Tuesday, December 27, 2011
C.A.A. on Vacation
C.A.A. will not be posting regular updates this week. Daily updates will resume on Sunday the 2nd.
The Refounding of America
Tiffany Jones Miller
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The “progressive” label is back in vogue; politicians of the Left routinely use it to describe themselves, hoping to avoid the radical connotations associated with being “liberal” in the post-Reagan era. The irony in this is manifold, especially because the aim of the movement to which the name refers, the late-19th- and early-20th-century progressive movement, was anything but moderate.
If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil War American university, professors — many of whom had obtained their graduate training in German universities, and whose thought reflected the “intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind,” as progressive Charles Merriam once put it — articulated a critique of America that was as deep as it was wide. It began with a conscious rejection of the natural-rights principles of the American founding and the promotion of a new understanding of freedom, history, and the state in their stead. From this foundation, the progressives then criticized virtually every aspect of our traditional way of life, recommending reforms or “social reorganization” on a sweeping scale, the primary engine of which was to be a new, “positive” role for the state. As the progressives’ influence in the academy increased, and growing numbers of their students sallied forth into all aspects of endeavor, this intellectual transformation gradually began to reshape the broader American mind, and, in time, American political practice. “A new regime in thought,” as Eldon Eisenach writes, “began to become a new regime in power.”
While many progressive academics helped effect this philosophical transformation, few, if any, were as influential as John Dewey. Through an immense and wide-ranging body of work, vigorous activism, and his many students, Dewey made a mark that was deep and enduring. Part of the reason for this was that he enjoyed an unusually long and prolific academic career. In 1884, Dewey received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, that seedbed of progressive academia where Richard T. Ely taught economics and helped cultivate future reformers like Woodrow Wilson, John R. Commons, and Frederic Howe. Over the course of his subsequent half-century career, Dewey taught mainly at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where he held appointments in both philosophy and education, and published over 40 books and several hundred articles. In 1914, moreover, Dewey became a regular contributor to Herbert Croly’s The New Republic, the flagship journal of progressivism; he also played a more or less important role in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Federation of Teachers. During the New Deal, Dewey and his students helped shape the character of various programs, including the fine-arts program of the Works Progress Administration and the flagrantly socialist community-building program undertaken by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads. Dewey’s social theory continued to influence major political events even after his death in 1952. Lyndon Johnson not only delivered many speeches (including his signature Great Society address) that read, as James Ceaser has aptly noted, like “a grammar school version of some of John Dewey’s writings,” but professed his admiration for “Dr. Johnny.”
Finally, Dewey arguably did more than any other reformer to repackage progressive social theory in a way that obscured just how radically its principles departed from those of the American founding. Like Ely and many of his fellow progressive academics, Dewey initially embraced the term “socialism” to describe his social theory. Only after realizing how damaging the name was to the socialist cause did he, like other progressives, begin to avoid it. In the early 1930s, accordingly, Dewey begged the Socialist party, of which he was a longtime member, to change its name. “The greatest handicap from which special measures favored by the Socialists suffer,” Dewey declared, “is that they are advanced by the Socialist party as Socialism. The prejudice against the name may be a regrettable prejudice but its influence is so powerful that it is much more reasonable to imagine all but the most dogmatic Socialists joining a new party than to imagine any considerable part of the American people going over to them.”
Dewey’s influential 1935 tract, Liberalism and Social Action, should be read in the light of this conclusion. In this essay, Dewey purportedly recounts the “history of liberalism.” “Liberalism,” he suggests, is a social theory defined by a commitment to certain “enduring,” fundamental principles, such as liberty and individualism. After defining these principles in the progressives’ terms — e.g., liberty means the “claim of every individual to the full development of his capacities” — Dewey claims that the American founders, no less than the progressives, were committed to them. By seemingly establishing the agreement of the two groups, Dewey is able to dismiss their disagreement over the proper scope of government as a mere disagreement over the best “means” of securing their common “ends.” That is, although limited government may once have been the best means of securing individual liberty, its perpetuation in the changed social and economic circumstances of the 20th century would simply ensure liberty’s denial. If contemporary defenders of limited government only realized this, he concludes, they would drop their commitment to limited government and enthusiastically join their fellow “liberals” in expanding the power of the state. Dewey’s argument has enjoyed a potent legacy in subsequent scholarship, blinding many to what he and his fellow progressives plainly understood: However superficially similar, the founders’ conception of freedom, and the way of living to which it gave rise, differs markedly from the progressive conception of freedom and the more wholly “social” way of living that follows from it.
Commentators tend to underplay Dewey’s connection to the philosophical taproot of the wider progressive movement. Much attention is given to his role, along with that of William James, in founding pragmatism, a philosophical school frequently described as uniquely American. Dewey’s turn to pragmatism is admittedly important, as it helped induce the development of the increasingly relativistic outlook so characteristic of contemporary liberalism. Nevertheless, such an account of his thought is both incomplete and overstated. Indeed, when he was a graduate student at Hopkins and in the early years of his career, Dewey’s thought, like that of his fellow progressives generally, was decidedly Hegelian. Even after turning away from Hegelian metaphysics, Dewey retained a significant Hegelian residue. In 1945, less than a decade before his death, he declared: “I jumped through Hegel, I should say, not just out of him. I took some of the hoop . . . with me, and also carried away considerable of the paper the hoop was filled with.” Dewey’s break with Hegel was thus only partial, and did not essentially alter the content of the social theory he had developed while under Hegel’s spell.
The cornerstone of this theory — the principle from which “Dr. Johnny’s” diagnosis of America’s shortcomings, and his prescription for its reform, proceed — is a new, “positive” conception of human freedom. Like Hegel, Dewey distinguishes between the “material” and “spiritual” aspects of human nature, and ranks the latter higher than the former. “The appetites and instincts may be ‘natural,’ in the sense that they are the beginning,” he explains in a 1908 text co-authored with James Tufts, but “the mental and spiritual life is ‘natural,’ as Aristotle puts it, in the sense that man’s full nature is developed only in such a life.” Although man’s instincts are natural in the sense of being spontaneous, man’s “mental and spiritual life is ‘natural’” in a different and higher sense — a teleological one. Like his instincts, man’s spiritual faculties exist in him from the beginning; unlike his instincts, however, they exist only in potential, in an inactive or undeveloped way. Man thus “cannot be all that he may be,” cannot realize his “full nature” and thereby achieve his “best life,” until he is able to develop his higher faculties properly and subordinate his lower nature to their rule — to the resulting “world of ideal interests.” A man so developed, the early Dewey declares, would be “perfect.” In short, for Dewey, as for Hegel, because individuals can become free only to the extent that they actualize their spiritual potential, true freedom is “something to be achieved.”
In the early years of his career, accordingly, Dewey’s socialism was grounded in a conception of human freedom synonymous with the realization or fulfillment of spiritual potential. (Even after his turn to pragmatism, interestingly, he continued to use this teleological nomenclature, however vigorously he denied the metaphysics from which it was derived.) Man’s spiritual potential, while encompassing a host of faculties or talents that vary among individuals, also, and more essentially, consists in “capacities” common to all men, especially the social, intellectual, and aesthetic ones. Of these, man’s social capacity is particularly significant. For Dewey, its development involves a process through which the individual’s will becomes decreasingly determined by his particular interests and increasingly concerned with the “interests of others.” Not only are these interests defined ultimately in terms of comprehensive good (or spiritual welfare), but these “others” ultimately include all human beings. As the individual grows more social, he will increasingly choose to promote the “fullest life” for every other human being in every sphere of life, e.g., in business and government (domestically and internationally) no less than in family and church.
In the founders’ view, by contrast, the natural rights of the individual correspond to a series of natural duties, the scope of which vary with the social relationship in question. Thus, while parents are obliged to promote the comprehensive good or welfare of their children, and to sacrifice their personal concerns accordingly, the obligations they owe unrelated adults are far more minimal — e.g., to refrain from interfering with their freedom, to honor contracts with them, and, at the outside, to promote their (mere) preservation. Beyond these duties, individuals are entitled to pursue their own concerns, a right that government, in turn, is obliged to respect. While individuals are free to assume a more robust obligation to unrelated others, as through a church, government itself is not the agent for advancing it.
From Dewey’s (and the progressives’) standpoint, so minimal an understanding of obligation allows men to pursue a degree of selfishness that is developmentally primitive and hence morally disgusting. The progressives’ view on this matter is particularly obvious in the scorn they heap upon the free market, an economic system animated by the selfish, and hence base, profit motive, but they viewed virtually every aspect of life in America — e.g., the prevailing interpretation of Christian Scripture and worship of God, the aim and methods of education, the physical layout and architecture of our cities and towns, the pattern of rural settlement and the character of life within it, the use of our natural resources, etc. — in the same light. The way of living inherited from the American founding was, in short, a cesspool of selfishness.
When freedom is redefined in terms of spiritual fulfillment, the “problem of achieving freedom” radically changes. Freedom is no longer secured by constraining government interference with “the liberty of individuals in matters of conscience and economic action,” as Dewey notes, but rather by “establishing an entire social order, possessed of a spiritual authority that would nurture and direct the inner as well as the outer life of individuals.” The problem with limited government — with a government dedicated to securing the natural rights of man — is that it does not perform the more positive role of “nurtur[ing] and direct[ing]” the spiritual lives of the governed. Rather, it secures mere “negative freedom.” “Negative freedom,” Dewey clarifies, is “freedom from subjection to the will and control of others . . . capacity to act without being exposed to direct obstructions or interferences from others.” In practice, freedom understood as natural rights is “negative” because government puts individuals in the enjoyment of their rights (e.g., the right to acquire and use one’s property, to speak, to worship God according to the dictates of one’s conscience, etc.) primarily by restraining others — and, importantly, itself — from interfering with the individual’s right to make such decisions. While interference with individual decision-making is certainly not altogether illegitimate in a limited government, freedom is the normal case and restraint the exception.
At best, Dewey argues, such a government secures to every individual the mere legal right to realize his spiritual potential, a right that for many is essentially worthless. “The freedom of an agent who is merely released from direct external obstructions is formal and empty,” for unless he possesses every resource needed to take advantage of this broad legal opening, he will remain unable to exercise his freedom and thereby actualize his spiritual potential. While the law would “exempt [him] from interference in travel, in reading, in hearing music, in pursuing scientific research[,] . . . if he has neither material means nor mental cultivation to enjoy these legal possibilities, mere exemption means little or nothing.” In view of this situation, the perpetuation of limited government would consign many, perhaps most, Americans to a condition of spiritual retardation.
If mere negative freedom is to be transformed into what Dewey calls “effective” freedom, accordingly, negative government must give way to positive government. That is, the legislative power of government must expand in whatever ways are needed — and hence however far proves necessary — to effect a wider and deeper distribution of the resources essential to the actualization of every American’s spiritual potential. As Dewey presents it, and as subsequent political practice confirmed, this process is basically synonymous with the implementation of the positive conception of individual rights. In this new order, individuals are entitled to whatever resources they need to attain spiritual fulfillment. Because Dewey, like the progressives generally, regarded poverty as among the greatest constraints on spiritual development, a host of the new rights purported to enhance the material security of poorer Americans — e.g., the right to a job, a minimum wage, a maximum work day and week, a decent home (public housing), and insurance against accident (workers’ compensation), illness (public health care), and old age (Social Security). Most of these rights were enshrined in federal law during the New Deal. Because access to education at all levels and to fine art are no less essential to spiritual fulfillment, Dewey also advocated generous public provision of these resources — and indeed the provision of both was a hallmark of LBJ’s Great Society. Because all such resources are secured for those who lack them through the creation of new redistributive programs (which increase the burden on those who pay taxes) and the imposition of new regulations such as the minimum wage (which foreclose choices previously reserved to the individual), a politics of rights-as-resources inevitably erodes freedom in the founders’ sense.
In sum, the core of Dewey’s progressivism, socialism, or what subsequently became known (thanks in no small part to his efforts) as liberalism is freedom understood as spiritual fulfillment. Because the embrace of this ideal necessitated a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the American way of living, primarily by means of the positive state, it revolutionized not only the founders’ theory of limited government, but also their constitutionalism: for, as Dewey and Tufts candidly note, progressive judges have “smuggled in” many valuable reforms by devising “‘legal fictions’ and by interpretations which have stretched the original text to uses undreamed of.” Dewey was hardly alone in encouraging this transformation, but few would deny the preeminent role he played in it.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
The “progressive” label is back in vogue; politicians of the Left routinely use it to describe themselves, hoping to avoid the radical connotations associated with being “liberal” in the post-Reagan era. The irony in this is manifold, especially because the aim of the movement to which the name refers, the late-19th- and early-20th-century progressive movement, was anything but moderate.
