Federal Governance: The Tale of Two (Ohio) Cities

Federal Governance: The Tale of Two (Ohio) Cities

A chilling note from Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)

All,

A few weeks ago, the President made an impassioned, reasoned and compelling argument for the good that can be done by a strong federal government during a commencement speech at Ohio State University.

Goodbye, Columbus and hello Cincinnati.

Now, that entire argument has been badly undone by… the strongest domestic arm of the federal government, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

This is a tragedy and a disgrace for the IRS, but the real casualty is faith in a strong federal government.

What those people in Cincinnati did was almost certainly criminal (as likely was the dishonest Congressional testimony* and cover-up that began over a year ago). 

What is not in question is the fact that they singlehandedly did more to create mistrust between the American people and its government than any group since the Nixon "plumbers."

Mike

*March 2012 sworn testimony given by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman who stated: "We pride ourselves on being a nonpartisan non-political organization" and in regards to "Tea Party groups" there was "absolutely no targeting." The only possible explanations for his false testimony was that Shulman was ignorantly unprepared (highly unlikely since he answered the "targeting issue" questions while reading from prepared talking points) or he lied or he was lied to by whomever researched, prepared and vetted his talking points or the IRS is a poorly led and under-supervised rogue power unto itself. What a mess.

Understanding Terrorism by Islamic Extremists

Understanding Terrorism by Islamic Extremists
Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)

All,

The public discourse on terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists is often of limited value because their methods are so atypical of how most American’s think and act – a psychological “disconnect” that leads inevitably to misunderstanding the nature of the threat facing us as a nation.

One problem lies in terminology. The term “self-radicalized” is a meaningless statement of the obvious and plainly unhelpful. Perhaps only “collateral damage” is more harmful, a dishonest euphemism for the death of innocents.

In the end, “self-radicalization” is simply a specific example of self-actualization and conveys nothing of real use. Everyone is self-actuated as no one is coerced, for example, to become a doctor or lawyer. The decision to enter into teaching or fire fighting or the military is the result of self-actuation and every Islamic extremist terrorist, or pacifist for that matter, chose that path at some point.

Declaring someone as “self-radicalized” gets us virtually nowhere in understanding the threat as every radical Islamic terrorists is self-radicalized to one degree or another. That gets to heart of the matter, what can we conclude about the radical Islamic terrorists?

Actually, we can conclude quite a bit. First, as alluded to above, they operate along asymmetrical lines. They do not function within a “block and line “ organization chart, nor do they operate like a traditional guerilla movement. That does not mean that their form of asymmetrical warfare is not highly effective, in fact, that sense of unfamiliarity and strangeness is an asset.

Second, there are recognizable characteristics. Radical Islamic terrorists share both a belief in a perversely extreme form of Islam and a broadly common world-vision of a future that can only be realized through horrific violence.

The terrorists are unusually independent, as their actions require a deeply personal form of commitment. In other words, the radical Islamic terrorist often needs to identify the “what, when, where, and how” they can best help in winning the war and it is their responsibility to act without necessarily being asked or told.

This is nothing new. In the Marine Corps, making independent decisions based on understanding the “intent,” rather than being given explicit instructions, is a common practice and the ability to globally transmit an “intent” that eventually translated into a terrorist operation was what made Anwar Al-Awlaki such a deadly and effective al Qaeda operative.

That leads to the final point, radical Islamic extremists realize that one of the best tools to assist their fellow travelers is through social media and the internet – personal contact is valued and encouraged, if proper safeguards are taken, but not essential to success. These are not traits that only arise in the United States, for they were and are an Islamic terrorist’s modus operandi in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Maghreb, across the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Terrorism in Boston: A Marine Tells It To You

Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)

That the attackers were radical Islamic extremists from Chechnya was unsurprising as we had killed any number of their brethren murderers in Iraq and the same can be said of Afghanistan.

No doubt some are unsettled by the fact that the two terrorists had lived for a long period in the United States but not I.

Too many modern progressive Americans abandoned the idea that newcomers should embrace the core beliefs that once held the nation together; most obviously a submission to the values put forth in the Constitution. Instead, we replaced those tenets with a dubious form of individualism where “our common bond” came to be defined as superficial social interactions and certain minimal civil behaviors that, as this case so amply proves, allows the vilest of haters to pass as acceptable.

