yglesias writes,
But he didn’t do either. Instead, as David Dayen recounts, he just said we should cut Social Security benefits to reduce the long-term deficit even though this clearly had nothing one way or another to do with the current labor market situation:
"No second stimulus, no jobs bill, no public investment to deal with the worst hiring crisis since the Depression, no relief for a jobless recovery, but yes to cutting people’s meager Social Security benefit and their health care in their old age.
And this is what he’s saying when he WANTS his job back. What will it be if he gets it?"
Hmm...if Bernanke is enraging these guys, maybe I should rethink my anti-Bernanke stance.
But really it just highlights the bipartisan nature of anti-Bernanke sentiment. There are folks on the left and the right who think that he's not doing enough with the money supply to spur recovery and job creation. People who think he's creating too much inflation are mostly, but not wholly, confined to the right. And the group that thinks that he played a significant role in regulatory failure and unfairly helped Wall Street is truly a bipartisan collection.
McCain Blasts Obama for Reneging on C-SPAN Promise
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 11:35AM
Sen. John McCain, speaking on the Senate floor, took aim at President Obama for reneging on his pledge that health care negotiations would be broadcast on C-SPAN.
“A year ago last October, then candidate for president said, ‘It’s all going to be on C-SPAN,” McCain said mockingly of his election opponent, pointing his finger in the air. “The C-SPAN cameras are still waiting outside of Sen. Reid's office to go in and film these negotiations so that, as President Obama said then, ‘all Americans can see who’s on the side of the pharmaceutical companies, and who’s on the side of the American people.'”
McCain jested, “C-SPAN, keep waiting, we’re going to try and get you in.”
Hostettler to Challenge Evan Bayh
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 10:40AM
Former Congressman John Hostettler announced yesterday that he will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). A staunch conservative from the class of '94 who held a tough district for six terms, Hostettler will not be the party establishment's favorite. He lost his seat by a lopsided margin in 2006 and, as the linked Politico piece notes, was often a thorn in the party leadership's side. But Hostettler is the biggest name in the race and his vote against the Iraq war could allow him to tap into the Ron Paul fundraising network.
Obama's Afghan Adventure
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 10:22AM
Up on the main site, I have a column looking at the political peril that lies ahead for Obama on Afghanistan. But it's worth clarifying that I do think Congress will let him have his way with the additional troops. The problems will come as conditions in Afghanistan don't lend themselves to quick fixes and this goes from being Bush's war to Obama's war.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 9:55AM
- Majority of Americans approve the Afghan war strategy, but heavily oppose a war tax (USA Today)
- White House told Mickey Rooney to get lost a month ago when he tried to show up without an appointment (Washington Times)
- Omar Bin Laden denied entry into UK (The Australian)
- Hillary Clinton asks Europeans for Afghan help, citing Article 5 of NATO -- which many European nations don't seem to recall lately (Telegraph)
Senate Democrats Struggle to Unite on Health Care Bill
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 9:48AM
As the Senate debate on health care legislation enters its fifth day today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is still struggling to round up the 60 votes he needs to pass a health care bill. The most contentious issues remain abortion language and the creation of a new government plan.
With four Democrats (including Joe Lieberman) opposing the government plan and liberals refusing to abandon the idea, Sen. Tom Carper is working to forge some sort of compromise. But when Lieberman came out of one of the rooms during negotiations, he said he was unmoved, according to the Hill. “I say it every time before I go into one of these discussions: I feel really strongly about this," Lieberman said. "I’m going to come and listen but generally speaking I didn’t hear anything that changes my mind."
The key thing to keep in mind is that even if moderate Democrats were to agree to some sort of compromise, it would still require 60 votes to pass. That means that Reid can't simply insert the compromise in the bill and be done with it. At least 20 Democrats would have to be willing to infuriate their liberal base and weaken the government plan (possibly more, depending on how Republicans handle Democratic efforts to improve the bill).
At the same time, Ben Nelson is preparing an amendment along with Orrin Hatch that would adopt stricter abortion language along the lines of the Stupak amendment that passed the House. Nelson has said that he would filibuster the final package if it did not include such language on abortion. However, the amendment is all but assured to fail, as there simply are not 60 pro-life votes in the Senate, and pro-choice groups have now had weeks to lobby Democratic Senators.
The Democrats could lose Lieberman and/or Nelson if they were to pick up Republicans Olympia Snowe and/or Susan Collins.
But the problem is that any bill that can get out of the Senate would have a much more limited government plan and much weaker abortion language than the bill that already passed the House. That will cause problems during the reconciliation process, as the two sides try to merge the bills into something that can pass both chambers.
Unemployment Rate Drops to 10 Percent
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 9:08AM
In a bit of good economic news that is sure to be touted by the White House, the November unemployment rate has declined to 10 percent, as job losses slowed to 11,000 in the month.
The Department of Labor also revised downward the job losses in the previous months. September was revised to 139,000 job losses to 219,000 job lossses, and October was revised down to 111,000 job losses from 190,000.
The largest gains in November came from jobs in "professional and business services," which rose 86,000, (52,000 of those jobs were temporary). Health care employment increased by 21,000, But offsetting those gains were construction employment (-27,000), manufacturing employment (-41,000), and information industry employment (-17,000).
At the same time, however, there were 861,000 discouraged workers in November, up from 608,000 a year earlier. Also, 9.2 million people were still working part-time because their hours were cut or they couldn't find full-time employment, a number that was unchanged.
The bottom line is that this morning's report still shows that the economy is losing jobs, but at a slower rate. Of course, one month of good data doesn't make a trend. This report may be a sign that the worst is over on the unemployment front, or it could be an aberration.
Once a Commie, Always a Commie
Posted by on 12.4.09 @ 3:09AM
At least that appears to be the case in Germany. More German leftists have been exposed as former Stasi informants. Who would have thought it!?
It was supposed to be the beginning of a new era for Germany's Social Democrats (SPD). Following state elections in Brandenburg, held concurrently with the Sept. 27 general elections in Germany, SPD Governor Matthias Platzeck entered into a governing coalition with the far-left Left Party. Such an alliance has long governed the city-state of Berlin. But following the SPD's election-day debacle -- a miserable result of just 23 percent of the vote -- the party saw fit to begin opening itself up to the left elsewhere as well.
The experiment, as recent events indicate, has been a disaster. On Wednesday, it was revealed that Michael Luthardt, a member of Brandenburg's state parliament, was an informant for the East German secret police, the Stasi. Even worse, his was the seventh such case unveiled since the election.
"What's happening at the moment is extremely painful," Platzeck said this week. He intends to go before the Brandenburg parliament on Friday to address the issue.
Continuing revelations may be the only thing that will keep an increasingly desperate SPD from eventually joining with the hardline Die Linke, or Left Party. SPD members need to remember that communists really exist, and some are still active in German politics today.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Karl Rove: Architect of Socialism?
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 7:18PM
Responding to Michael Steele -- and agreeing with Steele that a Republican "litmus test" is a bad idea -- legendary conservative fundraiser Richard Viguerie wrote this:
The current Republican leadership has consistently supported our national slide to socialism. I'm talking about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and the leading architect of Republican endorsed socialist-statism, former Bush White House political advisor Karl Rove.
Viguerie's application of the "s-word" to McConnell, Boehner and Rove is sure to spark controversy. In his blog post, Viguerie specifically names the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Wall Street bailout that doomed John McCain to defeat last year.
Some would say that it is unfair to use "socialism" to describe those GOP-supported policies. But if conservatives are going to call Barack Obama's policies socialist, then it's hard to argue with Viguerie's consistency in applying the "s-word" to big-government Republicans.
Menzie Chinn Joins Me in Nihilism
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 4:11PM
I take Menzie Chinn's second attack on me as a compliment, as his blog Econbrowser is probably the most sophisticated economics blog extant and has been one of my favorites and a daily read for about two years now. But I fear for Econbrowser, because Dr. Chinn has established that I am a nihilist, while at the same time endorsing all my claims, which inescapably leads me to conclude that he, too, is a nihilist.
Let's approach Dr. Chinn's latest broadside, "Politico Joseph Lawler Goes Nihilist," piece by piece:
Be afraid, be very afraid...again. From Joseph Lawler
"... I take yesterday's CBO report as affirmation both that ... the number of jobs created by the stimulus cannot be determined without making judgment calls about the underlying economic model ..."
As far as I can tell, the logical conclusion of Mr. Lawler's article is that since all models forecast poorly, we should not use any models to make any policy conclusions, regarding output, regarding employment.
Dr. Chinn could have better comprehended the logical conclusion of my article had he looked at the actual conclusion, i.e. the conclusion at the end of the blog post:
Continue reading…
McCain Amendment to Block Medicare Cuts Fails
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 3:32PM
Sen. John McCain's amendment to strip Medicare cuts from the health care bill and send it back to committee has failed, by a 58 to 42 vote.
I criticized the amendment earlier this week.
Heat on Mann at Home
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 2:46PM
Pennsylvania State University's Climategate guy, hockey stick creator Michael Mann, has already come under scrutiny from the school over suspicions that he manipulated data to fit his global warming alarmism faith. For good measure state Senator Jeffrey Piccola, chairman of the Education Committee, wants to make sure PSU president Graham Spanier follows through, as he explained in a letter he sent today:
The allegations of intellectual and scientific fraud like those made against Dr. Mann are serious against anybody involved in academics, but the impact in this case is significantly elevated. The work of Dr. Mann and other scientists at the CRU is being used to develop economic and environmental policies in states and countries across the world. Considering the saliency of the work being conducted by the CRU, anything short of the pursuit of absolute science cannot be accepted or tolerated.