If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil War American university, professors — many of whom had obtained their graduate training in German universities, and whose thought reflected the “intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind,” as progressive Charles Merriam once put it — articulated a critique of America that was as deep as it was wide. It began with a conscious rejection of the natural-rights principles of the American founding and the promotion of a new understanding of freedom, history, and the state in their stead. From this foundation, the progressives then criticized virtually every aspect of our traditional way of life, recommending reforms or “social reorganization” on a sweeping scale, the primary engine of which was to be a new, “positive” role for the state. As the progressives’ influence in the academy increased, and growing numbers of their students sallied forth into all aspects of endeavor, this intellectual transformation gradually began to reshape the broader American mind, and, in time, American political practice. “A new regime in thought,” as Eldon Eisenach writes, “began to become a new regime in power.”
While many progressive academics helped effect this philosophical transformation, few, if any, were as influential as John Dewey. Through an immense and wide-ranging body of work, vigorous activism, and his many students, Dewey made a mark that was deep and enduring. Part of the reason for this was that he enjoyed an unusually long and prolific academic career. In 1884, Dewey received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, that seedbed of progressive academia where Richard T. Ely taught economics and helped cultivate future reformers like Woodrow Wilson, John R. Commons, and Frederic Howe. Over the course of his subsequent half-century career, Dewey taught mainly at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where he held appointments in both philosophy and education, and published over 40 books and several hundred articles. In 1914, moreover, Dewey became a regular contributor to Herbert Croly’s The New Republic, the flagship journal of progressivism; he also played a more or less important role in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Federation of Teachers. During the New Deal, Dewey and his students helped shape the character of various programs, including the fine-arts program of the Works Progress Administration and the flagrantly socialist community-building program undertaken by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads. Dewey’s social theory continued to influence major political events even after his death in 1952. Lyndon Johnson not only delivered many speeches (including his signature Great Society address) that read, as James Ceaser has aptly noted, like “a grammar school version of some of John Dewey’s writings,” but professed his admiration for “Dr. Johnny.”
Finally, Dewey arguably did more than any other reformer to repackage progressive social theory in a way that obscured just how radically its principles departed from those of the American founding. Like Ely and many of his fellow progressive academics, Dewey initially embraced the term “socialism” to describe his social theory. Only after realizing how damaging the name was to the socialist cause did he, like other progressives, begin to avoid it. In the early 1930s, accordingly, Dewey begged the Socialist party, of which he was a longtime member, to change its name. “The greatest handicap from which special measures favored by the Socialists suffer,” Dewey declared, “is that they are advanced by the Socialist party as Socialism. The prejudice against the name may be a regrettable prejudice but its influence is so powerful that it is much more reasonable to imagine all but the most dogmatic Socialists joining a new party than to imagine any considerable part of the American people going over to them.”
Dewey’s influential 1935 tract, Liberalism and Social Action, should be read in the light of this conclusion. In this essay, Dewey purportedly recounts the “history of liberalism.” “Liberalism,” he suggests, is a social theory defined by a commitment to certain “enduring,” fundamental principles, such as liberty and individualism. After defining these principles in the progressives’ terms — e.g., liberty means the “claim of every individual to the full development of his capacities” — Dewey claims that the American founders, no less than the progressives, were committed to them. By seemingly establishing the agreement of the two groups, Dewey is able to dismiss their disagreement over the proper scope of government as a mere disagreement over the best “means” of securing their common “ends.” That is, although limited government may once have been the best means of securing individual liberty, its perpetuation in the changed social and economic circumstances of the 20th century would simply ensure liberty’s denial. If contemporary defenders of limited government only realized this, he concludes, they would drop their commitment to limited government and enthusiastically join their fellow “liberals” in expanding the power of the state. Dewey’s argument has enjoyed a potent legacy in subsequent scholarship, blinding many to what he and his fellow progressives plainly understood: However superficially similar, the founders’ conception of freedom, and the way of living to which it gave rise, differs markedly from the progressive conception of freedom and the more wholly “social” way of living that follows from it.
Commentators tend to underplay Dewey’s connection to the philosophical taproot of the wider progressive movement. Much attention is given to his role, along with that of William James, in founding pragmatism, a philosophical school frequently described as uniquely American. Dewey’s turn to pragmatism is admittedly important, as it helped induce the development of the increasingly relativistic outlook so characteristic of contemporary liberalism. Nevertheless, such an account of his thought is both incomplete and overstated. Indeed, when he was a graduate student at Hopkins and in the early years of his career, Dewey’s thought, like that of his fellow progressives generally, was decidedly Hegelian. Even after turning away from Hegelian metaphysics, Dewey retained a significant Hegelian residue. In 1945, less than a decade before his death, he declared: “I jumped through Hegel, I should say, not just out of him. I took some of the hoop . . . with me, and also carried away considerable of the paper the hoop was filled with.” Dewey’s break with Hegel was thus only partial, and did not essentially alter the content of the social theory he had developed while under Hegel’s spell.
The cornerstone of this theory — the principle from which “Dr. Johnny’s” diagnosis of America’s shortcomings, and his prescription for its reform, proceed — is a new, “positive” conception of human freedom. Like Hegel, Dewey distinguishes between the “material” and “spiritual” aspects of human nature, and ranks the latter higher than the former. “The appetites and instincts may be ‘natural,’ in the sense that they are the beginning,” he explains in a 1908 text co-authored with James Tufts, but “the mental and spiritual life is ‘natural,’ as Aristotle puts it, in the sense that man’s full nature is developed only in such a life.” Although man’s instincts are natural in the sense of being spontaneous, man’s “mental and spiritual life is ‘natural’” in a different and higher sense — a teleological one. Like his instincts, man’s spiritual faculties exist in him from the beginning; unlike his instincts, however, they exist only in potential, in an inactive or undeveloped way. Man thus “cannot be all that he may be,” cannot realize his “full nature” and thereby achieve his “best life,” until he is able to develop his higher faculties properly and subordinate his lower nature to their rule — to the resulting “world of ideal interests.” A man so developed, the early Dewey declares, would be “perfect.” In short, for Dewey, as for Hegel, because individuals can become free only to the extent that they actualize their spiritual potential, true freedom is “something to be achieved.”
In the early years of his career, accordingly, Dewey’s socialism was grounded in a conception of human freedom synonymous with the realization or fulfillment of spiritual potential. (Even after his turn to pragmatism, interestingly, he continued to use this teleological nomenclature, however vigorously he denied the metaphysics from which it was derived.) Man’s spiritual potential, while encompassing a host of faculties or talents that vary among individuals, also, and more essentially, consists in “capacities” common to all men, especially the social, intellectual, and aesthetic ones. Of these, man’s social capacity is particularly significant. For Dewey, its development involves a process through which the individual’s will becomes decreasingly determined by his particular interests and increasingly concerned with the “interests of others.” Not only are these interests defined ultimately in terms of comprehensive good (or spiritual welfare), but these “others” ultimately include all human beings. As the individual grows more social, he will increasingly choose to promote the “fullest life” for every other human being in every sphere of life, e.g., in business and government (domestically and internationally) no less than in family and church.
In the founders’ view, by contrast, the natural rights of the individual correspond to a series of natural duties, the scope of which vary with the social relationship in question. Thus, while parents are obliged to promote the comprehensive good or welfare of their children, and to sacrifice their personal concerns accordingly, the obligations they owe unrelated adults are far more minimal — e.g., to refrain from interfering with their freedom, to honor contracts with them, and, at the outside, to promote their (mere) preservation. Beyond these duties, individuals are entitled to pursue their own concerns, a right that government, in turn, is obliged to respect. While individuals are free to assume a more robust obligation to unrelated others, as through a church, government itself is not the agent for advancing it.
From Dewey’s (and the progressives’) standpoint, so minimal an understanding of obligation allows men to pursue a degree of selfishness that is developmentally primitive and hence morally disgusting. The progressives’ view on this matter is particularly obvious in the scorn they heap upon the free market, an economic system animated by the selfish, and hence base, profit motive, but they viewed virtually every aspect of life in America — e.g., the prevailing interpretation of Christian Scripture and worship of God, the aim and methods of education, the physical layout and architecture of our cities and towns, the pattern of rural settlement and the character of life within it, the use of our natural resources, etc. — in the same light. The way of living inherited from the American founding was, in short, a cesspool of selfishness.
When freedom is redefined in terms of spiritual fulfillment, the “problem of achieving freedom” radically changes. Freedom is no longer secured by constraining government interference with “the liberty of individuals in matters of conscience and economic action,” as Dewey notes, but rather by “establishing an entire social order, possessed of a spiritual authority that would nurture and direct the inner as well as the outer life of individuals.” The problem with limited government — with a government dedicated to securing the natural rights of man — is that it does not perform the more positive role of “nurtur[ing] and direct[ing]” the spiritual lives of the governed. Rather, it secures mere “negative freedom.” “Negative freedom,” Dewey clarifies, is “freedom from subjection to the will and control of others . . . capacity to act without being exposed to direct obstructions or interferences from others.” In practice, freedom understood as natural rights is “negative” because government puts individuals in the enjoyment of their rights (e.g., the right to acquire and use one’s property, to speak, to worship God according to the dictates of one’s conscience, etc.) primarily by restraining others — and, importantly, itself — from interfering with the individual’s right to make such decisions. While interference with individual decision-making is certainly not altogether illegitimate in a limited government, freedom is the normal case and restraint the exception.
At best, Dewey argues, such a government secures to every individual the mere legal right to realize his spiritual potential, a right that for many is essentially worthless. “The freedom of an agent who is merely released from direct external obstructions is formal and empty,” for unless he possesses every resource needed to take advantage of this broad legal opening, he will remain unable to exercise his freedom and thereby actualize his spiritual potential. While the law would “exempt [him] from interference in travel, in reading, in hearing music, in pursuing scientific research[,] . . . if he has neither material means nor mental cultivation to enjoy these legal possibilities, mere exemption means little or nothing.” In view of this situation, the perpetuation of limited government would consign many, perhaps most, Americans to a condition of spiritual retardation.
If mere negative freedom is to be transformed into what Dewey calls “effective” freedom, accordingly, negative government must give way to positive government. That is, the legislative power of government must expand in whatever ways are needed — and hence however far proves necessary — to effect a wider and deeper distribution of the resources essential to the actualization of every American’s spiritual potential. As Dewey presents it, and as subsequent political practice confirmed, this process is basically synonymous with the implementation of the positive conception of individual rights. In this new order, individuals are entitled to whatever resources they need to attain spiritual fulfillment. Because Dewey, like the progressives generally, regarded poverty as among the greatest constraints on spiritual development, a host of the new rights purported to enhance the material security of poorer Americans — e.g., the right to a job, a minimum wage, a maximum work day and week, a decent home (public housing), and insurance against accident (workers’ compensation), illness (public health care), and old age (Social Security). Most of these rights were enshrined in federal law during the New Deal. Because access to education at all levels and to fine art are no less essential to spiritual fulfillment, Dewey also advocated generous public provision of these resources — and indeed the provision of both was a hallmark of LBJ’s Great Society. Because all such resources are secured for those who lack them through the creation of new redistributive programs (which increase the burden on those who pay taxes) and the imposition of new regulations such as the minimum wage (which foreclose choices previously reserved to the individual), a politics of rights-as-resources inevitably erodes freedom in the founders’ sense.
In sum, the core of Dewey’s progressivism, socialism, or what subsequently became known (thanks in no small part to his efforts) as liberalism is freedom understood as spiritual fulfillment. Because the embrace of this ideal necessitated a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the American way of living, primarily by means of the positive state, it revolutionized not only the founders’ theory of limited government, but also their constitutionalism: for, as Dewey and Tufts candidly note, progressive judges have “smuggled in” many valuable reforms by devising “‘legal fictions’ and by interpretations which have stretched the original text to uses undreamed of.” Dewey was hardly alone in encouraging this transformation, but few would deny the preeminent role he played in it.
The Medicare Debate
Is the program the solution, or the problem?
James C. Capretta
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
There are many reasons to be grateful for the introduction of the Medicare “premium support” plan by Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.
In some respects, it represents an improvement over the design of previous versions of premium support. Whereas the original Ryan plan offered seniors a subsidy based on a predetermined formula, the Wyden-Ryan plan relies on competitive bidding for setting the government’s contribution rate. Competitive bidding has the potential to cut costs even more than a predetermined index, because an index tends to lock in today’s wasteful spending. Of course, Wyden-Ryan also very usefully shook up the political debate over premium support, making it much more difficult for Democrats to demonize the concept.
But perhaps the most useful byproduct of the Wyden-Ryan plan has been the clarifying effect it has had on the debate over how to slow the rise of health-care costs.