That gets to the crux of the matter: Why do they hate us?

Look to the Constitution as there is no other document that better serves to answer the question as to why radical Islamic terrorists hate America and therefore, any and all Americans. Of course, a quick corollary can be made to expand that hatred to all liberal democracies across the globe. Such is the perceived power and engendered fear associated with freedom and free societies by one-dimensional radicals.

Where to begin? The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the opening ten words defeats the ultimate goal of radical Islamic extremists everywhere: Islam will never be the established religion of the United States and, even worse, other religions not of the Book are not only permitted but treated equally with Islam.

Please do not read too much into this for hundreds of millions of Muslims are comfortable with the Constitution. It is equally true, however, that for Islamic extremists, like Chechen terrorists, the First Amendment is an affront to Allah and justifies the most savage of acts in revenge.

They see this as the wellspring of America’s war on Islam as the First Amendment eats away like a cancer at “true” Islamic values and everything else America does or does not do perpetuates this harm: our freedom of speech, our equal treatment of women under the law (which contradicts the Koran at a number of places, an unforgivable sin against Islam for the extremists), even the Thirteenth Amendment that bans slavery is a sinful act that raises America’s laws above those of a Koran that explicitly states that slaveholding is permissible but not a duty for a good Muslim.

I could go on but you get the point: Modern America’s values are deemed wrongfully incompatible with Islamic beliefs by the extremists and they will wage war against us to end our evil ways. 

We must also remember that their intolerant hate is not limited to America. India is well acquainted with these people’s hatred towards Hinduism. One of my favorite newspaper photo’s addressing this pan-hatred of other religions shows a Buddhist monk wearing his saffron robe in Southeast Asia while holding a placard declaring that, “The world is not just for Muslims” and the 2001 destruction of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan statues by the Taliban sparked shock and outrage in nations like Japan and Korea. Finally, those who suffer greatest by the hand of Islamic extremists are the millions upon millions of Muslims who do not "measure up."

After having gone to far parts of the globe to combat these “haters,” I feel safe in writing that what sets the Islamic extremist, like a Chechen terrorist, apart from the mainstream is unbridled and arrogant intolerance, unquestioned surety in their beliefs, a conviction that their life is of little importance as heaven is the reward and, since they care not for their own life, the life of their enemy – an endlessly expanding group and the object unthinking hatred – is truly worthless and can be taken without compunction.

Semper Fi,

Mike

The question is raised: If you can't be trusted to make the simple decisions in life (ex, soda container sizes) how can you be trusted in things like voting? BH

PHILOSOPHER KING FOR THE NANNY STATE

Scott Johnson, Powerline

Bowdoin College government professor Jean Yarbrough takes up the case of Bowdoin College philosophy professor Sarah Conly in the RCP column “Zero calories to zero population.” In her RCP column Professor Yarbrough responds to Professor Conly’s New York Times column“Three cheers for the nanny state,” defending Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to ban super-size sodas within his jurisdiction. I think it’s fair to say that Professor Yarborough gives Professor Conly three raspberries, on a scale of 1 to 3.

Conly is a philosopher for the Age of Obama, out to teach us that we are too foolish (i.e., cognitively inept) to take responsibility for our own choices. Despite what you may suspect, Conly’s column is lacking in any hint of irony or satirical intent. She is not out to raise questions about the nanny state utopia. She is out to serve as its philosopher king.

Professor Conly has devoted a whole book to the justification of “coercive paternalism.” Former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, you may not be surprised to learn, has warmly praised Conly’s book in the pages of the New York Review of Books. (Conly nevertheless goes too far for Sunstein.)

So what’s wrong with “coercive paternalism,” or its application to supersize soda? Professor Yarbrough comments:

Conly’s argument does raise important questions about liberty and dignity. For if we are so cognitively impaired that we cannot make wise choices about such minor matters, how can we be trusted with more important decisions? The logic of her argument points toward ever more intrusive government.

In her essay, Conly anticipates the objection that banning large size sodas is just the beginning; tomorrow these same bureaucrats will be telling you to “eat your broccoli, floss your teeth, and watch ‘PBS NewsHour’ every day.” The reason this won’t happen is because sensible paternalism is based on a “cost-benefit analysis; if it’s too painful, it’s not a good law.” Should we be reassured?

