It is a better outcome than federal bailouts.
Michael Barone
Monday, November 29, 2010
We won’t be able to say we weren’t warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government-borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, predicted this month. “The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same.”
Bowles is talking about what the business press calls bond-market vigilantes. People with capital are currently willing to loan money to the federal government, by buying U.S. bonds at low interest rates. That’s because interest rates are generally low and because Treasury bonds are regarded as the safest investment in the world.
But what if they aren’t? What if investors suddenly perceive a higher risk and demand a higher return? That’s what Bowles is talking about, and there are signs it may be starting to happen. The Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing — QE2 — was intended to lower the interest rate on long-term bonds. Instead, the rate has been going up.
The federal government still seems a long way from the disaster Bowles envisions. But some state governments aren’t.
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Washington earlier this year to get $7 billion for his state government, which resorted to paying off vendors with scrip and delaying state-income-tax refunds. Illinois seems to be in even worse shape. A recent credit rating showed it weaker than Iceland and only slightly stronger than Iraq.
It’s no mystery why these state governments — and those of New York and New Jersey, as well — are in such bad fiscal shape. These are the parts of America where the public-employee unions have been calling the shots, insisting on expanded payrolls, ever higher pay, hugely generous fringe benefits, and utterly unsustainable pension promises.
The prospect is that the bond market will quit financing California and Illinois long before it quits financing the federal government. This may already be happening. Earlier this month, California could sell only $6 billion of $10 billion in revenue-anticipation notes it put on the market.
Individual investors have been selling off state and local municipal bonds this month. Meredith Whitney, the financial expert who first spotted Citigroup’s overexposure to mortgage-backed securities, is now predicting a sell-off in the municipal bond market.
So it’s entirely possible that some state government — California and Illinois, facing $25 billion and $15 billion deficits, are likely suspects — will be coming to Washington some time in the next two years in search of a bailout. The Obama administration may be sympathetic. It’s channeled stimulus money to states and TARP money to General Motors and Chrysler in large part to bail out its labor-union allies.
But the Republican House is not likely to share that disposition, and it’s hard to see how tapped-out state governments can get 60 votes in a 53–47 Democratic Senate.
How to avoid this scenario? University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggests that Congress pass a law allowing states to go bankrupt.
Skeel, a bankruptcy expert, notes that a Depression-era statute allows local governments to go into bankruptcy. Some have done so: Orange County, Calif., in 1994, Vallejo, Calif., in 2008. Others — perhaps a dozen small municipalities in Michigan — are headed that way.
A state-bankruptcy law would not let creditors thrust a state into bankruptcy — that would violate state sovereignty. But it would allow a state government going into bankruptcy to force a “cram down,” imposing a haircut on bondholders, and to rewrite its union contracts.
The threat of bankruptcy would put a powerful weapon in the hands of governors and legislatures: They can tell their unions that they have to accept cuts now or face a much more dire fate in bankruptcy court.
It’s not clear that governors like California’s Jerry Brown, who first authorized public-employee unions in the 1970s, or Illinois’s Pat Quinn will be eager to use such a threat against unions, which have been the Democratic party’s longtime allies and financiers.
But the bond market could force their hand and seems already to be pushing in that direction. And, as Bowles notes, when the markets come, they will be swift and severe.
The policy arguments for a bailout of California or Illinois public-employee-union members are incredibly weak. If Congress allows state bankruptcies, it might prevent a crisis that is plainly looming.
Monday, November 29, 2010
California’s Real Fantasyland
By Meredith Turney
Monday, November 29, 2010
In 1955, Walt Disney opened his first amusement park in Anaheim, California. Disneyland has become the most successful amusement park in the world, with an estimated 600 million visitors since it first opened its gates 55 years ago. One of the most popular parts of the park is Fantasyland. Children and adults alike are dazzled by whimsical rides stretching the imagination, envisioning a blissfully perfect world.
Perhaps that’s why fantasy is such an entertaining venture. For just a few moments, we can set aside the troubles and trials of everyday life and visualize things that defy logic or mask the harsh realities of the real world. Unfortunately, California is trying to set up its own Fantasyland outside Disneyland’s walls, passing fantasy-inspired budgets that defy the laws of finance by spending much more than the state can possibly take in. And the Golden State is about to discover that trying to create a fantasy in the real world has devastating consequences.
A recent Los Angeles Times headline says it all: “Californians want it both ways on budget.” A poll conducted by the newspaper found that voters adamantly oppose tax increases to cover the state’s massive $25.4 billion deficit. Instead, they favor cuts to the budget—but not any of the cuts necessary to actually achieve a balanced budget. In fact, voters oppose cuts, and prefer even more spending, on government programs that make up 85% of the state's general budget.
Californians aren’t willing to cut spending on education or healthcare, but they are amenable to cutting the state’s prison system—which makes up just 10% of the overall state budget. Education and healthcare are important, but when it comes right down to it, the ultimate responsibility of government is to execute justice and ensure public safety through keeping criminals off the streets. Californians still living in Fantasyland don’t seem to understand the ramifications of spending all their money on a failing education system and healthcare benefits at the expense of protecting the public.
The current state deficit doesn’t even take into account the pension tsunami that threatens to wipe out taxpayers. California’s pension liability is estimated to be in excess of $500 billion. A recent study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that local governments’ employment pension plans are underfunded by $200 billion.
California’s Fantasyland is threatening the entire nation now, as the state seeks assistance from the federal government. In 2001, when the state fantasized that its utopia would never end, the legislature voted to double unemployment benefits. Now, with the economy struggling and over 12% of Californians out of work, the state’s unemployment insurance fund is running a $10.3 billion deficit.
In the last two years, the state collected just $9.9 billion in unemployment insurance taxes—but it paid out $20.6 billion in benefits during the same time. California recently had to borrow $8.5 billion from the federal government to pay for the unemployment benefit obligations. If the state doesn’t pay off its loan from Washington, D.C. by 2012, it will owe a $362 million interest payment. That’s an expensive fantasy to finance—and California can’t print Monopoly money to stay afloat.
All three of the major credit rating agencies— Moody's, Standard and Poor's, and Fitch—have given California the lowest credit rating of any state. And investors are increasingly turning away from purchasing California bonds over fears it’s not a prudent investment. If the government can’t solve its deficit, buying the state’s debt is no longer a sound investment. As we’ve seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain and a host other countries, irresponsible spending decimates an economy and can bring a nation to its penniless knees. For some reason, investors believe in pesky things like balanced budgets and returns on investment—things that cannot exist in California’s Fantasyland.
Although Californians still vainly believe they can solve their budget woes with simply cutting waste and fraud, this crisis is the perfect opportunity to look at the bigger picture. During difficult times, it’s appropriate to examine the real purpose of government and what it should or shouldn’t do for the public. Although never pleasant, the pruning process provides greater opportunity for true growth.
Cutting real government programs that have created dependency and fostered an entitlement mentality is critical for trimming the size of government and restoring in the public a sense of independence and self-accomplishment. But such self-examinations and real cuts will necessarily burst the California fantasy of unaccountable, limitless government spending.
California needs to recognize that its real Fantasyland isn’t in Anaheim anymore, it’s in Sacramento.
Monday, November 29, 2010
In 1955, Walt Disney opened his first amusement park in Anaheim, California. Disneyland has become the most successful amusement park in the world, with an estimated 600 million visitors since it first opened its gates 55 years ago. One of the most popular parts of the park is Fantasyland. Children and adults alike are dazzled by whimsical rides stretching the imagination, envisioning a blissfully perfect world.
Perhaps that’s why fantasy is such an entertaining venture. For just a few moments, we can set aside the troubles and trials of everyday life and visualize things that defy logic or mask the harsh realities of the real world. Unfortunately, California is trying to set up its own Fantasyland outside Disneyland’s walls, passing fantasy-inspired budgets that defy the laws of finance by spending much more than the state can possibly take in. And the Golden State is about to discover that trying to create a fantasy in the real world has devastating consequences.
A recent Los Angeles Times headline says it all: “Californians want it both ways on budget.” A poll conducted by the newspaper found that voters adamantly oppose tax increases to cover the state’s massive $25.4 billion deficit. Instead, they favor cuts to the budget—but not any of the cuts necessary to actually achieve a balanced budget. In fact, voters oppose cuts, and prefer even more spending, on government programs that make up 85% of the state's general budget.
Californians aren’t willing to cut spending on education or healthcare, but they are amenable to cutting the state’s prison system—which makes up just 10% of the overall state budget. Education and healthcare are important, but when it comes right down to it, the ultimate responsibility of government is to execute justice and ensure public safety through keeping criminals off the streets. Californians still living in Fantasyland don’t seem to understand the ramifications of spending all their money on a failing education system and healthcare benefits at the expense of protecting the public.
The current state deficit doesn’t even take into account the pension tsunami that threatens to wipe out taxpayers. California’s pension liability is estimated to be in excess of $500 billion. A recent study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that local governments’ employment pension plans are underfunded by $200 billion.
California’s Fantasyland is threatening the entire nation now, as the state seeks assistance from the federal government. In 2001, when the state fantasized that its utopia would never end, the legislature voted to double unemployment benefits. Now, with the economy struggling and over 12% of Californians out of work, the state’s unemployment insurance fund is running a $10.3 billion deficit.
In the last two years, the state collected just $9.9 billion in unemployment insurance taxes—but it paid out $20.6 billion in benefits during the same time. California recently had to borrow $8.5 billion from the federal government to pay for the unemployment benefit obligations. If the state doesn’t pay off its loan from Washington, D.C. by 2012, it will owe a $362 million interest payment. That’s an expensive fantasy to finance—and California can’t print Monopoly money to stay afloat.
All three of the major credit rating agencies— Moody's, Standard and Poor's, and Fitch—have given California the lowest credit rating of any state. And investors are increasingly turning away from purchasing California bonds over fears it’s not a prudent investment. If the government can’t solve its deficit, buying the state’s debt is no longer a sound investment. As we’ve seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain and a host other countries, irresponsible spending decimates an economy and can bring a nation to its penniless knees. For some reason, investors believe in pesky things like balanced budgets and returns on investment—things that cannot exist in California’s Fantasyland.
Although Californians still vainly believe they can solve their budget woes with simply cutting waste and fraud, this crisis is the perfect opportunity to look at the bigger picture. During difficult times, it’s appropriate to examine the real purpose of government and what it should or shouldn’t do for the public. Although never pleasant, the pruning process provides greater opportunity for true growth.
Cutting real government programs that have created dependency and fostered an entitlement mentality is critical for trimming the size of government and restoring in the public a sense of independence and self-accomplishment. But such self-examinations and real cuts will necessarily burst the California fantasy of unaccountable, limitless government spending.
California needs to recognize that its real Fantasyland isn’t in Anaheim anymore, it’s in Sacramento.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Why Unhappy People Become Liberals
. . . and why liberalism makes them even unhappier.
Dennis Prager
Monday, November 22, 2010
According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans.
Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.”
But common sense and data suggest other explanations.
For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations’ liberty.
Both of these facts refute the liberals-are-more-concerned-about-others explanation for liberal unhappiness.
So, let’s look at other explanations.
Perhaps we are posing the question backwards when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.
Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the Left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.
Why?
Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black person will gravitate to liberalism and liberalism will in turn make him more unhappy by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.
The unhappy gravitate toward the Left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’”
Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky as to be born or naturalized an American.
Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. They earn $45,000 a year, they have the same amount of debt on their homes, and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?
This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more a man or woman feels like captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.
A fourth explanation for greater unhappiness among liberals is that the more people allow feelings to govern them, the less happy they will be. And the further left one goes, the more importance one attaches to feelings.
It is liberal educators and liberal parents who have clamored for protecting young people from the pain of losing games. The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad.
A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness.
From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there were no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior.
Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people.
The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the Left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.
Dennis Prager
Monday, November 22, 2010
According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans.
Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.”
But common sense and data suggest other explanations.
For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations’ liberty.
Both of these facts refute the liberals-are-more-concerned-about-others explanation for liberal unhappiness.
So, let’s look at other explanations.
Perhaps we are posing the question backwards when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.
Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the Left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.
Why?
Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black person will gravitate to liberalism and liberalism will in turn make him more unhappy by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.
The unhappy gravitate toward the Left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’”
Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky as to be born or naturalized an American.
Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. They earn $45,000 a year, they have the same amount of debt on their homes, and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?
This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more a man or woman feels like captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.
A fourth explanation for greater unhappiness among liberals is that the more people allow feelings to govern them, the less happy they will be. And the further left one goes, the more importance one attaches to feelings.
It is liberal educators and liberal parents who have clamored for protecting young people from the pain of losing games. The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad.
A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness.
From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there were no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior.
Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people.
The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the Left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Beware a Hollow Air Force
If we intend to maintain American military dominance abroad, the U.S. Air Force cannot be relegated to a supporting role.
Michael Auslin
Monday, November 22, 2010
As the youngest of America’s military branches, the Air Force has sometimes suffered from an inferiority complex. Despite the popular images of the glamorous fighter jock or steel-nerved bomber pilot, Air Force personnel are well aware of their lack of traditions comparable to the Halls of Montezuma or John Paul Jones.
Perhaps this relative lack of pedigree has resulted in fewer champions for the Air Force on Capitol Hill. Whatever the reason, today’s budget restrictions are hitting especially hard at the American military’s air arm. If the 2012 budget doesn’t contain funds for some major programs, the Air Force’s future will look even grimmer than it does now. If it loses the political battle at home, the Air Force may one day find itself losing the battle in the skies. That would be a grievous blow to America’s global power and ability to defend its interests and friends. Luckily, the new Congress can reverse the trends of recent years, even if the Defense Department refuses to do so.
In many ways, the Air Force is a victim of its success. During the Cold War, it was inconceivable that the United States could deter or contain the Soviet Union and its proxies without an overwhelming air-power advantage. From the iconic Strategic Air Command to the gritty Tactical Air Command, from missileers to homeland-defense squadrons, the Air Force provided an iron umbrella over America’s global interests. In doing so, it shaped the nature of modern warfare while driving technological change that spread around the world. Some of the stunning joint creations of the Air Force and America’s defense industrial base, such as the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird, will likely never be repeated.
The apotheosis of U.S. air power came in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when the air war against Saddam Hussein’s million-man army reduced his forces to a shadow of their former selves, and allowed the U.S. Army and Marines to win the ground war in just three weeks. The Air Force by this time had perfected what one former general calls the “pillar of fire”: It achieved air dominance by collecting intelligence and using long-range bombing to control the enemy’s skies, and also provided full tactical support for ground troops engaged in combat.
Yet 1991 was the year the Soviet Union collapsed, and U.S. airmen suddenly found themselves nearly alone in the sky. Ironically, the demands on them only increased. After Desert Storm, the Army took a break from major overseas campaigns until Afghanistan in 2001, and the Navy (which also lost its only peer with the fall of the Soviet Union) began to focus more and more on simply maintaining its global presence. The Air Force, however, was tasked with enforcing the no-fly zone in Iraq until 2003, and it shouldered the entire burden of the 1997 Balkan campaign. If peace could not be kept without boots on the ground, the ground could not be secured without help from the skies.
Coincident with these burdens, the Air Force failed over the past decade in some very public ways that cut into its credibility and made it a target in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Since the closing of the Strategic Air Command in 1992, the Air Force has struggled with numerous problems in its nuclear mission, most shockingly when four hydrogen bombs were mistakenly flown cross-country in 2008 without anyone being aware; many believe this made it easier for Secretary of Defense Gates to sack the service’s secretary and chief of staff, who earlier had clashed with him over the future of the Air Force’s fighter program. A procurement scandal in buying new tankers resulted in the decision’s being taken out of the hands of the Air Force. And delays and cost overruns in the fleet’s marquee F-22 fighter program provided the political rationale for slashing the final buy from 750 planes to just 187, a fraction of what is needed to make an effective force.
For these reasons and others, the Air Force today risks becoming just a support service to the rest of the military. Since 2001, the Air Force has increasingly wound up fighting solely as an airborne artillery arm. It is expected to ferry troops to the theater of action, keep them supplied, provide real-time intelligence to ground-combat operations, maintain surveillance, and provide close air support when needed. All of those are crucial roles that only U.S. airmen can play, but the force itself cannot be structured to carry out only those missions. The Air Force must keep the “pillar of fire” lit, or all presumptions of U.S. presence and military campaigning will be thrown in doubt.
What has been lost among civilian leaders, and perhaps even within some parts of the Air Force itself, is the understanding of strategic airpower’s role in carrying out U.S. national-security policy. Given the distances involved in defending America’s global interests and upholding its responsibilities, the Air Force is by necessity the first responder in most cases, be it disaster relief or regional conflict. It must have the planes and bases it needs to carry out this role; if properly equipped, it can prevent crises from spreading and give the U.S. footholds that might be too expensive to attain later. It can reach where other military services cannot, and can inflict the most severe damage on an enemy with minimal risk to the U.S. forces involved.