For some time, it has been easy to get confused over where Obamacare’s apologists actually stand on that question. When it has been useful for them, Obamacare’s apologists have sometimes left the impression that they aren’t averse to competition and choice in health care, and they have pointed to the state-based “exchanges” in Obamacare as evidence of their open-mindedness to a form of competition for the under-65 population. But at other times, their distrust of competition has been on display: They have signaled on numerous occasions that they plan to use the exchanges for regulatory control, not competition. For instance, they have threatened to bar some insurers from participating in the exchanges based on any number of subjective judgments from federal and state regulators.
The reason they sent mixed signals in this regard is that they wanted to get the legislation through Congress, and they concluded, perhaps accurately, that feigned support for competition might help them get the needed votes. Also, for some time, their real plan for cost cutting has been based on extending Medicare’s regulatory reach even further into the health system.
The consistent opposition of most Democrats to premium support is yet more evidence that they aren’t really for competition at all, and never have been. Ever since the news began to spread that Senator Wyden was joining forces with Representative Ryan, liberal commentators of all stripes have denounced the plan in the same apocalyptic terms that the president used to attack the Ryan version of premium support last April. The reaction has been fast and furious for a reason: Wyden-Ryan is the antithesis of their vision for American health care. Indeed, as the debate over the past several weeks has demonstrated, the liberal vision for American health care is embodied in traditional Medicare. They don’t want to move Medicare away from today’s uber-regulatory model. Quite the contrary. They want to drag the rest of American health care toward the way Medicare is micromanaged today.
But are they right? Can we fix American health care by applying Medicare-style regulation to the rest of the health-care sector? Or is Medicare actually the source of today’s dysfunction, and most especially rapidly rising costs?
Dr. Donald Berwick, who recently left his position as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), answered that question this way in a recent interview:
This is exactly the wrong way to think about the problem. Yes, the manner in which health care is delivered to patients in this country is fragmented, uncoordinated, full of waste and excess, and not responsive enough to patient concerns and wishes. But what’s the primary cause of all of these problems? As research has shown, it’s Medicare, and most especially Medicare’s dominant “fee-for-service” insurance model. In Medicare fee-for-service, those providing the services get paid for every procedure or test that is performed, regardless of whether it helps the patient. And the government sends reimbursement for all claims submitted by any licensed provider, with no questions asked.
In most markets, Medicare fee-for-service is the largest purchaser of medical care. The entire delivery system has been built up around the program’s distorted incentives. Every type of provider has its own payment system. This fosters extreme fragmentation, as every lab, clinic, physician’s office, and hospital can bill the Medicare program separately. Moreover, 90 percent of Medicare fee-for-service enrollees have supplemental insurance that pays for all of the costs that Medicare does not cover. That means these beneficiaries pay nothing at the point of service, and therefore have no incentive to limit the amount of care they receive, regardless of how tentative the potential benefits. Of course, those providing the services are able to increase their incomes from Medicare only by increasing the volume of services consumed by their Medicare patients. The result is a quite predictable and longstanding trend toward rapidly rising use of services.
The response of the political system to this inefficiency and high cost is counterproductive price controls. To hit budget targets (at least on paper), Congress and Medicare’s regulatory apparatus have reduced the amounts that the program pays for medical procedures. This kind of cost cutting makes no distinction based on the quality or efficiency of care provided. Rather, it is across-the-board, hitting good actors and bad alike. Some liberals say that the government is merely using its “market leverage.” But the truth is that private-insurance enrollees are paying hundreds of billions of dollars in higher premiums because the federal government forces doctors and hospitals to provide services to Medicare and Medicaid recipients at artificially low rates. This cost-shifting from private- to public-insurance enrollees is far greater than the frequently lamented cost-shifting from the uninsured to the insured.
Dr. Berwick and his allies now argue that we shouldn’t dwell too much on Medicare’s role in creating the mess we are in today because, in the future, the cost-cutting will be more rational, through such ideas as “Accountable Care Organizations,” which are essentially government-organized HMOs. But this is just more wishful thinking. For ACOs or any other model to work, the government must build a high-quality, low-cost network of providers. The government has shown absolutely no capacity for doing this, despite 30 years of trying.
Which brings us back to Wyden-Ryan. Premium support is a critical policy initiative, because it would get at the heart of what is wrong in the broader American health system. What is needed more than anything else is higher productivity in the health sector. How can that be brought about? The only answer is through a functioning marketplace in which the key actors have strong incentives to improve the way they do business. That’s exactly what would happen under Wyden-Ryan, as plans would be competing for the business of cost-conscious program enrollees.
The key issue at the heart of the health-care debate continues to be what will be done about costs. The opponents of Wyden-Ryan have come down clearly on the side of a governmental solution, with price controls leading to supply restrictions, eroding quality, and longer waits for care. The alternative is real consumer choice in a competitive marketplace, which would result in resources’ being allocated to the plans that can deliver the best value for the money spent. When the debate over the future of American health care is framed this way, as it should be, there’s little question where the electorate will come down.
James C. Capretta
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
There are many reasons to be grateful for the introduction of the Medicare “premium support” plan by Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.
In some respects, it represents an improvement over the design of previous versions of premium support. Whereas the original Ryan plan offered seniors a subsidy based on a predetermined formula, the Wyden-Ryan plan relies on competitive bidding for setting the government’s contribution rate. Competitive bidding has the potential to cut costs even more than a predetermined index, because an index tends to lock in today’s wasteful spending. Of course, Wyden-Ryan also very usefully shook up the political debate over premium support, making it much more difficult for Democrats to demonize the concept.
But perhaps the most useful byproduct of the Wyden-Ryan plan has been the clarifying effect it has had on the debate over how to slow the rise of health-care costs.
For some time, it has been easy to get confused over where Obamacare’s apologists actually stand on that question. When it has been useful for them, Obamacare’s apologists have sometimes left the impression that they aren’t averse to competition and choice in health care, and they have pointed to the state-based “exchanges” in Obamacare as evidence of their open-mindedness to a form of competition for the under-65 population. But at other times, their distrust of competition has been on display: They have signaled on numerous occasions that they plan to use the exchanges for regulatory control, not competition. For instance, they have threatened to bar some insurers from participating in the exchanges based on any number of subjective judgments from federal and state regulators.
The reason they sent mixed signals in this regard is that they wanted to get the legislation through Congress, and they concluded, perhaps accurately, that feigned support for competition might help them get the needed votes. Also, for some time, their real plan for cost cutting has been based on extending Medicare’s regulatory reach even further into the health system.
The consistent opposition of most Democrats to premium support is yet more evidence that they aren’t really for competition at all, and never have been. Ever since the news began to spread that Senator Wyden was joining forces with Representative Ryan, liberal commentators of all stripes have denounced the plan in the same apocalyptic terms that the president used to attack the Ryan version of premium support last April. The reaction has been fast and furious for a reason: Wyden-Ryan is the antithesis of their vision for American health care. Indeed, as the debate over the past several weeks has demonstrated, the liberal vision for American health care is embodied in traditional Medicare. They don’t want to move Medicare away from today’s uber-regulatory model. Quite the contrary. They want to drag the rest of American health care toward the way Medicare is micromanaged today.
But are they right? Can we fix American health care by applying Medicare-style regulation to the rest of the health-care sector? Or is Medicare actually the source of today’s dysfunction, and most especially rapidly rising costs?
Dr. Donald Berwick, who recently left his position as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), answered that question this way in a recent interview:
I don’t think Medicare is broken. I don’t think Medicaid is broken. They’re very important social programs of good intent that are accomplishing largely what they intend to accomplish. Health care is broken. The delivery system isn’t working. That’s the problem.
We set up a delivery system which is fragmented, unsafe, not sufficiently patient-centered, full of waste, unreliable, despite . . . great efforts of the work force. We built it wrong. It isn’t built for modern times.
Medicare doesn’t need fixing. Health care needs fixing.
This is exactly the wrong way to think about the problem. Yes, the manner in which health care is delivered to patients in this country is fragmented, uncoordinated, full of waste and excess, and not responsive enough to patient concerns and wishes. But what’s the primary cause of all of these problems? As research has shown, it’s Medicare, and most especially Medicare’s dominant “fee-for-service” insurance model. In Medicare fee-for-service, those providing the services get paid for every procedure or test that is performed, regardless of whether it helps the patient. And the government sends reimbursement for all claims submitted by any licensed provider, with no questions asked.
In most markets, Medicare fee-for-service is the largest purchaser of medical care. The entire delivery system has been built up around the program’s distorted incentives. Every type of provider has its own payment system. This fosters extreme fragmentation, as every lab, clinic, physician’s office, and hospital can bill the Medicare program separately. Moreover, 90 percent of Medicare fee-for-service enrollees have supplemental insurance that pays for all of the costs that Medicare does not cover. That means these beneficiaries pay nothing at the point of service, and therefore have no incentive to limit the amount of care they receive, regardless of how tentative the potential benefits. Of course, those providing the services are able to increase their incomes from Medicare only by increasing the volume of services consumed by their Medicare patients. The result is a quite predictable and longstanding trend toward rapidly rising use of services.
The response of the political system to this inefficiency and high cost is counterproductive price controls. To hit budget targets (at least on paper), Congress and Medicare’s regulatory apparatus have reduced the amounts that the program pays for medical procedures. This kind of cost cutting makes no distinction based on the quality or efficiency of care provided. Rather, it is across-the-board, hitting good actors and bad alike. Some liberals say that the government is merely using its “market leverage.” But the truth is that private-insurance enrollees are paying hundreds of billions of dollars in higher premiums because the federal government forces doctors and hospitals to provide services to Medicare and Medicaid recipients at artificially low rates. This cost-shifting from private- to public-insurance enrollees is far greater than the frequently lamented cost-shifting from the uninsured to the insured.
Dr. Berwick and his allies now argue that we shouldn’t dwell too much on Medicare’s role in creating the mess we are in today because, in the future, the cost-cutting will be more rational, through such ideas as “Accountable Care Organizations,” which are essentially government-organized HMOs. But this is just more wishful thinking. For ACOs or any other model to work, the government must build a high-quality, low-cost network of providers. The government has shown absolutely no capacity for doing this, despite 30 years of trying.
Which brings us back to Wyden-Ryan. Premium support is a critical policy initiative, because it would get at the heart of what is wrong in the broader American health system. What is needed more than anything else is higher productivity in the health sector. How can that be brought about? The only answer is through a functioning marketplace in which the key actors have strong incentives to improve the way they do business. That’s exactly what would happen under Wyden-Ryan, as plans would be competing for the business of cost-conscious program enrollees.
The key issue at the heart of the health-care debate continues to be what will be done about costs. The opponents of Wyden-Ryan have come down clearly on the side of a governmental solution, with price controls leading to supply restrictions, eroding quality, and longer waits for care. The alternative is real consumer choice in a competitive marketplace, which would result in resources’ being allocated to the plans that can deliver the best value for the money spent. When the debate over the future of American health care is framed this way, as it should be, there’s little question where the electorate will come down.
PETA Wants Memorial to Cow Victims of 5/22
By John Ransom
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
PETA has asked the Department of Transportation in Illinois to commemorate the spot where 16 cows lost their life on May 22 in a traffic accident says a report in the Chicago Tribune.
The cows plunged from the back of a tractor trailer when it jackknifed on a bridge on an I-80 highway overpass.
I’m wondering if we could just have a memorial BBQ. I’ll bring the grill.
Now, before you start laughing remember: This is Illinois.
Yes, that state.
You know how people warn you about avoiding stupid mistakes by saying, “You don’t want to be that guy.”
Well, ladies and gentleman I present you your Daley-Obama-Rahm Emmanuel-led State of Illinois. That state.
It’s a state where graft makes everything “work,” and where 3 out 4 governors go to prison, because someone has to take the rap for all that graft. You have to keep up appearances that you are interested in good government. And there is nothing like sending both Republican and Democrat governors to jail to make the message clear.
You don’t want to be that guy? Then, don’t become governor of Illinois.
In other states the position of governor is one of honor. In Illinois governors are elected patsies so the graft machine can keep going.
The PETA proposal memorializing the Cow-Victims-of-5/22 asks Illinois to glorify the animals that died while performing their function “in the meat trade.”
The “meat trade” is what you and I call groceries.
"These proposed signs would also remind tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day," said Tracy Patton, 26, a campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals according to UPI. "It's a big enough tragedy that these animals end up in slaughterhouses, where they are kicked, shocked with electric prods and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths. Sparing them from being tossed from a speeding truck and deprived of care afterward, sometimes for several hours, seems the least that we can do."
So they want drivers to act more responsibly while driving animals to their deaths? Maybe keeping truck drivers’ eyes on the road and not on some signs would be a good start.