Conly’s own research agenda is frightening. On the Bowdoin College Philosophy Department website, Conly states that her next project is tentatively entitled “One: Do We Have A Right to More Children?” In it, she proposes to argue that “opposition to population regulation is based on a number of mistakes: that the right to have a family doesn’t entail the right to have as many children as you may want; that the right to control one’s body is conditional on how much harm you are doing others; and that nothing in population regulation entails that those who break the law can be forced to have abortions, or subject to any sort of punishment that is horrific. If population growth is sufficiently dangerous, it is fair for us to impose restrictions on how many children we can give birth to.”

“Coercive Paternalism” may start with soda, but its reach extends to matters at the core of our understanding of liberty and human dignity.

Like the storied liberals of Bill Buckley’s ideal type, Professor Conly wants to reach into your shower and adjust the temperature of the water. It’s only for our own good. At the least, I should think we ought to be able to take a look at the MMPI on Professor Conly and on those who assume responsibility for the management of our lives.

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)
The Korean Situation (discussion continued below in two more posts)

The latest steps by North Korea have reconfirmed long-held polices by that nation while raising the risks of war to the highest level since the early 1990s.

What we have done right

The actions taken by the Obama administration during the last few weeks have been prudent, important and well founded. Washington has hit an ideal balance of showing strength and clarifying our position to protect the peace while not escalating tensions by making both calm and accurate public statements.

What we do wrong

The ongoing error committed by many, in and out of Washington, is what intelligence professionals call the “mistake of mirror imaging.” Whenever a situation or pending crisis occurs, there are intelligence gaps. The most common and dangerous mistake policy makers can make is to fill the gaps by assuming the other side is some sort of “mirror image” of our self or some other.

For example, if you do not know how local governments are run in country X, the error is to assume they are like American local governments or if you do not understand how their air force trains then you assume they train like the RAF. More dangerously, if you do not have intelligence on their rationale for starting a war or assessing their chances of victory then you assume they think like us. That type of “mirror image” thinking gets people killed.

The Risks

We run great risks in trying to determine what North Korea is going to do for several reasons, but here are the three most important:

First, the intelligence gaps at the North Korean strategic policy level are huge. No other society on earth is more closed and less transparent than North Korea.

Second, there is no other society on earth more determined to wage a war of conquest. The combined policies of Juche, or self-reliance, and Songun, or putting every resource immediately at the disposal of the armed forces, create a radically militarized and warped society.

Third, the disadvantage of a closed society cuts both ways. Virtually every key North Korean leader, especially those in uniform, has a very poor understanding of the United States and the Republic of Korea and is dismissive of the two allies’ military might.

Will there be War?

The greatest unfulfilled dream of the Kim Dynasty is the reunification of Korea under their rule. The “unknown” is how much of a priority the newest Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, places on a war of unification.

It still seems unlikely that Kim will call a meeting to order the army to invade South Korea.

The greater risk is that the Supreme Leader will order an uncontainable military provocation.

The fear is that North Korea will launch a “limited” military strike to trigger a South Korean response by inflicting death and destruction on South Korea. The Great Leader may then decided to escalate the “limited” incident to teach the South Koreans a lesson they will not soon forget.

If the military actions escalate beyond a local strike then the war hawks in North Korea – probably led by recently appointed military commander Kim Yong-chol – will begin to whisper to the Supreme Leader that we must strike now while we are ready and before the South Koreans can mobilize or the Americans come to their aid.

The Consequences

If, God forbid, a general war breaks out and North Korea targets the civilian population in Seoul, then the slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women, and children will galvanize the South. There will soon arise a consensus that this can never be allowed to happen again. Outside diplomats, especially those in Beijing, may think a peace with a status quo ante may be possible, but the South Koreans who hold the bodies of their innocent dead children can and will drive the war to a different conclusion: the destruction of the Kim Dynasty.

China needs to understand this and needs to understand that supporting North Korea while South Korean and American soldiers are in battle will fundamentally redefine China’s relationship with the Pacific region and all for the worse. If North Korea begins a general war then the BEST solution for all, especially China, is the destruction of the North Korean regime. A unified Korea under the leadership in Seoul is in the best interests of the Korean people, and would also lead to the withdrawal of US forces on the Korean peninsula, a plus for everyone, to include the rulers in Beijing.

