More Washington

Mark Steyn, National Review Online

As Obama sees it, whatever the problem, the solution is more Washington.

The world turns

In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father.

In New Zealand, a German tourist, Herr Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at Christchurch with 44 live lizards in his underpants.

In Britain, a research team at King’s College, London, has declared that the female “G-spot” does not, in fact, exist.

In France a group of top gynecologists led by M. Sylvain Mimoun has dismissed the findings, and said what do you expect if you ask a group of Englishmen to try to find a woman’s erogenous zone.

But in America Barack Obama is talking.

Talking, talking, talking. He talked for 70 minutes at the State of the Union. No matter how many geckos you shoveled down your briefs, you still lost all feeling in your legs. And still he talked. If you had an erogenous zone before he started, by the end it was undetectable even to Frenchmen. But on he talked. As respected poverty advocate Sen. John Edwards commented, “After the first hour, even my malevolent genie was back in the bottle.”

Like any gifted orator, the president knows how to vary the talk with a little light and shade. Sometimes he hectors, sometimes he whines, sometimes he demands. He hectored the Supreme Court. He whined about all the problems he inherited. He demanded Congress put a jobs bill on his desk. Or was it a desk job on his bill? No matter. He does Nixon impressions, too: “We do not quit,” he said.

Boy, you can say that again!

So he did: “We don’t quit. I don’t quit,” he said. Throughout the chamber, Democrats were quitting. “I quit,” says Rep. Marion Berry of Arkanas, declining to run this November. “I quit,” says Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, doing likewise. “I quit,” says Beau Biden of Delaware, son of Vice President Joe Biden, choosing not to succeed to his father’s seat in America’s House of Lords.

But not Barack Obama: “I don’t quit.” So on he went. As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it.

The ever tinnier, more perfunctory sophomoric uplift at the start and finish can’t conceal the hope-killing, jobs-slaying, soul-sapping message in between, which is perfectly consistent, and has been for two years. As President Obama sees it, whatever the problem — from health care to education, banking to the environment — the solution is more Washington.

Simply as a matter of internal logic, this is somewhat perplexing. After all, when he isn’t blaming Bush, Obama blames “Washington” — a Washington mired in “partisanship” and “pettiness” and “the same tired battles” and “Washington gimmicks” that do nothing but ensure that our “problems have grown worse.” Washington, Obama tells us, is “unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.”

So let’s have more Washington! In our schools, in our hospitals, in our cars, in everything!

Which raises the question: Does even Obama listen to Obama’s speeches? The public does — at least to this extent: They understand that, when he’s attacking the tired old Washington games, he’s just playing the tired old Washington games. But, when he’s proposing the tired old Washington solutions, he means it; that’s the real Obama, the only Obama on offer. And everything the president proposes means more debt, which at the level this guy’s spending means, at some point down the road, either higher taxes or total societal collapse.

Functioning societies depend on agreed rules. If you want to open a business, you do it in Singapore or Ireland, because the rules are known to all parties. You don’t go to Sudan or Zimbabwe, where the rules are whatever the state’s whims happen to be that morning.

That’s why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president’s proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of “health” “care” “reform” that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees’ health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won’t. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they’re being made up as they go along — and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon’s new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to “double down.” That hardly does justice to what the president’s doing. In effect, he’s told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

That’s a lot of virgins to pass out, but with this administration, budget restraints aren’t exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia. What’s the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan “reform” proposals: If you choose to go into “public service,” any college-loan debts will be forgiven after ten years.

Because “public service” is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C’mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into “public service.”

Why?

In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself. So quite reasonably he sees government dependency as the natural order of things. And in his college-loan plan he’s explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you’re a schmuck and a loser. In the America he’s building, you’ll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama’s proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It’s the audacity of hopelessness.

In Massachusetts, enough voters got the message. And the more speeches this one-note politician inflicts on the nation, the louder they’ll hear it.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn

Mike Walker lays out a disturbing scenario supported by historical references and raw economic data… I hope I have some change left...

When the Next Bubble Bursts

All,

Life with our Federal Government is like a marriage, so here are my taxpayer wedding thoughts:

Something Old – From over a year ago

Something New – Bipartisanship

Something Borrowed – TARP Payback

Something Blue –The Next Bubble: Our Federal Deficit

So here we go!

A. Something Old – From over a year ago

It Is The Economy Stupid!