Beyond that, what has made the Air Force so useful and lethal for so long is the depth of its force structure. From strategic bombers to heavy lift, from surveillance platforms to tactical assault aircraft, the Air Force has been a flexible instrument immediately deployable in numbers commensurate to the challenge. This has provided national policymakers with a range of options available to no other nation.
Thus, current plans to hollow out the Air Force are misguided and will in the long run cost far more to the nation than they will save today. Retiring 650 combat fighters before replacements are ready will necessarily reduce the availability of needed planes and thus U.S. credibility. Yet the Air Force finds itself in a Catch-22, since its fleet is superannuated. Flying airframes until they are falling apart is inexcusable in a country that can spend billions of dollars filling in potholes and repaving curbs. No airman should be expected to fly planes that are older than he is, but today’s B-52 pilots fly airframes built in the 1960s, and F-15 pilots fly the same planes as did their fathers. The lack of progress on the Next-Generation Bomber similarly puts America’s strategic options at risk. Unless a future president wants to start lobbing ballistic missiles at enemy fortifications, a modern bomber fleet remains necessary to penetrate the heavily defended airspace of potential adversaries.
Why is all this so urgent? Because authoritarian states that seek to challenge global stability are not only getting stronger, but becoming more advanced, as well. China’s air and naval forces are giving it the confidence to stake out claims in the South China, East China, and Yellow Seas that implicitly dare the U.S. to get involved. Both Russia and China are developing two-engine fifth-generation stealth fighters, just when America has shut down F-22 production. News reports this week indicate Russia may sell its most advanced fighters, the Su-35, to China. Iran will likely soon develop the know-how to build nuclear weapons, and has a ballistic-missile supply source in North Korea. All of these countries, moreover, have increasingly sophisticated integrated air defenses that will prevent U.S. airplanes from entering their airspace — except the F-22, whose numbers are now so low that combatant commanders will be wary of using them for fear of losing them. One doesn’t have to be a fatalist to see various scenarios in which the Air Force will be called upon to respond to a crisis, yet may be unable to do so, or succeed only at appallingly high cost in airmen’s lives.
Today, the Air Force needs to come up with a list of strategic priorities and make its case on Capitol Hill and on Main Street. As next year’s budget is being drawn up, there must be development funding for the Next-Generation Bomber, which has already been canceled once by Secretary Gates. The White House or Senate cannot be allowed to kill the production of C-17 transport planes, which ensure global reach. Further cutting the production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will drive up the per-plane cost, as anyone with budgetary experience can attest. Equally important, Air Force leadership needs to make Congress face up to the fact that canceling the F-22 was a mistake that will limit the force’s ability to respond to a variety of high-level threats. Finally, the Air Force must ensure it receives funding resources commensurate with its unique missions of providing cyber security and space assets to America’s national-security establishment.
Secretary Gates has criticized military leaders for having “next-waritis,” arguing that they should focus on current conflicts — which today means counterinsurgency operations. But it is dangerously irresponsible for our national-security leadership to ignore state-level threats that are not merely on the horizon, but rapidly approaching. America needs to build the weapons that are necessary for defeating high-level threats, even as our armed forces must better steward their diminishing budgetary resources.
If we intend to maintain American military dominance abroad, the U.S. Air Force cannot be hollowed out and relegated to a supporting role. Nor can it be asked to maintain its global responsibilities with a sub-par force. If the United States wants to maintain the ability to be a global actor, to protect friends, and to dissuade adversaries, then a 360-degree Air Force is a prerequisite, as it has been for the last 60 years. For its part, the Air Force must reclaim its unique spirit, recommit to core competencies in its nuclear mission, regain control of spiraling costs and procurement problems, and reassert itself in the political process and public debates. Anything less risks failure in the air and a loss of America’s unique role in the world.
Michael Auslin
Monday, November 22, 2010
As the youngest of America’s military branches, the Air Force has sometimes suffered from an inferiority complex. Despite the popular images of the glamorous fighter jock or steel-nerved bomber pilot, Air Force personnel are well aware of their lack of traditions comparable to the Halls of Montezuma or John Paul Jones.
Perhaps this relative lack of pedigree has resulted in fewer champions for the Air Force on Capitol Hill. Whatever the reason, today’s budget restrictions are hitting especially hard at the American military’s air arm. If the 2012 budget doesn’t contain funds for some major programs, the Air Force’s future will look even grimmer than it does now. If it loses the political battle at home, the Air Force may one day find itself losing the battle in the skies. That would be a grievous blow to America’s global power and ability to defend its interests and friends. Luckily, the new Congress can reverse the trends of recent years, even if the Defense Department refuses to do so.
In many ways, the Air Force is a victim of its success. During the Cold War, it was inconceivable that the United States could deter or contain the Soviet Union and its proxies without an overwhelming air-power advantage. From the iconic Strategic Air Command to the gritty Tactical Air Command, from missileers to homeland-defense squadrons, the Air Force provided an iron umbrella over America’s global interests. In doing so, it shaped the nature of modern warfare while driving technological change that spread around the world. Some of the stunning joint creations of the Air Force and America’s defense industrial base, such as the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird, will likely never be repeated.
The apotheosis of U.S. air power came in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when the air war against Saddam Hussein’s million-man army reduced his forces to a shadow of their former selves, and allowed the U.S. Army and Marines to win the ground war in just three weeks. The Air Force by this time had perfected what one former general calls the “pillar of fire”: It achieved air dominance by collecting intelligence and using long-range bombing to control the enemy’s skies, and also provided full tactical support for ground troops engaged in combat.
Yet 1991 was the year the Soviet Union collapsed, and U.S. airmen suddenly found themselves nearly alone in the sky. Ironically, the demands on them only increased. After Desert Storm, the Army took a break from major overseas campaigns until Afghanistan in 2001, and the Navy (which also lost its only peer with the fall of the Soviet Union) began to focus more and more on simply maintaining its global presence. The Air Force, however, was tasked with enforcing the no-fly zone in Iraq until 2003, and it shouldered the entire burden of the 1997 Balkan campaign. If peace could not be kept without boots on the ground, the ground could not be secured without help from the skies.
Coincident with these burdens, the Air Force failed over the past decade in some very public ways that cut into its credibility and made it a target in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Since the closing of the Strategic Air Command in 1992, the Air Force has struggled with numerous problems in its nuclear mission, most shockingly when four hydrogen bombs were mistakenly flown cross-country in 2008 without anyone being aware; many believe this made it easier for Secretary of Defense Gates to sack the service’s secretary and chief of staff, who earlier had clashed with him over the future of the Air Force’s fighter program. A procurement scandal in buying new tankers resulted in the decision’s being taken out of the hands of the Air Force. And delays and cost overruns in the fleet’s marquee F-22 fighter program provided the political rationale for slashing the final buy from 750 planes to just 187, a fraction of what is needed to make an effective force.
For these reasons and others, the Air Force today risks becoming just a support service to the rest of the military. Since 2001, the Air Force has increasingly wound up fighting solely as an airborne artillery arm. It is expected to ferry troops to the theater of action, keep them supplied, provide real-time intelligence to ground-combat operations, maintain surveillance, and provide close air support when needed. All of those are crucial roles that only U.S. airmen can play, but the force itself cannot be structured to carry out only those missions. The Air Force must keep the “pillar of fire” lit, or all presumptions of U.S. presence and military campaigning will be thrown in doubt.
What has been lost among civilian leaders, and perhaps even within some parts of the Air Force itself, is the understanding of strategic airpower’s role in carrying out U.S. national-security policy. Given the distances involved in defending America’s global interests and upholding its responsibilities, the Air Force is by necessity the first responder in most cases, be it disaster relief or regional conflict. It must have the planes and bases it needs to carry out this role; if properly equipped, it can prevent crises from spreading and give the U.S. footholds that might be too expensive to attain later. It can reach where other military services cannot, and can inflict the most severe damage on an enemy with minimal risk to the U.S. forces involved.
Beyond that, what has made the Air Force so useful and lethal for so long is the depth of its force structure. From strategic bombers to heavy lift, from surveillance platforms to tactical assault aircraft, the Air Force has been a flexible instrument immediately deployable in numbers commensurate to the challenge. This has provided national policymakers with a range of options available to no other nation.
Thus, current plans to hollow out the Air Force are misguided and will in the long run cost far more to the nation than they will save today. Retiring 650 combat fighters before replacements are ready will necessarily reduce the availability of needed planes and thus U.S. credibility. Yet the Air Force finds itself in a Catch-22, since its fleet is superannuated. Flying airframes until they are falling apart is inexcusable in a country that can spend billions of dollars filling in potholes and repaving curbs. No airman should be expected to fly planes that are older than he is, but today’s B-52 pilots fly airframes built in the 1960s, and F-15 pilots fly the same planes as did their fathers. The lack of progress on the Next-Generation Bomber similarly puts America’s strategic options at risk. Unless a future president wants to start lobbing ballistic missiles at enemy fortifications, a modern bomber fleet remains necessary to penetrate the heavily defended airspace of potential adversaries.
Why is all this so urgent? Because authoritarian states that seek to challenge global stability are not only getting stronger, but becoming more advanced, as well. China’s air and naval forces are giving it the confidence to stake out claims in the South China, East China, and Yellow Seas that implicitly dare the U.S. to get involved. Both Russia and China are developing two-engine fifth-generation stealth fighters, just when America has shut down F-22 production. News reports this week indicate Russia may sell its most advanced fighters, the Su-35, to China. Iran will likely soon develop the know-how to build nuclear weapons, and has a ballistic-missile supply source in North Korea. All of these countries, moreover, have increasingly sophisticated integrated air defenses that will prevent U.S. airplanes from entering their airspace — except the F-22, whose numbers are now so low that combatant commanders will be wary of using them for fear of losing them. One doesn’t have to be a fatalist to see various scenarios in which the Air Force will be called upon to respond to a crisis, yet may be unable to do so, or succeed only at appallingly high cost in airmen’s lives.
Today, the Air Force needs to come up with a list of strategic priorities and make its case on Capitol Hill and on Main Street. As next year’s budget is being drawn up, there must be development funding for the Next-Generation Bomber, which has already been canceled once by Secretary Gates. The White House or Senate cannot be allowed to kill the production of C-17 transport planes, which ensure global reach. Further cutting the production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will drive up the per-plane cost, as anyone with budgetary experience can attest. Equally important, Air Force leadership needs to make Congress face up to the fact that canceling the F-22 was a mistake that will limit the force’s ability to respond to a variety of high-level threats. Finally, the Air Force must ensure it receives funding resources commensurate with its unique missions of providing cyber security and space assets to America’s national-security establishment.
Secretary Gates has criticized military leaders for having “next-waritis,” arguing that they should focus on current conflicts — which today means counterinsurgency operations. But it is dangerously irresponsible for our national-security leadership to ignore state-level threats that are not merely on the horizon, but rapidly approaching. America needs to build the weapons that are necessary for defeating high-level threats, even as our armed forces must better steward their diminishing budgetary resources.
If we intend to maintain American military dominance abroad, the U.S. Air Force cannot be hollowed out and relegated to a supporting role. Nor can it be asked to maintain its global responsibilities with a sub-par force. If the United States wants to maintain the ability to be a global actor, to protect friends, and to dissuade adversaries, then a 360-degree Air Force is a prerequisite, as it has been for the last 60 years. For its part, the Air Force must reclaim its unique spirit, recommit to core competencies in its nuclear mission, regain control of spiraling costs and procurement problems, and reassert itself in the political process and public debates. Anything less risks failure in the air and a loss of America’s unique role in the world.
The Failing Promise of Public Education
By Joseph C. Phillips
Monday, November 22, 2010
We, the American public, hold it as an article of faith that those responsible for devising and implementing public policy have our best interests at heart. Our best minds are hard at work, striving to make the world a better place. Our elected officials are dedicated to protecting our freedoms, increasing our prosperity, and securing justice for all.
What, then, is the public to assume when, in spite of the best efforts of our most brilliant thinkers and politicians, freedoms erode, prosperity decreases, and for a great many, justice seems elusive? Surely, sinister forces must be at work.
Let us take for an example the nation’s system of public education. For years, American taxpayers have been sold on a triad of public policy fixes for public education. In order to improve student performance, state and federal governments must dedicate a greater portion of their budgetary dollars to education; class sizes must be reduced, and there must be greater oversight by the federal government. So fervent is the belief in this holy trinity of education, that to even ponder the efficacy of the federal Department of Education is seen as heresy. Any politician who attempts to curb the unrestricted flow of tax dollars to public schools is accused of not wanting to “invest in education.”
And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased. Given the brilliance and dedication of our public servants, the failure of significant academic gains to materialize, in spite of billions spent on education, can only be the devil’s work.
And if you are a black man, the devil must, indeed, be working overtime.
Information recently culled from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, based on national math and reading tests given to students in the fourth and eighth grades, revealed some rather disheartening results. According to the New York Times, the report paints a picture for black males that is, “even bleaker than generally known.”
In 2009, math scores for black boys lagged behind those of both Hispanic boys and girls, and black males fell behind white boys by an average of 30 points, which is interpreted as three academic grades. Black males drop out of high school at a rate twice as high as white males and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In short, the report shows that black males fall behind academically early on and never regain ground.
These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.
The social cost of this failure is not to be underestimated.
Half of these students will drop out of high school; lacking a high school diploma and being functionally illiterate will qualify them for manual labor, which is steadily in the decline. They will join the ranks of the chronically unemployed; many of these men will make a life hustling on the streets and eventually become involved in the criminal justice system. Criminal records will make these men more unemployable, which will make it even more unlikely that they will have the financial means to support the children they father. It is a hellish cycle that will repeat generation after generation.
Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, says, “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten.” Ferguson gives voice to something that many of us have long suspected: how well children perform in school depends, to a great extent, on the kind of training they receive in the home.
Battling the dark forces aligned against our children may necessitate the asking of some uncomfortable questions. For instance, is the continued academic under-performance of black boys the result of a failure of the educational system? Or, is the issue rooted in black culture?
Of course, we can always avoid the discomfort of those questions and continue to rely on the original thinking of our best and brightest. In response to the chilling figures presented in the report, the authors have come up with the original idea of urging Congress to “appropriate more money for schools.”
Monday, November 22, 2010
We, the American public, hold it as an article of faith that those responsible for devising and implementing public policy have our best interests at heart. Our best minds are hard at work, striving to make the world a better place. Our elected officials are dedicated to protecting our freedoms, increasing our prosperity, and securing justice for all.
What, then, is the public to assume when, in spite of the best efforts of our most brilliant thinkers and politicians, freedoms erode, prosperity decreases, and for a great many, justice seems elusive? Surely, sinister forces must be at work.
Let us take for an example the nation’s system of public education. For years, American taxpayers have been sold on a triad of public policy fixes for public education. In order to improve student performance, state and federal governments must dedicate a greater portion of their budgetary dollars to education; class sizes must be reduced, and there must be greater oversight by the federal government. So fervent is the belief in this holy trinity of education, that to even ponder the efficacy of the federal Department of Education is seen as heresy. Any politician who attempts to curb the unrestricted flow of tax dollars to public schools is accused of not wanting to “invest in education.”
And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased. Given the brilliance and dedication of our public servants, the failure of significant academic gains to materialize, in spite of billions spent on education, can only be the devil’s work.
And if you are a black man, the devil must, indeed, be working overtime.
Information recently culled from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, based on national math and reading tests given to students in the fourth and eighth grades, revealed some rather disheartening results. According to the New York Times, the report paints a picture for black males that is, “even bleaker than generally known.”
In 2009, math scores for black boys lagged behind those of both Hispanic boys and girls, and black males fell behind white boys by an average of 30 points, which is interpreted as three academic grades. Black males drop out of high school at a rate twice as high as white males and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In short, the report shows that black males fall behind academically early on and never regain ground.
These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.
The social cost of this failure is not to be underestimated.
Half of these students will drop out of high school; lacking a high school diploma and being functionally illiterate will qualify them for manual labor, which is steadily in the decline. They will join the ranks of the chronically unemployed; many of these men will make a life hustling on the streets and eventually become involved in the criminal justice system. Criminal records will make these men more unemployable, which will make it even more unlikely that they will have the financial means to support the children they father. It is a hellish cycle that will repeat generation after generation.
Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, says, “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten.” Ferguson gives voice to something that many of us have long suspected: how well children perform in school depends, to a great extent, on the kind of training they receive in the home.
Battling the dark forces aligned against our children may necessitate the asking of some uncomfortable questions. For instance, is the continued academic under-performance of black boys the result of a failure of the educational system? Or, is the issue rooted in black culture?
Of course, we can always avoid the discomfort of those questions and continue to rely on the original thinking of our best and brightest. In response to the chilling figures presented in the report, the authors have come up with the original idea of urging Congress to “appropriate more money for schools.”
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Could California Sink The Obama Presidency?