Piccola's take-home message for Spanier is if his investigation is a whitewash, then the PA Senate Education Committee will conduct its own look-see-find.
Hat tip: Commonwealth Foundation, which on Monday made their own request for an investigation of Mann.
Mark Kirk's Lead Seems Safe
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 1:11PM
On FrumForum today, writer Jeb Golinkin describes Senate candidate Mark Kirk's opposition to the transferring of Gitmo prisoners to Thomson Illinois Correctional Facility as "hard line." While the Chicago media have voiced objections to Kirk's position, using his stance on detainee transfers to indicate that he is pandering to a narrow right-wing base may not be appropriate in this instance.
A poll cited in the Chicago Sun-Times (albeit from the Illinois GOP) indicated that the Illinois voters object to the transfer of detainees to Illinois with 57% saying it was a "bad idea", and only 32% supporting the plan. A plurality of self-identified Democrats also opposed the plan.
Voters may change their mind on this detainee issue, but the question over whether the relatively moderate Congressman Kirk is feeling pressured to move to the right in order to secure the party nomination is worth considering. Media have cited his stated switch on Cap and Trade, support for the Stupak Amendment banning federal funds for abortion, as well as the prison issue as examples of this trend. Kirk's primary opponent, candidate Patrick Hughes, compares himself to Marco Rubio of Florida -- who is challenging the more moderate Charlie Crist for Senate. It seems that the Kirk/Hughes situation is entirely different from Crist/Rubio for the following reasons:
1.) The Illinois primary is on February 2nd, in Florida the primary is in August. Thus, Kirk can likely afford to run out the clock while Crist has a long battle ahead of him.
2.) Rubio has been the darling of national conservatives, already endorsed by Jim DeMint and his PAC, as well as Club for Growth. Rubio will also be keynoting at CPAC in February, 2010. Illinois underdog Hughes has reached out to DeMint and Club for Growth, but has yet to secure endorsements.
3.) Rubio has raised over $1 million, Hughes has very little money.
4.) Rubio is within ten points in some polls, polls have shown that Hughes is pretty much a no-hoper.
5.) Florida is traditionally much more conservative than Illinois -- the seat Kirk and Hughes are fighting to take is the Barack/Burris seat. In Florida, the GOP are playing defense on a retiring Republican senator, and Florida went for Bush in 2004. Thus running a conservative candidate in Florida seems much more realistic.
For these reasons (timing, money, polling, electability) it doesn't seem that Kirk should feel that much pressure to move right before the primary. Conservatives may wish the primary was moved back to August so to pressure him, but it seems likely that the final Republican challenger for the Obama/Blago/Burris seat will be a slightly center-right Kirk in what is one of the bluest states in America.
Dear Ben Santer: Resign
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 12:59PM
Dr. Ben Santer, one of the climate modelers who works on the public dime at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has called all his comrades to join him in a weep-fest over the "crime" of Climategate. Of course this bully who wanted to "beat the crap out of" former Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels thinks he's the victim, as he explains in a letter to "colleagues and friends:"
I am sure that by now, all of you are aware of the hacking incident which recently took place at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). This was a criminal act. Over 3,000 emails and documents were stolen. The identity of the hacker or hackers is still unknown.
The emails represented private correspondence between CRU scientists and scientists at climate research centers around the world. Dozens of the stolen emails are from over a decade of my own personal correspondence with Professor Phil Jones, the Director of CRU.
How the Climategate emails were extracted from the UEA CRUnit may or may not have been a "criminal act" -- that has still not been determined. But Dr. Thug clearly doesn't understand how this whole public/private nature of correspondence is categorized. Let me explain.
Private emails between two or more parties: These are sent and delivered between personal email accounts such as those set up for individuals and private businesses on services like Google and Yahoo! You know, like the personal accounts that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin utilized last year that were illegally hacked.
Public emails subject to open scrutiny and broad dissemination: These only need to be sent by, or delivered to, at least one email address that is a public, government institution funded by taxpayers. An example in Great Britain would be the University of East Anglia, where Phil Jones was once director of the CRU. Another example, in the U.S., would be the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where every employee has a "llnl.gov" email address. That "dot-gov" suffix is a dead giveaway.
I suppose there are exceptions in the law for LLNL and other government agencies to withhold documents and emails from the public for national security purposes. Much as Santer might like to think global warming is one of those exemptions, I doubt he could successfully make a legal case for that.
So Santer's messages to Jones and others at UEA were not "private" or "personal" correspondence. If he wanted them to be, he should not have used his llnl.gov email account with his official LLNL affiliation in the signature line. He should know better, since LLNL makes clear those distinctions. But if he did want to communicate with Jones on that level, I doubt he could have conducted official government business -- such as discussion of climate data -- on a Google account. That would have been evading public scrutiny. A Santer-Jones Google exchange would have had to been about the merits of U.S. vs. European football or something like that.
One last thing about Santer: he might want to review LLNL's "Mission, Vision and Values" statement "that guides the way we accomplish our work and the way we interact with each other, our colleagues, sponsors and stakeholders, and the public." Included among the values:
- Integrity and responsible stewardship of the public trust
- Intense competition of ideas with respect for individuals
- Treating each other with dignity
- A high-quality, motivated workforce with diverse ideas, skills, and backgrounds
How the desire to "beat the crap out of" someone who is a fellow scientist, and who is also a taxpayer who helps pay his salary, is in accord with these above values is something I'd love to hear Santer explain.
But from the looks of his whiny letter, he's of a completely different mindset. He thinks that while he's on the public payroll that he has the right to intimidate dissenters, and to keep everything he writes in his LLNL role a secret. Clearly he hates accountability to his bosses.
Looks like there's no other choice for him, then, but to quit.
Senate Passes Mikulski Amendment on Women's Preventive Care
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 12:46PM
The Senate just passed an amendment offered by Sen. Barbara Mikulski that would force insurers to cover women's preventive care services such as mammograms without charging co-pays.
The amendment, which passed 61 to 39, came in repsponse to controversial recommendations by the U.S Preventive Services Task Force, which advised women to wait until 50 to start getting mammograms. A Republican alternative offered by Lisa Murkowski, that would have blocked recommendations of the task force from being used to ration care, was defeated 59 to 41.
While the Mikulski amendment promises free screenings to women, in reality, nothing is free -- adding additional benefit mandates to insurance policies will just drive up premiums. And the provision leaves it up to the Department of Health and Human Services to determine which services must be covered, leading to concerns among abortion opponents that it could pave the way for federally funded abortion if HHS simply defines the procedure as preventive care for women.
UPDATE. In case you were wondering, Sen. Olympia Snowe broke with Republicans to vote for the Mikulski amendment, and Sen. Ben Nelson broke with Democrats to vote for the Murkowski amendment.
Pelosi Can't Run a Railroad
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 12:34PM
Over at TheConservatives.com, a growing blog of the Washington Times, Brian Faughnan does a good job explaining what a mess the Demo leadership has made of the legislative schedule. "It is the most basic functions - passing spending bills, managing the debt limit, and passing bills that are approved every year - that are falling by the wayside," he notes. Good point.
But these people want to run an additional one-sixth of the economy. What a nightmare.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 11:28AM
- Obama used "I" and "me" 44 times in West Point speech(CFP)
- Washington Times laying off 370 employees (Breitbart)
- Dinner crasher Michaele Salahi performed in FedEx Field as an alum Redskin cheerleader this fall -- without ever having been an actual Redskins cheerleader (Washington Post)
- Viguerie: the problem isn't the RINOs, it's the leadership. No litmus test is needed (ConservativeHQ)
Business Leaders: Obamanomics Is Preventing Jobs Recovery
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 10:48AM
James Pethokoukis reports that at a recent jobs summit with business leaders, CEOs told Obama that his economic agenda and giant programs may in fact be hindering jobs recovery.
CEOs are saying as much amongst themselves. At a recent symposium, Intel boss Paul Otellini, a contributor to both parties, expressed concern about the “amount of variability in the system” created by the state of policy flux in healthcare, energy and tax policy. “It is very difficult to make a hiring decision,” he said. General Electric chief executive Jeffery Immelt, a strong supporter of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal, added he would just like to “know what the rules are.”
All in all, a disturbing replay of the 1930s when FDR’s big changes left business reeling with uncertainty and confusion. The “devil you don’t know” and all that.
That is very similar to what business leaders were saying during the Great Depression. But there's one key difference, which is that businessmen are much better at playing the game and shaping the rules today.
When businesses are afraid to invest and hire because they don't "know what the rules are," it's called regime uncertainty. Regime uncertainty's role in exarcerbating and extending the Great Depression has been carefully examined by the economic historian Robert Higgs, most notably in a 1997 paper by the name "Regime Uncertainty (pdf)." Higgs presents poll data and anecdotes from the businessmen of that era, who sounded frighteningly similar to the Immelts nad Otellinis of today.
For instance, Higgs notes a 1939 Fortune poll that found that 65 percent of a sample of business executives agreed that the policies of the Roosevelt administration "have so affected the confidence of businessmen that recovery has been seriously held back." A 1941 Fortune poll indicated even deeper sources of uncertainty: almost 93 percent of businessmen expected that in the case of a war (which looked increasingly likely, obviously) the postwar regime would be one with significantly weakened propert rights. Fully 40 percent thought that the US regime would be a "semi-socialized society in which there will be very little room for the profit system to operate" or "a complete economic dictatorship along fascist or communist lines."
Of course, both the executives of the Great Depression and those of today have it in their best interests to stoke fears about the influence of government, so that they are better able to exert their own influence. Surely a 1941 executive in the know didn't really think that we were going to end up with a fascist dictator, just as Immelt, a big-time Obama supporter [Immelt actually donated to the McCain campaignm as a commentator pointed out. GE overall, however, broke two thirds for Democrats in 2008. --JL], doesn't think that Obama's going to destroy the private sector.