Semper Fi,

Mike

April 4, 2012 (continued from above)

Harry,

The NKs "know" they are tougher than the South Koreans, it is an article of faith and not subject to analysis or reflection. 

Also remember that until the mid-1970s, the NK standard of living was higher than that of South Korea (due to the fact that most of the 1950-1953 war was fought in the south and that Japan built all the industries and production facilities in the north because of access to water and hydroelectric power from the mountain dams they built (like the Chosin Reservoir)).

As for the spies, the message does not get through and here are two quick stories:

The #4 leader in NK, Hwang Jang-yop,  defected in the late 1990s and was flabbergasted at how strong and rich South Korea was -- showing that even the most senior leaders were living in a "dream world." 

On the other end of the spectrum, a special operations commando trained to infiltrate South Korea went on a mission that went bad and was captured at a farm house.

Asked why he did not eat and flee, he explained that he felt he had severals hours to get away as no farmers in NK have telephones in their homes -- only very senior communist party (WPK) officials have home phones.  

His conclusion: It was "impossible" for a South Korean farmer to telephone the police.

From top to bottom, the NKs underestimate their enemy (ROK/US). That is why a war of miscalculation keeps people awake at night: The NKs believe their own propaganda.

Mike

April 5, 2012 (continued from above)

RE: China

You are right, in my opinion, in concluding that China does not currently want a unified Korea under Seoul. My imperfect point was that we need to talk to the Chinese now and let them know where we stand and how that stand can benefit China if they think it through.

If we point out the history of German reunification in the 1990's then they should see that Korea would be tied up "fixing" the north for the next two decades, making it a non-existent threat. Add in the fact that their nightmare about a massive flow of refugees into NE China would go away as N Koreans want to go south plus the advantage mentioned about getting the US military out of the Korean peninsula and they might change their mind.

RE: Influencing NK Leaders

If I learned one thing over three decades of watching NK leaders, it is that when it comes to major policy positions they are going to do what they want to do -- and to hell with everyone else. 

Beyond bizarre extremes (we surrender unconditionally to NK's demands or we declare war on NK), almost everything we do or say is irrelevant on major NK policy choices. Our limited leverage only works when dealing with lower-tier policy issues.

And therein lies the rub.

We, and most of the rest of the international community, keep offering carrots and sticks to modify their behavior on big issues. For NK, if the pursuit of major policy coincides with getting rewarded then fine, they will take it, and if that means getting punished, they will take on that as well.

It is equally true that they will manipulate the negotiations to get everything they can get: Their philosophy is that that there is a sucker born everyday and someone has to fleece the fool so it may as well be NK.

The problem with that reality is that to many onlookers, the acceptance of rewards and punishments creates an illusion that outside influences can modify/change NK's stance on a major policy position, which of course, is untrue.

Add in the American control freaks on the right and left who feel Washington is sole source of world power, and you have a lot people running around with very wrongheaded ideas.

Mike

Sensory deprivation...

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY’LL PRINT IT?”

TOM LIPSCOMB: “HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY’LL PRINT IT?”

Scott Johnson, Powerline

Investigative reporter/editor Tom Lipscomb is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future (USC) and the founder of Times Books. He broke stories on questions about the military records of both John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election in the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Sun. Tom argues that the media’s allegiance to the Democratic Party is suppressing news:

In one of the most egregious violations of American pretensions to an independent press, John Kerry conspired with the Boston Globe, Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times organizations to set the ground rules for the long awaited release of his papers after his defeat in 2004.

No one has revealed what the agreement was, but there had been eager anticipation by the public and news media punctuated by lies and promises by Kerry to release them for years before.

When they were finally “released,” the receiving news organizations, none of which had shown any ability or interest in pursuing the numerous discrepancies in Kerry’s claimed war experiences as shown by other records and witnesses, preferring to characterize them as “not proven,” proceeded to put out one to two days’ brief extracts from the papers which contained little of note besides Kerry’s inferior (to George Bush’s) college grades.

When I pressed those news organizations, and others for access, they refused. I reminded them I had run the book publishing company that published The Pentagon Papers in their entirety and at considerable expense, and that today with internet publishing, it would cost practically nothing to put them entirely on line in the interest of answering the public’s many questions about Kerry. And I asked, as with the Pentagon Papers, wasn’t it in the public interest to do so?