By Austin Hill
Sunday, November 21, 2010
First, let me be clear about this: Contrary to the growing consensus, I am still not convinced that President Obama is destined to be a one-term President.
Despite the colossal rejection of the President’s policies and his “vision” in the midterm election earlier this month (the President himself stated repeatedly before the election that “my name’s not on the ballot, but my agenda is”), I’m still not assuming that he won’t turn things around for himself.
In fact, as it stands now, I think President Obama is more likely to be re-elected than not.
But there’s a present-day crisis on the “left coast,” and most Americans have no idea how bad it is. When more Americans get a grasp of the carnage – and once Barack Obama begins to act-out his natural tendencies towards “government bailouts” - the American electorate may very well become so outraged that the President destroys his own future political prospects.
California – the most populous state in our nation – is bankrupt. Just as is the case in Washington, D.C., nobody in The Golden State dares to say the word “bankrupt” to describe the state government right now, but it is still nonetheless true.
However, since Californians collectively defied the national trend of abandoning the bankrupting Obama-styled economic policies in the recent election, and instead voted for more of the same, the 31st state in our union is now on the fast-track for economic collapse. And it is a crisis that is custom-made for politicians like Barack Obama, who love to spend other people’s money in an effort to make themselves appear heroic.
Outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called a special legislative session for December 6, to deal with the projected $6 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year’s budget. Last week a New York Times article predicted that “deep cuts” in California government programs would result from the session, while Schwarzenegger’s Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy was quoted as saying “There’s no more easy stuff to cut; we are cutting into bone now.”
But neither of these assertions is true. There is no political will in California to cut state government programs (at least not in any substantial way), and “deep cuts” just aren’t going to happen. Similarly, there is plenty of “fat” that could be eliminated from the state budget – a swift cut in the state’s generous unemployment benefits program would make sense – but again, no California politician has the courage to do something so sensible.
So instead, California is accruing $40 million a day in debt, just to keep their unemployment benefits checks flowing. This is the kind of fiscally lethal public policy that has brought down the country of Greece, yet California refuses to do what is necessary – cut government spending – and instead is poised to raise payroll taxes (again) as a means of partially paying for unemployment benefits.
Another example of the horribly self-destructive public policy in California emerged just last week, when the publicly funded Fresno State University was embarrassed with the revelation that the school’s elected Student Body President Pedro Ramirez is an illegal alien. This outraged the local community, which has been embroiled for years in long-standing tensions over illegal immigration.
Yet after being “outed” by the school’s on-campus newspaper, Ramirez made multiple media appearances (including an interview on my own daily radio talk show at Fresno, California’s TalkRadio 105.9, KMJ-FM) assuring people that his enrollment in the school is legal.
As it turns out, Ramirez was mostly accurate. The “California AB 540 Program,” named after “Assembly bill 540” and signed into law by former California Governor Gray Davis in 2001, essentially grants illegal immigrant students the same rights and privileges enjoyed by U.S. citizens at California’s numerous public colleges and universities. In many ways, the educational entitlements for illegal immigrants that would be mandated for all the states if President Obama’s “Dream Act” amnesty legislation were to become law are already mandated in California. Thus, the Golden State of California that is barely keeping school doors open for legal residents is nonetheless required to hold the door open for illegal aliens as well.
So what’s a guy like Barack Obama to do? Politically he can’t afford to do nothing while the “biggest blue state” in the country begins to default on its debts, and he’ll probably find it personally difficult to resist his natural tendencies to “rescue” and “control” things (think G.M. and Chrysler and the many “bailed out” banks). And while there won’t be adequate support in the Congress to legislate an official “bailout” for California, one could envision the President “ordering” the U.S. Treasury to “offer assistance” of some sort, and perhaps trying to “command” revenues out of the private sector and into California government coffers (Mr. Obama had no constitutional authority to “demand” a “settlement” from B.P. oil, but he did it anyway).
But as Americans in the other 49 states learn more about the decades of fraud and waste that has brought about California’s self-induced disaster, the more angry they will become at a President who drives the nation further into debt as a means of “enabling” California’s dysfunction to continue.
California will lapse into some condition of “default,” and President Obama will get involved. The nature of his response could determine his tenure at the White House.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
First, let me be clear about this: Contrary to the growing consensus, I am still not convinced that President Obama is destined to be a one-term President.
Despite the colossal rejection of the President’s policies and his “vision” in the midterm election earlier this month (the President himself stated repeatedly before the election that “my name’s not on the ballot, but my agenda is”), I’m still not assuming that he won’t turn things around for himself.
In fact, as it stands now, I think President Obama is more likely to be re-elected than not.
But there’s a present-day crisis on the “left coast,” and most Americans have no idea how bad it is. When more Americans get a grasp of the carnage – and once Barack Obama begins to act-out his natural tendencies towards “government bailouts” - the American electorate may very well become so outraged that the President destroys his own future political prospects.
California – the most populous state in our nation – is bankrupt. Just as is the case in Washington, D.C., nobody in The Golden State dares to say the word “bankrupt” to describe the state government right now, but it is still nonetheless true.
However, since Californians collectively defied the national trend of abandoning the bankrupting Obama-styled economic policies in the recent election, and instead voted for more of the same, the 31st state in our union is now on the fast-track for economic collapse. And it is a crisis that is custom-made for politicians like Barack Obama, who love to spend other people’s money in an effort to make themselves appear heroic.
Outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called a special legislative session for December 6, to deal with the projected $6 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year’s budget. Last week a New York Times article predicted that “deep cuts” in California government programs would result from the session, while Schwarzenegger’s Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy was quoted as saying “There’s no more easy stuff to cut; we are cutting into bone now.”
But neither of these assertions is true. There is no political will in California to cut state government programs (at least not in any substantial way), and “deep cuts” just aren’t going to happen. Similarly, there is plenty of “fat” that could be eliminated from the state budget – a swift cut in the state’s generous unemployment benefits program would make sense – but again, no California politician has the courage to do something so sensible.
So instead, California is accruing $40 million a day in debt, just to keep their unemployment benefits checks flowing. This is the kind of fiscally lethal public policy that has brought down the country of Greece, yet California refuses to do what is necessary – cut government spending – and instead is poised to raise payroll taxes (again) as a means of partially paying for unemployment benefits.
Another example of the horribly self-destructive public policy in California emerged just last week, when the publicly funded Fresno State University was embarrassed with the revelation that the school’s elected Student Body President Pedro Ramirez is an illegal alien. This outraged the local community, which has been embroiled for years in long-standing tensions over illegal immigration.
Yet after being “outed” by the school’s on-campus newspaper, Ramirez made multiple media appearances (including an interview on my own daily radio talk show at Fresno, California’s TalkRadio 105.9, KMJ-FM) assuring people that his enrollment in the school is legal.
As it turns out, Ramirez was mostly accurate. The “California AB 540 Program,” named after “Assembly bill 540” and signed into law by former California Governor Gray Davis in 2001, essentially grants illegal immigrant students the same rights and privileges enjoyed by U.S. citizens at California’s numerous public colleges and universities. In many ways, the educational entitlements for illegal immigrants that would be mandated for all the states if President Obama’s “Dream Act” amnesty legislation were to become law are already mandated in California. Thus, the Golden State of California that is barely keeping school doors open for legal residents is nonetheless required to hold the door open for illegal aliens as well.
So what’s a guy like Barack Obama to do? Politically he can’t afford to do nothing while the “biggest blue state” in the country begins to default on its debts, and he’ll probably find it personally difficult to resist his natural tendencies to “rescue” and “control” things (think G.M. and Chrysler and the many “bailed out” banks). And while there won’t be adequate support in the Congress to legislate an official “bailout” for California, one could envision the President “ordering” the U.S. Treasury to “offer assistance” of some sort, and perhaps trying to “command” revenues out of the private sector and into California government coffers (Mr. Obama had no constitutional authority to “demand” a “settlement” from B.P. oil, but he did it anyway).
But as Americans in the other 49 states learn more about the decades of fraud and waste that has brought about California’s self-induced disaster, the more angry they will become at a President who drives the nation further into debt as a means of “enabling” California’s dysfunction to continue.
California will lapse into some condition of “default,” and President Obama will get involved. The nature of his response could determine his tenure at the White House.
Keep an eye out...
C.A.A. is back in the U.S. for Thanksgiving, but doesn't have regular internet access. Please check back for sporadic updates.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Attacking “The Wealthy” Hurts Everyone
By Nicole Kurokawa
Saturday, November 20, 2010
All eyes are back on Congress as the lame duck session continues. One topic on everyone’s mind: extending the Bush tax cuts. In fact, the showdown over the cuts is likely to be one of the biggest policy fights of President Obama’s term to date.
For months, the Administration officials said they would only accept an extension for the middle class, and fully intended to raise rates on “the wealthy” (defined as those making over $250,000 per year). So who are “the wealthy,” exactly?
In many cases, the “wealthy” are small businesses.
Given that many small businesses aren’t structured as formal corporations, their owners file as individual taxpayers – meaning they are subject to increases in the income tax rate. According to the Internal Revenue Service’s 2008 Statistics of Income Data, there are 30 million small business owners in the country – 22 million sole proprietors, and 8 million partnerships and S-corporations. Ryan Ellis, director of tax policy at Americans for Tax Reform, estimates that two-thirds of small business profits face tax rate hikes under the White House’s plan.
Those successful small businesses – the ones with profits – are the ones who hire workers. They are the ones who purchase goods and services from other companies. These are the people who will be hit with tax increases. In an increasingly interconnected economy, it is impossible to penalize the few without injuring many. Pillaging these businesses' profits will mean less expansion, fewer jobs, and diminished output and will decrease incentives to be successful.
Many “wealthy” small business owners are women. According to the Oct 2010 Department of Commerce report “Women-Owned Businesses in the 21st Century,” 6.7 percent of all women-owned firms had sales of $250,000 or above in 2002 – a year that boasted 6.5 million women-owned firms in total. Breaking those numbers down, that means that 435,500 women-owned firms saw sales of $250,000 or above. Given the number of women-owned businesses jumped to 7.8 million in 2007, that number is sure to rise (the Census Bureau will release more detailed data from 2007 regarding women business owners in December 2010). The report goes on to note, however, that women-owned businesses are often smaller than men-owned businesses, and "average sales/receipts for women-owned businesses are only 25% of average sales/receipts for men-owned businesses." With a narrower margin, higher taxes bills can mean the difference between staying open or shutting the doors for these companies.
The “wealthy” are also the upwardly mobile. Americans are an aspirational people. Although many Americans are not “wealthy” in the White House’s eyes, many would like to be. College enrollment continues to increase, demonstrating the priority that individuals place on education as the stepping stone to a better life.
In addition, entrepreneurship – the very essence of trying to better one’s station in life – has long been a hallmark of the American economy; the Small Business Administration’s September 2010 report “Global Entrepreneurship and the United States” ranks the U.S. third out of 71 countries on its Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index, which provides a comprehensive measure of entrepreneurship drawing on economic freedom, competitiveness, and entrepreneurial activity. Women have taken advantage of the United States’ business-friendly environment; according to “Women-Owned Businesses in the 21st Century,” between 1997 and 2007, the number of women-owned businesses grew 44 percent – twice as fast as men-owned businesses.
The American economy is extremely dynamic, and income mobility is considerable. A 2007 report from the U.S. Treasury Department notes “the analysis found that more than half of taxpayers (56 percent by one measure and 55 percent by another measure) moved to a different income quintile between 1996 and 2005.” Importantly, however, not only do people have the chance to move up, but the top bracket is not set. The report also states that, “the composition of the very top income groups changes dramatically over time. Less than half (40 percent or 43 percent by different measures) of those in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still in the top 1 percent in 2005.” Taxing the “wealthy” doesn’t just affect those at the top, but slows the ascent of those who dream of making it to the top, discouraging the innovation and hard work needed to grow the economy.
And bear in mind – although $250,000 seems like a high benchmark, it’s certainly possible for a couple of Chicago schoolteachers or public officials to hit that threshold.
Despite the government’s best efforts at class warfare, to attack “the wealthy” will only serve to slow the overall economy – hurting everyone in the process. In order to maintain the nation’s global competitiveness, it is critical to not raise rates on engines of growth and mobility. By penalizing the most productive members of society, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, our country’s leaders will discourage the virtues that made this country great. The only true solution to the nation’s fiscal crisis is for the economy to grow – not to tax itself to irrelevance.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
All eyes are back on Congress as the lame duck session continues. One topic on everyone’s mind: extending the Bush tax cuts. In fact, the showdown over the cuts is likely to be one of the biggest policy fights of President Obama’s term to date.
For months, the Administration officials said they would only accept an extension for the middle class, and fully intended to raise rates on “the wealthy” (defined as those making over $250,000 per year). So who are “the wealthy,” exactly?
In many cases, the “wealthy” are small businesses.
Given that many small businesses aren’t structured as formal corporations, their owners file as individual taxpayers – meaning they are subject to increases in the income tax rate. According to the Internal Revenue Service’s 2008 Statistics of Income Data, there are 30 million small business owners in the country – 22 million sole proprietors, and 8 million partnerships and S-corporations. Ryan Ellis, director of tax policy at Americans for Tax Reform, estimates that two-thirds of small business profits face tax rate hikes under the White House’s plan.
Those successful small businesses – the ones with profits – are the ones who hire workers. They are the ones who purchase goods and services from other companies. These are the people who will be hit with tax increases. In an increasingly interconnected economy, it is impossible to penalize the few without injuring many. Pillaging these businesses' profits will mean less expansion, fewer jobs, and diminished output and will decrease incentives to be successful.
Many “wealthy” small business owners are women. According to the Oct 2010 Department of Commerce report “Women-Owned Businesses in the 21st Century,” 6.7 percent of all women-owned firms had sales of $250,000 or above in 2002 – a year that boasted 6.5 million women-owned firms in total. Breaking those numbers down, that means that 435,500 women-owned firms saw sales of $250,000 or above. Given the number of women-owned businesses jumped to 7.8 million in 2007, that number is sure to rise (the Census Bureau will release more detailed data from 2007 regarding women business owners in December 2010). The report goes on to note, however, that women-owned businesses are often smaller than men-owned businesses, and "average sales/receipts for women-owned businesses are only 25% of average sales/receipts for men-owned businesses." With a narrower margin, higher taxes bills can mean the difference between staying open or shutting the doors for these companies.
The “wealthy” are also the upwardly mobile. Americans are an aspirational people. Although many Americans are not “wealthy” in the White House’s eyes, many would like to be. College enrollment continues to increase, demonstrating the priority that individuals place on education as the stepping stone to a better life.
In addition, entrepreneurship – the very essence of trying to better one’s station in life – has long been a hallmark of the American economy; the Small Business Administration’s September 2010 report “Global Entrepreneurship and the United States” ranks the U.S. third out of 71 countries on its Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index, which provides a comprehensive measure of entrepreneurship drawing on economic freedom, competitiveness, and entrepreneurial activity. Women have taken advantage of the United States’ business-friendly environment; according to “Women-Owned Businesses in the 21st Century,” between 1997 and 2007, the number of women-owned businesses grew 44 percent – twice as fast as men-owned businesses.
The American economy is extremely dynamic, and income mobility is considerable. A 2007 report from the U.S. Treasury Department notes “the analysis found that more than half of taxpayers (56 percent by one measure and 55 percent by another measure) moved to a different income quintile between 1996 and 2005.” Importantly, however, not only do people have the chance to move up, but the top bracket is not set. The report also states that, “the composition of the very top income groups changes dramatically over time. Less than half (40 percent or 43 percent by different measures) of those in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still in the top 1 percent in 2005.” Taxing the “wealthy” doesn’t just affect those at the top, but slows the ascent of those who dream of making it to the top, discouraging the innovation and hard work needed to grow the economy.
And bear in mind – although $250,000 seems like a high benchmark, it’s certainly possible for a couple of Chicago schoolteachers or public officials to hit that threshold.
Despite the government’s best efforts at class warfare, to attack “the wealthy” will only serve to slow the overall economy – hurting everyone in the process. In order to maintain the nation’s global competitiveness, it is critical to not raise rates on engines of growth and mobility. By penalizing the most productive members of society, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, our country’s leaders will discourage the virtues that made this country great. The only true solution to the nation’s fiscal crisis is for the economy to grow – not to tax itself to irrelevance.
Climate change no longer scary in Europe
By Hans Labohm
Friday, November 19, 2010
Bjorn Lomborg’s ongoing publicity campaign for his new film makes it obvious that the fight against the delusion of dangerous man-made global warming remains an uphill struggle.
For decades the climate debate has been obfuscated by cherry-picking, spin-doctoring and scare-mongering by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists, including the environmental movement and mainstream media. Their massive effort to overstate the threat of man-made warming has left its imprint on public opinion.