All,

My very brief musings on the current troubles in our economy. Here are hard questions that need to be asked in Washington:

A. Increase the velocity of the dollar in the economy. This means getting the cash flowing again in our financial markets. When the "quiz kids" and hat-in-hand bankers show up ask them how they are going to achieve this paramount goal. If they waffle, dissemble, etc send them packing without a dime.

As an aside, it is a national loss that many investment banks have gone away. Investment banks are a great engine for economic growth. Their "velocity" in priming the economy is double that of commercial banks. They are the best.

B. Good Stable Jobs = Support for Private Sector Businesses.

Job #1 is support for Small Business. That is the road to turning the economy around. Every other stimulus goal must be secondary.

When someone opines in Washington that they have the "magic bullet" to cure our ills ask them about small businesses. If it ain't first and foremost then send them packing without a dime.

Job #2 is support for the rest of the private sector. If we want to keep jobs in America we need to make American industry competitive. We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Shame on us! We need to be globally competitive and that means keeping big government out of the pockets of the private sector.

Job #3 is infrastructure development. This is an essential but tricky issue. Infrastructure can enhance economic growth but alone it cannot turn an economy around.

When the gurus propose their infrastructure plans, ask how does this help our Country achieve Job #1 and Job #2?

If it looks like they are giving you the "smoke screen" and really arguing infrastructure is Job # 1 then send them packing without a dime.

The purpose of infrastructure development is to create an environment that allows the private sector to thrive. Building a bridge to make it economically efficient for local business to operate is super. Building roads to provide access for new businesses is the ticket.

But these projects are never ends in themselves. They take years to get off the ground and it is short-term work. Once the bridge is built the jobs go away for many decades.

Ask how the project stimulates the private sector and how that will create long-term job growth. If the nabobs can't clearly answer that question then send them packing without a dime.

The last Job. Assisting failed/failing industries and State/big city bureaucracies. When these guys come begging ask them to specifically explain how they are going to change.

Ask them to present a fiscally responsible plan for the future. Ask them to explain in detail how the money they want from Washington is a one-time bridge to a responsible future. If they can't provide the answers then send them packing without a dime.

C. Change the business model in Congress. Kill the pork added to the economic actions. Enough is enough. This national economic downturn is a real problem. It is a serious problem. It is time for adult leadership in congress.

Congress needs to put our county first and their pork project/special interest pandering dead last.

Ask your elected representatives if they are going to deal with the task at hand before they go back to politics as usual. If they start to pontificate and ramble, vote them out the first chance you get.

Semper Fi,

Mike

New 2010 Addendum: There are two points I would like to add to this “something old” section. First, I failed to note that during the last recession in California small businesses alone led the way in job creation. That is why support to small businesses is so crucial. Second, when the states, like my California, come knocking for more bail out money then simply tell them “No.” But also tell them the federal government is ready to give them a LOAN, and one with a sweetheart deal on the interest rate. But firmly say “No” to any further federal gift of funds.

B. Something New - Bipartisanship

Remember what the late Tip O’Neill used to say about differing political opinions: Hate the sin but love the sinner. It is OK to disagree. It is NOT OK to hate the other guy or consider them a criminal because you disagree.

In 2008 the wind was to the back of the Democrats.

In 2010 the wind is to the back of the Republicans.

The overwhelming majority of us were more than willing to support a centrist President Obama.

Very few of us thought we were going to have the country run by the far-left folks under Nancy Pelosi.

We have had it with them and are fed up.

But very few of us want to be led by a bunch of far-right folks from the Republican Party.

So here is what needs to happen. After the 2010 elections in November, the Republicans and the Democrats need to identify five to ten tasks of great need that are shared in common, if not identical, aim. They then need to sit down with the President and under his leadership seek to find the middle ground with all their might to get the job done for the benefit of all Americans.

If that cannot happen then a pox on all their houses.

C. Something Borrowed – TARP Payback

“We want our money back!” President Obama declared during a 15 January 2010 speech where he announced a proposal for a new 15% tax on banks that took TARP monies. Here are the facts from the “top ten” list on where our tax dollars went:

Entity Borrowed Paid Back Plus Profit for US Taxpayers New Tax

AIG $69.8 Billion $0 $0 Exempt

Fannie Mae $59.9 Billion $0 $1.3 Billion Exempt

Freddie Mac $50.7 Billion $0 $3 Billion Exempt

GM $50.7 Billion $0 $0.3 Billion Exempt

Ctitgroup $45 Billion $20 Billion $2.5 Billion 15% Rate

B of A $45 Billion $45 Billion $2.8 Billion 15% Rate

Wells Fargo $25 Billion $25 Billion $1.3 Billion 15% Rate

JPMorganC $25 Billion $25 Billion $0.8 Billion 15% Rate

GMAC $16.3 Billion $0 $0.7 Billion 15% Rate

Goldman-S $10 Billion $10 Billion $0.3 Billion 15% Rate

Morgan-S $10 Billion $10 Billion $0.3 Billion 15% Rate

$135 Billion paid back with interest is a good start. But we taxpayers are still owed $272.4 Billion by the big borrows alone.