But Higgs presents another poll that highlights an interesting difference. A majority of businessmen, according to another Fortune poll, thought that the administration had such disregard for business and contracts that it could not be trusted even in the rearmament process. As Higgs explained, "[e]vidently, many business executives so distrusted the Roosevelt administration that they would rather forgo potentially lucrative munitions contracts than deal with the administration."
Contrast that with the actions of Immelt. At every turn, GE has been begging to deal with the administration on everything from the stimulus and the bailouts to cap and trade. It's not that GE and the others are afraid that the Obama administration is incorrigibly antibusiness, as the Depression businessmen thought of the Roosevelt administration. Instead, it's that they are terrified that the fruits of their lobbying will be wasted and Obama's programs will benefit someone else, and not themselves.
Anti-Bernanke Manifesto
Posted by on 12.3.09 @ 10:05AM
Today is the day of Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearings on the Hill. Word has it that, despite Obama's approval, most senators "have their fingers in the wind" on Bernanke. In August, when Obama announced that he would not replace Bernanke, I wrote a manifesto of Bernanke's misdeeds and negligence.
That was in August; there's been plenty more to add to the list since then. The argument is very simple, though, and doesn't benefit much from further evidence: we had a recession. It's the Fed's job to prevent recessions, therefore the Fed failed. Bernanke is not some oracle. We have plenty of other brilliant economists, and we could let them take over instead of rewarding failure. Let's not create some sort of cult of technocracy, in which the Fed chairman can do no wrong.
But go back and read the article. It is amazing to see the Fed and Treasury's tag-teamed overreaches of power aggregated on paper.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Boxer Struggles With Basic Facts About Health Care Bill
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 9:38PM
Sen. Barbara Boxer appeared on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show earlier, and her performance was a pretty stunning demonstration of how little clue she has about what's actually in the health care legislation she was on air to promote. A frustrated Boxer appeared on the show to defend the bill against attacks from the liberal Schultz, who began the segment by hammering Democrats for caving into moderates and watering down the government-run plan.
In the clip below, Boxer tried to reassure Schultz by touting all of the government programs that are expanded by the bill. But she stumbled when trying to say how many new Medicaid beneficiaries would be added, said she needed to fact check it, looked off camera as if for guidance, and ended up asserting that the Medicaid expansion alone would cover 30 million more people. Yet anybody with an inkling of understanding of the Senate bill knows that the entire bill only covers 31 million according to the Congressional Budget Office. The expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP accounts for 15 million of that. I may sound like I'm nitpicking, but this is not some obscure provision of the bill or esoteric statistic. The coverage provisions account for the bulk of the overall cost of the legislation. It's alarming that a sitting Senator would be this utterly clueless on the most sweeping domestic policy initiative since Medicare was created in 1965.
You can watch the full segment here.
Let's Not Call the Whole Thing Off
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 6:34PM
What does Senate Environment and Public Works chairwoman (I assume she doesn't want to be called "chairman") Barbara Boxer call Climategate?
"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting. "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."
Boxer showed her passion for law-and-order at today's committee meeting.
Boxer said her committee may hold hearings into the matter as its top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), has asked for, but that a criminal probe would be part of any such hearings.
"We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not," Boxer said. "Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.
"This is a crime," Boxer said.
Considering that a lot of Climategate has to do with the muzzling of scientists that hold views contrary to alarmism, you might think the honorific-conscious senator would be concerned about the exclusion of their research from professional journals. After all, nearly four years ago she demanded an investigation into the Bush administration's alleged silencing of NASA's James Hansen:
In light of recent reports that the Bush Administration attempted to severely restrict NASA’s top climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen from discussing his scientific findings on global warming, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today urged two Senate Committees to investigate the extent of the Administration’s efforts to censor scientists for political purposes.
Got that? TWO committees!! For ONE guy! Who lied about it!
Mann's Mad Money
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 5:34PM
Since watching the Climategate scandal explode a week before Thanksgiving, debris from the mushroom cloud has rained upon the earth, and there are hints that some folks (other than me and my fellow climate realists) are getting curious about how the alarmists are funded. It used to be the narrative of the formerly mainstream media, when they deemed it worthy to include perspective from the "skeptic" side, always came with a "financed by Big Oil" disclaimer -- whether it was true or not. Meanwhile the warmists' financial gain from the game was irrelevant in the media's eyes.
It's been widely reported in the blogosphere about the millions of dollars in grants that East Anglia CRUnit director Phil Jones collected for his climate modeling, but so far I haven't seen much detail about his fellow email correspondents. What about 'em?
Inarguably the next-largest culprit is Michael Mann, Mr. Nature Trick, who is not to be confused with the Nature Boy or the other "Heat"-making Mann. He has had his grants available for public viewing for a while, so I'm surprised I've not seen those spread around the 'Net. They are right there listed in his curriculum vitae.
In these days of skulduggery and hack-for-a-hack frontier justice on the Wild, Wild, Web, it's a good idea to replicate things. You never know when public records on display at a public university might suddenly disappear. So for the benefit of those interested in climate science transparency and even Mr. Mann himself ("I would be disappointed if the university wasn't doing all [it] can to get as much information as possible" about the controversy), I will list here his funded proposals since 2006 from his CV:
2009-2013 Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases, NSF-EF [Principal Investigator: M. Thomas; Co-Investigators: R.G. Crane, M.E. Mann, A. Read, T. Scott (Penn State Univ.)] $1,884,991
2009-2012 Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing: Combining Paleoclimate Proxy and Instrumental Observations with an Earth System Model, NSF-ATM [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann; Co-Investigators: K. Keller (Penn State Univ.), A. Timmermann (Univ. of Hawaii)] $541,184
2008-2011 A Framework for Probabilistic Projections of Energy-Relevant Streamflow Indices, DOE [Principal Investigator: T. Wagener; Co-Investigators: M. Mann, R. Crane, K. Freeman (Penn State Univ.)] $330,000
2008-2009 AMS Industry/Government Graduate Fellowship (Anthony Sabbatelli), American Meteorological Society [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann (Penn State Univ.)] $23,000
2006-2009 Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network in Ghana, USAID [Principal Investigator: P. Tschakert; Co-Investigators: M.E. Mann, W. Easterling (Penn State Univ.)] $759,928
2006-2009 Analysis and testing of proxy-based climate reconstructions, NSF-ATM [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann (Penn State Univ.)] $459,000
2006-2009 Constraining the Tropical Pacific’s Role in Low-Frequency Climate Change of the Last Millennium, NOAA-Climate Change Data & Detection (CCDD) Program [Principal Investigators: K. Cobb (Georgia Tech Univ.), N. Graham (Hydro. Res. Center), M.E. Mann (Penn State Univ.), Hoerling (NOAA Clim. Dyn. Center), Alexander (NOAA Clim. Dyn. Center)] PSU award (M.E. Mann): $68,065
2006-2007 Acquisition of high-performance computing cluster for the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC), NSF-EAR [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann, Co-Investigators: R. Alley, M. Arthur, J. Evans, D. Pollard (Penn State Univ.)] $100,000
2003-2006 Decadal Variability in the Tropical Indo-Pacific: Integrating Paleo & Coupled Model Results, NOAA-Climate Change Data & Detection (CCDD) Program [Principal Investigators: M.E. Mann (U.Va), J. Cole (U. Arizona), V. Mehta (CRCES)] U.Va award (M.E. Mann): $102,000
2002-2005 Reconstruction and Analysis of Patterns of Climate Variability Over the Last One to Two Millennia, NOAA-Climate Change Data & Detection (CCDD) Program [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann, Co-Investigators: S. Rutherford, R.S. Bradley, M.K. Hughes] $315,000
2002-2005 Remote Observations of Ice Sheet Surface Temperature: Toward Multi-Proxy Reconstruction of Antarctic Climate Variability, NSF-Office of Polar Programs, Antarctic Oceans and Climate System [Principal Investigators: M.E. Mann (U. Va), E. Steig (U. Wash.), D. Weinbrenner (U. Wash)] U.Va award (M.E. Mann): $133,000
2002-2003 Paleoclimatic Reconstructions of the Arctic Oscillation, NOAA-Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research (CIFAR) Program [Principal Investigators: Rosanne D'Arrigo, Ed Cook (Lamont/Columbia); Co-Investigator: M.E. Mann] U.Va subcontract (M.E. Mann): $14,400
2002-2003 Global Multidecadal-to-Century-Scale Oscillations During the Last 1000 years, NOAA-Climate Change Data & Detection (CCDD) Program [Principal Investigator: Malcolm Hughes (Univ. of Arizona); Co-Investigators: M.E. Mann; J. Park (Yale University)] U.Va subcontract (M.E. Mann): $20,775
2001-2003 Resolving the Scale-wise Sensitivities in the Dynamical Coupling Between Climate and the Biosphere, University of Virginia-Fund for Excellence in Science and Technology (FEST) [Principal Investigator: J.D. Albertson; Co-Investigators: H. Epstein, M.E. Mann] U.Va internal award: $214,700
2001-2002 Advancing predictive models of marine sediment transport, Office of Naval Research [Principal Investigator: P. Wiberg (U.Va), Co-Investigator: M.E. Mann] $20,775
1999-2002 Multiproxy Climate Reconstruction: Extension in Space and Time, and Model/Data Intercomparison, NOAA-Earth Systems History [Principal Investigator: M.E. Mann (U.Va), Co-Investigators: R.S. Bradley, M.K. Hughes] $381,647
1998-2000 Validation of Decadal-to-Multi-century climate predictions, DOE [Principal Investigator: R.S. Bradley (U. Mass); Co-Investigators: H.F. Diaz, M.E. Mann]
1998-2000 The changing seasons? Detecting and understanding climatic change, NSF-Hydrological Science [Principal Investigator U. Lall (U. Utah); Co-investigators: M.E. Mann, B. Rajagopalan, M. Cane] $266,235K
1996-1999 Patterns of Organized Climatic Variability: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Globally
Distributed Climate Proxy Records and Long-term Model Integrations, NSF-Earth Systems History [Principal Investigator: R.S. Bradley (U. Mass); Co-Investigators: M.E. Mann, M.K. Hughes] $270,000
1996-1998 Investigation of Patterns of Organized Large-Scale Climatic Variability During the Last
Millennium, DOE, Alexander Hollaender Postdoctoral Fellowship [M.E. Mann] $78,000
For those keeping score, that's almost $6 million total for various predictions, models and reconstructions over the last 13 years by Mann and his playmates. Note also the generally escalating grant amounts in recent years. A lot of that is from the government's National Science Foundation and NOAA teats. Wouldn't trains and Tinkertoys been just as much fun and cost a whole lot less?