But the tide seems to be turning. The Climate Conference fiasco in Copenhagen, Climategate scandal and stabilization of worldwide temperatures since 1995 have given rise to growing doubts about the putative threat of “dangerous global warming” or “global climate disruption.” Indeed, even Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and one of the main players in Climategate, now acknowledges that there has been no measurable warming since 1995, despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
People are paying attention, and opinion polls in many countries show a dramatic fall in the ranking of climate change among people’s major concerns. They are also beginning to understand that major rain and snow storms, hurricanes and other weather extremes are caused by solar-driven changes in global jet streams and warm-cold fronts, not by CO2, and that claims about recent years being the “warmest ever” are based on false or falsified temperature data.
In various parts of the world, the climate debate displays different features. The US and other parts of the non-European Anglo-Saxon world feature highly polarized and politicized debates along the left/right divide. In Europe, all major political parties are still toeing the “official” IPCC line. In both arenas, with a few notable exceptions, skeptical views – even from well-known scientists with impeccable credentials – tend to be ignored and/or actively suppressed by governments, academia and the media.
However, skepticism about manmade climate disasters is gradually gaining ground nevertheless.
In my own country, The Netherlands, for instance, it has even received some official recognition, thus dissolving the information monopoly of climate alarmists. The Standing Committee on Environment of the Lower House even organized a one-day hearing, where both climate chaos adherents and disaster skeptics could freely discuss their different views before key parliamentarians who decide climate policy.
This hearing was followed by a special seminar organized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, using the same format but focusing on scientific topics. The Academy will soon publish a report about this seminar.
Europe often brags about its emission trading scheme (ETS), regarding itself as the vanguard of an international climate policy. In the European view, the Copenhagen climate summit should have produced a worldwide extension and sharpening of its ETS. But the vast majority of countries in the world refused to follow Europe’s example, so the meeting turned into a fiasco. Its follow-up in Cancun at year’s end will surely produce a similar result. And for good reason.
Contrary to official claims, Europe’s experience with ETS is dismally bad. The system is expensive and prone to massive fraud. More importantly, it serves no useful purpose.
The European Environmental Agency tracks Europe's performance regarding the reduction of CO2 emissions. Its latest report states: “The European Union's greenhouse gas inventory report … shows that emissions have not only continued their downward trend in 2008, but have also picked up pace. The EU-27’s emissions stood 11.3% below their 1990 levels, while EU-15 achieved a reduction of 6.9% compared to Kyoto base-year levels.”
On the face of it, the scheme seems to be pretty successful. However, much of the downward trend was due to the global economic recession, not to the ETS. Moreover, both climate chaos proponents and climate disaster skeptics agree that the scheme will have no detectable impact whatsoever on worldwide temperatures – perhaps 0.1 degrees – though this crucial piece of information has been carefully and deliberately shielded from the public eye.
What about renewable energy as an alternative? Consider these EU costs for various sources of electricity in cents per kilowatt-hour: nuclear 4, coal 4, natural gas 5, onshore wind 13, biomass 16 … solar 56!
Obviously, the price tag for renewables is extremely high, compared to hydrocarbons. The additional costs can be justified either by imminent fossil fuel scarcity (the “oil peak”), which would send petroleum and coal prices through the roof, or by the threat of man-made global warming. But on closer inspection neither argument is tenable.
The authoritative International Energy Agency does not foresee any substantial scarcity of oil and gas in the near to medium future, and coal reserves remain sufficient for centuries to come. As to global warming, the absence of a statistically significant increase in average worldwide temperatures since 1995 obliterates that assertion.
Meanwhile, recent peer-reviewed studies indicate that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere (natural or man-made) have minimal effects on climate change – while others demonstrate that, on balance, this plant-fertilizing gas is beneficial, rather than harmful, for mankind and the biosphere.
All this argues for a closer look at the cost/benefit relationship of investing in renewable energy projects, to prevent a massive waste of financial and natural resources on unreliable and thus uncompetitive forms of energy. Since every cloud has a silver lining, the ongoing economic crisis might give extra impetus toward that end.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Bjorn Lomborg’s ongoing publicity campaign for his new film makes it obvious that the fight against the delusion of dangerous man-made global warming remains an uphill struggle.
For decades the climate debate has been obfuscated by cherry-picking, spin-doctoring and scare-mongering by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists, including the environmental movement and mainstream media. Their massive effort to overstate the threat of man-made warming has left its imprint on public opinion.
But the tide seems to be turning. The Climate Conference fiasco in Copenhagen, Climategate scandal and stabilization of worldwide temperatures since 1995 have given rise to growing doubts about the putative threat of “dangerous global warming” or “global climate disruption.” Indeed, even Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and one of the main players in Climategate, now acknowledges that there has been no measurable warming since 1995, despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
People are paying attention, and opinion polls in many countries show a dramatic fall in the ranking of climate change among people’s major concerns. They are also beginning to understand that major rain and snow storms, hurricanes and other weather extremes are caused by solar-driven changes in global jet streams and warm-cold fronts, not by CO2, and that claims about recent years being the “warmest ever” are based on false or falsified temperature data.
In various parts of the world, the climate debate displays different features. The US and other parts of the non-European Anglo-Saxon world feature highly polarized and politicized debates along the left/right divide. In Europe, all major political parties are still toeing the “official” IPCC line. In both arenas, with a few notable exceptions, skeptical views – even from well-known scientists with impeccable credentials – tend to be ignored and/or actively suppressed by governments, academia and the media.
However, skepticism about manmade climate disasters is gradually gaining ground nevertheless.
In my own country, The Netherlands, for instance, it has even received some official recognition, thus dissolving the information monopoly of climate alarmists. The Standing Committee on Environment of the Lower House even organized a one-day hearing, where both climate chaos adherents and disaster skeptics could freely discuss their different views before key parliamentarians who decide climate policy.
This hearing was followed by a special seminar organized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, using the same format but focusing on scientific topics. The Academy will soon publish a report about this seminar.
Europe often brags about its emission trading scheme (ETS), regarding itself as the vanguard of an international climate policy. In the European view, the Copenhagen climate summit should have produced a worldwide extension and sharpening of its ETS. But the vast majority of countries in the world refused to follow Europe’s example, so the meeting turned into a fiasco. Its follow-up in Cancun at year’s end will surely produce a similar result. And for good reason.
Contrary to official claims, Europe’s experience with ETS is dismally bad. The system is expensive and prone to massive fraud. More importantly, it serves no useful purpose.
The European Environmental Agency tracks Europe's performance regarding the reduction of CO2 emissions. Its latest report states: “The European Union's greenhouse gas inventory report … shows that emissions have not only continued their downward trend in 2008, but have also picked up pace. The EU-27’s emissions stood 11.3% below their 1990 levels, while EU-15 achieved a reduction of 6.9% compared to Kyoto base-year levels.”
On the face of it, the scheme seems to be pretty successful. However, much of the downward trend was due to the global economic recession, not to the ETS. Moreover, both climate chaos proponents and climate disaster skeptics agree that the scheme will have no detectable impact whatsoever on worldwide temperatures – perhaps 0.1 degrees – though this crucial piece of information has been carefully and deliberately shielded from the public eye.
What about renewable energy as an alternative? Consider these EU costs for various sources of electricity in cents per kilowatt-hour: nuclear 4, coal 4, natural gas 5, onshore wind 13, biomass 16 … solar 56!
Obviously, the price tag for renewables is extremely high, compared to hydrocarbons. The additional costs can be justified either by imminent fossil fuel scarcity (the “oil peak”), which would send petroleum and coal prices through the roof, or by the threat of man-made global warming. But on closer inspection neither argument is tenable.
The authoritative International Energy Agency does not foresee any substantial scarcity of oil and gas in the near to medium future, and coal reserves remain sufficient for centuries to come. As to global warming, the absence of a statistically significant increase in average worldwide temperatures since 1995 obliterates that assertion.
Meanwhile, recent peer-reviewed studies indicate that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere (natural or man-made) have minimal effects on climate change – while others demonstrate that, on balance, this plant-fertilizing gas is beneficial, rather than harmful, for mankind and the biosphere.
All this argues for a closer look at the cost/benefit relationship of investing in renewable energy projects, to prevent a massive waste of financial and natural resources on unreliable and thus uncompetitive forms of energy. Since every cloud has a silver lining, the ongoing economic crisis might give extra impetus toward that end.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Taking the Gloves Off: Is the Health Care Bill Constitutional
By Jillian Bandes
Friday, November 19, 2010
The legal arguments surrounding the constitutionality of the health care debate are nuanced, and at the center of the debate is whether Congress can regulate a citizen’s inactivity. The Federalist Society holds its annual conference in Washington, D.C. this week, and that's one of the hottest topics. In an afternoon panel on Thursday, four legal scholars went head-to-head in a panel titled “Litigation: Debating the Constitutionality of the Federal Health Care Legislation.”
Four lawsuits in four different states have been launched challenging Obamacare’s constitutionality — in California, Michigan, Virginia, and Florida — according to the panel’s moderator, David Stras, of the Minnesota Supreme Court. So far, the California and Michigan cases have been thrown out. The Virginia case is pending. In Florida, twenty other states have latched on to the case, which has just survived a motion to dismiss. Which arguments the courts will address in that suit remain to be seen.
On the panel, Charles Fried of Harvard University Law School took the unpopular position that the individual mandate in Obamacare was nothing more than a regulation of commerce — a regulation of activity — and was therefore completely Constitutional. The Commerce Clause in Article 1 of the Constitution allows Congress to “regulate Commerce ...among the several States,” which has provided the basis for interstate laws that govern the purchase and sale of goods and services.
“The commerce here is health insurance, and what the individual mandate does, is prescribes along with many other rules... for the economic activity, which is health insurance,” said Fried.
The liberal professor then went on to expound his theory of limitless government power: Government has the full authority to garnish wages from its citizens in the form of taxes, he said, and the individual mandate is able to garnish wages in order to force purchase of insurance. Fried also said that the government has authority to require its citizens to buy Froot Loops, for example, though it has no authority to require its citizens to eat them. Just because the government is requiring citizens to buy health care doesn’t mean it’s requiring them to go to the doctor.
David Rivkin, a partner at the law firm of Baker & Hostetler and outspoken political activist, said that Fried's argument was downright fruity. If there are no limits to what the government can require its citizens to buy, there is no way to say one type of purchase is more valid than the other.
“The fact that there's no meaningful, judicially enforceable doctrine here dooms what you... are defending,” said Rivkin. “Any failure to purchase something has impacts.”
Rivkin agreed with Randy Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University Law Center, who cited the “necessary and proper” clause, as well as the "substantial effects" doctrine originally proposed by Justice Antonin Scalia.
“You realize there is a limiting doctrine on necessary and proper,” said Rivkin, and that the “line between economic and non-economic activity” has already been formulated through existing case law.
Fried insisted that in practice, the government’s powers have been virtually limitless. He cited a case where the government had required children to be vaccinated — a purchase, a service, and physical pain.
“There was a needle into the body they mandated for that,” said Fried, who insisted that the only leg conservatives have to stand on were “liberty arguments,” that "make my heart beat faster.”
Rivkin insisted that government’s power had to be limited, and that the health care bill was unprecedented. Next up, he said, was the “Happiness and Welfare Act of 2011.”
Friday, November 19, 2010
The legal arguments surrounding the constitutionality of the health care debate are nuanced, and at the center of the debate is whether Congress can regulate a citizen’s inactivity. The Federalist Society holds its annual conference in Washington, D.C. this week, and that's one of the hottest topics. In an afternoon panel on Thursday, four legal scholars went head-to-head in a panel titled “Litigation: Debating the Constitutionality of the Federal Health Care Legislation.”
Four lawsuits in four different states have been launched challenging Obamacare’s constitutionality — in California, Michigan, Virginia, and Florida — according to the panel’s moderator, David Stras, of the Minnesota Supreme Court. So far, the California and Michigan cases have been thrown out. The Virginia case is pending. In Florida, twenty other states have latched on to the case, which has just survived a motion to dismiss. Which arguments the courts will address in that suit remain to be seen.
On the panel, Charles Fried of Harvard University Law School took the unpopular position that the individual mandate in Obamacare was nothing more than a regulation of commerce — a regulation of activity — and was therefore completely Constitutional. The Commerce Clause in Article 1 of the Constitution allows Congress to “regulate Commerce ...among the several States,” which has provided the basis for interstate laws that govern the purchase and sale of goods and services.
“The commerce here is health insurance, and what the individual mandate does, is prescribes along with many other rules... for the economic activity, which is health insurance,” said Fried.
The liberal professor then went on to expound his theory of limitless government power: Government has the full authority to garnish wages from its citizens in the form of taxes, he said, and the individual mandate is able to garnish wages in order to force purchase of insurance. Fried also said that the government has authority to require its citizens to buy Froot Loops, for example, though it has no authority to require its citizens to eat them. Just because the government is requiring citizens to buy health care doesn’t mean it’s requiring them to go to the doctor.
David Rivkin, a partner at the law firm of Baker & Hostetler and outspoken political activist, said that Fried's argument was downright fruity. If there are no limits to what the government can require its citizens to buy, there is no way to say one type of purchase is more valid than the other.
“The fact that there's no meaningful, judicially enforceable doctrine here dooms what you... are defending,” said Rivkin. “Any failure to purchase something has impacts.”
Rivkin agreed with Randy Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University Law Center, who cited the “necessary and proper” clause, as well as the "substantial effects" doctrine originally proposed by Justice Antonin Scalia.
“You realize there is a limiting doctrine on necessary and proper,” said Rivkin, and that the “line between economic and non-economic activity” has already been formulated through existing case law.
Fried insisted that in practice, the government’s powers have been virtually limitless. He cited a case where the government had required children to be vaccinated — a purchase, a service, and physical pain.
“There was a needle into the body they mandated for that,” said Fried, who insisted that the only leg conservatives have to stand on were “liberty arguments,” that "make my heart beat faster.”
Rivkin insisted that government’s power had to be limited, and that the health care bill was unprecedented. Next up, he said, was the “Happiness and Welfare Act of 2011.”
Holder Should Resign Or Be Fired, and Obama Should Apologize
By Hugh Hewitt
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Outrage is growing at the intersection of ideology and incompetence that is the jury's collapse in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, declared acquitted in the murders of 224 innocents, including a dozen Americans.
The outrage is growing as Americans learn more and more about how utterly avoidable this outrageous miscarriage of justice was. John Podhoretz's and Jennifer Rubin's criticisms are among the most pointed and both employ the damning word "debacle" in the title, and Powerline's Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker weigh in with "The Failure Option." Eric Holder who repeatedly declared his confidence in this process should resign and the president should apologize to the nation and especially to the families of the victims whose killed now has been declared not guilty
An email from an individual very experienced in federal criminal proceedings comments:
America cannot protect its citizens abroad nor avenge them even when their killers are captured. First a bare majority of the Supreme Court repeatedly overrode first the decisions of the Executive and then of the Executive and Congress acting jointly, and then hard left ideology invaded the Department of Justice and was empowered by President Obama and Attorney General Holder. The consequences are on display.
People should reread Justice Scalia's dissent in Boumediene, the Supreme Court's decision rejecting the other branches' joint judgment on the subject of the application of habeas corpus to the terrorists. Justice Scalia zeroed in on the arrogance of the Supreme Court in attempting to dictate how these unlawful combatants ought to be dealt with:
But the long proceedings and attendant confusion foisted on the country by the five justicies in this case and those that preceded it allowed the rise of this insane Obama-Holder approach the fruits of which are now on display in New York City.
Hopefully all but the most ideologically blinded of the cheerleaders of this manifestly unworkable and unnecessary process will now recognize their own folly and all future proceedings for unlawful combatants who are not American citizens will take place in military tribunals conducted at Gitmo. Hopefully at least one more Supreme Court Justice will blink in sudden recognition of the awful injustice their "reasoning" has produced and appropriately defer to the combined judgments of the Article I and Article II authorities on a matter of national security.
Hopefully at least some on the the academic left will shut up about that which they nothing about --the difficulty of trying unlawful combatants with civilians in the jury box and prosecutors unable to use evidence both because of evidentiary standards that ought not to be applicable to terrorists captured abroad and because of the the fear of compromising the methods and sources of intelligence gathering.
If these are the results of this case, perhaps the families of the victims of the massacre perpetrated by Ahmed Ghailani will receive some comfort that while the killer was acquitted of these murders, the manifest and shocking injustice of that result has curbed at least for a while the insanity of the American legal left, and especially its most prominent and powerful members, Barack Obama and Eric Holder.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Outrage is growing at the intersection of ideology and incompetence that is the jury's collapse in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, declared acquitted in the murders of 224 innocents, including a dozen Americans.
The outrage is growing as Americans learn more and more about how utterly avoidable this outrageous miscarriage of justice was. John Podhoretz's and Jennifer Rubin's criticisms are among the most pointed and both employ the damning word "debacle" in the title, and Powerline's Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker weigh in with "The Failure Option." Eric Holder who repeatedly declared his confidence in this process should resign and the president should apologize to the nation and especially to the families of the victims whose killed now has been declared not guilty
An email from an individual very experienced in federal criminal proceedings comments:
This smells like a compromise verdict to me. On Monday you had the report that a juror asked to be excused, claiming she was the lone holdout and she feared continuing verbal assaults on her by the other jurors for refusing to agree with them.I would like to say "of course the judge will give him life," but who knows? The terrorist should be executed --should have been executed long ago. He murdered hundreds, including a dozen Americans, and his compatriots are cheering this carnival of the incompetent.