They still refused to give access to anyone.

It seems highly likely to me, from what I had already learned about the many fraudulent statements in the material I had been able to see, that had they done so, Kerry would never have become our Secretary of State.

It was the first case I know of showing the press as an outrageously partisan player in American politics, far less interested in its traditional role of informing the public what it wished to know and ought to be aware of than protecting their political allies. And interestingly, circulation and advertising in newspapers and magazines suffered a catastrophic drop about the same time from which it is not recovering.

The strange case of the invisible Hillary Clinton-Sid Blumenthal correspondence might well be in that tradition. Only this time it is worse.

The coverup on Benghazi is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the American Presidency. There can be little doubt that the details of that scandal which may well have affected a Presidential election, were carefully left in doubt by mainstream media journalists, more than 80 percent of whom were in support of the Obama administration.

We don’t know which members of the American press are refusing to publish or even reveal what they know about the copies of the Clinton-Blumenthal e-mails “Guccifer” claims to have supplied them, but if there is one thing we do know now it is that we can no longer trust the mainstream media to report in the tradition of Adolph Ochs’s instruction to his New York Times: “without fear or favor.”

“Guccifer” should be smart enough to give them directly to “Thesmokinggun” or other investigative internet media, if he wants to get these emails to the public.

As Forbes points out in a fine and well-balanced account, left hanging by their own mainstream media, Americans only have access to what is claimed in the “Guccifer” material are Russian sources like Pravda, Moscow Times, and RT. Those are hardly sources without major political spin games of their own.

Some may remember the question hanging in the air at the end of the of Sydney Pollack’s film Three Days of the Condor. A CIA agent challenges whistleblower Robert Redford who has just given classified material on a scandal to the New York Times. “How do you know they’ll print it?” he asked.

It seemed a ridiculous question back in 1975, still a year before America’s bicentennial celebration. Of course they would publish it. As Abe Rosenthal said to me one day about some hot manuscript: “If I get my hands on it, it is going in the paper.”

Now, it is a valid question. News media are no longer media. They are active partisan players in American politics. And it appears they decide what the “news” is according to what fits their scenario, rather than what’s fit to print.

MISSILE DEFENSE, THEN AND NOW

MISSILE DEFENSE, THEN AND NOW

John Hinderacker, Powerline

Readers of a certain age will recall the battles over missile defense that raged during the Reagan administration. Virtually all Democrats opposed all forms of missile defense, deeming the concept not only unfeasible–”like hitting a bullet with a bullet,” as though that were impossible–but destabilizing as well. John Kerry’s denunciations of missile defense were typical: “a dream based on illusion, but one which could have real and terrible consequences,” As recently as 2008, Barack Obama said that he didn’t “agree with a missile defense system” and promised to slash funding for development of such systems. He did, too.

I was reminded of all of this by a low-key, matter of fact story in today’s newspapers:

The Obama administration will add 14 interceptors to a West Coast-based missile defense system, reflecting concern about North Korea’s focus on developing nuclear weapons and its advances in long-range missile technology, officials said Friday. …

The Pentagon intends to add the 14 interceptors to 30 already in place in California and Alaska. That will expand the system’s ability to shoot down long-range missiles in flight before they could reach U.S. territory. …

“As we think about our homeland missile-defense posture, we do not have a ‘just-in-time’ policy,” [James Miller, defense undersecretary for policy] said. “Our policy is to stay ahead of the threat — and to continue to ensure that we are ahead of any potential future Iranian or North Korean ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capability.”

Well, that is good news. Still, one wonders: has anyone ever asked Secretary of State John Kerry whether he now admits that he was wrong about missile defense being a “dream based on an illusion,” with “real and terrible consequences?” Or how about the Democratic Senators and Congressmen, many of them still in office, who bitterly attacked President Reagan for wanting to develop missile defense systems, and President Bush for wanting to deploy such systems? Does anyone ever ask whether they have changed their minds, or how they now feel about our ability to defend against North Korean missiles?

Being a Democrat means never being reminded of the times when you were wrong.

Oh yeah, stay on his good side!

Why North Korean “Reality” Is Important

Important word from Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

The fear of war in East Asia is not based on a reality that the region's nations are edging towards conflict because of state supported terrorism or religious hatred or over some other irresolvable problem.