Because, that’s all we need: truck drivers squinting at memorials to cows while speeding across bridges in downtown Chicago. What’s next? Cow-sensitivity training?
PETA submitted their application under a 2007 provision in Illinois law, where family members of those who die as victims of DUI accidents may request memorials to the victims. The law was passed, according to a DOT spokesman, in order to regulate unofficial roadside memorials says the Trib.
That’s been a terribly pressing problem for the US. If we could only get federal control of those roadside monuments, this economy would really boom. And certainly replacing spontaneous, personalized, ad-hoc memorials by friends and relatives who knew the victim with a sanitized government memorial will probably better aid the grieving process for those who are left behind.
Thank God for good government in Illinois.
The problem for PETA isn’t that their proposal is outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony; no the problem for PETA is the same problem that the rest of us have with government. The only reason why Illinois politicians aren’t rushing to support PETA in raising a memorial is because PETA doesn’t have the cash to get the graft machine to use the misguided law regulating personal acts of grief to help PETA with their outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony proposal.
Because earlier this year the Illinois legislature, in an outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony move, raised personal income taxes by 67 percent and corporate income taxes by 47 percent…and then started exempting the very biggest corporations from the tax.
And if you don’t think that those exemptions weren’t driven by cash and graft, then congratulations!
You qualify for either the Republican or the Democrat nominations for governor in Illinois
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
PETA has asked the Department of Transportation in Illinois to commemorate the spot where 16 cows lost their life on May 22 in a traffic accident says a report in the Chicago Tribune.
The cows plunged from the back of a tractor trailer when it jackknifed on a bridge on an I-80 highway overpass.
I’m wondering if we could just have a memorial BBQ. I’ll bring the grill.
Now, before you start laughing remember: This is Illinois.
Yes, that state.
You know how people warn you about avoiding stupid mistakes by saying, “You don’t want to be that guy.”
Well, ladies and gentleman I present you your Daley-Obama-Rahm Emmanuel-led State of Illinois. That state.
It’s a state where graft makes everything “work,” and where 3 out 4 governors go to prison, because someone has to take the rap for all that graft. You have to keep up appearances that you are interested in good government. And there is nothing like sending both Republican and Democrat governors to jail to make the message clear.
You don’t want to be that guy? Then, don’t become governor of Illinois.
In other states the position of governor is one of honor. In Illinois governors are elected patsies so the graft machine can keep going.
The PETA proposal memorializing the Cow-Victims-of-5/22 asks Illinois to glorify the animals that died while performing their function “in the meat trade.”
The “meat trade” is what you and I call groceries.
"These proposed signs would also remind tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day," said Tracy Patton, 26, a campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals according to UPI. "It's a big enough tragedy that these animals end up in slaughterhouses, where they are kicked, shocked with electric prods and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths. Sparing them from being tossed from a speeding truck and deprived of care afterward, sometimes for several hours, seems the least that we can do."
So they want drivers to act more responsibly while driving animals to their deaths? Maybe keeping truck drivers’ eyes on the road and not on some signs would be a good start.
Because, that’s all we need: truck drivers squinting at memorials to cows while speeding across bridges in downtown Chicago. What’s next? Cow-sensitivity training?
PETA submitted their application under a 2007 provision in Illinois law, where family members of those who die as victims of DUI accidents may request memorials to the victims. The law was passed, according to a DOT spokesman, in order to regulate unofficial roadside memorials says the Trib.
That’s been a terribly pressing problem for the US. If we could only get federal control of those roadside monuments, this economy would really boom. And certainly replacing spontaneous, personalized, ad-hoc memorials by friends and relatives who knew the victim with a sanitized government memorial will probably better aid the grieving process for those who are left behind.
Thank God for good government in Illinois.
The problem for PETA isn’t that their proposal is outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony; no the problem for PETA is the same problem that the rest of us have with government. The only reason why Illinois politicians aren’t rushing to support PETA in raising a memorial is because PETA doesn’t have the cash to get the graft machine to use the misguided law regulating personal acts of grief to help PETA with their outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony proposal.
Because earlier this year the Illinois legislature, in an outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony move, raised personal income taxes by 67 percent and corporate income taxes by 47 percent…and then started exempting the very biggest corporations from the tax.
And if you don’t think that those exemptions weren’t driven by cash and graft, then congratulations!
You qualify for either the Republican or the Democrat nominations for governor in Illinois
Monday, December 26, 2011
Obama Succeeds Abroad When He Follows Bush, Clinton
By Michael Barone
Monday, December 26, 2011
The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning.
Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on domestic issues in 1932 and ran a more isolationist foreign policy for his first years in office than any of the Republican presidents elected in the 1920s. But he became aware of the threat that Adolf Hitler posed earlier than most, and changed course accordingly.
George W. Bush called for a "humble" foreign policy when he was running in 2000. But the attacks of Sept. 11 utterly changed his priorities and policies.
Barack Obama has not had such a stark turning point. But the world certainly seems to be working differently from what he expected during the 2008 campaign.
Obama expected to be greeted as a hero and champion by the peoples and governments of what Donald Rumsfeld called derisively "Old Europe," and by leaders in the Middle East and Third World.
He thought it would matter that he "looked different" from previous presidents. But all presidents have looked different from one another, and the election of the first black president probably had more resonance to Americans than to foreigners who have less emotional connection with our history.
Obama may have been cheered by his reception in Berlin in July 2008, but he has gotten the cold shoulder from leaders of European countries old and new. Rather than hail his long opposition to military action in Iraq, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other Europeans plunged into intervention in Libya, a bit miffed that Obama was (in the words of one of his aides) "leading from behind."
Obama supposed that leaders of countries like Russia and China would find him, as Sarkozy might put it, a confrere. Not quite. Vladimir Putin pocketed Obama's concessions on missile defense that Obama made in his "reset" with Russia and gave back little in return. Putin is still balking at stopping Iran's drive for nuclear weapons.
With China, Obama has had an edgy rather than trustful relationship. His administration, like Bush's, is trying to induce China to be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs, with mixed results. And like Bush in his second term, Obama is basing policy on the so far forlorn hope that concessions will somehow make the horrifying North Korean dictatorship, now under a 20-something leader, change its ways.
In his first years as president, Obama brusquely rejected the emphasis on human rights that was, in varying proportions, the part of the foreign policy of every president from Jimmy Carter to the second Bush. After all, if it was Bush's policy, it was bad.
So he coldly ignored the Green movement against Iran's mullahs in June 2009, and he only hesitantly has expressed sympathy with what we at least used to call the Arab Spring.
But the mullahs have shown no more fellow feeling for the first black president than for the third Texas president or his four predecessors.
Our lack of engagement with the Arab Spring movement has reduced our leverage in the region. So has our sudden and abrupt withdrawal from Iraq, against military (but perhaps in accord with political) advice.
Where Obama has done better is in regions where he has followed the trajectory of Bush's (and in some cases Bill Clinton's) policies.
In Africa, he has continued Bush's widely successful campaign to eradicate AIDS. But there are signs that in some African countries Bush is more popular than the president whose father was a citizen of Kenya.
In Asia, once you get east of the horrifying conundrum of Pakistan, Obama has built alliances, formal and informal, with the major countries ringing China. Foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead hails the recent and first trilateral talks between the U.S., Japan and India as "history made."
Obama has built on our rapprochement with India, started gingerly by Clinton and continued with gusto by Bush. Suddenly China finds itself surrounded by nations, including South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and, maybe, Burma, resisting its expansionist thrusts. Japan is buying F-35s, and Australia has agreed to host U.S. troops.
You didn't hear Obama (or his opponents) talk much about Asia in 2008. But it has the world's largest populations and fastest economic growth -- while Old Europe struggles to avoid the collapse of the euro.
Obama's policy there, which continued past initiatives, is a serious achievement. But not one he forecast in his 2008 campaign.
Monday, December 26, 2011
The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning.
Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on domestic issues in 1932 and ran a more isolationist foreign policy for his first years in office than any of the Republican presidents elected in the 1920s. But he became aware of the threat that Adolf Hitler posed earlier than most, and changed course accordingly.
George W. Bush called for a "humble" foreign policy when he was running in 2000. But the attacks of Sept. 11 utterly changed his priorities and policies.
Barack Obama has not had such a stark turning point. But the world certainly seems to be working differently from what he expected during the 2008 campaign.
Obama expected to be greeted as a hero and champion by the peoples and governments of what Donald Rumsfeld called derisively "Old Europe," and by leaders in the Middle East and Third World.
He thought it would matter that he "looked different" from previous presidents. But all presidents have looked different from one another, and the election of the first black president probably had more resonance to Americans than to foreigners who have less emotional connection with our history.
Obama may have been cheered by his reception in Berlin in July 2008, but he has gotten the cold shoulder from leaders of European countries old and new. Rather than hail his long opposition to military action in Iraq, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other Europeans plunged into intervention in Libya, a bit miffed that Obama was (in the words of one of his aides) "leading from behind."
Obama supposed that leaders of countries like Russia and China would find him, as Sarkozy might put it, a confrere. Not quite. Vladimir Putin pocketed Obama's concessions on missile defense that Obama made in his "reset" with Russia and gave back little in return. Putin is still balking at stopping Iran's drive for nuclear weapons.
With China, Obama has had an edgy rather than trustful relationship. His administration, like Bush's, is trying to induce China to be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs, with mixed results. And like Bush in his second term, Obama is basing policy on the so far forlorn hope that concessions will somehow make the horrifying North Korean dictatorship, now under a 20-something leader, change its ways.
In his first years as president, Obama brusquely rejected the emphasis on human rights that was, in varying proportions, the part of the foreign policy of every president from Jimmy Carter to the second Bush. After all, if it was Bush's policy, it was bad.
So he coldly ignored the Green movement against Iran's mullahs in June 2009, and he only hesitantly has expressed sympathy with what we at least used to call the Arab Spring.
But the mullahs have shown no more fellow feeling for the first black president than for the third Texas president or his four predecessors.
Our lack of engagement with the Arab Spring movement has reduced our leverage in the region. So has our sudden and abrupt withdrawal from Iraq, against military (but perhaps in accord with political) advice.
Where Obama has done better is in regions where he has followed the trajectory of Bush's (and in some cases Bill Clinton's) policies.
In Africa, he has continued Bush's widely successful campaign to eradicate AIDS. But there are signs that in some African countries Bush is more popular than the president whose father was a citizen of Kenya.
In Asia, once you get east of the horrifying conundrum of Pakistan, Obama has built alliances, formal and informal, with the major countries ringing China. Foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead hails the recent and first trilateral talks between the U.S., Japan and India as "history made."
Obama has built on our rapprochement with India, started gingerly by Clinton and continued with gusto by Bush. Suddenly China finds itself surrounded by nations, including South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and, maybe, Burma, resisting its expansionist thrusts. Japan is buying F-35s, and Australia has agreed to host U.S. troops.
You didn't hear Obama (or his opponents) talk much about Asia in 2008. But it has the world's largest populations and fastest economic growth -- while Old Europe struggles to avoid the collapse of the euro.
Obama's policy there, which continued past initiatives, is a serious achievement. But not one he forecast in his 2008 campaign.
Liberal Hypocrisy is a Female Dog
By Mike Adams
Monday, December 26, 2011
Dear PETA: I have a neighbor who is being extremely rough with his Golden Retriever. He kicks the dog with the side of his foot whenever she is in his way. The dog weighs about 80 pounds and is not likely to be seriously harmed by the kicking. However, the dog is pregnant. Is this animal abuse? Would you recommend reporting this to the police?
Mike Adams
Mike, thank you so much for reporting this to us! Is there any change [sic] at all of sneaking some footage of this? How hard does he kick her? Also, could you give me the name and address of the owner, and can you tell me what her living conditions are like- does she live inside, outside, chained, is she fed properly, etc? Please be assured that we take your anonymity very seriously.
Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you!
Rachel, PETA
Dear Rachel: Thanks for getting back to me. I am not prepared (morally or technologically) to surreptitiously film my neighbor. He is not kicking the animal very hard. It would not be an issue but for the pregnancy of the animal. She lives outside, is unchained, and appears to be fed properly. As an armed citizen, I am wholly unconcerned with the issue of anonymity. I am more concerned with wasting my time with the authorities as I just don’t know whether there is a crime to report. The litter appears to be at risk, not the mother. I wonder whether the owner is even liable if any of those unborn puppies is either stillborn or deformed. I honestly don’t know the answer. Any help you can provide is appreciated.
Mike
Dear Rachel: Moments after I wrote you, I received an email from PETA containing the following passage, which is relevant to my inquiry: “We speak up for, among others, rabbits and foxes who are skinned alive for the fur trade, chickens and cows who suffer hellish conditions on factory farms just to end up on someone's dinner plate, and the dogs who should be treated as part of the family (emphasis mine) but are relegated to a lonely life on the end of a chain. PETA is the voice for animals who have none (emphasis also mine).”