I suspect the 11 jurors wanted to convict on all counts, and this one juror refused.
In order to reach a verdict, the 11 jurors agreed to join her in acquitting him on all counts but one, in exchange for her agreeing to convict him on the one count -- which sounds the least serious based on its description in the indictment.
But, the potential sentence for that count is a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life. Its up to the district judge to determine how much time he will give him, and the judge can consider all the evidence at trial, including the evidence on the acquitted counts.
To take those counts into consideration in determining what sentence to impose, the judge is only required to find by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant was involved in the criminal conduct for which he was acquitted. He's not being punished for the acquitted conduct, rather, that conduct is to inform the judge about the nature of the defendant's character.
I expect the judge will give him life when all is said and done.
America cannot protect its citizens abroad nor avenge them even when their killers are captured. First a bare majority of the Supreme Court repeatedly overrode first the decisions of the Executive and then of the Executive and Congress acting jointly, and then hard left ideology invaded the Department of Justice and was empowered by President Obama and Attorney General Holder. The consequences are on display.
People should reread Justice Scalia's dissent in Boumediene, the Supreme Court's decision rejecting the other branches' joint judgment on the subject of the application of habeas corpus to the terrorists. Justice Scalia zeroed in on the arrogance of the Supreme Court in attempting to dictate how these unlawful combatants ought to be dealt with:
But even when the military has evidence that it can bring forward, it is often foolhardy to release that evidence to the attorneys representing our enemies. And one escalation of procedures that the Court is clear about is affording the detainees increased access to witnesses (perhaps troops serving in Afghanistan?) and to classified information. See ante, at 54–55. During the 1995 prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, federal prosecutors gave the names of 200 unindicted co-conspirators to the “Blind Sheik’s” defense lawyers; that information was in the hands of Osama Bin Laden within two weeks. See Minority Report 14–15. In another case, trial testimony revealed to the enemy that the United States had been monitoring their cellular network, whereupon they promptly stopped using it, enabling more of them to evade capture and continue their atrocities. See id., at 15.The Supreme Court did not overturn the two branches' decision to authorize military tribunals in Boumediene. The five justice majority just made it more difficult to ever execute the terrorist convicted by the tribunals.
And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside. A mere two Terms ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557 (2006) , when the Court held (quite amazingly) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 had not stripped habeas jurisdiction over Guantanamo petitioners’ claims, four Members of today’s five-Justice majority joined an opinion saying the following:
“Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary.
“Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means.” Id., at 636 (Breyer, J., concurring).1
Turns out they were just kidding. For in response, Congress, at the President’s request, quickly enacted the Military Commissions Act, emphatically reasserting that it did not want these prisoners filing habeas petitions. It is therefore clear that Congress and the Executive—both political branches—have determined that limiting the role of civilian courts in adjudicating whether prisoners captured abroad are properly detained is important to success in the war that some 190,000 of our men and women are now fighting. As the Solicitor General argued, “the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act … represent an effort by the political branches to strike an appropriate balance between the need to preserve liberty and the need to accommodate the weighty and sensitive governmental interests in ensuring that those who have in fact fought with the enemy during a war do not return to battle against the United States.” Brief for Respondents 10–11 (internal quotation marks omitted).
But it does not matter. The Court today decrees that no good reason to accept the judgment of the other two branches is “apparent.” Ante, at 40. “The Government,” it declares, “presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas corpus courts had jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ claims.” Id., at 39. What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails.
But the long proceedings and attendant confusion foisted on the country by the five justicies in this case and those that preceded it allowed the rise of this insane Obama-Holder approach the fruits of which are now on display in New York City.
Hopefully all but the most ideologically blinded of the cheerleaders of this manifestly unworkable and unnecessary process will now recognize their own folly and all future proceedings for unlawful combatants who are not American citizens will take place in military tribunals conducted at Gitmo. Hopefully at least one more Supreme Court Justice will blink in sudden recognition of the awful injustice their "reasoning" has produced and appropriately defer to the combined judgments of the Article I and Article II authorities on a matter of national security.
Hopefully at least some on the the academic left will shut up about that which they nothing about --the difficulty of trying unlawful combatants with civilians in the jury box and prosecutors unable to use evidence both because of evidentiary standards that ought not to be applicable to terrorists captured abroad and because of the the fear of compromising the methods and sources of intelligence gathering.
If these are the results of this case, perhaps the families of the victims of the massacre perpetrated by Ahmed Ghailani will receive some comfort that while the killer was acquitted of these murders, the manifest and shocking injustice of that result has curbed at least for a while the insanity of the American legal left, and especially its most prominent and powerful members, Barack Obama and Eric Holder.
Eric Holder’s War
A courtroom is the wrong place to fight it.
Rich Lowry
Friday, November 19, 2010
The Obama administration wants us to believe that one out of 285 ain’t bad.
A jury in New York acquitted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on 284 out of 285 charges for his part in the murder of 224 people in the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Attorney General Eric Holder thought the trial would be a glorious showcase for the civilian court system. We’d stun the terrorists with our courtroom procedure, win over the world with our mincing legalisms, and salve our consciences after the horrors of the Bush years.
This was Holder’s war on terror. He’s losing it in a rout.
The attorney general’s obsession with bringing terrorists captured overseas to the U.S. for trial in the civilian courts looks more willful and untenable by the day, as the edifice of his legal strategy collapses in a pathetic heap. It’s not inconceivable that, should he win a second term, Pres. Barack Obama will hand over an operational Guantanamo Bay prison facility to his successor in January 2017.
Ghailani offered a brazen defense at his trial. It was all an innocent misunderstanding when he helped buy the refrigeration truck and the oxygen and flammable acetylene tanks used to make the bomb in Tanzania, when he stored electric detonators in his house, and when the suicide bomber used his cell phone in the attack. These are the things liable to befall any young man on the streets of Dar es Salaam.
Apparently, at least one juror bought some version of this contemptible fabrication and dragged the jury into a senseless verdict. It found Ghailani guilty in a conspiracy to destroy government buildings, but acquitted him of everything else, including 224 counts of murder. Does anyone believe that a truck bomb meant to destroy a U.S. embassy wasn’t also intended to kill and maim everyone in the vicinity?
Ghailani’s lawyer praised the verdict as “a reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised.” Or, in other words, “Thanks for everything, suckers.”
Ghailani will get 20 years to life, and that’s something. But this is no one’s idea of a showcase outcome. The trial went astray in the mismatch between Ghailani’s status as an enemy combatant and the protections rightly afforded civilians in our justice system.
When Ghailani was caught in Pakistan in 2004, he was that most priceless commodity — an al-Qaeda operative with real-time information about the terror network. The Bush administration interrogated him harshly with an eye to extracting that information quickly, rather than honoring the niceties that obtain in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Court Building in lower Manhattan.
The judge proceeded to bar a witness whom the government had learned about through Ghailani’s CIA interrogation. This “giant witness for the government,” in the words of the prosecutors, sold Ghailani TNT. Even if the judge’s ruling was too stringent, the tension between being captured and held in Ghailani’s circumstances and tried like a civilian is inescapable.
If we’re serious about protecting ourselves, we’ve never going to give all terrorists the Miranda warnings and immediate legal defense that our civilian justice system demands. That’s why the Bush administration fell back on military commissions and Gitmo. Our civilian system is meant to protect Americans from the awesome power of the state, and all its protections shouldn’t be afforded to enemy combatants waging war against us.
No less an authority than Eric Holder implicitly acknowledges the distinction. He resists even contemplating the possibility that terrorists brought here — and supposedly presumed innocent — will be acquitted. Even if a terrorist is found not guilty, the administration asserts the right to detain him after acquittal. Such a power would be an un-American outrage if it were applied to anyone except an enemy combatant.
In the literal sense, the Ghailani trial was a charade. We pretended to give him an ordinary trial, with the enormous escape hatch of keeping him locked up no matter what. The charade ended in travesty, a fitting conclusion to Eric Holder’s misbegotten war.
Rich Lowry
Friday, November 19, 2010
The Obama administration wants us to believe that one out of 285 ain’t bad.
A jury in New York acquitted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on 284 out of 285 charges for his part in the murder of 224 people in the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Attorney General Eric Holder thought the trial would be a glorious showcase for the civilian court system. We’d stun the terrorists with our courtroom procedure, win over the world with our mincing legalisms, and salve our consciences after the horrors of the Bush years.
This was Holder’s war on terror. He’s losing it in a rout.
The attorney general’s obsession with bringing terrorists captured overseas to the U.S. for trial in the civilian courts looks more willful and untenable by the day, as the edifice of his legal strategy collapses in a pathetic heap. It’s not inconceivable that, should he win a second term, Pres. Barack Obama will hand over an operational Guantanamo Bay prison facility to his successor in January 2017.
Ghailani offered a brazen defense at his trial. It was all an innocent misunderstanding when he helped buy the refrigeration truck and the oxygen and flammable acetylene tanks used to make the bomb in Tanzania, when he stored electric detonators in his house, and when the suicide bomber used his cell phone in the attack. These are the things liable to befall any young man on the streets of Dar es Salaam.
Apparently, at least one juror bought some version of this contemptible fabrication and dragged the jury into a senseless verdict. It found Ghailani guilty in a conspiracy to destroy government buildings, but acquitted him of everything else, including 224 counts of murder. Does anyone believe that a truck bomb meant to destroy a U.S. embassy wasn’t also intended to kill and maim everyone in the vicinity?
Ghailani’s lawyer praised the verdict as “a reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised.” Or, in other words, “Thanks for everything, suckers.”
Ghailani will get 20 years to life, and that’s something. But this is no one’s idea of a showcase outcome. The trial went astray in the mismatch between Ghailani’s status as an enemy combatant and the protections rightly afforded civilians in our justice system.
When Ghailani was caught in Pakistan in 2004, he was that most priceless commodity — an al-Qaeda operative with real-time information about the terror network. The Bush administration interrogated him harshly with an eye to extracting that information quickly, rather than honoring the niceties that obtain in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Court Building in lower Manhattan.
The judge proceeded to bar a witness whom the government had learned about through Ghailani’s CIA interrogation. This “giant witness for the government,” in the words of the prosecutors, sold Ghailani TNT. Even if the judge’s ruling was too stringent, the tension between being captured and held in Ghailani’s circumstances and tried like a civilian is inescapable.
If we’re serious about protecting ourselves, we’ve never going to give all terrorists the Miranda warnings and immediate legal defense that our civilian justice system demands. That’s why the Bush administration fell back on military commissions and Gitmo. Our civilian system is meant to protect Americans from the awesome power of the state, and all its protections shouldn’t be afforded to enemy combatants waging war against us.
No less an authority than Eric Holder implicitly acknowledges the distinction. He resists even contemplating the possibility that terrorists brought here — and supposedly presumed innocent — will be acquitted. Even if a terrorist is found not guilty, the administration asserts the right to detain him after acquittal. Such a power would be an un-American outrage if it were applied to anyone except an enemy combatant.
In the literal sense, the Ghailani trial was a charade. We pretended to give him an ordinary trial, with the enormous escape hatch of keeping him locked up no matter what. The charade ended in travesty, a fitting conclusion to Eric Holder’s misbegotten war.
Why Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run
Give her a TV show, not the presidency.
Mona Charen
Friday, November 19, 2010
By telling Barbara Walters that she thinks she can defeat President Obama, Sarah Palin has dimmed hopes cherished by sensible Republicans that she might decide against a run for the White House in 2012. Here are just some of the reasons she should not run.
The Republican nominee should be someone with a vast and impressive record in government and the private sector. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity — not sizzle and flash.
After the 2008 campaign revealed her substantive weaknesses, Palin was advised by those who admired her natural gifts to bone up on policy and devote herself to governing Alaska successfully. Instead, she quit her job as governor after two and a half years, published a book (another is due next week), and seemed to chase money and empty celebrity. Now, rather than being able to highlight the accomplishments of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, we get Sarah Palin’s Alaska, another cheesy entrant in the reality-show genre. She’d so much rather be out dog sledding than in some “dull political office,” she tells the audience. File that.
It’s true. She is wildly popular with a swath of the Republican electorate. And, as a conservative woman politician told me, political consultants (who get paid the big bucks, win or lose) will doubtless descend upon her with game plans showing how she can win in Iowa and then cruise to the nomination. Maybe. But the general election would be a problem, since 53 percent of independent voters view Palin unfavorably along with 81 percent of Democrats, according to a recent Gallup poll.
There is no denying that Sarah Palin has been harshly, sometimes even brutally, treated by the press and the entertainment gaggle. But any prominent Republican must expect and be able to transcend that. Palin compares herself to Reagan. But Reagan didn’t mud-wrestle with the press. Palin seems consumed and obsessed by it, as her rapid Twitter finger attests, and thus she encourages the sniping. She should be presiding over meetings on oil and gas leases in the North Slope, or devising alternatives to Obamacare. Every public spat with Dave Letterman or Politico, or the “lamestream media,” or (God help us) Levi Johnston, diminishes her.
Speaking of television, have you watched “Dancing with the Stars”? Calling the show cheesy would be too generous. Perhaps the former governor should not be blamed for the decisions of her adult daughter. Yet there in the audience we see Sarah and Todd Palin, mugging for the camera and cheering on their unwed-mother daughter as she bumps and grinds to the tune of “Mamma Told Me Not To Come.” Her parents had advised her, the 20-year-old Bristol told an interviewer, that she had to stay “in character” if she expected to win. Being “in character” evidently meant descending to the vulgarity that DWTS peddles on a weekly basis. The mama grizzly was apparently unfazed by, or — equally disturbingly — unaware of, the indignity. And she is supposed to be a conservative culture warrior?
Voters prize judgment, above all, in a presidential candidate. Some of Sarah Palin’s 2010 endorsements were sound and arguably helpful. Others betrayed flightiness and recklessness. Tom Tancredo, Palin’s choice for governor of Colorado, has ridden his anti-immigration hobby-horse in a style perfectly suited to alienate Hispanic voters (describing Miami, for example, as a “Third World city”). Her endorsement of Christine O’Donnell was irresponsible and damaging, losing a seat that would otherwise have been a Republican pick-up. Of course, O’Donnell received an absurdly disproportionate amount of ink and attention during the race (the liberal press naturally seizes upon any opportunity to make conservatives look kooky), but Palin should have anticipated that. Besides, this one cannot be laid at the feet of the biased media. O’Donnell was a thoroughly unqualified candidate.
Palin has many strengths. I admire her fortitude and her principles. Her ability to connect with a crowd is something most politicians can only dream of. I will always remember her 2008 convention speech as a rollicking star turn. She would be terrific as a talk-show host — the new Oprah.
But a presidential candidate? Someone to convince critical independent voters that Republicans can govern successfully? Absolutely not.
Mona Charen
Friday, November 19, 2010
By telling Barbara Walters that she thinks she can defeat President Obama, Sarah Palin has dimmed hopes cherished by sensible Republicans that she might decide against a run for the White House in 2012. Here are just some of the reasons she should not run.
The Republican nominee should be someone with a vast and impressive record in government and the private sector. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity — not sizzle and flash.
After the 2008 campaign revealed her substantive weaknesses, Palin was advised by those who admired her natural gifts to bone up on policy and devote herself to governing Alaska successfully. Instead, she quit her job as governor after two and a half years, published a book (another is due next week), and seemed to chase money and empty celebrity. Now, rather than being able to highlight the accomplishments of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, we get Sarah Palin’s Alaska, another cheesy entrant in the reality-show genre. She’d so much rather be out dog sledding than in some “dull political office,” she tells the audience. File that.
It’s true. She is wildly popular with a swath of the Republican electorate. And, as a conservative woman politician told me, political consultants (who get paid the big bucks, win or lose) will doubtless descend upon her with game plans showing how she can win in Iowa and then cruise to the nomination. Maybe. But the general election would be a problem, since 53 percent of independent voters view Palin unfavorably along with 81 percent of Democrats, according to a recent Gallup poll.
There is no denying that Sarah Palin has been harshly, sometimes even brutally, treated by the press and the entertainment gaggle. But any prominent Republican must expect and be able to transcend that. Palin compares herself to Reagan. But Reagan didn’t mud-wrestle with the press. Palin seems consumed and obsessed by it, as her rapid Twitter finger attests, and thus she encourages the sniping. She should be presiding over meetings on oil and gas leases in the North Slope, or devising alternatives to Obamacare. Every public spat with Dave Letterman or Politico, or the “lamestream media,” or (God help us) Levi Johnston, diminishes her.