China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States all want peace and work quite well together in promoting regional stability and economic progress.

The threat to peace comes from a North Korean leadership that has such a poor grasp of reality that it might actually think it would be logical to start a war because they truly believe they will win it.

I base this conclusion, in part, on my experiences as a former Marine intelligence officer that included duty with Combined Intelligence Section, Combined Marine Forces Command in Korea.

To better understand my point visit the link below, a short video for North Koreans to “educate” them about the United States.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/alleged-north-korean-propaganda-video-americans-live-today-215322616.html

Before you dismiss it as silliness, remember that there is no freedom of the press in North Korea. That video is the “real world” for all but a fraction of a percent of the population. It is NOT superficial propaganda or America-bashing.

The video represents the “truth” for the vast majority of the North Korean people, to include many in the highest ranks of the military and communist party -- the leaders who will decide if a new war against South Korea and the United States is “winnable.”

That is what scares people. After watching the video, if I were a North Korean army general, I would be more than confident that North Korea could defeat such a crippled nation so I would approve of an attack if the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, asked my opinion.

North Koreans have watched over million of their fellows starve to death over the last twenty years (the typical North Korean is several inches shorter than their South Korean counterpart due to poor diet), there is only one car or truck for every one hundred citizens and most of those are owned by the military, their GPD standard of living is under $2,000 per capita and most homes are without electricity.

The idea that the United States has a $15 trillion GPD, the largest in the world, a land were there are eight vehicles for every ten people, where obesity from overeating is a major health concern, where the average home is valued above $200,000 and the GPD standard of living is $48,000 per capita is pure science fiction to North Korea’s leaders.

For someone living in North Korea, the real strength of the United States is beyond anything in their experience and is unimaginable. The video, however, represents a life every North Korean can relate to and BELIEVE.

That is why so many serious people in the rest of world worry over what North Korea will do or not do.

The final layer of uncertainty is that the radical socialist-dynastic regime in North Korea has a frighteningly wrong view of the 1950-1953 Korean War and that influences how they see the prospects of another war.

They not only grossly underestimate the military and economic power of the United States and the Republic of Korea today as compared to sixty years ago, they also badly underestimate the critical role played by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in saving the North from complete destruction during the 1950-1953 war.

Most senior North Korean officials feel they could have won that war and that they will surely win the next round now that they have nuclear weapons and what they think are "modern" arms.

Those are the types of miscalculation that start wars.

Mike

OBAMA FLAILS AS REPUBLICANS STAND FIRM ON SEQUESTER

OBAMA FLAILS AS REPUBLICANS STAND FIRM ON SEQUESTER

By: Michael Barone

They’re flailing. That’s the impression I get from watching Barack Obama and his White House over the past week.

Things haven’t gone as they expected. The House Republicans were supposed to cave in on the sequester, as they did on the fiscal cliff at the beginning of the year.

They would be so desperate to avoid the sequester’s mandatory defense cuts, the theory went, that they would agree to higher taxes (through closing loopholes) on high earners.

But the Republicans didn’t deal. They decided to take the sequester cuts and make them the basis for a continuing resolution funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

Obama responded by threatening all sorts of dire consequences — Head Start kids left out in the snow, airline security lines as far as the eye can see.

Republicans would take the blame, the Obama folks believed. Polls showed they were far less popular than the president.

Then on Tuesday it was announced that White House tours were cancelled. The sequester meant there wasn’t enough money to host those high school kids from Waverly, Iowa.

Suddenly, it became apparent that it was Obama’s poll numbers that were falling. Not to the level of congressional Republicans’ admittedly dreadful numbers. But enough that the Quinnipiac poll — whose 2012 numbers tilted a bit toward Democrats — showed him with only 45 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval.

Then the president who doesn’t like spending much time with even Democratic members of Congress suddenly invited 12 Republican senators to dinner at the Jefferson Hotel. He even paid out of his own pocket!

And on Thursday, he invited House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and ranking Democrat Chris Van Hollen to lunch at the White House.

This is the same Paul Ryan whom Obama insulted after inviting him to a presidential speech at George Washington University. Presumably the lunch was insult-free.

Meanwhile, a top White House aide was dispatched to make Obama’s case to a heavily Republican audience.

