Monday, September 27, 2010
NO SURPRISE HERE
John Hinderacker, Powerline
Glenn Reynolds has done a series of posts on economic news at InstaPundit under the heading "Unexpected!" The failure of the administration's liberal economic policies to bear fruit--the fact that, on the contrary, they have worsened our economic problems--is always unexpected to those who, apparently, have no knowledge of economic history. Some stories, though, are not just foreseeable but inevitable. This one, from the New York Times, is in that category: Job Loss Looms as Part of Stimulus Act Expires.
Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion stimulus act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, at nonprofit organizations and at many small businesses. ...
The money that pays Mr. Davis's salary, and the salaries of tens of thousands of other people around the country, will dry up after next Thursday, when the welfare program in the stimulus act that pays the bills for those jobs is set to expire. While the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress want to extend the program, they are meeting stiff resistance from Republicans, many of whom oppose all things stimulus.
So, this is a surprise to whom, exactly? When the stimulus bill poured many millions of dollars into subsidizing employment by state and local governments, countless commentators pointed out that the impact would be temporary at best, since the subsidy would inevitably run out, leaving those governments exactly where they were in the first place--either unwilling or unable to hire the workers in question on a long-term basis. The workers, meanwhile, would only have deferred the need to find a job that will support them and their families for the long haul.
Now, the Times reports that Democrats want the subsidies extended. Naturally. But for how long? Do they want Washington to subsidize indefinitely employment that is otherwise uneconomic? The federal government could pay people to dig holes and fill them in again, and most Democrats, I suspect, would consider that a stimulus to the economy.
The case is much the same with respect to the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefits that have been enacted by the Democratic Congress. Most Democrats, I suspect, don't understand why such benefits should ever expire. Economists and many others with common sense, meanwhile, warned that extensions of unemployment benefits would help keep unemployment high. That has turned out to be true, but don't expect the Dems to catch on any time soon.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Visigoths at the gate?
When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation.
I don't blame anyone for seeking a deus ex machina when about to be swept out to sea. But this salvation du jour is flimsier than most.
In fact, the big political story of the year is the contrary: that a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership or discernible organization has been merged with such relative ease into the Republican Party.
The Tea Party could have become Perot '92, an anti-government movement that spurned the Republicans, went third-party and cost George H.W. Bush reelection, ending 12 years of Republican rule. Had the Tea Party gone that route, it would have drained the Republican Party of its most mobilized supporters and deprived Republicans of the sweeping victory that awaits them on Nov. 2.
Instead, it planted its flag within the party and, with its remarkable energy, created the enthusiasm gap. Such gaps are measurable. This one is a chasm. This year's turnout for the Democratic primaries (as a percentage of eligible voters) was the lowest ever recorded. Republican turnout was the highest since 1970.
True, Christine O'Donnell's nomination in Delaware may cost the Republicans an otherwise safe seat (and possibly control of the Senate), and Sharron Angle in Nevada is running only neck-and-neck with an unpopular Harry Reid. On balance, however, the Tea Party contribution is a large net plus, with its support for such strong candidates as Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Joe Miller of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah. Even Rand Paul, he of the shaky start in Kentucky, sports an eight-point lead. All this in addition to the significant Tea Party contribution to the tide that will carry dozens of Republicans into the House.
Nonetheless, some Democrats have convinced themselves that they have found the issue with which to salvage 2010. "President Obama's political advisers," reports the New York Times, "are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists."
Sweet irony. Fear-over-hope rides again, this time with Democrats in the saddle warning darkly about "the Republican Tea Party" (Joe Biden). Message: Vote Democratic and save the nation from a Visigoth mob with a barely concealed tinge of racism.
First, this is so at variance with reality that it's hard to believe even liberals believe it. The largest Tea Party event yet was the recent Glenn Beck rally on the Mall. The hordes descending turned out to be several hundred thousand cheerful folks in what, by all accounts, had the feel of a church picnic. And they left the place nearly spotless -- the first revolution in recorded history that collected its own trash.
Second, the general public is fairly evenly split in its views of the Tea Party. It experiences none of the horror that liberals do -- and think others should. Moreover, the electorate supports by 2-to-1 the Tea Party signature issues of smaller government and lower taxes.
Third, you would hardly vote against the Republican in your state just because there might be a (perceived) too-conservative Republican running somewhere else. How would, say, Paul running in Kentucky deter someone from voting for Mark Kirk in Illinois? Or, to flip the parties, will anyone in Nevada refuse to vote for Harry Reid because Chris Coons, a once self-described "bearded Marxist," is running as a Democrat in Delaware?