Speaking of television, have you watched “Dancing with the Stars”? Calling the show cheesy would be too generous. Perhaps the former governor should not be blamed for the decisions of her adult daughter. Yet there in the audience we see Sarah and Todd Palin, mugging for the camera and cheering on their unwed-mother daughter as she bumps and grinds to the tune of “Mamma Told Me Not To Come.” Her parents had advised her, the 20-year-old Bristol told an interviewer, that she had to stay “in character” if she expected to win. Being “in character” evidently meant descending to the vulgarity that DWTS peddles on a weekly basis. The mama grizzly was apparently unfazed by, or — equally disturbingly — unaware of, the indignity. And she is supposed to be a conservative culture warrior?
Voters prize judgment, above all, in a presidential candidate. Some of Sarah Palin’s 2010 endorsements were sound and arguably helpful. Others betrayed flightiness and recklessness. Tom Tancredo, Palin’s choice for governor of Colorado, has ridden his anti-immigration hobby-horse in a style perfectly suited to alienate Hispanic voters (describing Miami, for example, as a “Third World city”). Her endorsement of Christine O’Donnell was irresponsible and damaging, losing a seat that would otherwise have been a Republican pick-up. Of course, O’Donnell received an absurdly disproportionate amount of ink and attention during the race (the liberal press naturally seizes upon any opportunity to make conservatives look kooky), but Palin should have anticipated that. Besides, this one cannot be laid at the feet of the biased media. O’Donnell was a thoroughly unqualified candidate.
Palin has many strengths. I admire her fortitude and her principles. Her ability to connect with a crowd is something most politicians can only dream of. I will always remember her 2008 convention speech as a rollicking star turn. She would be terrific as a talk-show host — the new Oprah.
But a presidential candidate? Someone to convince critical independent voters that Republicans can govern successfully? Absolutely not.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Voting Present Beats Losing
With enemies like Michael Moore and Bill Maher, Obama needs fewer friends.
Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Obamism was repudiated in the midterm election. Not since 1938 has the Democratic party lost so many House seats. The losses of state legislatures and governorships were as bleak for liberals. Obama’s frantic campaigning in the last two weeks before the election did little to stop the tide, but did much to remind the country how easily the president reverts to a natural partisanship and divisiveness. Nancy Pelosi’s promise to “drain the swamp” of congressional corruption ended four years later with a disgraced Charles Rangel offering up the Magna Carta as a defense of his ethics violations. The congressional elections of 2012 could be just as depressing for liberals, given the greater exposure of Democratic incumbents. George W. Bush now polls roughly even in approval ratings with Barack Obama, who has neither the political experience nor the ideological deftness of a Bill Clinton to triangulate and reinvent himself as a moderate.
For Obama to continue pressing his agenda would further the ongoing destruction of the Democratic party in 2012. However, there are some reasons to believe that he may well instead prefer to vote present, as in his Illinois past, and thereby stave off catastrophe. Why?
The anger of the unhinged Left — the high-profile but ultimately irrelevant rantings of a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher — has the effect of making Obama seem more centrist than he is: With enemies like these, he needs fewer friends. Obama had offered such hope-and-change promises to a progressive America that many naïfs assumed he could turn a country that polls 60 percent conservative into another Sweden — and then onward to even more still. Now that Obama has been rendered politically impotent, he can stop with Obamacare, relieved of the burden of a liberal congressional majority. The extreme Left will become shriller the less the president does. And both their furor at presidential inaction and Obama’s own inability to press on with his leftist projects will help him politically.
We can already sense how the president is not going to take the bipartisan lead in cutting out-of-control expenses. Key Democrats have already turned on the centrist recommendations of the president’s deficit-reduction commission. Republicans will ultimately have to look at everything from Social Security and Medicare to defense. Obama can benefit from their fiscal responsibility while deploring their heartlessness.
The economy is bound to recover, especially when Americans with capital are assured that Obamism has stalled and it is time to reenter the market — to resume investing, hiring, and buying equipment. Consumers have reduced debt. The world economy is healing. Obama can do very little and take credit for very much. Things should be better by November 2012 than they are now — as long as the private sector is assured that Obama will do no more harm.
Obama’s class warfare will not end, but it may be refocused and refined. The problem for many Americans was not that he attacked the wealthy per se, but that he gored those who were not really wealthy — at least as defined by a ridiculous $250,000-annual-income rubric that demonized any above and patronized those below. Expect the president to up his them/us Mason-Dixon line to, say, a million dollars in annual income. Such a hike will reassure his upscale liberal supporters in the media, the universities, and the law that they are not exploiters and need not pay higher taxes, while also exempting most small businesses from increased income, capital-gains, and payroll taxes. Everyone knows of someone noble who makes somewhat over $250,000 a year; most people don’t worry much about a mostly unknown “they” who, as class enemies, pile up $1 million or more in annual income.
Abroad, the president is quietly starting to curb the bowing and apologizing. His team is learning that cynical foreign leaders appreciated Obama’s fawning only to the degree that they could take advantage of it at the expense of America — and of Obama’s reputation.
For all the past talk of hitting the reset button, Obama has quietly accepted the entire Bush anti-terrorism policy. There is no more bragging about closing Guantanamo, ending renditions and tribunals, or trying KSM in a civilian court; idiotic parlance like “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” hasn’t been heard for months. We are now witnessing the surreal world of Hillary Clinton (“suspension of disbelief”) defending America’s use of force in Afghanistan against international criticism and explaining why a Petraean surge is working this time, when she is in charge of U.S. foreign policy.
When Obama urges the American people to have patience with his war plans, as he ups the number of Predator drone attacks and special-forces hit missions, then we are living in quite an alternative universe to wanting all troops out of Iraq by March 2009 and declaring the Bush surge a failure.
By 2011, American foreign policy in practice will resemble nothing of what presidential candidate Obama outlined in 2008 and thought he could deliver in winter 2009. Instead, the damage that Obama has wrought in 2009–10 will be passed off as inevitable American “decline” that he was trying to “manage.”
In his first two years in office, Obama said and did some ridiculous things abroad, and assorted monsters in Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela are still calibrating to what degree they can (literally) get away with murder. Opportunists in China and Russia are still trying to decide whether it is time to humiliate Obama, cashing in their chips and taking their winnings home, or whether they can get more still from our gullible president.
Obama’s reelection chances could hinge on international crises to come. His fate may rest not on whether at home he triangulates like Bill Clinton or continues to sermonize like Jimmy Carter, but on whether abroad he is up to something like Clinton’s confrontation with Milosevic, or whether he prefers instead an appeasement akin to Carter’s enlistment of Ramsey Clark to help out with the hostage release.
How odd that, 22 months into his presidency, the best reelection chances for the president of the United States are suddenly found in keeping quiet, abandoning his agenda, adopting the security protocols of his hated predecessor, and sounding more like a Reagan or a Bush than a Carter when he reaps abroad in 2011–12 what he has sown in 2009–2010.
Weirder still? The more Obama’s polls improve from his not being Obama, the more moderate Democrats will probably praise him for his virtual progressivism.
Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Obamism was repudiated in the midterm election. Not since 1938 has the Democratic party lost so many House seats. The losses of state legislatures and governorships were as bleak for liberals. Obama’s frantic campaigning in the last two weeks before the election did little to stop the tide, but did much to remind the country how easily the president reverts to a natural partisanship and divisiveness. Nancy Pelosi’s promise to “drain the swamp” of congressional corruption ended four years later with a disgraced Charles Rangel offering up the Magna Carta as a defense of his ethics violations. The congressional elections of 2012 could be just as depressing for liberals, given the greater exposure of Democratic incumbents. George W. Bush now polls roughly even in approval ratings with Barack Obama, who has neither the political experience nor the ideological deftness of a Bill Clinton to triangulate and reinvent himself as a moderate.
For Obama to continue pressing his agenda would further the ongoing destruction of the Democratic party in 2012. However, there are some reasons to believe that he may well instead prefer to vote present, as in his Illinois past, and thereby stave off catastrophe. Why?
The anger of the unhinged Left — the high-profile but ultimately irrelevant rantings of a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher — has the effect of making Obama seem more centrist than he is: With enemies like these, he needs fewer friends. Obama had offered such hope-and-change promises to a progressive America that many naïfs assumed he could turn a country that polls 60 percent conservative into another Sweden — and then onward to even more still. Now that Obama has been rendered politically impotent, he can stop with Obamacare, relieved of the burden of a liberal congressional majority. The extreme Left will become shriller the less the president does. And both their furor at presidential inaction and Obama’s own inability to press on with his leftist projects will help him politically.
We can already sense how the president is not going to take the bipartisan lead in cutting out-of-control expenses. Key Democrats have already turned on the centrist recommendations of the president’s deficit-reduction commission. Republicans will ultimately have to look at everything from Social Security and Medicare to defense. Obama can benefit from their fiscal responsibility while deploring their heartlessness.
The economy is bound to recover, especially when Americans with capital are assured that Obamism has stalled and it is time to reenter the market — to resume investing, hiring, and buying equipment. Consumers have reduced debt. The world economy is healing. Obama can do very little and take credit for very much. Things should be better by November 2012 than they are now — as long as the private sector is assured that Obama will do no more harm.
Obama’s class warfare will not end, but it may be refocused and refined. The problem for many Americans was not that he attacked the wealthy per se, but that he gored those who were not really wealthy — at least as defined by a ridiculous $250,000-annual-income rubric that demonized any above and patronized those below. Expect the president to up his them/us Mason-Dixon line to, say, a million dollars in annual income. Such a hike will reassure his upscale liberal supporters in the media, the universities, and the law that they are not exploiters and need not pay higher taxes, while also exempting most small businesses from increased income, capital-gains, and payroll taxes. Everyone knows of someone noble who makes somewhat over $250,000 a year; most people don’t worry much about a mostly unknown “they” who, as class enemies, pile up $1 million or more in annual income.
Abroad, the president is quietly starting to curb the bowing and apologizing. His team is learning that cynical foreign leaders appreciated Obama’s fawning only to the degree that they could take advantage of it at the expense of America — and of Obama’s reputation.
For all the past talk of hitting the reset button, Obama has quietly accepted the entire Bush anti-terrorism policy. There is no more bragging about closing Guantanamo, ending renditions and tribunals, or trying KSM in a civilian court; idiotic parlance like “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” hasn’t been heard for months. We are now witnessing the surreal world of Hillary Clinton (“suspension of disbelief”) defending America’s use of force in Afghanistan against international criticism and explaining why a Petraean surge is working this time, when she is in charge of U.S. foreign policy.
When Obama urges the American people to have patience with his war plans, as he ups the number of Predator drone attacks and special-forces hit missions, then we are living in quite an alternative universe to wanting all troops out of Iraq by March 2009 and declaring the Bush surge a failure.
By 2011, American foreign policy in practice will resemble nothing of what presidential candidate Obama outlined in 2008 and thought he could deliver in winter 2009. Instead, the damage that Obama has wrought in 2009–10 will be passed off as inevitable American “decline” that he was trying to “manage.”
In his first two years in office, Obama said and did some ridiculous things abroad, and assorted monsters in Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela are still calibrating to what degree they can (literally) get away with murder. Opportunists in China and Russia are still trying to decide whether it is time to humiliate Obama, cashing in their chips and taking their winnings home, or whether they can get more still from our gullible president.
Obama’s reelection chances could hinge on international crises to come. His fate may rest not on whether at home he triangulates like Bill Clinton or continues to sermonize like Jimmy Carter, but on whether abroad he is up to something like Clinton’s confrontation with Milosevic, or whether he prefers instead an appeasement akin to Carter’s enlistment of Ramsey Clark to help out with the hostage release.
How odd that, 22 months into his presidency, the best reelection chances for the president of the United States are suddenly found in keeping quiet, abandoning his agenda, adopting the security protocols of his hated predecessor, and sounding more like a Reagan or a Bush than a Carter when he reaps abroad in 2011–12 what he has sown in 2009–2010.
Weirder still? The more Obama’s polls improve from his not being Obama, the more moderate Democrats will probably praise him for his virtual progressivism.
Hey, Michael Moore! Clinton, Gore and Kerry Lost the 'White Vote,' Too
By Larry Elder
Thursday, November 18, 2010
"White America does not like having a black president."
Thus pronounced Michael Moore in an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." And Maher agreed, "That is the truth."
"The statistics don't lie," Moore plowed ahead. "I'm not talking about polls. I'm talking about that the young people in '08 was the only -- do you know this? -- it's the only demographic -- white demographic -- that Obama won, 18- to 29-year-olds. Every other demographic, over 29, Obama lost the white vote. Every single one."
Crime solved. Case closed. Book 'em, Danno. Except for one minor detail: No Democratic presidential candidate has won the "white vote" since 1964.
Add Obama's name to a long list of white Democrats who lost that demographic: Humphrey in 1968; McGovern in 1972; Carter in 1976 and 1980; Mondale in 1984; Dukakis in 1988; Clinton in 1992 and 1996; Gore in 2000.
In fact, white voters preferred Obama to Sen. John Kerry -- who lost the white vote by 17 points in 2004, while Obama lost it in 2008 by "only" 12 points. Obama improved on Kerry's share of the white vote in every age demographic, including the 18- to 29-year-olds (which Kerry lost).
Did "white America" temporarily forget Obama's skin color, only to remember just in time for the midterm elections? This, perhaps, explains why Obama's approval rating, postelection, shot up to over 70 percent before coming down.
Obama's approval rating now stands at the low- to mid-40s. So, presumably, "white America" reverted back to its historical racism. But how does Moore explain whites like Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with an approval rating at less than 30 percent, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at 25 percent?
If "white America" dislikes having a black president, why does "white America" -- in the South, no less -- tolerate a black congressperson?
Allen West, a black Republican former lieutenant colonel, won Florida's 22nd Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 82.3 percent white, 3.8 percent black, 1.7 percent Asian, 10.7 percent Hispanic, 0.1 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.
Tim Scott, a black Republican candidate, won South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 74.8 percent white, 21.1 percent black, 1.3 percent Asian, 2.5 percent Hispanic, 0.4 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.
Worse, Scott was backed by what the NAACP calls the "racist" tea party! The civil rights organization commissioned a study that purported to unmask the tea party's racism. But NAACP CEO Ben Jealous encountered unexpected skepticism when he appeared on Anderson Cooper's CNN show.
Cooper asked why the NAACP selected a "clearly left-wing group -- which is opposed to the tea party" -- to conduct the study. He said the report "does seem to use a lot of innuendo and a lot of guilt by association." Cooper played a montage of video clips showing prominent Democrats -- from the President on down -- campaigning with the mantra that it's time to "take our country back!" "Why is it when Democrats say 'take our country back,'" said Cooper, "no one says that's extreme nationalism, but when tea party supporters say it, it's ominous and racism in disguise?" Jealous stammered, stumbled and fumbled. Painful to watch.
Actor/producer/director Rob Reiner says the Tim Scott-supporting tea party is not merely racist. It is also fascist. In an appearance on Bill Maher's show, Reiner worried whether a Hitler-like charismatic leader might emerge to lead the party:
Reiner: You never get into a political discussion unless you bring the word Hitler in. You have to have Hitler, so let's put Hitler out there. Here's Hitler, OK? You have bad economic times, right? Hitler, by the way, never got more than 33 percent of the vote ever in Germany. You have bad economic times--
Maher: Well, he only had that one election, let's be honest. ... There was no 1937 election.
Reiner: He wasn't a majority guy, but he was charismatic and they were having bad economic times, just like we are now. People were out of work. They needed jobs, and a guy came along and rallied the troops. My fear is that the tea party gets a charismatic leader, because all they're selling is fear and anger, and that's all Hitler sold."
Not a "majority guy"? President Bill Clinton not only twice lost the white vote but also, like Hitler, never won the majority of the electorate -- 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996. And the point is? Well, there is no point -- at least none one might call coherent.
A 2008 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked likely voters whether they would refuse to vote for a black presidential candidate. Only 4 percent said yes -- a smaller number than would refuse to vote for a woman or a Mormon.
It's not about race. The reality is simple, if less comforting to Mr. Moore. "White America" does not even like voting for a white president -- if he is a Democrat.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
"White America does not like having a black president."
Thus pronounced Michael Moore in an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." And Maher agreed, "That is the truth."
"The statistics don't lie," Moore plowed ahead. "I'm not talking about polls. I'm talking about that the young people in '08 was the only -- do you know this? -- it's the only demographic -- white demographic -- that Obama won, 18- to 29-year-olds. Every other demographic, over 29, Obama lost the white vote. Every single one."
Crime solved. Case closed. Book 'em, Danno. Except for one minor detail: No Democratic presidential candidate has won the "white vote" since 1964.
Add Obama's name to a long list of white Democrats who lost that demographic: Humphrey in 1968; McGovern in 1972; Carter in 1976 and 1980; Mondale in 1984; Dukakis in 1988; Clinton in 1992 and 1996; Gore in 2000.