How about collecting from these deadbeats?

How about taxing every pig at the federal money trough the same? While you’re at it, how about capping the million dollar salaries for the two super pigs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? And also promise no more “closed door” payout deals for the AIG fat cats as well.

D. Something Blue – The Next Bubble: Our Federal Deficit

Top 6 World Economies and Stimulus Spending

Nation Stimulus Date

United States $887 Billion February 2009 ARRA

Japan $100 Billion April 2009

China* $590 Billion November 2008

Germany $67 Billion February 2009

France $31 Billion February 2009

United Kingdom $250 Billion October 2009

* As reported in late January 2010 in the Wall Street Journal, China is desperately trying to roll back its stimulus due to the damage done to the economy.

Lest you need another perspective:

Period US Deficit Spending – What we will owe to others

2001-2004 $766 Billion

2005-2008 $1,200 Billion

2009-2012 $4,970 Billion (Actual and projected0

2013-2016 $3,440 Billion (Projected)

2017 alone! $1,080 Billion (Projected)

Good grief!

This is an unsustainable expenditure model. Why? Because we have to PAY BACK THE MONEY! It is nothing short of economic suicide to keep spending money we do not have at the rate of the US Government. If we keep going deeper and deeper into debt at this insane pace then that is the next bubble waiting to burst open in a flood of ruin over the world’s economy. At some unknown point in the future, the US will no longer be able to either borrow money or pay it back or both. Then all hell will break loose.

Are you prepared?

And for your own information, it ain’t the war considering US defense spending:

Year Percent of Federal Expenditures Note

1944 90% Peak of WWII

1952 70% Peak of Korean War

1968 46% Peak of Vietnam War

1987 28% Peak of Reagan defense build-up

2009 18% Iraq & Afghanistan Wars

Is there really a war on? You can’t tell by where we are putting our money.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Thoughts on bubbles for those who are not yet bored to tears:

Bubbles, at a basic level, have a few common characteristics.

First, the supposed “good” that is happening is at an unprecedented rate. In other words, the “good” thing grows so big that it becomes a “bad” thing. Second, we do not really understand what is going on but we think we do. I am particularly good at that. Third, the grey beards we seek out for knowledge say the unprecedented “good” is really a good thing when it is really a bad thing but we believe them anyway. Fourth, everyone thinks the good times will roll on forever. We convince ourselves that we are on the up escalator for life.

Then we get hit in the face with an ice-cold bucket of reality.

The 1930’s

We first saw this before the Great Depression with the stock market. First, the stock market grew to unprecedented heights. Second, everyone though they understood options, margins, splits, and the like. Third, all the young and bright economists praised the market conditions. Fourth, if you plunge into the marker you will only make money, forever. Then came the Stock Market Crash in October 1929.

The result was the Great Depression. This trip was so bad and so long that we learned not to repeat it for forty years.

The 1970’s

It began with the United States in a hopeless position where its dated manufacturing base, built on 1920’s technology left intact during the WWII, hit head on with the modern 1950’s and 1960’s technology utilized by the major world economies who had been forced to rebuild following the destruction of their industrial sector in WWII. By 1970 we simply could no longer compete in either the global or domestic marketplace.

We had wasted our enormous 1945 advantage by systemically declining to invest in new technologies because of what turned out to be a badly placed fear of losing any jobs that would be eliminated/displaced by modernization. We put almost everything into trying to hold back the tide of progress and inevitably almost lost everything when the tipping point was reached in 1970.

Our fall was further assisted by the Arab oil embargo of 1973. What followed was a national calamity. Year after year of double-digit inflation made paupers of retirees who saw their life saving turned into pennies by inflation. The story of old couples trapped by a fixed income eating dog food for meat protein was both sadly true and all too commonplace.

What is next?