Fourth, what sane Democrat wants to nationalize an election at a time of 9.6 percent unemployment and such disappointment with Obama that just this week several of his own dreamy 2008 supporters turned on him at a cozy town hall? The Democrats' only hope is to run local campaigns on local issues. That's how John Murtha's former district director hung on to his boss's seat in a special election in Pennsylvania.
Newt Gingrich had to work hard -- getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America -- to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans -- nationalize the election, gratis -- in 2010. As a very recent former president -- now preferred (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 1) in bellwether Ohio over the current one by 50 percent to 42 percent -- once said: Bring 'em on.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Obama’s Delusions of Competence
The president overestimates the government's ability to solve problems.
We Have a Problem” proclaims Vanity Fair magazine. In an eerie echo of the verdicts passed during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, namely that the presidency was “too big for one man,” Vanity Fair now declares “The evidence that Washington cannot function — that it’s ‘broken,’ as Vice President Joe Biden has said — is all around.”
The Vanity Fair piece is a long apologia for President Obama’s perceived ineffectiveness, and reflects — no surprise here — the Obama interpretation of events. “The G.O.P.,” writes Todd Purdum, “has spent most of the period since the inauguration in near lockstep refusal to give the president votes for any of his major initiatives, from the economic-stimulus bill to health-care reform.” This is President Obama’s constant plaint — though it rings hollow coming from someone who took office with comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress.
But in the course of documenting the difficulty of governing, Vanity Fair does make a conservative point. Government is too big. Purdum quotes from just one day’s Federal Register:
The edition for this ordinary Wednesday comes in at 350 pages of dense, dark type. It is unimaginably varied: you’ll find rules for the importation of Chinese honey; proposed conservation standards for home furnaces; permitting procedures for the experimental use of pesticides; announcements concerning the awarding of new radio and TV licenses; and hundreds of other items.
The president himself doesn’t at all concede that government is attempting to do too much (and failing at most of it). On the contrary, his vanity (and it is a common one for left-wingers) is that he believes his particular ideas on business investment, medical procedures, housing, and thousands of other matters are the solutions to our woes, but “politics” keeps getting in the way.
We’ve seen President Obama’s delusions of expertise on display before. Without any trial period, demonstration project, or peer-reviewed study, the federal government dictated that medical records be digitalized and extracted $19 billion from taxpayers to fund the transition. The new systems, the president insisted, would prevent errors, reduce costs, and improve patient care. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, “a 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that hospitals with more-advanced electronic systems fared no better than other hospitals on measures of administrative costs. . . . Meanwhile, many doctors and nurses say they’re frustrated with the technology. While some say electronic records have improved the way they practice medicine, many others say the systems are time-consuming distractions that take away from patient care.”
Digitalized medical records would certainly have evolved with time — just as paper books and newspapers are rapidly losing ground to their electronic competitors. But without government intrusion, the programs would have developed organically, adjusting to user feedback and actual experience — and costing the taxpayers nothing.
At his September 10 press conference, the president announced another “common sense” idea: We must stop “giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas.” A familiar trope from the 2008 campaign, this “idea” is really another tax increase.
The president’s refrain notwithstanding, there is no section of the U.S. tax code that rewards U.S. companies for outsourcing American jobs. American firms pay taxes on their worldwide income. Our effective corporate tax rate, the highest in the OECD according to a Cato Institute study, puts our companies at a competitive disadvantage abroad. The tax code accordingly does permit U.S. multinationals to “defer” taxes on income earned abroad that is reinvested abroad. They pay taxes on that income only when they repatriate the earnings to the United States.
But eliminating the “deferral” would simply increase corporate rates still further, undercutting the profitability of American companies with overseas operations. As Cato’s Daniel Griswold explains, “There is no evidence that expanding employment at U.S.- owned affiliates comes at the expense of overall employment by parent companies back home in the United States. In fact, the evidence and experience of U.S. multinational companies points in the opposite direction: foreign and domestic operations tend to complement each other and expand together. . . . More activity and sales abroad often require the hiring of more managers, accountants, lawyers, engineers, and production workers at the parent company.”
Reducing the rate of corporate taxation would make U.S. companies more competitive overseas while also attracting more foreign investment here.
But reducing taxes, like reducing regulation, or permitting the market to shape digital medical records, offends President Obama’s preference for top-down decision-making. He isn’t deciding, Carter-like, who should use the White House tennis courts, but he is attempting to do pretty much everything else, with similar results.
– Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)
President Obama, Newt Gingrich, the Manhattan Mosque, and Burning Books
All,
It is not too often that I get up the chutzpah (being Irish Catholic) to criticize both President Obama and Newt Gingrich in one e-mail. The controversy over the Mosque in Manhattan with its attendant drama has provided that ample pause for thoughtful written reflection, or so I kid myself.
1. Mr. President, words matter. Recently you made a statement that is as dangerous to the lives of Americans abroad as the foolishness of some very minor minister in Florida.
Here is where the damage was done: "...the idea that we would burn sacred texts." We? WE, Mr. President?
As my Marine Drill Instructor used to say: "Unless there is a mouse in your pocket, there ain't no WE here!" Of course, on those occasions that was followed by an endearing epithet like "maggot," "moron," "numb nuts," etc. But you are the President and I was simply an aspiring Marine.
Sir, let me set the record straight, I am as disgusted and offended by the proposed Quran burning as anyone. Of course, I was equally disgusted and offended by the "art show" presenting a crucifix of Jesus Christ submerged in a jar of urine. There wasn't any "we" in that sorry episode either.
When the President of the United States of America says "we" it means us all. The President is saying “we” did it and “we” are all responsible. That is plain wrong. What it does is give an official sanction to al Qaeda and their ilk, by the highest level of our representative government, to take revenge for this possible outrage against any and all of "we."
Having served as a Marine once in the Balkans and twice in Iraq, I know from savage personal experience what form that revenge will take. I fully know that "we" means targeting for death any American man, woman, or child, at any place and at any time.
While I do hold our Commander in Chief responsible for the words he chooses this is also an indictment of his senior advisors for National Security, Counterterrorism and Homeland Security. That our President would use “we” i.e. “all Americans” to affix responsibility to this outrageous act to a worldwide audience must lie squarely at their feet. Shame on them for their failure to the President, the American men and women serving today in harms way, and to the American people as a whole.
2. Newt! Although I frequently disagree with you there are very few Americans who make as compelling and reasoned an argument in favor of their convictions as you. However, a friend sent a newsletter you wrote in July entitled: “Newt Gingrich Statement on Proposed Mosque/Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero.” Here is my opining on that.
Newt Gingrich is right in publicly "shaming" Saudi Arabia about their intolerance of other faiths. However, he creates a false nexus between the proposed Cordoba House and Saudi Arabia. This is not a project created and funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For example, it would be as if one opposed the building of a new health clinic associated with the Cedars-Sinai Hospital because one opposes the policies of Israel. The connection is too frail to accept as valid.
As to the name “Cordoba” to which Mr. Gingrich took offense, rather than a celebration of Islamic military prowess it can equally be argued as a warning of the limitations and failures of spreading Islam through the sword vice peaceful evangelical conversion. The Arab armies in Spain did convert a church in Cordoba into a mosque only to see it return as an even grander church, a cathedral, in point of fact. “Cordoba” can also be seen a lesson on how the gains of an armed jihad can be as fleeting and futile as the blowing breeze.
3. Conclusions on the Mosque
There needs to be full transparency regarding the project leaders and funding sources for this development. Every project leader and donor should publicly and on the record pledge full and unqualified support of freedom of religion and religious tolerance in the United States of America.
If they refuse to make that public avowal then this project should face strong and continuous public condemnation, protest, boycott, and other appropriate acts of civil disobedience as the price to be paid for accepting leadership and/or funding from those who practice, aid, or abet religious intolerance in a free and democratic republic.
If you want to defeat an unjust and intolerant act here is the rule to follow: Non-violent advocacy of the truth is a far more powerful path to religious tolerance within the boundaries our great nation than any intolerant provocation or tactic.
If the leaders and financial backers of the “Cordoba House in Manhattan” are tolerant and peacemakers as we define those terms in the United States then they have nothing to fear. If the case is otherwise then the truth will out and they will fail.
Semper Fi,
Mike
Paul Mirengoff of Powerline
Hugh Hewitt directs our attention to this report by a Los Angeles Times blogger/reporting, according to which 41 Obama administration officials owe $831,000 in back taxes. That's more than $20,000 per official -- not quite Tim Geithner territory but bad enough.
Nor are things much better on Capitol Hill. There, it has beenreported, just 638 workers owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes.
As I understand it, these numbers focus on the leading miscreants and exclude administration officials and congressional staffers who have fully met their tax obligations. But it's still alarming to think that so many within these two categories have stiffed the government they represent.
And here's one more. According to the same LA TImes piece, at the Justice Department, our primary federal law enforcement agency, 1,971 employees owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.
It's no secret that our governing class sees itself as entitled. Even so, I would not have thought that the sense of entitlement extends quite this far.
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