In fact, white voters preferred Obama to Sen. John Kerry -- who lost the white vote by 17 points in 2004, while Obama lost it in 2008 by "only" 12 points. Obama improved on Kerry's share of the white vote in every age demographic, including the 18- to 29-year-olds (which Kerry lost).
Did "white America" temporarily forget Obama's skin color, only to remember just in time for the midterm elections? This, perhaps, explains why Obama's approval rating, postelection, shot up to over 70 percent before coming down.
Obama's approval rating now stands at the low- to mid-40s. So, presumably, "white America" reverted back to its historical racism. But how does Moore explain whites like Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with an approval rating at less than 30 percent, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at 25 percent?
If "white America" dislikes having a black president, why does "white America" -- in the South, no less -- tolerate a black congressperson?
Allen West, a black Republican former lieutenant colonel, won Florida's 22nd Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 82.3 percent white, 3.8 percent black, 1.7 percent Asian, 10.7 percent Hispanic, 0.1 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.
Tim Scott, a black Republican candidate, won South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 74.8 percent white, 21.1 percent black, 1.3 percent Asian, 2.5 percent Hispanic, 0.4 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.
Worse, Scott was backed by what the NAACP calls the "racist" tea party! The civil rights organization commissioned a study that purported to unmask the tea party's racism. But NAACP CEO Ben Jealous encountered unexpected skepticism when he appeared on Anderson Cooper's CNN show.
Cooper asked why the NAACP selected a "clearly left-wing group -- which is opposed to the tea party" -- to conduct the study. He said the report "does seem to use a lot of innuendo and a lot of guilt by association." Cooper played a montage of video clips showing prominent Democrats -- from the President on down -- campaigning with the mantra that it's time to "take our country back!" "Why is it when Democrats say 'take our country back,'" said Cooper, "no one says that's extreme nationalism, but when tea party supporters say it, it's ominous and racism in disguise?" Jealous stammered, stumbled and fumbled. Painful to watch.
Actor/producer/director Rob Reiner says the Tim Scott-supporting tea party is not merely racist. It is also fascist. In an appearance on Bill Maher's show, Reiner worried whether a Hitler-like charismatic leader might emerge to lead the party:
Reiner: You never get into a political discussion unless you bring the word Hitler in. You have to have Hitler, so let's put Hitler out there. Here's Hitler, OK? You have bad economic times, right? Hitler, by the way, never got more than 33 percent of the vote ever in Germany. You have bad economic times--
Maher: Well, he only had that one election, let's be honest. ... There was no 1937 election.
Reiner: He wasn't a majority guy, but he was charismatic and they were having bad economic times, just like we are now. People were out of work. They needed jobs, and a guy came along and rallied the troops. My fear is that the tea party gets a charismatic leader, because all they're selling is fear and anger, and that's all Hitler sold."
Not a "majority guy"? President Bill Clinton not only twice lost the white vote but also, like Hitler, never won the majority of the electorate -- 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996. And the point is? Well, there is no point -- at least none one might call coherent.
A 2008 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked likely voters whether they would refuse to vote for a black presidential candidate. Only 4 percent said yes -- a smaller number than would refuse to vote for a woman or a Mormon.
It's not about race. The reality is simple, if less comforting to Mr. Moore. "White America" does not even like voting for a white president -- if he is a Democrat.
The George W. Bush Fixation
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Barack Obama remains fixated by George W. Bush. For nearly two years, President Obama and his team have prefaced their explanations for the tough economy, tough finances and tough situation abroad with a "Bush did it" chorus. Apparently, they believed that most of our problems, here and abroad, either started with George W. Bush, or at least would not transcend him.
At first, it was an easy enough habit to fall into. Things were not in great shape in January 2009 when Obama took over. More importantly, Obama's started out with a nearly 70 percent approval rating. In contrast, Bush, like the punching bag Harry Truman, left office with an approval rating in the low 30s.
Obama's serial fixation with his former predecessor made little sense when he first took office -- and has now become a disastrous misreading of political realities.
Recent polls reflect that Bush and Obama are now just about even in popularity. Obama's supporters in the House have suffered the worst Democratic shellacking since 1938. The president got out of Washington on a foreign tour immediately after the election -- only to be cold-shouldered by fair-weather foreign leaders who sensed weakness. Bush, in contrast, is basking in endless media exposure as he expounds on his best-selling memoir -- appearing above the partisan fray, past and present.
Voters two years ago elected Obama for a variety of reasons -- from unhappiness with Bush and Iraq to the landmark novelty of seeing our first African-American president. The financial meltdown of September 2008 ended for good John McCain's small lead in the polls. That panic also reminded voters of their unease with the Bush deficits and his expansion of government.
Unfortunately, Obama misread all that, and ended up trumping many of the things that Bush did to alienate voters.
Deficits of $500 billion soared to $1.4 trillion ones. Vast but unfunded Bush programs like Medicare prescription drug benefits and No Child Left Behind soon were overshadowed by even bigger ones like ObamaCare. An initial Bush bailout evolved into a gargantuan stimulus and multifaceted takeovers.
The result, fairly or not, was that Bush's financial felonies began looking like misdemeanors in comparison. Tea Party voters saw the Obama medicine as worse than the original Bush disease.
There was the same obsession with, but misreading of, Bush in foreign affairs. The public was turned off by the violence and costs in Iraq -- but otherwise not especially concerned about Bush's largely traditional foreign policy or his anti-terrorism protocols. Too bad a Bush-obsessed Obama was again blind to that simple fact. So when Iraq became largely quiet as Obama entered office, the entire "Bush did it" refrain was rendered obsolete and should have been dropped.
The antiwar Obama had campaigned on closing Guantanamo, ending tribunals and renditions, and critiquing the Patriot Act and Predator drone attacks. But once Iraq was taken out of the equation, Obama quickly discovered that these old bogeymen Bush policies were both useful and relatively popular. So he was forced to keep or expand them. Obama's flip-flop only confused Americans: Why, in hypocritical fashion, was he now embracing the Bush legacy that he used to constantly demonize?
When Obama tried to chart a new and much-heralded "reset-button" foreign policy in loud opposition to Bush's, the irony continued. Most Americans did not want to try the accused architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court, replete with legal gymnastics. They did not think that announcing artificial deadlines for troop withdrawals in wartime was an especially bright idea.
They also did not expect that the much-heralded antidote to Bush's swagger and "Dead or Alive" Texanisms would include bowing to Saudi princes and Chinese dictators, apologizing abroad for America's purported sins, or spreading mythologies about the Islamic world's contribution to the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Just because Bush turned off Europe over Iraq did not mean that an "I'm not Bush" Obama could not turn it off even more by printing billions of dollars, urging European countries to borrow more in reckless American style, and downplaying old alliances with everyone from Britain to Poland.
So here is a polite suggestion for President Obama: After nearly two years of governance, free up your own policies to either succeed or fail on their own merits without chaining them to the Bush past. In a word: Let go of a now-smiling and relatively rehabilitated Bush -- before such a fixation consumes you and your presidency.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Barack Obama remains fixated by George W. Bush. For nearly two years, President Obama and his team have prefaced their explanations for the tough economy, tough finances and tough situation abroad with a "Bush did it" chorus. Apparently, they believed that most of our problems, here and abroad, either started with George W. Bush, or at least would not transcend him.
At first, it was an easy enough habit to fall into. Things were not in great shape in January 2009 when Obama took over. More importantly, Obama's started out with a nearly 70 percent approval rating. In contrast, Bush, like the punching bag Harry Truman, left office with an approval rating in the low 30s.
Obama's serial fixation with his former predecessor made little sense when he first took office -- and has now become a disastrous misreading of political realities.
Recent polls reflect that Bush and Obama are now just about even in popularity. Obama's supporters in the House have suffered the worst Democratic shellacking since 1938. The president got out of Washington on a foreign tour immediately after the election -- only to be cold-shouldered by fair-weather foreign leaders who sensed weakness. Bush, in contrast, is basking in endless media exposure as he expounds on his best-selling memoir -- appearing above the partisan fray, past and present.
Voters two years ago elected Obama for a variety of reasons -- from unhappiness with Bush and Iraq to the landmark novelty of seeing our first African-American president. The financial meltdown of September 2008 ended for good John McCain's small lead in the polls. That panic also reminded voters of their unease with the Bush deficits and his expansion of government.
Unfortunately, Obama misread all that, and ended up trumping many of the things that Bush did to alienate voters.
Deficits of $500 billion soared to $1.4 trillion ones. Vast but unfunded Bush programs like Medicare prescription drug benefits and No Child Left Behind soon were overshadowed by even bigger ones like ObamaCare. An initial Bush bailout evolved into a gargantuan stimulus and multifaceted takeovers.
The result, fairly or not, was that Bush's financial felonies began looking like misdemeanors in comparison. Tea Party voters saw the Obama medicine as worse than the original Bush disease.
There was the same obsession with, but misreading of, Bush in foreign affairs. The public was turned off by the violence and costs in Iraq -- but otherwise not especially concerned about Bush's largely traditional foreign policy or his anti-terrorism protocols. Too bad a Bush-obsessed Obama was again blind to that simple fact. So when Iraq became largely quiet as Obama entered office, the entire "Bush did it" refrain was rendered obsolete and should have been dropped.
The antiwar Obama had campaigned on closing Guantanamo, ending tribunals and renditions, and critiquing the Patriot Act and Predator drone attacks. But once Iraq was taken out of the equation, Obama quickly discovered that these old bogeymen Bush policies were both useful and relatively popular. So he was forced to keep or expand them. Obama's flip-flop only confused Americans: Why, in hypocritical fashion, was he now embracing the Bush legacy that he used to constantly demonize?
When Obama tried to chart a new and much-heralded "reset-button" foreign policy in loud opposition to Bush's, the irony continued. Most Americans did not want to try the accused architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court, replete with legal gymnastics. They did not think that announcing artificial deadlines for troop withdrawals in wartime was an especially bright idea.
They also did not expect that the much-heralded antidote to Bush's swagger and "Dead or Alive" Texanisms would include bowing to Saudi princes and Chinese dictators, apologizing abroad for America's purported sins, or spreading mythologies about the Islamic world's contribution to the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Just because Bush turned off Europe over Iraq did not mean that an "I'm not Bush" Obama could not turn it off even more by printing billions of dollars, urging European countries to borrow more in reckless American style, and downplaying old alliances with everyone from Britain to Poland.
So here is a polite suggestion for President Obama: After nearly two years of governance, free up your own policies to either succeed or fail on their own merits without chaining them to the Bush past. In a word: Let go of a now-smiling and relatively rehabilitated Bush -- before such a fixation consumes you and your presidency.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
American Rights, American Responsibilities
Big government invites corruption and imperils the generosity of the American spirit.
Governor Bobby Jindal
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
In America today, we need to trust ourselves — not look to others to take care of us. As a society, we bloom when we allow individuals to work hard and enjoy what they can achieve. Economist and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek rightly credited the “unchaining of individual energies” with creating and sustaining the West’s freedom and prosperity. Only individuals create and dream, something Americans have recognized since the nation’s founding. That is why we Americans reject collectivism. We do not believe that, in the words of one turn-of-the-century German thinker, “The individual is nothing in relation to the course [of time], the species is everything.”
However, we cannot ever allow our society to drift to the opposite extreme, at which the individual is everything, and the group is nothing. As Americans, we are bound together by a common outlook and heritage. We have freedom, but we also have responsibilities, both to ourselves and to those around us. That is what makes us great.
In my family, our need to care for others — not just our family but strangers, too — springs from our Christian beliefs. The greatest commandment, which envelops so many others, is the voluntary obligation to love your neighbor as yourself. Government coercion is a poor and dangerous substitute for that appeal to our better angels. As Winston Churchill said just over 100 years ago, the good Lord taught us to believe “all mine is yours,” not “all yours is mine.” Christian charity is about giving, not taking.
Here in Louisiana, when the storms have come, we have seen the incomparable generosity of the American spirit. I’ll never forget what I saw: people standing on rooftops begging to be rescued. Hospitals meant to save lives, suddenly helpless to preserve them. Families torn apart for all time by the relentless force of the rising waters.
A monumental failure of government contributed mightily to what we saw during those grim days in 2005.We will see other storms come to our state but, as governor, I’ve worked to make sure those tragic events never visit Louisiana again. I’ve also put everyone in the state on notice that all of us, as individuals, must take greater responsibility for preparing for the storms life brings us. All of us must be responsible for meeting the needs of the truly disadvantaged, people with physical or mental limitations. People who can take responsibility for themselves should not expect someone else do so. We will help you when catastrophe comes, but you’d better not sit there and just wait for someone to pull you out when you could climb out, or pick you up when you could stand on your own two feet.
Today, we have taxpayer dollars going to banks, investment houses, and automakers, and financial firms that are judged “too big to fail.” Our government is supposed to be a “partner” with these businesses. As one businessman told me, that’s like an alligator having a chicken as a partner for dinner. I believe big government should not be picking and choosing which companies we will bail out or rescue. That political competition lets the best lobbyists determine the winner.
Government’s role is to serve as an objective referee and make sure companies abide by the rules, compete fairly, and obey the law. We don’t want the referee tilting the football game. But when the federal government starts bailing out individual businesses, that’s exactly what it does. Of course, if you think there isn’t enough backroom dealing and corruption in Washington now, then let’s give big-government officials the chance to pass out more cash, loans, and contracts.
When you give Washington not hundreds of billions but trillions of dollars to hand out, you create corruption on steroids. Some will use their power and privilege to enrich themselves. Others will enrich their political allies. Either way, with new trillion-dollar pots of gold to lust after, I’m sure corruption is growing, even now, in Washington.
Consider the words of Harry Hopkins, who oversaw both the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the distribution of funds from the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) under FDR during the Great Depression. “I thought at first I could be completely non-political,” Hopkins said (as quoted by Robert E. Sherwood in the definitive Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History). “Then they told me I had to be part non-political and part political. I found out that was impossible, at least for me. I finally realized that there was nothing for it but to be all-political.” When trillions of dollars are sloshing around the Treasury, awaiting direction from the privileged few, we know what will happen: People who walk into public service with nothing will walk out with the taxpayers’ gold in their pockets. And businessmen who walked in with empty pockets will walk out millionaires because of whom they knew, not whom they served. Look at the list of the most corrupt countries in the world today, and you will see that centralized economies are at the top of the list.
In his 1958 book The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith said that with a home, a car, a television set, and a family member in college, the American family had reached its economic pinnacle. Then, in the 1970s, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich warned us that the immediate future would bring widespread famine, shortages, and despair. He wrote in his book The Population Bomb (1968): “By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion.” In his book The End of Affluence (1975), Ehrlich said Congress would be dissolved “during the food riots of the 1980s.” In 1977, Jimmy Carter warned, “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
Of course, there were no food riots in America in the 1980s. Our oil reserves expanded; they did not evaporate, despite our still-growing dependence. And, at last count, there were approximately 6 billion people on earth, including, surprisingly, Paul Ehrlich.
Yet today there are still some people who want to harp on America’s limits. They still say that our best days are behind us. These big-government advocates tell us their failures are the best Americans can do. Forget cooking up anything new — let’s just divide the old American pie into smaller, equally unsatisfying pieces.
That is all bunk. It’s not a sunset but a sunrise that still starts America’s day.
Governor Bobby Jindal
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
In America today, we need to trust ourselves — not look to others to take care of us. As a society, we bloom when we allow individuals to work hard and enjoy what they can achieve. Economist and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek rightly credited the “unchaining of individual energies” with creating and sustaining the West’s freedom and prosperity. Only individuals create and dream, something Americans have recognized since the nation’s founding. That is why we Americans reject collectivism. We do not believe that, in the words of one turn-of-the-century German thinker, “The individual is nothing in relation to the course [of time], the species is everything.”
However, we cannot ever allow our society to drift to the opposite extreme, at which the individual is everything, and the group is nothing. As Americans, we are bound together by a common outlook and heritage. We have freedom, but we also have responsibilities, both to ourselves and to those around us. That is what makes us great.
In my family, our need to care for others — not just our family but strangers, too — springs from our Christian beliefs. The greatest commandment, which envelops so many others, is the voluntary obligation to love your neighbor as yourself. Government coercion is a poor and dangerous substitute for that appeal to our better angels. As Winston Churchill said just over 100 years ago, the good Lord taught us to believe “all mine is yours,” not “all yours is mine.” Christian charity is about giving, not taking.
Here in Louisiana, when the storms have come, we have seen the incomparable generosity of the American spirit. I’ll never forget what I saw: people standing on rooftops begging to be rescued. Hospitals meant to save lives, suddenly helpless to preserve them. Families torn apart for all time by the relentless force of the rising waters.
A monumental failure of government contributed mightily to what we saw during those grim days in 2005.We will see other storms come to our state but, as governor, I’ve worked to make sure those tragic events never visit Louisiana again. I’ve also put everyone in the state on notice that all of us, as individuals, must take greater responsibility for preparing for the storms life brings us. All of us must be responsible for meeting the needs of the truly disadvantaged, people with physical or mental limitations. People who can take responsibility for themselves should not expect someone else do so. We will help you when catastrophe comes, but you’d better not sit there and just wait for someone to pull you out when you could climb out, or pick you up when you could stand on your own two feet.