It appears that PETA does not draw a moral distinction between dogs and humans. Therefore, in answering the question of whether the dog’s unborn puppies are protected, we must look to the alternatives available to us if the neighbor had been striking his pregnant wife. There are three distinct possibilities:
1. The unborn has no legal protection whatsoever.
2. The unborn has legal protection contingent upon its mother’s intention to carry it to term.
3. The unborn has legal protection regardless of its mother’s intention to carry it to term.
Obviously, the third possibility is precluded by the ruling in Roe v. Wade. According to that ruling, the unborn baby human is not given absolute protection. According to PETA’s stated position of dog/human equality, the unborn puppy must also lack absolute protection. PETA cannot say that the puppy does have absolute protection without elevating animal rights above human rights.
The second possibility is also problematic. A pregnant woman can decide to keep or abort her baby regardless of the input of the biological father. If the father becomes upset at the woman’s decision and strikes her causing miscarriage, then he may be criminally prosecuted – not just for harming the woman but also for harming the baby. Put simply, the woman can declare the child’s humanity merely by expressing a desire to bring it to term. Obviously, a dog has no such option.
This leaves us with the first possibility; namely, that the unborn dog has no legal protection whatsoever. This has to change. But it can only happen when members of PETA join the pro-life movement. PETA must somehow over-turn Roe v. Wade while maintaining its position on dog/human equality. Then and only then will people like my neighbor be forced to respect unborn doggie life. That kind of legal system would truly give a voice to animals without one.
I have some hesitation about asking PETA to join the pro-life movement. PETA has a disturbing history of following women in mink coats to the opera and giving coloring books to their children with pictures of dead animals inside. The captions in the coloring books read “Your mommy is a murderer.” Those words are hurtful to children and we must remember that children are just as valuable as dogs. PETA has also used large “Your mommy is a murderer” signs in other venues.
I know many women who have had an abortion and regretted the decision later. Some have partially assuaged that guilt by going on to have children. I hope that PETA will not locate women who have had abortions and hand their children coloring books with pictures of aborted babies. The words “Your mommy is a murderer” would be especially harmful to children who have lost a sibling to abortion. We must remember that children are just as valuable as dogs. It should be our guiding principle as we work together. The evolution of a grate organization depends on it.
Sincerely (?),
Mike S. Adams
Monday, December 26, 2011
Dear PETA: I have a neighbor who is being extremely rough with his Golden Retriever. He kicks the dog with the side of his foot whenever she is in his way. The dog weighs about 80 pounds and is not likely to be seriously harmed by the kicking. However, the dog is pregnant. Is this animal abuse? Would you recommend reporting this to the police?
Mike Adams
Mike, thank you so much for reporting this to us! Is there any change [sic] at all of sneaking some footage of this? How hard does he kick her? Also, could you give me the name and address of the owner, and can you tell me what her living conditions are like- does she live inside, outside, chained, is she fed properly, etc? Please be assured that we take your anonymity very seriously.
Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you!
Rachel, PETA
Dear Rachel: Thanks for getting back to me. I am not prepared (morally or technologically) to surreptitiously film my neighbor. He is not kicking the animal very hard. It would not be an issue but for the pregnancy of the animal. She lives outside, is unchained, and appears to be fed properly. As an armed citizen, I am wholly unconcerned with the issue of anonymity. I am more concerned with wasting my time with the authorities as I just don’t know whether there is a crime to report. The litter appears to be at risk, not the mother. I wonder whether the owner is even liable if any of those unborn puppies is either stillborn or deformed. I honestly don’t know the answer. Any help you can provide is appreciated.
Mike
Dear Rachel: Moments after I wrote you, I received an email from PETA containing the following passage, which is relevant to my inquiry: “We speak up for, among others, rabbits and foxes who are skinned alive for the fur trade, chickens and cows who suffer hellish conditions on factory farms just to end up on someone's dinner plate, and the dogs who should be treated as part of the family (emphasis mine) but are relegated to a lonely life on the end of a chain. PETA is the voice for animals who have none (emphasis also mine).”
It appears that PETA does not draw a moral distinction between dogs and humans. Therefore, in answering the question of whether the dog’s unborn puppies are protected, we must look to the alternatives available to us if the neighbor had been striking his pregnant wife. There are three distinct possibilities:
1. The unborn has no legal protection whatsoever.
2. The unborn has legal protection contingent upon its mother’s intention to carry it to term.
3. The unborn has legal protection regardless of its mother’s intention to carry it to term.
Obviously, the third possibility is precluded by the ruling in Roe v. Wade. According to that ruling, the unborn baby human is not given absolute protection. According to PETA’s stated position of dog/human equality, the unborn puppy must also lack absolute protection. PETA cannot say that the puppy does have absolute protection without elevating animal rights above human rights.
The second possibility is also problematic. A pregnant woman can decide to keep or abort her baby regardless of the input of the biological father. If the father becomes upset at the woman’s decision and strikes her causing miscarriage, then he may be criminally prosecuted – not just for harming the woman but also for harming the baby. Put simply, the woman can declare the child’s humanity merely by expressing a desire to bring it to term. Obviously, a dog has no such option.
This leaves us with the first possibility; namely, that the unborn dog has no legal protection whatsoever. This has to change. But it can only happen when members of PETA join the pro-life movement. PETA must somehow over-turn Roe v. Wade while maintaining its position on dog/human equality. Then and only then will people like my neighbor be forced to respect unborn doggie life. That kind of legal system would truly give a voice to animals without one.
I have some hesitation about asking PETA to join the pro-life movement. PETA has a disturbing history of following women in mink coats to the opera and giving coloring books to their children with pictures of dead animals inside. The captions in the coloring books read “Your mommy is a murderer.” Those words are hurtful to children and we must remember that children are just as valuable as dogs. PETA has also used large “Your mommy is a murderer” signs in other venues.
I know many women who have had an abortion and regretted the decision later. Some have partially assuaged that guilt by going on to have children. I hope that PETA will not locate women who have had abortions and hand their children coloring books with pictures of aborted babies. The words “Your mommy is a murderer” would be especially harmful to children who have lost a sibling to abortion. We must remember that children are just as valuable as dogs. It should be our guiding principle as we work together. The evolution of a grate organization depends on it.
Sincerely (?),
Mike S. Adams
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Tent Collapsing on Climate Change Circus
By Marita Noon
Sunday, December 25, 2011
During his 2008 campaign, President Obama made his support of climate-change interventions clear, stating that his presidency would slow the rise of the oceans and begin to heal the planet. He promised that a cap-and-trade system would curb global warming.
He was elected, but the electorate hasn’t liked many of his policies. Cap and trade never passed Congress. To this day, President Obama has remained comparatively popular, but people believe he is taking the country in the wrong direction—toward a European system. Even his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, believes our gasoline prices should be higher, like Europe’s.
Two weeks ago, my column addressed China’s act (ring #1) in the climate-change circus. Last week, I looked at Europe’s staunch support for climate-change intervention when the majority of the industrialized countries have rejected or resisted a Kyoto-style deal (ring #2). Using Italy as an example, I suggested that the country’s lack of natural resources made expensive renewable energy a viable option for them—though an economic tightrope destined to failure.
While Italy is in the news for its brutal economic woes, it shares several components with the US.
Italy has a declining private sector with growth in government, disappearing industrial production being filled in with goods from China, and high gas prices/imported oil. Italians are still consuming, but now their euros are going to other countries—most notably China and the OPEC countries, resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)
Climate-change mitigation adds to the problem as it artificially inflates energy prices through the troubled Ponzi-like cap-and-trade scheme and creates more government jobs, regulation, fees, and hidden taxes. With the increasing production costs, industry declines and unemployment rises. Over time, some of those put out of work in industry may get absorbed by government—which keeps the unemployment numbers from looking as grim as they might without the government jobs. Government jobs do not create wealth, as mining and farming do, but like a funhouse mirror, they distort the true picture.
All of the above sounds eerily similar to the US—except we did not sign on to the Kyoto protocol, nor did we pass cap-and-trade legislation. However, President Obama has not given up on his plans to “curb global warming.” Instead of cap and trade, we have the EPA directed by President Obama’s appointee, Administrator Lisa Jackson—who, by her own admission, aims to level the playing field. The EPA is doing everything it can to raise the cost of energy, which, if left unabated, will continue the demise of American industry and the growth of the government sector—resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)
While Italy’s situation and the US have several similarities that are worth noting, there are also some crowd-pleasing differences.
As noted, Italy lacks quantities of large natural resources—America has them in abundance. We often lack the access to our own resources.
Italy is a part of Europe’s cap-and-trade scheme intended to curb manmade global warming. We have Lisa Jackson’s EPA—but Congressional action (encouraged by America’s citizens) can thwart her, and the 2012 election can replace her.
Italy’s economy is collapsing, leaving the stronger countries—mainly England and Germany—to bail it out. The US isn’t quite there yet.
With the economic damage that climate-change interventions deliver, why is the administration still using them as an excuse to implement regulations that will make electricity more expensive for industry and consumers? Maybe, it is because they are, as Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper described Kyoto: “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” More and more, it seems that it never was about saving the planet.
If, in fact, reaching a binding global emissions-reduction agreement is really about global government—with the Green Climate Fund sucking money from the “wealthy” countries and redistributing it to the poor countries, Europe gives us a prime example of why the US should follow Canada’s lead and shun the “at-any-cost” green agenda that stunts economic growth and job creation.
Back to Italy. In EU terms, Italy is one of the “poor” countries—along with the other Club Med countries: Greece, Spain and Portugal. In the mini-global government known as the EU, the “wealthy” countries no longer want to carry the “poor” ones.
Germany and Italy are both EU members and in good times, Italy’s growing government sector could mask the harsh economic realities. By comparison to Italy, Germany has abundant energy supplies from nuclear and coal-fueled power, a strong industrial sector, and a good work ethic. Germany “has”; Italy “has not.” In EU terms, Germany is expected to carry Italy—but they don’t want to.
The US “has” abundant energy supplies; the EU “has not.” The EU has to depend on schemes like carbon trading, about which Rob Elsworth of the climate-campaign group Sandbag in London said: “is a pretty important revenue stream for most member states.” He asks, “If you take away this green-economy narrative, what's really left of Europe?”
The EU’s economic crisis provides the US with living proof that we do not want to play in the global-government game where the “haves” are expected to carry the “have nots.” We have the resources; we still have industry; and we still have a good work ethic. Will we use them to save America and the free market system that has allowed us to grow to strength, or will we be drawn into the green big top?
Sunday, December 25, 2011
During his 2008 campaign, President Obama made his support of climate-change interventions clear, stating that his presidency would slow the rise of the oceans and begin to heal the planet. He promised that a cap-and-trade system would curb global warming.
He was elected, but the electorate hasn’t liked many of his policies. Cap and trade never passed Congress. To this day, President Obama has remained comparatively popular, but people believe he is taking the country in the wrong direction—toward a European system. Even his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, believes our gasoline prices should be higher, like Europe’s.
Two weeks ago, my column addressed China’s act (ring #1) in the climate-change circus. Last week, I looked at Europe’s staunch support for climate-change intervention when the majority of the industrialized countries have rejected or resisted a Kyoto-style deal (ring #2). Using Italy as an example, I suggested that the country’s lack of natural resources made expensive renewable energy a viable option for them—though an economic tightrope destined to failure.
While Italy is in the news for its brutal economic woes, it shares several components with the US.
Italy has a declining private sector with growth in government, disappearing industrial production being filled in with goods from China, and high gas prices/imported oil. Italians are still consuming, but now their euros are going to other countries—most notably China and the OPEC countries, resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)
Climate-change mitigation adds to the problem as it artificially inflates energy prices through the troubled Ponzi-like cap-and-trade scheme and creates more government jobs, regulation, fees, and hidden taxes. With the increasing production costs, industry declines and unemployment rises. Over time, some of those put out of work in industry may get absorbed by government—which keeps the unemployment numbers from looking as grim as they might without the government jobs. Government jobs do not create wealth, as mining and farming do, but like a funhouse mirror, they distort the true picture.
All of the above sounds eerily similar to the US—except we did not sign on to the Kyoto protocol, nor did we pass cap-and-trade legislation. However, President Obama has not given up on his plans to “curb global warming.” Instead of cap and trade, we have the EPA directed by President Obama’s appointee, Administrator Lisa Jackson—who, by her own admission, aims to level the playing field. The EPA is doing everything it can to raise the cost of energy, which, if left unabated, will continue the demise of American industry and the growth of the government sector—resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)
While Italy’s situation and the US have several similarities that are worth noting, there are also some crowd-pleasing differences.