Anyway, Pennsylvania State University, where Mann is currently housed, is investigating him now. Mann calls Climategate a "manufactured controversy." Some alumni are calling for his ouster. Will he follow Phil? Maybe they can carry on their pen pal-manship somewhere else off the taxpayer dime.
Liberal Northeast Shoots Down Gay Marriage, Again
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 5:07PM
The New York legislature just gave us more evidence that marriage protection isn't a losing issue, despite clamoring to the contrary.
On the heels of Maine's handy rejection of same-sex marriage, the New York state Senate voted 38 to 24 to kill legislation that would have redefined civil marriage to include homosexual couples. In a liberal northeastern state, that comfortable of a margin is akin to a landslide, particularly since Gov. David Paterson promised to sign the measure into law.
To recap, 30 states have amended their constitutions to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and only five states have neither an amendment nor a statute limiting marriage to heterosexuals.
From a strictly political standpoint, I see no reason not to include this issue in the GOP platform. From a strictly historical and cultural viewpoint, I see many reasons why the party should.
Christmas in the Senate
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 4:40PM
Democrats now say they are prepared to extend the health care debate through Christmas to pass a bill by the end of the year, the Hill reports.
"The Republican leadership is stalling us, so we have decided we are going right through Christmas," Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said.
Tea Party Documentary Movie Premieres In DC Tonight
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 2:52PM
Freedom Works has produced a documentary film about the Tea Party movement that premieres tonight at the Ronald Reagan Building. Doors open at 5:45pm. A panel discussion featuring Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey at 6:15pm will be followed by a showing of the movie at 7:00 pm. Here's the YouTube preview of the film:
Orszag Compares Insurance Mandate to Seat Belt Laws
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 1:50PM
Peter Orszag, the White House director of Management and Budget, has compared the new health insurance mandate that would force every American to purchase coverage or pay a tax to seat belt laws, TPM reports.
But the comparison does not hold up.
Laws requiring that passengers wear seat belts are administered at the state level, while the insurance mandate would be federal. Wearing a seat belt does not apply to people unless they are in a moving automobile on a public road, whereas the health care mandate would apply to any American merely for being alive. And fastening a seat belt does not cost any money, whereas purchasing health insurance costs thousands of dollars. In fact, Monday's CBO report found that an individual insurance policy for somebody earning over $43,320 (and thus not qualifying for subsidies) would rise to $5,800 in 2016.
The only real similarity is that they're both an example of government assuming a paternalistic role.
What's most galling about Orszag's statement is the suggestion that people who choose not to purchase health insurance should be viewed as social outcasts:
Speaking with reporters at an event sponsored by Health Affairs at the National Press Club, Orszag dismissed critics who say the fine that essentially mandates coverage will work because he believes it is more of an issue of being socially acceptable.
As an example, Orszag cited seatbelt use, saying that there is more adherence to seatbelt laws than speeding laws because of social norms.
While proponents of a mandate try to portray those who are uninsured by choice as deadbeats, in reality many people with low annual health care costs make the rational decision to save money on monthly premiums, and simply pay out of pocket for whatever small costs they do incur. Now those same people will be forced to purchase a health care policy that's been pre-approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (or Health Choice Commissioner in the House bill), and submit proof of insurance to the IRS along with their tax forms. If they do not comply with the mandate, they'll be forced to pay a tax.
Tanner to Retire
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 1:28PM
Congressman John Tanner (D-Tennessee) announced Tuesday night that he will retire at the end of his term and not seek re-election. The lack of the 11-term Blue Dog incumbent in the 2010 race opens up a Republican gain. The mostly rural 8th Congressional District is rated as R+6 per Cook Partisan Voter Index, and John McCain carried 56 percent of it in 2008. Stephen Fincher has taken the early lead on the GOP side in fundraising and recently came out ahead in a straw poll reportedly organized by local Republican party officials.
To Huck: See Rock; Then Crawl Under It -- Please
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 12:56PM
Mike Huckabee is out there attacking his attackers. "“It really does show how sick our society has become that people are more concerned about a campaign three years from now than those grieving families in Washington." No, Mr. Huckster, that's not it at all. The fact is that the time to think about the grieving families in Washington would have been IN ADVANCE, so they wouldn't be grieving. Gov. Huckster faced PLENTY of opposition back home to his outrageous clemency policies, and he was warned that violent criminals become recidivists. In other words, he was warned that turning violent offenders loose would create more victims, more grieving families. But he thought he knew better. He thought he, the high and mighty, could tell when a violent offender had "found God" and that such a finding could override the duly enacted decisions of judges and juries, based on duly enacted legislation. Well, he was wrong -- and that is WHY there are now some grieving families in Washington. Of course Huck is not directly responsible for the cop killings; only Mr. Clemmons is. But Huck is responsible for Mr. Clemmons being free. Yes, parole boards let Clemmons free -- but only AFTER Huck's clemencies made it possible for them to do so. Without his commutation of Clemmons' sentence, my understanding is that Clemmons would not have been even eleigbile for parole until 2015.
(I must say, parenthetically, that the efforts of Sean Hannity and others to defend the Huckster are disappointing. They would NEVER have tried defending a lefty who made so many of the same decisions that Huck did.)
Finally, Huck's last quote in the linked story was this: “People are talking about this from a political standpoint, but what they need to be asking is how did the system break down?” What a pathetic weasel. No, "the system" didn't break down, Mr. Governor. YOU intervened in the system and it was your intervention that set in motion any other breakdowns that occurred. This isn't political, it's moral. You, Mr. Huck, did the wrong thing. You did it repeatedly, for numerous violent offenders. And now you try to dodge your share of responsibility for it.
For shame.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 12:48PM
- Medicare has reportedly paid $92 million over eight years for services that were billed as performed by dead doctors (Reuters)
- White House will host 28 parties in December that will be attended by 50,000 people (Chicago Sun Times)
- Shoe thrower gets a shoe thrown at him in Paris (Associated Press)
- Senator Boxer says no to more troops (Orange County Register)
Kissinger on Obama Speech
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 11:39AM
Last night Greta Van Sustren had a brief yet insightful interview with Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger gave a measured dose of approbation for the President's speech with a few caveats. The entire interview is just a few minutes and worth watching.
Dr. Kissinger emphasized that this should be a counterinsurgency battle, focused on local regions, in the hope of securing local tribes and communities now -- the goal that at some future point, a centralized governance will be possible. The main reason for the Soviets' defeat in Afghanistan, Dr. Kissinger states, was their failure to recognize the futility of trying to impose a centralized government on a region that has never been unified. Eventually, Russia, China, and India will also need to be brought into the political process in an effort to recognize their interest in a secure and stable Afghanistan. This will require diplomacy and this will require time.
Which leads to the essential concern in Obama's new strategy. A full-blown commitment becomes impotent given an arbitrary or illogical timeline. If we are to see success in that region, rooting out and neutralizing the Taliban, time-lines need to kneel to tenacity. Additional troops are only one part of the Afghanistan solution. Time is the other.
As Dr. Kissinger implied, a commitment to withdraw troops after 18 months is disconcerting; at best, it should only be seen as aspirational -- it should be seen as "a hope rather than a commitment."
Leave Tiger Alone
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 11:17AM
Clearly, the voice mails and text messages tell the tale: Tiger catted around. And his statement today pretty much confirms it. Okay, fine. Enough already. He is right about this: "No matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don't share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions." He's a golfer, fergoshsakes. He's not a politician preaching family values. Even celebrity athletes have a right to privacy.
What he did with other women is abhorrent. Okay. What he did to the fire hyrant will earn him, and SHOULD earn him, a citation and a fine. Good. After that, though, public prying is no more than prurience.
I've never been a big Tiger fan. I admire him for some of his charitable work and for his support of military personnel. And obviously I think he is a wondrous athlete, and one who in the US Open in 2008 showed incredible, and admirable, grit. But he's not warm, and I don't like his F-bombs, and he generally leaves me cold. I neither like him nor dislike him. I almost never root for him, because there are others I like better. All of which is relevant only so readers can understand that my judgments above about his privacy are not ones biased by being a fan of Tiger. It's just common decency to say that where the public issue of reckless driving stops -- and unless the integrity of the game of golf is involved -- then a zone of privacy really should begin. Remember that his privacy is also that of his apparently innocent wife and children. Tiger acting like a skank doesn't mean THEY should be be forced to lose their privacy. Papparazzi (sp?) who invade such privacy are skankier even than Tiger is. Enough is enough.