Today, we have taxpayer dollars going to banks, investment houses, and automakers, and financial firms that are judged “too big to fail.” Our government is supposed to be a “partner” with these businesses. As one businessman told me, that’s like an alligator having a chicken as a partner for dinner. I believe big government should not be picking and choosing which companies we will bail out or rescue. That political competition lets the best lobbyists determine the winner.
Government’s role is to serve as an objective referee and make sure companies abide by the rules, compete fairly, and obey the law. We don’t want the referee tilting the football game. But when the federal government starts bailing out individual businesses, that’s exactly what it does. Of course, if you think there isn’t enough backroom dealing and corruption in Washington now, then let’s give big-government officials the chance to pass out more cash, loans, and contracts.
When you give Washington not hundreds of billions but trillions of dollars to hand out, you create corruption on steroids. Some will use their power and privilege to enrich themselves. Others will enrich their political allies. Either way, with new trillion-dollar pots of gold to lust after, I’m sure corruption is growing, even now, in Washington.
Consider the words of Harry Hopkins, who oversaw both the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the distribution of funds from the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) under FDR during the Great Depression. “I thought at first I could be completely non-political,” Hopkins said (as quoted by Robert E. Sherwood in the definitive Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History). “Then they told me I had to be part non-political and part political. I found out that was impossible, at least for me. I finally realized that there was nothing for it but to be all-political.” When trillions of dollars are sloshing around the Treasury, awaiting direction from the privileged few, we know what will happen: People who walk into public service with nothing will walk out with the taxpayers’ gold in their pockets. And businessmen who walked in with empty pockets will walk out millionaires because of whom they knew, not whom they served. Look at the list of the most corrupt countries in the world today, and you will see that centralized economies are at the top of the list.
In his 1958 book The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith said that with a home, a car, a television set, and a family member in college, the American family had reached its economic pinnacle. Then, in the 1970s, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich warned us that the immediate future would bring widespread famine, shortages, and despair. He wrote in his book The Population Bomb (1968): “By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion.” In his book The End of Affluence (1975), Ehrlich said Congress would be dissolved “during the food riots of the 1980s.” In 1977, Jimmy Carter warned, “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
Of course, there were no food riots in America in the 1980s. Our oil reserves expanded; they did not evaporate, despite our still-growing dependence. And, at last count, there were approximately 6 billion people on earth, including, surprisingly, Paul Ehrlich.
Yet today there are still some people who want to harp on America’s limits. They still say that our best days are behind us. These big-government advocates tell us their failures are the best Americans can do. Forget cooking up anything new — let’s just divide the old American pie into smaller, equally unsatisfying pieces.
That is all bunk. It’s not a sunset but a sunrise that still starts America’s day.
Dude, Where's My Obamacare Waiver?
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
More than one million Americans have escaped the clutches of the Democrats' destructive federal health care law. Lucky them. Their employers and labor representatives wisely applied for Obamacare waivers earlier this fall and got out while the getting was good. Now, it's time for Congress to create a permanent escape hatch for the rest of us. Repeal is the ultimate waiver.
As you'll recall, President Obama promised repeatedly that if Americans liked their health insurance plan, they could keep it. "Nobody is talking about taking that away from you," the cajoler-in-chief assured. What he failed to communicate to low-wage and part-time workers across the country is that they could keep their plans -- only if their companies begged hard enough for exemptions from Obamacare's private insurance-killing regulations.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, at least 111 waivers have now been granted to companies, unions and other organizations of all sizes who offer affordable health insurance or prescription drug coverage with limited benefits. Obamacare architects sought to eliminate those low-cost plans under the guise of controlling insurer spending on executive salaries and marketing.
It's all about control. If central planners can't dictate what health benefits qualify as "good," what plans qualify as "affordable" and how health care dollars are best spent, then nobody can. The ultimate goal, of course: precipitating a massive shift from private to government insurance.
McDonald's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Jack in the Box are among the large, headline-garnering employers who received the temporary waivers. But perhaps the most politically noteworthy beneficiaries of the HHS waiver program: Big Labor.
The Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures a total of 12,000 SEIU health care workers in upstate New York, secured its Obamacare exemption in October. The Local 25 SEIU Welfare Fund in Chicago also nabbed a waiver for 31,000 of its enrollees. SEIU, of course, was one of Obamacare's loudest and biggest spending proponents. The waivers come on top of the massive sweetheart deal that SEIU and other unions cut with the Obama administration to exempt them from the health care mandate's onerous "Cadillac tax" on high-cost health care plans until 2018. _
Other unions who won protection from Obamacare:
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Allied Trade Health and Welfare Trust Fund
-- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union No. 915
-- Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund
-- Employees Security Fund
-- Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 455 (Maximus)
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1262
-- Musicians Health Fund Local 802
-- Hospitality Benefit Fund Local 17
-- Transport Workers Union
-- United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund
-- International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO)
-- Plus two organizations that appear to be chapters of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA)
Several of these labor organizations did not respond to requests for comment about their waivers. But Jay Blumenthal, financial vice president of the Local 802 Musicians Health Fund in New York, did explain to me: "We got grandfathered in" (his description for getting a pass) because "things were moving so fast" and "we need time now to prepare for the law." In other words: Policy cramdowns first, political fixes later. A supporter of Obamacare, Blumenthal told me he "sees no irony, no," in unions supporting the very health care "reform" from which they are now seeking relief.
Chris Rodriguez, director of human resources at Fowler Packing Company in California's San Joaquin Valley, sees things a little differently. Fowler pursued an HHS waiver because their low-wage agricultural workers would have lost the basic coverage his company has voluntarily offered for years. "We take care of our employees, and we warned (health care officials that) if they imposed this, large numbers of workers would lose access to affordable coverage," he told me. Rodriguez said he's grateful the firm won a waiver, but he did not lose sight of the fact that the very policies passed to increase health insurance access are having the opposite effect: "That's our government at work."
Indeed, some prominent government officials who lobbied hardest for Obamacare are now also joining waiver-mania -- including liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been pushing for an individual mandate exemption for his state of Oregon, and Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is pushing to waive Obamacare's burdensome 1099 reporting requirements of small businesses.
Fearful of retribution by HHS Secretary and chief inquisitor Kathleen Sebelius, who has threatened companies speaking out about Obamacare's perverse consequences, many business owners who obtained waivers refused to talk to me on the record. One said tersely: "We did what we had to do to survive."
A new House GOP majority now has the chance to protect the rest of America from this regulatory monstrosity. We want out.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
More than one million Americans have escaped the clutches of the Democrats' destructive federal health care law. Lucky them. Their employers and labor representatives wisely applied for Obamacare waivers earlier this fall and got out while the getting was good. Now, it's time for Congress to create a permanent escape hatch for the rest of us. Repeal is the ultimate waiver.
As you'll recall, President Obama promised repeatedly that if Americans liked their health insurance plan, they could keep it. "Nobody is talking about taking that away from you," the cajoler-in-chief assured. What he failed to communicate to low-wage and part-time workers across the country is that they could keep their plans -- only if their companies begged hard enough for exemptions from Obamacare's private insurance-killing regulations.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, at least 111 waivers have now been granted to companies, unions and other organizations of all sizes who offer affordable health insurance or prescription drug coverage with limited benefits. Obamacare architects sought to eliminate those low-cost plans under the guise of controlling insurer spending on executive salaries and marketing.
It's all about control. If central planners can't dictate what health benefits qualify as "good," what plans qualify as "affordable" and how health care dollars are best spent, then nobody can. The ultimate goal, of course: precipitating a massive shift from private to government insurance.
McDonald's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Jack in the Box are among the large, headline-garnering employers who received the temporary waivers. But perhaps the most politically noteworthy beneficiaries of the HHS waiver program: Big Labor.
The Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures a total of 12,000 SEIU health care workers in upstate New York, secured its Obamacare exemption in October. The Local 25 SEIU Welfare Fund in Chicago also nabbed a waiver for 31,000 of its enrollees. SEIU, of course, was one of Obamacare's loudest and biggest spending proponents. The waivers come on top of the massive sweetheart deal that SEIU and other unions cut with the Obama administration to exempt them from the health care mandate's onerous "Cadillac tax" on high-cost health care plans until 2018. _
Other unions who won protection from Obamacare:
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Allied Trade Health and Welfare Trust Fund
-- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union No. 915
-- Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund
-- Employees Security Fund
-- Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 455 (Maximus)
-- United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1262
-- Musicians Health Fund Local 802
-- Hospitality Benefit Fund Local 17
-- Transport Workers Union
-- United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund
-- International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO)
-- Plus two organizations that appear to be chapters of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA)
Several of these labor organizations did not respond to requests for comment about their waivers. But Jay Blumenthal, financial vice president of the Local 802 Musicians Health Fund in New York, did explain to me: "We got grandfathered in" (his description for getting a pass) because "things were moving so fast" and "we need time now to prepare for the law." In other words: Policy cramdowns first, political fixes later. A supporter of Obamacare, Blumenthal told me he "sees no irony, no," in unions supporting the very health care "reform" from which they are now seeking relief.
Chris Rodriguez, director of human resources at Fowler Packing Company in California's San Joaquin Valley, sees things a little differently. Fowler pursued an HHS waiver because their low-wage agricultural workers would have lost the basic coverage his company has voluntarily offered for years. "We take care of our employees, and we warned (health care officials that) if they imposed this, large numbers of workers would lose access to affordable coverage," he told me. Rodriguez said he's grateful the firm won a waiver, but he did not lose sight of the fact that the very policies passed to increase health insurance access are having the opposite effect: "That's our government at work."
Indeed, some prominent government officials who lobbied hardest for Obamacare are now also joining waiver-mania -- including liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been pushing for an individual mandate exemption for his state of Oregon, and Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is pushing to waive Obamacare's burdensome 1099 reporting requirements of small businesses.
Fearful of retribution by HHS Secretary and chief inquisitor Kathleen Sebelius, who has threatened companies speaking out about Obamacare's perverse consequences, many business owners who obtained waivers refused to talk to me on the record. One said tersely: "We did what we had to do to survive."
A new House GOP majority now has the chance to protect the rest of America from this regulatory monstrosity. We want out.
Obama Can't Play Center
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Should Obama pull a Clinton? This has been a burning question inside the Beltway ever since the polls showed the Great Shellacking bearing down on the White House.
As most know by now, pulling a Clinton isn't anything kinky; it simply means moving to the center, or "triangulating" between the unpopular left and the unpopular right. That's what President Clinton did after the Democrats' historic drubbing at the polls in 1994, and it's what a lot of would-be sages argue President Obama must do now after the rout of 2010.
But the argument is deeply flawed for a few simple reasons: 2011 will be very different than 1995; the Republicans and the Democrats are different than they were then; and Obama is very, very different than Clinton.
Other than that, the analogy is perfect.
Even outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes the political importance of the economy. In 1995, the economy was poised to take off like a rocket. Today, no one thinks the economy is about to perform in a way that would provide a glide path to re-election for Obama. If at the end of Obama's first term, near 10 percent unemployment is the "new normal," as Obama fretted recently on "60 Minutes," then his chances for re-election are bleak -- so long as the GOP doesn't throw him a lifeline, the way it did Clinton in 1995-96.
And the GOP is not only determined not to repeat those mistakes, it is well positioned to avoid them. With Democrats controlling the Senate, it will be much harder for Obama to run against a do-nothing Congress.
As even Newt Gingrich has conceded, he made a lot of mistakes back then, chief among them acting as if the Republican Congress ran the country. No such cockiness has been on display from the GOP since Election Day. "This election wasn't about us" is a mantra repeated by every member of the leadership.
Moreover, the composition of Congress is very different today. As Ramesh Ponnuru notes in the current issue of National Review, in 1995 the GOP House majority was so narrow that Gingrich had a devil of a time balancing moderates and conservatives. "(John) Boehner's task will be easier," Ponnuru writes. "Republicans have the largest majority they have had since the 1940s. For the first time in the modern history of conservatism, the House has an outright conservative majority." Boehner has the wiggle room to let some Republicans off the hook for tough votes while still having enough left over to win passage.
Speaking of wiggle room, Clinton had the luxury of failure in 1995; Obama has the albatross of success. Because HillaryCare died without even a vote in Congress, Clinton had no major reform to defend. ObamaCare is the law. The president cannot tack to the center and defend his signature accomplishment at the same time. Or, to be more precise, the GOP won't let him.
Even if the GOP were inclined to give Obama breathing room, the left isn't. It's much stronger today than it was in 1995, and the activist core of today's Democratic Party sees itself as an antibody response to Clintonian triangulation. Pulling a Clinton would be seen as flat-out betrayal to Obama's biggest fans -- and to an unapologetic Pelosi, who has decided to shrug off the election results as someone else's problem.
And even if the left were to give Obama room to maneuver, there's little reason to believe Obama could sell a change of heart. Clinton was a creature of Arkansas, and Ozark politics are just a tad more conservative than Hyde Park politics. Clinton is not only endowed with a preternatural gift for faking sincerity, he also had deep experience working across the aisle. Obama's smooth path to the presidency offered far fewer opportunities for political introspection and the flexibility that comes with it.
Whatever the motivation, Obama's response to his predicament has been more Pelosian than Clintonian. There's been less apologizing and more faculty-lounge theorizing about voters too scared to know what's good for them. That doesn't suggest he's ready to reinvent himself.
By no means does this suggest that Obama has no path to re-election. But Clinton's map won't get him where he needs to go.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Should Obama pull a Clinton? This has been a burning question inside the Beltway ever since the polls showed the Great Shellacking bearing down on the White House.
As most know by now, pulling a Clinton isn't anything kinky; it simply means moving to the center, or "triangulating" between the unpopular left and the unpopular right. That's what President Clinton did after the Democrats' historic drubbing at the polls in 1994, and it's what a lot of would-be sages argue President Obama must do now after the rout of 2010.
But the argument is deeply flawed for a few simple reasons: 2011 will be very different than 1995; the Republicans and the Democrats are different than they were then; and Obama is very, very different than Clinton.
Other than that, the analogy is perfect.
Even outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes the political importance of the economy. In 1995, the economy was poised to take off like a rocket. Today, no one thinks the economy is about to perform in a way that would provide a glide path to re-election for Obama. If at the end of Obama's first term, near 10 percent unemployment is the "new normal," as Obama fretted recently on "60 Minutes," then his chances for re-election are bleak -- so long as the GOP doesn't throw him a lifeline, the way it did Clinton in 1995-96.
And the GOP is not only determined not to repeat those mistakes, it is well positioned to avoid them. With Democrats controlling the Senate, it will be much harder for Obama to run against a do-nothing Congress.
As even Newt Gingrich has conceded, he made a lot of mistakes back then, chief among them acting as if the Republican Congress ran the country. No such cockiness has been on display from the GOP since Election Day. "This election wasn't about us" is a mantra repeated by every member of the leadership.
Moreover, the composition of Congress is very different today. As Ramesh Ponnuru notes in the current issue of National Review, in 1995 the GOP House majority was so narrow that Gingrich had a devil of a time balancing moderates and conservatives. "(John) Boehner's task will be easier," Ponnuru writes. "Republicans have the largest majority they have had since the 1940s. For the first time in the modern history of conservatism, the House has an outright conservative majority." Boehner has the wiggle room to let some Republicans off the hook for tough votes while still having enough left over to win passage.
Speaking of wiggle room, Clinton had the luxury of failure in 1995; Obama has the albatross of success. Because HillaryCare died without even a vote in Congress, Clinton had no major reform to defend. ObamaCare is the law. The president cannot tack to the center and defend his signature accomplishment at the same time. Or, to be more precise, the GOP won't let him.
Even if the GOP were inclined to give Obama breathing room, the left isn't. It's much stronger today than it was in 1995, and the activist core of today's Democratic Party sees itself as an antibody response to Clintonian triangulation. Pulling a Clinton would be seen as flat-out betrayal to Obama's biggest fans -- and to an unapologetic Pelosi, who has decided to shrug off the election results as someone else's problem.
And even if the left were to give Obama room to maneuver, there's little reason to believe Obama could sell a change of heart. Clinton was a creature of Arkansas, and Ozark politics are just a tad more conservative than Hyde Park politics. Clinton is not only endowed with a preternatural gift for faking sincerity, he also had deep experience working across the aisle. Obama's smooth path to the presidency offered far fewer opportunities for political introspection and the flexibility that comes with it.
Whatever the motivation, Obama's response to his predicament has been more Pelosian than Clintonian. There's been less apologizing and more faculty-lounge theorizing about voters too scared to know what's good for them. That doesn't suggest he's ready to reinvent himself.
By no means does this suggest that Obama has no path to re-election. But Clinton's map won't get him where he needs to go.
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