As noted, Italy lacks quantities of large natural resources—America has them in abundance. We often lack the access to our own resources.
Italy is a part of Europe’s cap-and-trade scheme intended to curb manmade global warming. We have Lisa Jackson’s EPA—but Congressional action (encouraged by America’s citizens) can thwart her, and the 2012 election can replace her.
Italy’s economy is collapsing, leaving the stronger countries—mainly England and Germany—to bail it out. The US isn’t quite there yet.
With the economic damage that climate-change interventions deliver, why is the administration still using them as an excuse to implement regulations that will make electricity more expensive for industry and consumers? Maybe, it is because they are, as Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper described Kyoto: “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” More and more, it seems that it never was about saving the planet.
If, in fact, reaching a binding global emissions-reduction agreement is really about global government—with the Green Climate Fund sucking money from the “wealthy” countries and redistributing it to the poor countries, Europe gives us a prime example of why the US should follow Canada’s lead and shun the “at-any-cost” green agenda that stunts economic growth and job creation.
Back to Italy. In EU terms, Italy is one of the “poor” countries—along with the other Club Med countries: Greece, Spain and Portugal. In the mini-global government known as the EU, the “wealthy” countries no longer want to carry the “poor” ones.
Germany and Italy are both EU members and in good times, Italy’s growing government sector could mask the harsh economic realities. By comparison to Italy, Germany has abundant energy supplies from nuclear and coal-fueled power, a strong industrial sector, and a good work ethic. Germany “has”; Italy “has not.” In EU terms, Germany is expected to carry Italy—but they don’t want to.
The US “has” abundant energy supplies; the EU “has not.” The EU has to depend on schemes like carbon trading, about which Rob Elsworth of the climate-campaign group Sandbag in London said: “is a pretty important revenue stream for most member states.” He asks, “If you take away this green-economy narrative, what's really left of Europe?”
The EU’s economic crisis provides the US with living proof that we do not want to play in the global-government game where the “haves” are expected to carry the “have nots.” We have the resources; we still have industry; and we still have a good work ethic. Will we use them to save America and the free market system that has allowed us to grow to strength, or will we be drawn into the green big top?
My Christmas Present to Liberals: New Words
By Mark Baisley
Sunday, December 25, 2011
With today being both Christmas and Hanukkah, I figured that I would take an uncharacteristically charitable tone with this week’s article. No political analysis. No interpretation of presidential candidate positioning. Just a jog through jargon; the art of argot; the pleasance of parlance.
Learning and appreciating new vocabulary words is an avocation of mine. Having the right word at hand is like having the right tool for the job. Creative terminology makes for inspired speech.
Here a few of my favorites:
consuetude |'känswi?t(y)ood|
noun
an established custom, esp. one having legal force.
Liberals disrespect the consuetude of religious expression in the public square.
revanchism |r?'vä n ? sh iz?m|
noun
a policy of seeking to retaliate, esp. to recover lost territory.
The mission for the Republican Party in 2012 will be the revanchism of freedoms disposed of by the Obama Administration.
cicatrix |'sik??triks| (also cicatrice |-?tris|)
noun
the scar of a healed wound.
The cicatrix of a fifteen-trillion-dollar debt will stand as a reminder to Americans of the enormous cost of socialism.
velleity |v?'le?te; ve-|
noun
a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action
The Tea Party was born in response to the frustrating velleity exhibited by some Republican elected officials.
mulct |m?lkt|
noun
a fine or compulsory payment.
President Obama never met a mulct that he didn’t like.
louche |loo sh |
adjective
disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way
The louche Democratic Party holds on to minority support by keeping them weak and dependent on government programs.
doyen |doi'en; 'doi-en|
noun
the most respected or prominent person in a particular field
While Newt Gingrich is the established doyen of the Republican field, he will need to overcome a dug-in party establishment to become the nominee.
bowdlerize |'bodl??riz; 'boud-|
verb
remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), esp. with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective
There is nothing like bowdlerizing history books to prepare America’s youth for a politically correct indoctrination.
stultify |'st?lt??fi|
verb
cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, esp. as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine
The Democratic Party relies on environmentalism to stultify the American economy.
kith |ki?|
noun
one's friends, acquaintances, and relations
Senator Obama’s kith alone, like Bill Ayers, should have prevented him from being elected as president.
sangfroid |sä ng 'frwä|
noun
composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, as shown in danger or under trying circumstances
President Obama’s sangfroid in the face of economic collapse leads one to believe that controverting American exceptionalism is his goal.
enfant terrible |ä n ?fä n te'rebl(?)|
noun
a person whose unconventional or controversial behavior or ideas shock, embarrass, or annoy others
It seems that no scheme of the enfant terrible Representative from San Francisco is too radical for the Democratic Party.
koan |'ko?än|
noun
a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.
Finding original intent to be far too restrictive, the 9th Circuit relies primarily on koan to arrive at its rulings.
denizen |'den?z?n|
noun
an inhabitant or occupant of a particular place
The denizens of Wall Street are the popular voice of the Obama Administration.
gimcrack |'jim?krak|
adjective
flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive
We can only hope that the American electorate in 2012 will see the Obama Administration’s doctrine for the gimcrack ideology that it truly is.
Happy holidays to all of my fellow terminologists.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
With today being both Christmas and Hanukkah, I figured that I would take an uncharacteristically charitable tone with this week’s article. No political analysis. No interpretation of presidential candidate positioning. Just a jog through jargon; the art of argot; the pleasance of parlance.
Learning and appreciating new vocabulary words is an avocation of mine. Having the right word at hand is like having the right tool for the job. Creative terminology makes for inspired speech.
Here a few of my favorites:
consuetude |'känswi?t(y)ood|
noun
an established custom, esp. one having legal force.
Liberals disrespect the consuetude of religious expression in the public square.
revanchism |r?'vä n ? sh iz?m|
noun
a policy of seeking to retaliate, esp. to recover lost territory.
The mission for the Republican Party in 2012 will be the revanchism of freedoms disposed of by the Obama Administration.
cicatrix |'sik??triks| (also cicatrice |-?tris|)
noun
the scar of a healed wound.
The cicatrix of a fifteen-trillion-dollar debt will stand as a reminder to Americans of the enormous cost of socialism.
velleity |v?'le?te; ve-|
noun
a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action
The Tea Party was born in response to the frustrating velleity exhibited by some Republican elected officials.
mulct |m?lkt|
noun
a fine or compulsory payment.
President Obama never met a mulct that he didn’t like.
louche |loo sh |
adjective
disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way
The louche Democratic Party holds on to minority support by keeping them weak and dependent on government programs.
doyen |doi'en; 'doi-en|
noun
the most respected or prominent person in a particular field
While Newt Gingrich is the established doyen of the Republican field, he will need to overcome a dug-in party establishment to become the nominee.
bowdlerize |'bodl??riz; 'boud-|
verb
remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), esp. with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective
There is nothing like bowdlerizing history books to prepare America’s youth for a politically correct indoctrination.
stultify |'st?lt??fi|
verb
cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, esp. as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine
The Democratic Party relies on environmentalism to stultify the American economy.
kith |ki?|
noun
one's friends, acquaintances, and relations
Senator Obama’s kith alone, like Bill Ayers, should have prevented him from being elected as president.
sangfroid |sä ng 'frwä|
noun
composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, as shown in danger or under trying circumstances
President Obama’s sangfroid in the face of economic collapse leads one to believe that controverting American exceptionalism is his goal.
enfant terrible |ä n ?fä n te'rebl(?)|
noun
a person whose unconventional or controversial behavior or ideas shock, embarrass, or annoy others
It seems that no scheme of the enfant terrible Representative from San Francisco is too radical for the Democratic Party.
koan |'ko?än|
noun
a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.
Finding original intent to be far too restrictive, the 9th Circuit relies primarily on koan to arrive at its rulings.
denizen |'den?z?n|
noun
an inhabitant or occupant of a particular place
The denizens of Wall Street are the popular voice of the Obama Administration.
gimcrack |'jim?krak|
adjective
flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive
We can only hope that the American electorate in 2012 will see the Obama Administration’s doctrine for the gimcrack ideology that it truly is.
Happy holidays to all of my fellow terminologists.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Fair Is a Four Letter Word
By Michael Prell
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
“It’s not fair” is one of the first things we say as children and one of the last things we say before we leave this world. In between, we call it: growing up.
It is time for the current occupants of the White House to grow up.
In Osawatomie, Kansas, President Obama gave the defining speech of his re-election campaign. The central theme: fairness. In that one speech, the President of the United States invoked the name of fairness fifteen times.
But, as any child will tell you, life is not fair. The children’s book, It’s Not Fair! which was written for four year-olds, spells it out clearly. “Why’d I get the smaller half (of the cookie)? Why don’t you yell at her? Why does my team always lose? Why can’t we have a pet giraffe? Because that’s life. And life can’t always go the way we want it to.”
A child who has spent less than four years on earth understands that life is not fair. A president who has spent less than four years in the White House does not understand that life is not fair.
First, what is “fairness?” According to President Obama, the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, and many people on the political Left, it is supremely unfair when some people have more money than others (the 1% VS the 99%), when some people have more opportunities than others, and when a gap exists between rich “fat-cat” CEOs (Bourgeoisie) and the little guy (Proletariat).
Barack Obama’s stated mission is to close the “fairness gap” between the power-haves and the power have-nots. And, in taking up the fight to “restore fairness” as he put it, Barack Obama has joined a long line of leaders in human history who have tried to “restore fairness” in a world that is unfair by design.
So far – under the names of fairness, egalitarianism, socialism, and Communism – efforts to close the “fairness gap” between power-haves and power have-nots have killed more people than any other idea in human history: more than 100 million dead and counting.
Why? Because, as any four year-old can tell you: life is not fair. Which is a lesson that Barack Obama has not yet learned, as evidenced by his campaign speech on fairness.
This is what economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One Thinking.” Stage One Thinking is when an Occupy Wall Street protester says she wants free school and a guaranteed income, and when a four year-old child says “I want a cookie.” There is no thought whatsoever given to what will happen next – Stage Two – or what must happen for someone to get “free” school, “free” money or a “free” cookie.
Here is what Stage Two looks like. For someone to get free school, free money or a free cookie – or to close any “unfair” gap between the haves and the have-nots – there must, by design, be an interceding hand that steps in to “restore fairness” by taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots. That is the definition of tyranny, the opposite of liberty, and it is the opposite of America’s founding principles.
In the case of the children’s book, It’s Not Fair!, there is one cookie and two four year-old siblings. No thought is given to the work their parents had to do to buy that cookie, or the “thousand points of Capitalism” that brought that cookie to market at a price their parents could afford. All these four year-olds knew was that they each wanted the cookie. “Me want.” That is Stage One Thinking.
Now, in the breaking of the cookie, one half wound up being bigger than the other. Unfair? Some of us might say “that’s how the cookie crumbles.” But in this book, the child with the smaller half filed a lawsuit in “The Circuit Court of Fairness” citing that “Sibling No. 1 clearly got the smaller half of the cookie,” resulting in “grievous emotional trauma and malnourishment.”
That is funny. What is not funny is the millions of human beings who have died in the failed pursuit of fairness, or the millions of suffering Americans who are now being conned by a president who is playing the “fairness card” to strengthen and perhaps extend his grip on power.
Life is not fair. Beware the politician who promises you otherwise.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
“It’s not fair” is one of the first things we say as children and one of the last things we say before we leave this world. In between, we call it: growing up.
It is time for the current occupants of the White House to grow up.
In Osawatomie, Kansas, President Obama gave the defining speech of his re-election campaign. The central theme: fairness. In that one speech, the President of the United States invoked the name of fairness fifteen times.
But, as any child will tell you, life is not fair. The children’s book, It’s Not Fair! which was written for four year-olds, spells it out clearly. “Why’d I get the smaller half (of the cookie)? Why don’t you yell at her? Why does my team always lose? Why can’t we have a pet giraffe? Because that’s life. And life can’t always go the way we want it to.”
A child who has spent less than four years on earth understands that life is not fair. A president who has spent less than four years in the White House does not understand that life is not fair.
First, what is “fairness?” According to President Obama, the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, and many people on the political Left, it is supremely unfair when some people have more money than others (the 1% VS the 99%), when some people have more opportunities than others, and when a gap exists between rich “fat-cat” CEOs (Bourgeoisie) and the little guy (Proletariat).
Barack Obama’s stated mission is to close the “fairness gap” between the power-haves and the power have-nots. And, in taking up the fight to “restore fairness” as he put it, Barack Obama has joined a long line of leaders in human history who have tried to “restore fairness” in a world that is unfair by design.