Baucus: Medicare Advantage is Not Medicare
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 11:13AM
Sen. Max Baucus, in an effort to push back against Republican criticisms that the Senate health care bill would cut Medicare benefits, just argued on the Senate floor that the claim was false because the $118 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage did not count.
“There are no benefit cuts," Baucus said. "None. Now one could say that with the private plans, Medicare Advantage plans, which are vastly overpaid."
He continued: “One could say that those private plans – it’s not Medicare – those private plans, Medicare Advantage – those aren’t Medicare plans.”
But a visit to Medicare.gov, the official website for the program, contradicts Baucus. While it's true that the plans are quasi-private, they are still part of Medicare.
"Medicare Advantage Plans are health plan options that are part of the Medicare program," the site, run by the Department of Health and Human services, reads. "If you join one of these plans, you generally get all your Medicare-covered health care through that plan."
In actuality, 11 million Medicare beneficiaries -- or one out of every four -- are enrollees in a Medicare Advantage plan. If the program gets cut, those enrollees will lose benefits, and will be forced to purchase additional coverage elsewhere. Conveniently enough, this would be a boon to AARP, whose support Democrats have touted all through the week to immunize them from charges that they're cutting Medicare. The group makes most of its money selling Medigap insurance policies, which would be in higher demand were Medicare Advantage gutted.
Baucus also argued that the $150 billion reduction in payments to hospitals and providers would not have any impact on beneficiaries. But we already know from the experience in Massachusetts, in which hospitals have sued the state, that lower reimbursement rates force hospitals to make budget cuts -- including trimming staff -- that ultimately affect service.
As I wrote earlier this week, I take issue with the way Republicans are demagoging the Medicare issue, because I do believe that we will have to cut Medicare benefits if we have any hope of averting a fiscal disaster. This is also a main reason why I oppose creating a massive new health care entitlement program. But at the same time, it's absurd for Democrats to argue that their plans would not cut Medicare benefits.
'Tis the Season to Freeload in DC
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 10:21AM
Washington is a town of freeloaders so of course it's only natural that some people compile lists of the best freeloading events of the Christmas party season.
This year Cloture Girl has compiled the list which affords taxpayers the opportunity to recoup their tax dollars in the form of booze and pigs-in-a-blanket.
My Man McCotter
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 9:13AM
I came across this clip of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter's remarks about military families at Restoration Weekend a few weeks ago, which I found particularly poignant this morning. Take a look:
I'm not sure I can think of many (any?) other elected officials in this day and age who have the courage, humility (not to mention intelligence) that it takes to truly speak from the heart like he does here.
McCotter fills a gaping hole in both the Congress and the GOP. May he stay the course!
Rendezvous With Craig Shirley
Posted by on 12.2.09 @ 9:08AM
Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, was guest of honor for a book-signing party Tuesday night at the Alexandria home of American Spectator publisher Alfred S. Regnery.
A groundbreaking history of Reagans' 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny "will be at the very core of the Reagan bibliography for future generations, and will not anytime soon -- if ever -- be surpassed," Jason Emerson writes in his review in the December-January issue of The American Spectator. More than 100 guests turned out for Tuesday's reception.
Mr. Shirley describes the three-year process of writing Rendezvous, as T. Kenneth Cribb of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Mr. Regnery listen.
Mr. Shirley and Mr. Regnery.
American Spectator editorial director Wlady Pleszczynski and Washington correspondent Philip Klein.
Christopher Malagisi, political training director of the Leadership Institute, Washington P.R. wizard Diana Banister and Mr. Shirley.
American Spectator contributor Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute and Mr. Pleszczynski.
American Spectator senior editor Quin Hillyer, his wife Tresy, and Rasmussen Reports managing editor Francis Coombs.
American
Spectator culture critic James Bowman and
editor-in-chief R. Emmett
Tyrrell Jr.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Giving Credit to Obama
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 10:20PM
As I write this, Sean Hannity is griping about President Obama taking too long to make a decision on Afghanistan, only deploying 30,000 troops instead of 40,000, and showing weakness in talking about withdrawal. This sort of talk among conservatives strikes me as petty. To be clear, there are those on both the right and left who believe that it's time to pull out of Afghanistan and who don't believe deploying more troops will accomplish anything. It's perfectly understandable if they were not swayed by tonight's speech. But those who support the war effort and believe in sending more troops to implement Gen. McCrystal's strategy should give credit to Obama for taking on the base of his own party to make a decision that he believes is in the national security interests of the United States. Obama may not have delivered his speech in the way that a lot of conservatives would have preferred, and they may have problems with aspects of the new policy. But it's an approach that, broadly speaking, is consistent with what war supporters had been advocating. So, supporters of the effort, broadly speaking, should give Obama credit.
The People Just Don't Trust Uncle Sam
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 9:52PM
According to Rasmussen Reports:
Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they're at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry.
What I want to know is, who are the ten percent?
Kling on the CBO and Jobs
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 9:49PM
Econlog's Arnold Kling notes that Derek Thompson misinterpreted yesterday's CBO analysis of the stimulus's effect on employment, and says in two paragraphs what I said in 1,200 words:
Back in March, the CBO ran a simulation model of the economy, with and without the stimulus. The difference between the two simulations gives you the predicted increase in employment and GDP.
Recently, the CBO repeated the exercise. Lo and behold, the differences were the same. This says nothing about what happened in the real world. It tells you that the simulation model that they used did not change.
I added more detail, but the idea is the same: the CBO's assessment relies on certain models. If you believe these models, you should also believe that the stimulus generated 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs, just as the administration and CBO say. But if you have prior doubts about those models, there is no reason to start now listening to CBO present the same simulations again.
The Difference Between the U.S. and China
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 9:17PM
It's the end of the semester. A degree of giddiness creeps in.
My students and I have been working through the political systems of a variety of nations. Yesterday, we talked about China.
China is a wonderful subject because any professor not completely sold out to Marxist fantasy gains the license to speak judgmentally about Mao's ridiculous policies of The Great Leap Forward (in which the nation stopped producing food and tried to manufacture steel in backyards) and The Cultural Revolution (in which Mao deputized snotty teenagers to force their elders into self-criticism for improper revolutionary thinking).
But the fun begins to subside as you approach the present day. I was explaining to the students that although the Chinese still have the Communist Party -- and it is the only party permitted to operate -- the nation has rejected communism. Instead, they engage in a form of state-sponsored capitalism.
I began to say that the U.S. embraces private capitalism versus this state-sponsored capitalism of the Chinese, but then I realized that would be inaccurate. The truth, I realized and said to the students, is that both nations engage in state-sponsored capitalism. But there is a key difference.
The Chinese government owns companies that make a profit. The United States government only owns companies that lose money.
And that is why they are loaning us money instead of the other way around.
On “Jobs Created or Saved” and the CBO
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 6:37PM
Yesterday the CBO released, as mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, the stimulus bill), an analysis commenting on the reports filed by recipients of stimulus funds. I have argued in the past that interpretation of such analyses is difficult, and that the Obama administration's public interpretations have not demonstrated a corresponding level of exactitude. Now I see that the same left-of-center economists who dismissed my previous argument are presenting yesterday's CBO report as confirmation of their beliefs that the stimulus saved or created about 1 million jobs and that the administration is free to advertise "created or saved" numbers as if they could point to each specific job.
Nevertheless, I take yesterday's CBO report as affirmation both that 1) the number of jobs created by the stimulus cannot be determined without making judgment calls about the underlying economic model and that 2) the administration is on shaky ground when it claims to have evidence of hundreds of thousands of jobs created or saved.
Continue reading…
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 1:40PM
- In an age where 58% of college degrees go to women, where is the affirmative action for men? (Townhall)
- Gibbs: Barack and Michelle are "angry" about the dinner crashers (Houston Chronicle)
- Pelosi spent $3k of taxpayer money on flowers (Politico)
- Australia says no thanks to the idea of more troops in Afghanistan, but Prime Minister Rudd is happy that the Americans will be bearing the burden (AAP)
Yes, the AFC is Better
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 12:27PM
Since my hometown team was humiliated on Monday Night Football last night, I would normally be reluctant to weigh into a football debate. But the New England Patriots don't look as bad as some of the sports commentary coming out of the Bay State. From the Boston Globe: "While we're here ... Can we please put to rest the ridiculous notion that the AFC is so much superior to the NFC? Like, right now? OK?"
Now, the difference between the AFC and the NFC is nowhere near as stark as the gap between the American League and the National League in baseball. NFC teams regularly win Super Bowls and Pro Bowls. There are some elite teams in the NFC. But the argument for parity between the conferences just doesn't wash. Consider how the Globe sportswriter makes his case: "Look at the top three clubs, today, in each conference ..." He proceeds to compare their win-loss records, with the AFC's Colts (11-0), Bengals (8-3), Chargers (8-3) stacked up against the NFC's Saints (11-0), Vikings (10-1), Cowboys (8-3). "See?" he seems to be saying. "The NFC's top three have better records."
The New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings are indisputably playing some of the best football in the NFL. But after them, you immediately drop off to the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys have struggled mightily on offense. Jumbo stadiums, Jerry-trons, and all the other bread and circus notwithstanding, they are a franchise with some big wins, painful losses, and exceedingly narrow victories over terrible teams. The Cowboys barely lead a division that is teeming with mediocrity, as the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants are only consistent in their inconsistency. The less that is said about the Washington Redskins (a team the Cowboys beat by just one point after scoring only a single, last-minute touchdown), the better. By the end of the season, it should be clear that Dallas isn't as good as NFC rivals like the Arizona Cardinals.