The message coming from the White House seems to be that Obama has made concessions, including spending cuts, and is really, sincerely interested in a grand bargain with Republicans on entitlements.

He has already, the argument goes, agreed to using the chained CPI — an inflation measure that produces lower cost-of-living adjustments to entitlement and other programs.

For this, he’s taken some heat from Democrats. So Republicans should understand that he is dealing in good faith and should be willing to agree to increased revenues by removing tax preferences for high earners.

The Obama folks are correct in saying that Speaker John Boehner was willing to do that during the summer 2011 grand bargain negotiations.

But that proposed deal did not include tax rate increases. Now that Obama extracted higher tax rates on earners over $400,000 in the fiscal cliff deal, Boehner and other Republicans insist that’s all the revenue increases they’ll agree to.

This comes amid stories that Obama’s chief political goal is helping his fellow Democrats win a House majority in 2014 and as his Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America) is still cranking out press releases about the dire effects of the sequester.

It’s not unheard of for a politician to make public threats and private blandishments at the opposing party at the same time.

But it is sometimes awkward. Especially if the threats and blandishments are not entirely credible.

Democrats have some chance of winning the 17 seats they need for a House majority. But it’s an uphill climb. Even though Obama won 51 percent of the vote in 2012, he did not carry a majority of House districts.

And there is some chance Republicans will capture the six seats they need for a Senate majority. Seven Democratic incumbents are running in states Mitt Romney carried.

And the retirements of incumbent Democrats in West Virginia, Iowa and, as announced Friday, Michigan may put those seats in play.

As for blandishments, Boehner is not the only Republican who has concluded that Obama is not capable of good-faith negotiating.

Republicans argue that revenues are approaching the norm of 19 percent of gross domestic product and that spending needs to come down more from its historic high of 25 percent of GDP.

They’re making a little bit of headway on that by accepting the sequester. Obama’s flailing seems unlikely to persuade them to change course.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics

PJ O'Rourke... enough said!

P.J O’WOW!

Steven Hayward in Conservatism, Powerline

Churchill used to say somewhere that only someone with a sense of humor could understand the most serious things in life.  That’s one reason I’ve always told people that they should take the political humorist P.J. O’Rourke more seriously—deep down inside, his political humor is anchored in a grasp of some fundamental political truths.  Like Will Rogers, or Mark Twain, his work conveys a serious teaching, and, like Jon Stewart and comics on the left, he can reach younger voters in ways that straight up commentary from old fogies likes me can’t.

This is preface to bringing your attention to a bracing article O’Rourke wrote at the Weekly Standard right after the 2008 election and which recently surfaced again on several blogs.  It is even more salient today than it was in 2008: “We Blew It.”  It is a thoroughgoing self-criticism of the complacency and mistakes of the conservative movement going back to the Reagan years.  We had the left cornered in a box canyon, he says, and let them escape.  And in recent years we’ve failed to perceive how the political landscape was shifting beneath our feet.  There’s some of the usual O’Rourkian wit here and there, but on the whole this is a deeply serious article.  It is very much worth reading the whole thing, but herewith samples from the beginning and the end of the piece:

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park. . .

We, the conservatives, who do understand the free market, had the responsibility to–as it were–foreclose upon this mess. The market is a measurement, but that measuring does not work to the advantage of a nation or its citizens unless the assessments of volume, circumference, and weight are conducted with transparency and under the rule of law. We’ve had the rule of law largely in our hands since 1980. Where is the transparency? It’s one more job we botched.

Although I must say we’re doing good work on our final task–attaching the garden hose to our car’s exhaust pipe and running it in through a vent window. Barack and Michelle will be by in a moment with some subsidized ethanol to top up our gas tank. And then we can turn the key.