So far – under the names of fairness, egalitarianism, socialism, and Communism – efforts to close the “fairness gap” between power-haves and power have-nots have killed more people than any other idea in human history: more than 100 million dead and counting.
Why? Because, as any four year-old can tell you: life is not fair. Which is a lesson that Barack Obama has not yet learned, as evidenced by his campaign speech on fairness.
This is what economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One Thinking.” Stage One Thinking is when an Occupy Wall Street protester says she wants free school and a guaranteed income, and when a four year-old child says “I want a cookie.” There is no thought whatsoever given to what will happen next – Stage Two – or what must happen for someone to get “free” school, “free” money or a “free” cookie.
Here is what Stage Two looks like. For someone to get free school, free money or a free cookie – or to close any “unfair” gap between the haves and the have-nots – there must, by design, be an interceding hand that steps in to “restore fairness” by taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots. That is the definition of tyranny, the opposite of liberty, and it is the opposite of America’s founding principles.
In the case of the children’s book, It’s Not Fair!, there is one cookie and two four year-old siblings. No thought is given to the work their parents had to do to buy that cookie, or the “thousand points of Capitalism” that brought that cookie to market at a price their parents could afford. All these four year-olds knew was that they each wanted the cookie. “Me want.” That is Stage One Thinking.
Now, in the breaking of the cookie, one half wound up being bigger than the other. Unfair? Some of us might say “that’s how the cookie crumbles.” But in this book, the child with the smaller half filed a lawsuit in “The Circuit Court of Fairness” citing that “Sibling No. 1 clearly got the smaller half of the cookie,” resulting in “grievous emotional trauma and malnourishment.”
That is funny. What is not funny is the millions of human beings who have died in the failed pursuit of fairness, or the millions of suffering Americans who are now being conned by a president who is playing the “fairness card” to strengthen and perhaps extend his grip on power.
Life is not fair. Beware the politician who promises you otherwise.
The Year of Krugman Thuggishness
By Brent Bozell
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time, it wasn't hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical dynamite at anything that stands in the way of his radical worldview.
Krugman outdid himself for outrage in 2011. Every year, the Media Research Center collects a panel of willing conservative journalists and talk show hosts and puts them on a sickening roller coaster ride through the worst media bilge of the last twelve months to arrive at the Best Notable Quotables of the Year.
Paul Krugman sat in the sulfurous center with three other "bests."
First, Krugman took the Quote of the Year for his controversial dynamite throwing on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. On his blog "The Conscience of a Liberal," he accused someone else of ruining the unifying force of the attacks.
"What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons."
The atrocity was "hijacked" -- note the distinct flavor of terrorism in that term -- by the neocons. "The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it."
What made this commentary perfect in its spoiled-brattiness was the last sentence: "I'm not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons." It's obvious he was a world-class divider on a day of unity and a coward.
One of the vilest aspects of Obamacare was the inclusion of "death panels" to recommend when medical treatments should be denied because extending Grandma's remaining life wasn't cost-efficient. But that never stopped a liberal from posturing. Krugman won the Grim Reaper Award for Saying Conservatives Want You to Die for his remarks against the Paul Ryan Medicare proposal on CNN.
"To be a little melodramatic, the voucher would kill people, no question," said Krugman, as CNNs Gloria Borger said, Ryan "infuriated liberals." Then came more Krugman. "The cuts in Medicare that he's proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would in the end, mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me."
Krugman also won the Tea Party Terrorists Award for another blast of toxicity, this one less than two hours after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot (and several others murdered) by a young madman. Krugman didn't need to wait for the evidence. He knew the culprits. He blamed conservatives.
"We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She's been the target of violence before." This was a reference to her district being "targeted" in a Sarah Palin list of Democrats to defeat. "Her father says that 'the whole Tea Party' was her enemy. And yes, she was on Sarah Palin's infamous 'crosshairs' list. Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it's been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing. ...Violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOPs leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers."
Where were Krugman and his fellow Democratic opponents of "toxic talk" to take a stand against left-wing radio host Mike Malloy, who asked for Bush to be assassinated by Navy SEALs after they killed Osama bin Laden? "So when does SEAL Unit 6, or whatever it's called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden." That won the Damn Those Conservatives Award.
Conservatives are assumed to be deeply racist by the tolerant left. The Ku Klux Con Job Award was won by MSNBCs Lawrence O'Donnell for shocking liberal ex-Gov. Jennifer Granholm with the notion that the phrase "Obama and his union bosses" in an ad was racist: "Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can't be the real boss?" Granholm confessed she hadn't thought about that. It takes a Paul Krugman level of "imagination" to smear conservatives with this kind of mud.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time, it wasn't hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical dynamite at anything that stands in the way of his radical worldview.
Krugman outdid himself for outrage in 2011. Every year, the Media Research Center collects a panel of willing conservative journalists and talk show hosts and puts them on a sickening roller coaster ride through the worst media bilge of the last twelve months to arrive at the Best Notable Quotables of the Year.
Paul Krugman sat in the sulfurous center with three other "bests."
First, Krugman took the Quote of the Year for his controversial dynamite throwing on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. On his blog "The Conscience of a Liberal," he accused someone else of ruining the unifying force of the attacks.
"What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons."
The atrocity was "hijacked" -- note the distinct flavor of terrorism in that term -- by the neocons. "The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it."
What made this commentary perfect in its spoiled-brattiness was the last sentence: "I'm not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons." It's obvious he was a world-class divider on a day of unity and a coward.
One of the vilest aspects of Obamacare was the inclusion of "death panels" to recommend when medical treatments should be denied because extending Grandma's remaining life wasn't cost-efficient. But that never stopped a liberal from posturing. Krugman won the Grim Reaper Award for Saying Conservatives Want You to Die for his remarks against the Paul Ryan Medicare proposal on CNN.
"To be a little melodramatic, the voucher would kill people, no question," said Krugman, as CNNs Gloria Borger said, Ryan "infuriated liberals." Then came more Krugman. "The cuts in Medicare that he's proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would in the end, mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me."
Krugman also won the Tea Party Terrorists Award for another blast of toxicity, this one less than two hours after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot (and several others murdered) by a young madman. Krugman didn't need to wait for the evidence. He knew the culprits. He blamed conservatives.
"We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She's been the target of violence before." This was a reference to her district being "targeted" in a Sarah Palin list of Democrats to defeat. "Her father says that 'the whole Tea Party' was her enemy. And yes, she was on Sarah Palin's infamous 'crosshairs' list. Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it's been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing. ...Violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOPs leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers."
Where were Krugman and his fellow Democratic opponents of "toxic talk" to take a stand against left-wing radio host Mike Malloy, who asked for Bush to be assassinated by Navy SEALs after they killed Osama bin Laden? "So when does SEAL Unit 6, or whatever it's called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden." That won the Damn Those Conservatives Award.
Conservatives are assumed to be deeply racist by the tolerant left. The Ku Klux Con Job Award was won by MSNBCs Lawrence O'Donnell for shocking liberal ex-Gov. Jennifer Granholm with the notion that the phrase "Obama and his union bosses" in an ad was racist: "Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can't be the real boss?" Granholm confessed she hadn't thought about that. It takes a Paul Krugman level of "imagination" to smear conservatives with this kind of mud.
Paul Ryan's Old-Fashioned American Vision
By Larry Kudlow
Friday, December 23, 2011
When you think of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, terms like earnest, serious and important come to mind. So does the term old-fashioned. Ryan comes from an old-fashioned place, the blue-collar town of Janesville, Wis. He cherishes the old-fashioned values of a faithful family man. He even looks old-fashioned, with his white shirts and striped ties. And he uses old-fashioned argument skills, persuasively weaving big-picture themes with the numbers that back them up.
And Ryan has old-fashioned goals, too, like saving America from fiscal bankruptcy, economic stagnation and a European-style entitlement state.
"Just look at what happened across the Atlantic," Ryan told me in a year-end interview. "We have to avoid that. We must reclaim our founding principles of economic freedom and free markets. We must preserve the American Idea."
With this vision, and with a pro-growth budget framework called "A Roadmap for America's Future," Ryan's serious ideas have seriously gotten under President Obama's skin.
In a White House meeting this year, Ryan's superior knowledge of health care baffled Obama and left him speechless. And the serious Ryan budget, which lowers spending by $6.2 trillion and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion over 10 years, totally outflanked the White House. It embarrassingly exposed the Obama administration's flimsy and inconsequential 2012 budget, which even rejected the findings of Obama's own Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission (another Oval Office embarrassment).
And when Ryan unveiled his first Medicare-reform package, which featured patient-centered consumer choice and market competition, the White House went nuts. Team Obama whipped up a Mediscare panic, resorting to a fictional caricature of Ryan forcing old ladies off a cliff. But the charge that the Ryan plan "ends Medicare" couldn't be further from the truth. The website PolitiFact labeled this "the lie of the year."
Ryan later amended his Medicare reform to keep the existing system as an option, and bolstered it with a menu of market-based private insurance plans to promote cost-cutting choice and competition. But he did so with the bipartisan support of Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. How did the White House react? It went rhetorically ballistic, although it couldn't put together a serious response.
No, Ryan's reforms didn't quite resonate in the White House. But they did force a serious debate about domestic policy and the economy throughout the country. With his comprehensive budget of deep spending cuts, entitlement reform and tax simplification -- a plan that would strictly limit government and unleash growth at the same time -- Ryan became the most influential Republican of his younger generation. Quite likely, he became the most influential thinker in today's GOP. For these reasons, Paul Ryan has been chosen as the Human Events Man of the Year.
The Ryan "Path to Prosperity" budget passed the House this past spring. In effect, it became Republican policy. Unfortunately, things went downhill after that.
The summer debt-ceiling crisis produced a meager $1 trillion in spending restraint, way below the Ryan goals. Then the supercommittee, which couldn't even produce a policy, fell back on the trigger of another $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts. And now the year is ending in a chaotic and unserious gridlock over the temporary extension of a temporary payroll tax holiday that has no economic-growth content and ultimately would blow more holes in the Social Security trust fund and the overall budget.
A disappointed Ryan told me: "Tea party enthusiasm hasn't yet translated into the kind of reforms we need. One-third of the government has only limited political power." He added that the 2011 budget narrative shows "the total un-seriousness of the left in tackling problems."
Nevertheless, the Republican budget leader is an eternal optimist. He believes "there is a shift to the right" in the country, "toward free-market approval." He sees evidence that "we are winning this debate." He says, "The country will not accept a permanent class of technocrats that will diminish freedom, enhance crony capitalism and allow the economy to enter some sort of managed decline."
Ryan talks about "reclaiming founding principles," and about "fighting paternalistic, arrogant, and condescending government elites who want to equalize outcomes, create new entitlement rights and promote less self-government by the citizenry."
In other words, Rep. Paul Ryan is offering a completely different vision than the one Obama outlined in his Osawatomie, Kan., campaign speech in early December. Ryan wants "the right to rise," not a third wave of liberal progressivism. He wants to stop Obama's attempt to add to the New Deal/Great Society with the statist universal health care program called Obamacare and an effective nationalization of the energy and financial sectors. And he completely rejects Obama's divisive, big-government, punish-wealth, tax-the-rich leftist populism.
"A ruling system of big business, big government and big-government unions does violence to the notion of entrepreneurial capitalism," Ryan told me. "Whether it's TARP, Fannie or Freddie, cap-and-trade, or Obamacare, this must be stopped." Ryan stands against what he calls "the moral endgame to equalize outcomes." He says: "No consolidation of power into a permanent political class. Equality of opportunity, not result."
Drawing from the Declaration of Independence, Ryan believes that individual citizen power in a democracy comes from God and natural rights, not government. And he believes these natural rights flow directly to the people. It complements what Reagan always said: Government works for the people; the people don't work for government.
The congressman calls himself a second-generation supply-sider, flowing from his mentor Jack Kemp. He knows that growth incentives work and that our tax system should reward success, not penalize it. Ryan frequently notes that Obama's vision would raise federal tax rates toward 50 percent, which doesn't even include increasing state and local tax burdens. Countering this, the Ryan roadmap features a modified flat tax, with two brackets and a 25 percent top rate.
But Ryan also believes that under the threat of fiscal insolvency, supply-side tax cuts must be accompanied by entitlement reform, deep spending cuts and an end to corporate welfare. Rounding out his policy proposals, the budget chief wants the Federal Reserve to move to a single mandate for price stability and a stable dollar.
So, many have asked, why didn't the intellectual and policy leader of the GOP run for president? His supporters continue this drumbeat, with many hoping for a deadlocked convention in August, and the emergence of an optimistic, pro-growth, center-right man with a clear vision to save the country.