When you get below the top three teams in the AFC based on current win-loss record, you still have the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Denver Broncos, the Baltimore Ravens, and yes, even in their attenuated form, the Patriots. The fact that AFC teams, aside from the Colts, don't have overpowering winning records is itself a testament to the strength of competition rather than proof of weakness. The AFC North, for example, contains three powerhouse teams that were considered legitimate contenders for at least the AFC Championship game.
That says something right there: Most experts are already predicting a New Orleans vs. Minnesota showdown for the NFC title. Relatively few will venture a guess as to the AFC contenders. Sure, the Saints and the Vikings are as good as any team in the AFC and have proven it by repeatedly winning interconference games. But just because you can find a woman who is taller than a man doesn't mean that men aren't taller than women on average.
Washington Post Spins CBO Report for Democrats
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 11:55AM
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the effects that the Senate health care bill would have on insurance premiums. In my writeup of the report, I emphasized the part of the analysis that projected the bill would raise premiums in the individual market by 10 percent to 13 percent, or more than $2,100 for the typical family policy. As I also noted, the report found that the bill would have a negligible impact on the employer-based market, causing either no change or a slight decrease in the price of premiums. Understandably, Democrats chose to focus on the news concerning the employer-based market, but I was surprised to see that the Washington Post, in a front page story, completely bought into their spin. The article, titled "Senate health bill gets a boost," begins:
As the Senate opened debate Monday on a landmark plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, congressional budget analysts said the measure would leave premiums unchanged or slightly lower for the vast majority of Americans, contradicting assertions by the insurance industry that the average family's coverage would rise by thousands of dollars if the proposal became law.
The article continues along these lines, and only mentions the fact that it would increase premiums in the individual market after the jump to page A7, in paragraph 15 of an 18 paragraph story.
It's worth keeping in mind how much the goal posts have shifted this year. At the outset, reforming the health care system was supposed to bring down premiums that were imposing an economic burden on individuals and businesses. Now we're supposed to celebrate a bill that would raise premiums on individuals by 10-13 percent -- unless they qualify for government subsidies -- and that, at best, will have a minimal affect on premiums for employers (though other parts of the bill impose new taxes on them).
Good Grief!
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 11:41AM
Forget the massive spending, the reckless borrowing, the unconstitutional federal power grabs. Now President Obama has really done something that should make good people everywhere stand up and say, "Enough!"
His speech on Afghanistan tomorrow night will bump the Charlie Brown Christmas special. If Lucy were on his staff, she would surely advise, "Mr. President, don't be a blockhead!"
How Long Until Liberals Make a Martyr of Maurice Clemmons?
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 9:29AM
The Lakewood cop-killer has been shot dead by Seattle cops. That makes him a victim of police brutality, right? Could he become the next Mumia Abu-Jamal?
ClimateGate's Josh Steiner Moment
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 9:01AM
By now you've likely forgotten the name of that Bill Clinton aide who feebly testified that he had lied to his own diary when recording events of the time. But you haven't forgotten the pitifulness of the spectacle. I suggest we may have just passed that one in ClimateGate, with the following passage from John Tierney's column in the New York Times, discussing "Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline":
"In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of 'grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,' immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:
'No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto' any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.'
Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word."
But wasn't it "Mike's trick" to do this that is being described here, grasped and described as such by CRU's Phil Jones as having been performed on Mike's graph, by Mike? So, his defense is that no one had told him that that's what he was doing?
These guys really need to call for a RealInvestigation to get the the bottom of their actions, as the more they stumble around the worse they're making themselves look.
More on Premiums in Senate Bill
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 8:34AM
Megan McArdle has a post explaining how one the one hand it is right for Phil Klein to report that the CBO analysis of the Senate bill indicates that certain premiums will rise and on the other Krugman can claim that it says the exact opposite.
It's a confusing topic, and there are real judgment calls to be made regarding whether premiums would go up or down.
But Krugman presented a graph created by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber using data from a different CBO score as if it corresponded to the most recent CBO score. He did so in order to deride Republicans, in a way that is terribly misleading.
McArdle:
The only thing I can say with real confidence is that Paul Krugman's interpretation of the whole affair is very odd:
"But here's the thing: senior Republican politicians suffer from reading comprehension. (To be fair, the CBO report is written in a remarkably elliptical style). Several have already claimed that the report shows that premiums will rise.
And they probably won't get called on it."
Republican politicians are saying this because this is, in fact, what the CBO report says: average premiums will be higher.
Unlike a Politico
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 8:17AM
With word that the Obama White House has extended the "War on Fox" to Politico, we are one more media organization away from a trend.
Before it goes any further down this road, the administration should realize that excluding or calling out media outlets is a terrible strategy. The administration's deft handling of the press was one of its greatest assets on the campaign trail, and far too valuable to pass up for a chance to get revenge on journalists who cross them.
This should be obvious even if the outlets in question lean to the right, as Fox News clearly does and Politico did in the piece that drew the White House's ire. The last thing you, as a politician, want to do is foster an Us vs. Them mentality, which ensures that you never get the benefit of the doubt.
Remember on the campaign trail that McCain, and even more so Palin, chose to be somewhat adversarial toward the press members assigned to their campaign because they thought they weren't getting fair representation. That turned out to be a self-fulfilling complaint. After all, reporters are only human.
Obama, it seemed, fully understood this dynamic. Just before his inauguration he even went so far as to have dinner with George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, and Charles "The Opposer in Chief" Krauthammer.
For Obama to reverse this conciliatory policy is a losing strategy.
Switzerland Should Tell Muslim Critics: Shut Up!
Posted by on 12.1.09 @ 4:51AM
In a national referendum the Swiss people voted to ban the construction of minarets on mosques. Not mosques, but minarets.
Oh, my, are Muslims in Muslim nations upset. Reports the Daily Telegraph:
Maskuri Abdillah, head of Indonesia's biggest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, said: "This is the hatred of Swiss people against Muslim communities. They don't want to see a Muslim presence in their country and this intense dislike has made them intolerant."
Egypt's Mufti Ali Gomaa, the Egyptian government's official interpreter of Islamic law, denounced the minaret ban as an "insult" to Muslims and "an attack on freedom of beliefs".
In Pakistan, Khurshid Ahmad, vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami, a hardline Islamic political party that is represented in the parliament, said: "This development reflects extreme Islamophobia among people in the West. This is an effort to provoke Muslims and prompt a clash between Islam and the West."
In fact, I believe the restriction is an unjustified restriction on religious liberty. But I can say that because I live in a country which actually protects the freedom of people to worship as they see fit. All people.
In contrast to Indonesia, Egypt, and Pakistan, in which religious minorities are routinely victimized and persecuted. In Indonesia it is mostly private violence--even Christian school girls have been murdered. I have visited the ruins of churches and Bible schools destroyed by Muslim mobs. Local authorities then have refused to allow the facilities to be rebuilt.
Eqypt does little to punish those who kill Coptic Christians and destroy their homes and businesses. The government routinely discriminates against non-Muslims. Pakistan also discriminates against Christians and other religious minorities in many ways, including jailing anyone convicted of "blaspheming" the Prophet. Non-Muslims face mob violence.
As I've previously written for the Spectator, this is simply the way of life in most Muslim nations. Even moderate Islamic countries, such as Morocco, generally are less than hospitable to Christians and other religious minorities.
So Switzerland's response to its Muslim critics should be a simple "Shut up!" When Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, and other Islamic nations start protecting the rights of Jews, Christians, Bahais, and other religious minorities, then they can lecture the West on religious liberty. Until then, they should just Shut up!
Monday, November 30, 2009
John McCain, Guardian of Entitlements
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 5:55PM
Sen. John McCain just offered the first Republican motion as part of the Senate health care debate, which would remove roughly $500 billion in Medicare cuts and send the legislation back to the Finance Committee.
While Republicans don't have the votes to pass their amendments, the Senate floor debate gives Republicans the opportunity to highlight areas of the Democratic health care bills that are unpopular, and the proposed cuts to Medicare are a large reason why older Americans remain among the most opposed to the health care push.
But even though it's true that Democrats should be called out on their claims that the proposed cuts will not affect benefits, Republicans have gone overboard in demagoging the issue to the point where they themselves are protectors of entitlement programs that are bankrupting the nation.
McCain, who typically raises hell about any earmark, no matter how tiny, was just on the Senate floor urging his fellow lawmakers to "preserve the solemn obligations we have made to our senior citizens."
Statements such as these, aside from making a mockery out of the idea of Republicans as the party of small government, help enshrine the third rail status of entitlement programs that need to be substantially cut if we have any chance of averting the looming fiscal collapse of the United States.
Chart Reading Comprehension
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 5:12PM
Paul Krugman writes that Republican politicians who picked up on the Philip Klein's report that the CBO analysis concludes that the Senate health care bill will raise premiums "suffer from reading comprehension. [sic]"
Krugman then reproduces a chart made by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, which shows declines in the cost of premiums for plans purchased in the individual market, as evidence that today's CBO report shows the opposite of what Philip Klein and Republican politicians say it does.
One problem: The Gruber chart Krugman produces is dated November 27th (pdf). The CBO report came out, to repeat, today, the 30th (pdf). Obviously the Gruber analysis referred to the earlier CBO analysis (pdf), not today's.
Krugman is badly misrepresenting today's CBO report, because it contains bad news for Democrats.
Rickey! Don't Lose His Number
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 4:15PM
Several months ago, I wrote that former Saints (and 49ers) linebacker Rickey Jackson deserved to be in the NFL Hall of Fame. Now, finally, he at least has been named a semi-finalist. The man is second all-time in fumble rcoveries, 10th all-time in sacks (and would be higher, but sacks were not an official stat during his first year in the league), way up high in tackels, good on interceptions for a LB, won a Super Bowl ring as a starter, and was a six-time Pro Bowler and would have made even more Pro Bowls if he weren't competing for votes with three top teammates at the same position. (In a number of those years, he made the "all-Madden" team, which is to my mind a better barometer sometimes than that of the players voting for the Pro Bowl, as the players don't get to watch all the other games while they are playing in them.) Lots of other people agree that Jackson should be in the Hall.