We will be faced with two painful decisions. The first it to have great but limited pain by drastically reigning in government programs. The second is to have universally cataclysmic pain by letting the government programs run unabated until they crash the entire national economy ala the 2007 Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/AIG/Investment Bank meltdown. Only this time it will be on a far larger scale.

The 2007 financial/mortgage meltdown was defined by the suffering of millions. The next one will be defined by the suffering of hundreds of million. This is our future if we do not act and act now to prevent it.

The Meaning of Brown

Charles Krauthammer, Townhall

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health care reform. "If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have."

The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don't throw her a millstone.

After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that ... it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.

And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama not Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.

Bull's-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don't Mirandize terrorists. Don't raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.

These deals -- the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback -- had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff -- in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a ("Cadillac") health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized.

The reason both wings of American liberalism -- congressional and mainstream media -- were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they'd spent Obama's first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.

Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to diss Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal -- of a man who had them swooning only a year ago -- something is going on beyond personality.

That something is substance -- political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power -- even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can't even see is in your own interest.

Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?

"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up."

I say: Let them sleep.

John Stossel

Stealth Propaganda

An obscure 2008 academic article gained traction with bloggers over the weekend. The article was written by the head of Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. He’s a good friend of the president and the promoter the contradictory idea: "libertarian paternalism". In the article, he muses about what government can do to combat "conspiracy" theories:

...we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies ... will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.

That's right. Obama's Regulation Czar is so concerned about citizens thinking the wrong way that he proposed sending government agents to "infiltrate" these groups and manipulate them. This reads like an Onion article: Powerful government official proposes to combat paranoid conspiracy groups that believe the government is out to get them...by proving that they really are out to get them. Did nothing of what Sunstein was writing strike him as...I don't know...crazy? "Cognitive infiltration" of extremist groups by government agents? "Stylized facts"? Was "truthiness" too pedantic?

Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald explains why this you should be disturbed by this:

This was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.

... What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.

It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.

It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned -- rationally -- to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.

Why would we think that the course we've selected would work? Because we are weak!

The Limits of "Surge and Run", Paul Mirengoff, Powerline

The Washington Post reports on an upsurge of terrorist violence in Anbar province. On Thursday, fiive explosions in a city in the province killed at least eight people. A week earlier, twin explosions killed at least 24 people. There have also been approximately 40 attempted assassinations in Anbar province, according to the Post.

As a result, the Iraqi government has replaced the provincial police chief. This has angered the tribal leaders. They considered the police chief ineffective, but see his replacement by an army chief from Baghdad as an affront to their power.

The tribal leaders also say that members of al Qaeda in Iraq were released from local prisions after the U.S. turned them over to the Iraqi government as part of our withdrawal agreement. If true, and some Iraqi officials say it is, this would be particularly disturbing.

Who do the Iraqis think they are, Eric Holder?

This news has some interesting implications with respect to the Iraq surge and "surges" generally. First, it further undercuts the claims of leftists and other Bush administration critics that the surge was not responsible for the stunning turnaround in Anbar province that followed our change in strategy. Critics argued that internal developments in Anbar province,not the U.S. surge, were responsible for the transformation. This claim was always implausibe -- tribal leaders almost surely would not have committed to taking on al Qaeda without our support; they hadn't before we surged. It is even less plausible now that the situation has worsened following our departure. U.S. presence is down from 35 enclaves to 5, and our forces are largely confined to their base in Ramadii and rarely accompany Iraqis on operations.

Second, developments in Anbar province show that a "surge and run" strategy -- though generally preferable to its alternatives of "cut and run" or continue to lose -- is not the best approach. The best approach would have been to maintain a more substantial presence in Anbar province, to continue to accompany Iraqis on operations, and not to turn al Qaeda prisoners over to Iraq. There were, of course, political pressures both at home and in Iraq that militated against this approach. Let's hope the price for giving in to those pressures does not include a major resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Debates about the Iraq surge are largely academic at this point except to the extent they provide lessons for Afghanistan. In my view, the lesson for Afghanistan is that we should surge, but not surge and run.

President Obama has not said in so many words that we will surge and run, only that we will begin reducing our forces in July 2011 based on conditions on the ground. My guess is that, in practice, this will mean surge and run. I hope I'm wrong.

If I'm not wrong, we can expect that some of the whatever progress the surge in Afghanistan makes likely will be undone. Moreover, by sending the signal that we intend to surge and run, Obama reduces the likelihood that local forces will assist us, and thus reduces the prospects for a successful surge in the first instance.