I don’t agree with every particular of P.J.’s piece, but I agree with its self-critical spirit.  (And in fact the chapter on the 1984 election in my Age of Reagan book makes the point that the Reagan campaign made a huge strategic blunder by not seeking to finish off liberalism and the Democratic Party in that election—that “morning in America” was a bad strategy for the long-run.)  Here’s part of how I put the matter in a memo I wrote and circulated to some conservative leaders a couple of years ago (before, needless to say, the re-election of Obama):

How did the Left get the drop on us?  In the early- to mid-1990s we thought we had won on the major premises of politics and policy—Francis Fukuyama told us so!—such that what was needed from the likes of us was the technical work of unraveling piece-by-piece the architecture of the administrative-welfare state.  The reasons for thinking this way were all around us, from the spectacular fall of the Berlin Wall to the market liberalizations proceeding apace in nearly every corner of the world to the spectacular rout of Hillarycare and the noticeable acceptance of market logic within Clintonite & Blairist liberalism.  These encouraging signs were profoundly misleading.  The problem with thinking you are riding a “wave of history” is that the wave might leave you stranded on a sandbar far from shore.  Just ask Newt.

I have a field theory for this that is simple but hopefully not simplistic.  We should not repair behind exogenous excuses about the surprise of the housing bubble/financial collapse and the extraordinary phenomenon of Obamamania.  The seeds of decay and regress should have been evident long before these events.  We should be honest: we—our cause, our movement—became complacent.   We became too narrowly focused on policy studies to the exclusion of the sustained public argument about the principles and practices of a free society that were the predicate of policy reforms.  We forgot the “public” part of “public policy” studies. . .

I don’t think we ever fully appreciated, as Hayek did as far back as the 1960s, that the nature of the challenge from the Left would change profoundly going forward from that point, and become much more difficult.  Instead I think the conservative intellectual movement, and its institutions, became entirely too self-congratulatory (which was one of the mistakes the Left made starting in the 1960s).

In some ways we have become a mirror image of the very problem we are set against: we are bogged down in petty details instead of broad principles.

Now, one obvious consequence of the loss of the conservative intellectual movement’s focus on the broader public argument part of “public policy studies” is that we have a crop of presidential candidates who speak almost entirely in technocratic tones.  And so we get a crop of candidates who promulgate 59-point jobs plans.  Why not?  That tends to be what they see from us [think tankers] most of the time.  Conservatives who talk incessantly of finding “the next Reagan” are missing the point in looking for that particular skill set and style (though those are not unimportant things); a large part of what made Reagan effective was that he represented the culmination of a generation of patient public argument to change public opinion on general principles.  For a variety of reasons I do not put much stock in the public opinion poll data that shows the public is “with us” on a variety of discrete questions.

Well, it was a long memo, and this is enough.  But it does explain part of why I decided to leave Washington last year, and try something else.  P.J.—let’s party!

Cutting Budgets in Government

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired) and Superintendent of Business Services for a California school district.

All,

 

Sequestration has come to pass and now the real work begins. In California, the school district where I worked saw its funding cut by over 25% in a few short years, a decrease that surpassed the cuts made during the Great Depression.

We had to constantly keep before us the truth that our core responsibility was to teach kids the 3 R’s (for simplicity’s sake) and we did it.

How: Looking at every possible aspect of how we educated kids to see where we could cut spending.

First and foremost, you have to be able to distinguish what services you must provide versus what services you want to provide. In other words, you have to have crystal clear picture of why your organizations exists – what is your fundamental purpose and accomplish that mission and that mission only.

Once you have done that then you protect the core and start cutting the rest. In the case of a school district, all the initial cuts needed to be as far away from the classroom as possible.

That also meant looking at the little things as well as the big things.

For big-ticket examples, put off capital improvements. Reduce travel to a minimum and eliminate almost all conferences. When staff leave, (except essential employees, your equivalent of classroom teachers) do not fill their positions.

Before we had to go the route of furloughs, we carefully asked for input/ideas/thoughts for saving money from the employees that were going to suffer from the furloughs. We were amazed at how many great ideas they came up with which proves once again that managers do not have all the answers. We still eventually had to go the furlough route, but the actual number of days turned out to be less than half of the initial plan.

Please note the use of the phrase “carefully asked.” If not then all the ideas will devolve into cutting the other guys budget i.e. the high school staff says cut the elementary schools and vice versa. They need to offer up ideas on how to cut their part of the pie.

For small examples, you can save a lot of money by reducing the number of printers, microwaves, copiers, office refrigerators, coffee pots, etc. You can extend the service life of computers, turn off the lights and regulate thermostat settings.

 

One last point, you may have noticed during the above discussion there was an emphasis on student education and not about school employees. That is because schools exist for the kids, not the adults.

The U.S. Government exists for the benefit of the citizens not the employees. Never forget that.

Mike