Seven people can get inducted. My votes would go to Jackson, Ray Guy (as the first punter to so clearly outclass all his competitors that he was a huge strategic and tactical asset for his team), Aeneas Williams (8-time Pro Bowl DB), Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice (no explanations needed for those two), and then I would have a terrible time choosing among the following for the last two spots this year: OL Russ Grimm, WR Tim Brown, WR Cris Carter, DB Lester Hayes, DL Richard Dent, DL Charles Haley, TE Shannon Sharpe. If I were FORCED to choose, I would go with Tim Brown (barely over Cris Carter, a contemporary with not quite as many yards receiving and without the added benefit of being a great kick and punt returner), and with Russ Grimm because he was the leader of one of the best offensive lines in history, the Redskins' "Hogs," none of whom have received the credit due them. I do, however, think that Dent, Haley, Sharpe, and Carter SHOULD be in the Hall eventually, with Hayes , Cortez Kennedy, Chris Doleman, and Dermontti Dawson and all probably deserving as well....
But back to Rickey Jackson. The man played LEFT outside LB. He had as many sacks as LT, and LT was rushing from the blind side, the easier side. Jackson got his sacks while the QB was looking at him. And Jackson, unlike LT, also was great dropping into pass coverage and also playing every down against the run. And he was a leader in the locker room, a guy who EVERYBODY looked up to. Ask fellow Saints all-Pro LB Pat Swilling, later a state legislator, what he thinks of Jackson: Hall of Fame, all the way. As for me, all things considered, I would choose Jackson as the single player I would choose, all-time, to build my defense around, if I wanted a team to last ten years. The man never missed games due to injury, never made excuses, never dogged it, never let up. He deserves to be in the Hall.
Obama's Narcissism Will Nauseate — Eventually
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 3:15PM
The electorate wildly prefers politicians who look good. That's been a truism in United States races since Richard Nixon's infamous sweaty performance in a televised debate with JFK in 1960. Not that looks weren't important before, but they played far less of a role. America's celebrity fetish, which mushroomed during the last century, only adds to the equation.
Along those lines, it's undeniable that one factor in Barack Obama's victory last year was his smooth demeanor, particularly when contrasted with the aged and seemingly crotchety John McCain. On the reverse side of the political spectrum, I doubt Sarah Palin would garner the same following among men were she comparable to, say, Dianne Feinstein in appearance.
But Americans don't like arrogant schmucks, either. Thus the necessity of combining good looks with an approachable demeanor. Bill Clinton, somehow, managed to pull it off. Barack Obama won't be able to.
Why? Because he's too much of an egoist and lacks the political savvy to muffle it. Sooner or later, the American people will see that. And they won't like it.
Obama's narcissism has enough political implications to catch the POLITICO's attention — even garnering a spot in the publication's top seven stories the president doesn't want told:
It's a common theme of Washington buzz that Obama is over-exposed. He gives interviews on his sports obsessions to ESPN, cracks wise with Leno and Letterman, discusses his fitness with Men's Health, discusses his marriage in a joint interview with first lady Michelle Obama for The New York Times. A photo the other day caught him leaving the White House clutching a copy of GQ featuring himself.
White House aides say making Obama widely available is the right strategy for communicating with Americans in an era of highly fragmented media.
But, as the novelty of a new president wears off, the Obama cult of personality risks coming off as mere vanity unless it is harnessed to tangible achievements.
Obama will increasingly be unable to harness the power of his celebrity appeal because the situation on the ground won't tally with his grandstanding. Afghanistan and the economy are two examples. A nice smile and rhetorical wizardry come off as elitist and smug when causalities are rising and the employment rate is hovering at double digits.
More Huckabee Background
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 3:09PM
I wrote about Mike Huckabee's record on pardons and clemencies in depth during the presidential campaign here. The key thing to keep in mind is that these were not isolated incidents, but part of a broader pattern throughout his time as governor.
An excerpt:
Over the course of his 10 and a half years as governor, Huckabee granted a staggering 1,033 clemencies, according to the Associated Press. That was more than double the combined 507 that were granted during the 17 and a half years of his three predecessors: Bill Clinton, Frank White, and Jim Guy Tucker.
In many cases, Huckabee's actions set loose savage criminals convicted of grisly murders over the passionate objections of prosecutors and victims' families.
"I felt like Huckabee had more compassion for the murderers than he ever did for the victims," Elaine Colclasure, co-leader of the Central Arkansas chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, a group that works on behalf of victims' families, told TAS. "He was kind of like a defense attorney. He couldn't see the pain and suffering that the victims were going through."
Among the violent criminals Huckabee granted clemency to were Denver Witham, who was "convicted of beating a man to death with a lead pipe at a bar," according to the AP; Robert A. Arnold Jr., who was convicted of killing his father in law; Willy Way Jr., who pled guilty to shooting a grocery store owner as his wife looked on; and James Maxwell, who murdered a reverend. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, when the reverend's daughter met with Huckabee to plead that Maxwell be denied clemency, Huckabee "'affectionately referred' to her father's killer as 'Jim.'"
Huck Fin-ished
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 2:28PM
If only the wish could be father to the thought! If this cop killer case doesn't end Mike Huckabee's political career once and for all, there is no justice. Here's a GREAT blog post that rounds up Huck's horrible record on pardons. Follow all the lengths within to read about the huge numbers of clemencies he issued, the arrogance with which he and his staff approached the issue, the lack of transparency on the subject, and the tragic results from some of his clemencies, including in the horrid case of Wayne DuMond, who raped and raped and raped again. No amount of stagecraft featuring backlit crosses and folksy aphorisms should hide Huckabee's culpability for such horrendous judgment.
Mike's Mercy, Lakewood's Pain
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 2:28PM
Doug Bandow has noted Mike Huckabee'e promiscuous use of pardon power during his tenure as governor of Arkansas. The case of accused cop-killer Maurice Clemmons highlights the ease with which clemency was obtained:
Clemmons wrote in an appeal to Huckabee that he'd been sent to prison after an extended crime spree that started in 1989 when he was a teenager - and that he was a different person now.
At the time of the crimes - which included aggravated robbery, firearms possession and burglary - Clemmons claimed he was 16 years old and had moved from Seattle to a high-crime neighborhood in Arkansas.
"I succumbed to the peer pressure and the need I had to be accepted by other youth in my new environment and fell in with the wrong crowd and thus began a seven (7) month crime spree which led me to prison," Clemmons wrote in his application to Huckabee.
Clemmons said he came from "a very good Christian family" and "was raised much better than my actions speak (I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought to my family name.)," he wrote. . . .
Read the rest, if you have the stomach for it. Michelle Malkin notes the "passive language and blame-shifting" in Huckabee's statement about the case. Right now, there is nothing but pain for the people of Lakewood, Wash., and especially the family and friends of the four officers Clemmons is accused of killing in a cold-blooded ambush Sunday morning:
Those killed were identified as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Gregory Richards, 42.
The Lakewood Police Benevolent Guild is raising money for the families of the officers:
Lakewood Police Benevolent Fund
PO Box 99579
Lakewood, WA 98499
And the manhunt for Clemmons continues.
Phil Jones, Phil Connors...
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 2:26PM
...so many similarities between Climategate's villain and the "Groundhog Day" antihero:
CBO: Senate Health Care Bill Would Raise Premiums 10-13 Percent
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 12:41PM
In another blow to Democrats' health care claims, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis on Monday projecting that the Senate health care bill would raise premiums by more than $2,000 on family policies compared to what the cost otherwise would be if Congress were simply to do nothing.
The report, prepared at the request of Sen. Evan Bayh, found that premiums on policies individuals purchase on their own or through the government-run exchanges would cost 10 percent to 13 percent more in 2016 than under current law. In dollar terms, in 2016 an individual policy would cost $5,800 and a family policy would cost $15,200 if the Senate bill were enacted, according to the CBO, compared with $5,500 and $13,100 under the status quo.
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Bayh, a moderate Democrat from Indiana, said that the CBO report would figure prominently in his decision making process as he evaluates whether he should support the legislation.
"I'm going to be looking at - and we haven't gotten the score from the CBO yet; they're about to give it to us - what does this do for the cost of insurance for people who currently have it," Bayh said. "We want to cover the uninsured, yes, but we don't want to do it in a way that's going to drive up the costs for folks who currently have it. That's one of the biggest complaints that I hear from people. So I'm going to be looking very carefully at what the bean counters have to say about that."
The major driver of the increased premium costs are the new mandates that will force insurers to offer more comprehensive coverage, and effectively bar individuals from purchasing less benefit rich insurance at a lower price.
The CBO said the legislation would have less of an affect on group coverage -- small employers may see their premiums go up 1 percent or down 2 percent, while larger employers could see no change, or see their premiums go down 3 percent.
From the start of the process, one of primary rationales President Obama has given for the urgent need to pass health care legislation is that the cost of premiums are skyrocketing, and putting more pressure on family budgets. In a speech to the American Medical Association in June, Obama declared that, "if we fail to act, premiums will climb higher." Now the CBO has estimated that if we do act -- at least in the way Democrats are proposing -- premiums will climb even higher than the unsustainable levels that supposedly prompted the drive for reform in the first place.
Earlier this month, the actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the bill passed by the House would raise overall health care spending in the United States, despite pledges to the contrary.
UPDATE: TNR's Jonathan Cohn, via Twitter, asks why I didn't mention the federal subsidies that would more than offset the cost of the increased premiums for about 57 percent of those obtaining insurance on their own. The reason I didn't is that the subsidies do not change the underlying cost of the policies -- the only difference is that other taxpayers are picking up the rest of the higher tab. And 14 million Americans who earn too much to qualify for subsidies (the cutoff is $43,320 for individuals; $88,000 for a family of four) would see their premiums go up. The point is that when the health care push began, we were led to believe that legislation would reduce the economic burden of health care costs by lowering premiums and containing the growth of health care spending. But the current legislation does not accomplish that goal. If liberals still want to argue that helping more Americans obtain coverage is worth the costs, that's fine. But saying that government will subsidize the higher premium costs created by health care legislation is a far cry from boasting that reforming our health care system will lower the actual price of insurance.
With that said, rereading my post, I realize that the way I phrased things originally made it sound as if anybody purchasing insurance on their own would personally be paying more for insurance than under the status quo, and that wouldn't be the case for those receiving subsidies -- regardless of whether their costs are ultimately borne by others. I just went back and tweaked the language.
The Left: "This Time Is Different"
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 12:01PM
Reading Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly was eye-opening and entertaining (entertaining only if you skim over the majority of the book that is dense technical matter and detailed charts, tables, and graphs). But I couldn't shake the sense that they were creating a straw man: sure, nations get into trouble with debt crises, but not because policymakers really delude themselves that "this time is different."
And yet while we ourselves are in a similar situation, as Niall Ferguson illustrates in Newsweek, here is Paul Krugman, speaking for the left, saying that...this time is different:
Now, back in 2003 I got very alarmed about the US deficit — wrongly, it turned out — not so much because of its size as because of its origin. We had an administration that was behaving in a deeply irresponsible way. Not only was it cutting taxes in the face of a war, which had never happened before, plus starting up a huge unfunded drug benefit, but it was also clearly following a starve-the-beast budget strategy: tax cuts to reduce the revenue base and force later spending cuts to be determined. In effect, it was a strategy designed to produce a fiscal crisis, so as to provide a reason to dismantle the welfare state. And so I thought the crisis would come.
In fact, it never did. Bond markets figured that America was still America, and that responsibility would eventually return; it’s still not clear whether they were right, but the housing boom also led to a revenue boom, whittling down those Bush deficits.
Compare and contrast the current situation.
He then presents an argument that sounds plausible, but amounts to "this time is different."
Maybe it is. But it's tough to say so out loud if you've looked at the evidence Reinhart and Rogoff presented in their book.
The Government Wants Your Appliances Destroyed
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 11:56AM
Starting early next year, the government will initiate Cash for Clunkers Extreme Home Appliance Edition.
Reports WaPo:
Supported by $300 million from the economic stimulus, the program will offer rebates to consumers who buy energy-efficient refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners and other appliances to replace their older models.
...
The appliances program may be destined to continue the debate. For when it comes to stimulus, timing can be critical, and the implementation of the effort has dragged on, possibly diminishing its usefulness.
Although the $787 billion stimulus program was signed by Obama in February of 2009, much of the cash-for-appliances money won't hit the streets until next February, March or April.
The government wants to stimulate the economy by shifting consumption from the future to the present. But they are telling folks that if they just hold out until next year, they will get paid for replacing their old appliances. Sounds like a sure-fire way to suppress consumption to me.
James Hamilton notes that the logic behind Cash for Applicances goes far beyond even John Maynard Keynes's most intentionally outrageous statements about stimulus:
Keynes wrote in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:
"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
Destroying durable goods in order to build new ones goes beyond even this colorful recommendation from Keynes.
It would be as if the Treasury were to give banknotes to anyone who destroyed the bottles that happened to be lying around their house.
Obama May Bow to Japan's Emperor...
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 11:33AM
...but never to Lou Dobbs or Ralph Nader. Take it from James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, whose Democracy Corps email update this morning included the following hard hitting analysis:
The incredibly low standing of the Republican brand has the Democrats retaining a small but stable lead on the named congressional ballot and shows President Obama with a strong lead in a potential 2012 match-up against Mitt Romney, Ralph Nader and Lou Dobbs.
Crikey! If the field is really this wide 2012 will be more entertaining than I thought!
"Obama/Biden 2012: Hide the Decline"
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 11:02AM
As he searches for a slogan for Obama/Biden 2012, David Axelrod knows Obama can't reuse President Reagan's "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Now that Climategate's Phil Jones' expression "hide the decline" permanently has entered the political lexicon, may we offer Axelrod a suggestion?
"Obama/Biden 2012: Hide the Decline"
By Asher Embry
We've got ourselves a Prez who's in a permanent campaign.
Each day's events designed by Ax to help "O" run again.
Yet unemployment's on the rise and terror's gotten
worse.
Instead of watching spending, he's just opened up the
purse.
The world has seen him dither and apologize and bow
Resulting in the worldwide view our country's weaker now.
Transparency's elusive and post-partisan he's not.
With made-up jobs and health care claims his honesty is
shot.
He's "calling out" his enemies, vindictiveness abounds.
And any sari'd blonde, it seems, can crash the White House
grounds.
No way that voters feel that we are better off with "O."
So Ax knows Reagan's question will be answered with a "no!"
What can he do? What novel tricks can Ax this time arrange?
Get Shepard Fairey painting "Hope" and talk again of "Change"?
Obama needs a slogan. Thanks to Phil Jones, I've got mine.
It's this: "Obama/Biden 2012: Hide the Decline"
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
"A Very Tame Fame Monster, Decidedly Un-Freakish"
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:49AM
The Weekly Standard's Katherine Eastland, fresh from delving into the divergent doggy christening styles of Jimmy Stewart and Barack Obama, now sets about unpacking the relative merits of the marriage of imagery, pop, and second-rate performance art the strange cultural phenomenon known as Lady Gaga is currently presiding over.
Mike "Pardon Me" Huckabee
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:25AM
The revelation that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted the term of the murderer of four Washington state police officers should sink Huckabee's presidential aspirations, as Quin suggests. It's worth remembering how busy the pardon-happy governor was while in office. Reported ABC's Jake Tapper two years ago:
from 1996 through 2007, Huckabee helped free through commutations and pardons more prisoners than had been freed by the previous three governors - Bill Clinton, Frank White and Jim Guy Tucker - combined in an 18-year period.
In fact, an Arkansas Leader study indicated that Huckabee helped free more prisoners from 1996 through 2004 than were freed in the six neighboring states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas - combined.
If he runs, Mike Huckabee deserves to suffer the same fate as Michael Dukakis, who released the infamous Willie Horton to commit more crimes.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:25AM
- Huck's latest Willie Horton: Man suspected of shooting four police officers in Washington state was granted clemency by then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (Politico)
- California debt might be $500 billion (Sacramento Bee)
- New York Times: Honduran election "appears" to be a success, with a conservative candidate in front.
- Examiner: Are we after a boogeyman in Afghanistan who is already dead? Bin Laden reportedly was a diabetic kidney patient nearly a decade ago.
Gallup Still Finds More Americans Opposed to Dems' Health Care Bills
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:16AM
As the Senate prepares to take up debate on Democrats' 2,074-page bill, Gallup finds that 49 percent of Americans are leaning toward advising their member of Congress to vote against health care legislation, compared with just 44 percent who say they would advise their member to vote for it. Meanwhile, among independents, support is only at 37 percent.
Asked about President Obama's handling of health care, a majority of 53 percent now disapprove, compared with only 40 percent who approve.
Huck Be Politically Dead
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:11AM
This horrible story about the cop killer in Washington State gets far worse once you find out that the guy should have been in prison for decades more already. The fact that it was the asinine Mike Huckabee who commuted his sentence merely confirms all the stories that I and others spent so much timne in 2007-2008 trying to alert people to -- namely, that Huckabee A) has massive ethical problems and B) that his history of commutations of criminals shows a reckless disregard for public safety and for victims' rights. (Please do go back to that period and look up all my column and blog warnings to this effect.) Huckabee is no more fit to be president than Tiger Woods is fit to give driving lessons. Huck now says he is leaning against running for president in 2012. It would be better if he changed "in 2012" to "ever."
Neurodiversity, Fire Water, and The Wealth of Nations
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 10:05AM
Frequent TAS contributor Jeremy Lott on why you shouldn't confuse your inner economist with Rainman.
Cop-Killer Suspect Set Free by Huckabee
Posted by on 11.30.09 @ 5:14AM
After I reported here yesterday about 4 Lakewood, Wash., police officers killed in an ambush, police identified Maurice Clemmons as a "person of interest" in the case. Clemmons, 37, is a violent felon from Arkansas who was granted clemency by Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2000.
It's the biggest story of the day at Memeorandum, Michelle Malkin has blogged it extensively, and I've been up all night live-blogging about a SWAT standoff in Seattle, where Clemmons is reported to be holed up and bleeding.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
'A Complete Coward and Threat Upon All of Society'
Posted by on 11.29.09 @ 7:57PM
Four police officers from Lakewood, Wash., were ambushed in a coffee shop this morning and, at this writing, the suspect is still at large. There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of this cop-killer. Lakewood Police Guild spokesman Brian D. Wurts:
This morning a complete coward and threat upon all of society took the lives of four of my Guild members and your sworn protectors in a cold blooded assassination. As I write this I am numb. . . . You cannot understand evil like this, as a community we must form a solid bond against criminals and hold them accountable. . . . If you know a cop tell them how much you appreciate them, it truly keeps us going. . . .
UPDATE 9 p.m. ET: KOMO-TV reports the gunman may have been wounded. Video of a police spokesman describing the "targeted" ambush:
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