Well, here comes the old-fashioned Ryan, a man who's interested in policy, not personal ambition. He also has to help raise his young family. He and his wife Janna have two boys ages 7 and 8 and a girl age 9. He's been teaching his 9-year-old Liza how to shoot a .243 light-caliber Remington 700 bolt-action hunting rifle. The weekend before Christmas, he took his crew to Medieval Times on the North Shore of Chicago, where they watched knights on horseback jousting with each other while eating a little junk food. Family is clearly more important right now than presidential ambition.
So would he become Office of Management and Budget director in a Republican administration? "I don't think about it," he said. But for the 2012 election, Ryan has a political vision: Republicans must develop and communicate a clear policy agenda along the lines of his "Path to Prosperity." Then, should they win, the GOP can use this agenda to govern effectively.
"Reagan had this right," Ryan told me. For the congressman from Wisconsin, it's the American Idea. That's Ryan's vision. And the Republican party better take notice, because this election could be America's last chance for a very long time.
Friday, December 23, 2011
When you think of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, terms like earnest, serious and important come to mind. So does the term old-fashioned. Ryan comes from an old-fashioned place, the blue-collar town of Janesville, Wis. He cherishes the old-fashioned values of a faithful family man. He even looks old-fashioned, with his white shirts and striped ties. And he uses old-fashioned argument skills, persuasively weaving big-picture themes with the numbers that back them up.
And Ryan has old-fashioned goals, too, like saving America from fiscal bankruptcy, economic stagnation and a European-style entitlement state.
"Just look at what happened across the Atlantic," Ryan told me in a year-end interview. "We have to avoid that. We must reclaim our founding principles of economic freedom and free markets. We must preserve the American Idea."
With this vision, and with a pro-growth budget framework called "A Roadmap for America's Future," Ryan's serious ideas have seriously gotten under President Obama's skin.
In a White House meeting this year, Ryan's superior knowledge of health care baffled Obama and left him speechless. And the serious Ryan budget, which lowers spending by $6.2 trillion and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion over 10 years, totally outflanked the White House. It embarrassingly exposed the Obama administration's flimsy and inconsequential 2012 budget, which even rejected the findings of Obama's own Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission (another Oval Office embarrassment).
And when Ryan unveiled his first Medicare-reform package, which featured patient-centered consumer choice and market competition, the White House went nuts. Team Obama whipped up a Mediscare panic, resorting to a fictional caricature of Ryan forcing old ladies off a cliff. But the charge that the Ryan plan "ends Medicare" couldn't be further from the truth. The website PolitiFact labeled this "the lie of the year."
Ryan later amended his Medicare reform to keep the existing system as an option, and bolstered it with a menu of market-based private insurance plans to promote cost-cutting choice and competition. But he did so with the bipartisan support of Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. How did the White House react? It went rhetorically ballistic, although it couldn't put together a serious response.
No, Ryan's reforms didn't quite resonate in the White House. But they did force a serious debate about domestic policy and the economy throughout the country. With his comprehensive budget of deep spending cuts, entitlement reform and tax simplification -- a plan that would strictly limit government and unleash growth at the same time -- Ryan became the most influential Republican of his younger generation. Quite likely, he became the most influential thinker in today's GOP. For these reasons, Paul Ryan has been chosen as the Human Events Man of the Year.
The Ryan "Path to Prosperity" budget passed the House this past spring. In effect, it became Republican policy. Unfortunately, things went downhill after that.
The summer debt-ceiling crisis produced a meager $1 trillion in spending restraint, way below the Ryan goals. Then the supercommittee, which couldn't even produce a policy, fell back on the trigger of another $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts. And now the year is ending in a chaotic and unserious gridlock over the temporary extension of a temporary payroll tax holiday that has no economic-growth content and ultimately would blow more holes in the Social Security trust fund and the overall budget.
A disappointed Ryan told me: "Tea party enthusiasm hasn't yet translated into the kind of reforms we need. One-third of the government has only limited political power." He added that the 2011 budget narrative shows "the total un-seriousness of the left in tackling problems."
Nevertheless, the Republican budget leader is an eternal optimist. He believes "there is a shift to the right" in the country, "toward free-market approval." He sees evidence that "we are winning this debate." He says, "The country will not accept a permanent class of technocrats that will diminish freedom, enhance crony capitalism and allow the economy to enter some sort of managed decline."
Ryan talks about "reclaiming founding principles," and about "fighting paternalistic, arrogant, and condescending government elites who want to equalize outcomes, create new entitlement rights and promote less self-government by the citizenry."
In other words, Rep. Paul Ryan is offering a completely different vision than the one Obama outlined in his Osawatomie, Kan., campaign speech in early December. Ryan wants "the right to rise," not a third wave of liberal progressivism. He wants to stop Obama's attempt to add to the New Deal/Great Society with the statist universal health care program called Obamacare and an effective nationalization of the energy and financial sectors. And he completely rejects Obama's divisive, big-government, punish-wealth, tax-the-rich leftist populism.
"A ruling system of big business, big government and big-government unions does violence to the notion of entrepreneurial capitalism," Ryan told me. "Whether it's TARP, Fannie or Freddie, cap-and-trade, or Obamacare, this must be stopped." Ryan stands against what he calls "the moral endgame to equalize outcomes." He says: "No consolidation of power into a permanent political class. Equality of opportunity, not result."
Drawing from the Declaration of Independence, Ryan believes that individual citizen power in a democracy comes from God and natural rights, not government. And he believes these natural rights flow directly to the people. It complements what Reagan always said: Government works for the people; the people don't work for government.
The congressman calls himself a second-generation supply-sider, flowing from his mentor Jack Kemp. He knows that growth incentives work and that our tax system should reward success, not penalize it. Ryan frequently notes that Obama's vision would raise federal tax rates toward 50 percent, which doesn't even include increasing state and local tax burdens. Countering this, the Ryan roadmap features a modified flat tax, with two brackets and a 25 percent top rate.
But Ryan also believes that under the threat of fiscal insolvency, supply-side tax cuts must be accompanied by entitlement reform, deep spending cuts and an end to corporate welfare. Rounding out his policy proposals, the budget chief wants the Federal Reserve to move to a single mandate for price stability and a stable dollar.
So, many have asked, why didn't the intellectual and policy leader of the GOP run for president? His supporters continue this drumbeat, with many hoping for a deadlocked convention in August, and the emergence of an optimistic, pro-growth, center-right man with a clear vision to save the country.
Well, here comes the old-fashioned Ryan, a man who's interested in policy, not personal ambition. He also has to help raise his young family. He and his wife Janna have two boys ages 7 and 8 and a girl age 9. He's been teaching his 9-year-old Liza how to shoot a .243 light-caliber Remington 700 bolt-action hunting rifle. The weekend before Christmas, he took his crew to Medieval Times on the North Shore of Chicago, where they watched knights on horseback jousting with each other while eating a little junk food. Family is clearly more important right now than presidential ambition.
So would he become Office of Management and Budget director in a Republican administration? "I don't think about it," he said. But for the 2012 election, Ryan has a political vision: Republicans must develop and communicate a clear policy agenda along the lines of his "Path to Prosperity." Then, should they win, the GOP can use this agenda to govern effectively.
"Reagan had this right," Ryan told me. For the congressman from Wisconsin, it's the American Idea. That's Ryan's vision. And the Republican party better take notice, because this election could be America's last chance for a very long time.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
China Trade: Myths vs. Reality
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda." During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend." In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China."
Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is." Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."
Let's look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled "The U.S. Content of 'Made in China.'" One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Hale and Hobijn find that the vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, total imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and of that, 2.5 percent came from China. A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States, the bulk of which are domestically produced services -- such as medical care, housing, transportation, etc. -- which make up about two-thirds of spending. Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures, about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share. Chinese imported goods consist mainly of furniture and household equipment; other durables; and clothing and shoes. In the clothing and shoes category, 35.6 percent of U.S. consumer purchases in 2010 were items with the "Made in China" label.
Much of what China sells us has considerable "local content." Hale and Hobijn give the example of sneakers that might sell for $70. They point out that most of that price goes for transportation in the U.S., rent for the store where they are sold, profits for shareholders of the U.S. retailer, and marketing costs, which include the salaries, wages and benefits paid to the U.S. workers and managers responsible for getting sneakers to consumers. On average, 55 cents of every dollar spent on goods made in China goes for marketing services produced in the U.S.
Going hand in hand with today's trade demagoguery is talk about decline in U.S. manufacturing. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy -- with its own GDP -- it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth-richest economy. Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.
The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda." During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend." In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China."
Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is." Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."
Let's look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled "The U.S. Content of 'Made in China.'" One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Hale and Hobijn find that the vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, total imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and of that, 2.5 percent came from China. A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States, the bulk of which are domestically produced services -- such as medical care, housing, transportation, etc. -- which make up about two-thirds of spending. Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures, about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share. Chinese imported goods consist mainly of furniture and household equipment; other durables; and clothing and shoes. In the clothing and shoes category, 35.6 percent of U.S. consumer purchases in 2010 were items with the "Made in China" label.
Much of what China sells us has considerable "local content." Hale and Hobijn give the example of sneakers that might sell for $70. They point out that most of that price goes for transportation in the U.S., rent for the store where they are sold, profits for shareholders of the U.S. retailer, and marketing costs, which include the salaries, wages and benefits paid to the U.S. workers and managers responsible for getting sneakers to consumers. On average, 55 cents of every dollar spent on goods made in China goes for marketing services produced in the U.S.
Going hand in hand with today's trade demagoguery is talk about decline in U.S. manufacturing. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy -- with its own GDP -- it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth-richest economy. Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.
The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.
The Hundred Years' German War
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.
Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a "Fourth Reich" and arrogant new Nazi "Gauleiters" who dictate terms to their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior for supposedly inferior peoples.
Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and other Europeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard of living regress to that of a half-century ago.
A worried neighbor, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand over German unification -- that neither a new European Union nor an old NATO could quite rein in German power -- proved true.
How did the grand dream of a "new Europe" end just 20 years later in a German protectorate -- especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide super-state?
Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over the globe, from Libya to Iraq. France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its borders -- without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military base abroad.
Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism -- without help from others. To drive through southern Europe is to see new freeways, bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or subsidized by the German government.
Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail them out.
And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell -- in ways even Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Rome were not.
In truth, German character -- so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history -- led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like "national character" that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.
Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European neighbors -- investing rather than consuming, saving rather than spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to dinner. Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century commercial serfdom. True enough, but that still begs the question why Berlin, and not Rome or Madrid, was able to pull off such lucrative mercantilism.
Where does all this lead? Right now to some great unknowns that terrify most of Europe. Will German industriousness and talent eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism -- as it has in the past? How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or NATO, now "led from behind" by a disengaged United States, persuade Germany not to translate its overwhelming economic clout into political and military advantage?
Can poor European adolescents really obey their rich German parents? Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and plentiful consumer goods -- the adornments of a rich American and northern Europe lifestyle -- then they have to start behaving in the manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for others.
In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may still enjoy his new Mercedes. But not if they still insist on daily siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on taxes, and a de facto 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.
Behind all the EU's 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany's new European order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German. Take it or leave it.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.
Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a "Fourth Reich" and arrogant new Nazi "Gauleiters" who dictate terms to their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior for supposedly inferior peoples.
Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and other Europeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard of living regress to that of a half-century ago.
A worried neighbor, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand over German unification -- that neither a new European Union nor an old NATO could quite rein in German power -- proved true.
How did the grand dream of a "new Europe" end just 20 years later in a German protectorate -- especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide super-state?
Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over the globe, from Libya to Iraq. France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its borders -- without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military base abroad.
Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism -- without help from others. To drive through southern Europe is to see new freeways, bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or subsidized by the German government.
Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail them out.
And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell -- in ways even Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Rome were not.
In truth, German character -- so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history -- led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like "national character" that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.
Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European neighbors -- investing rather than consuming, saving rather than spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to dinner. Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century commercial serfdom. True enough, but that still begs the question why Berlin, and not Rome or Madrid, was able to pull off such lucrative mercantilism.
Where does all this lead? Right now to some great unknowns that terrify most of Europe. Will German industriousness and talent eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism -- as it has in the past? How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or NATO, now "led from behind" by a disengaged United States, persuade Germany not to translate its overwhelming economic clout into political and military advantage?
Can poor European adolescents really obey their rich German parents? Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and plentiful consumer goods -- the adornments of a rich American and northern Europe lifestyle -- then they have to start behaving in the manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for others.
In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may still enjoy his new Mercedes. But not if they still insist on daily siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on taxes, and a de facto 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.
Behind all the EU's 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany's new European order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German. Take it or leave it.
The Case for Palestinian Nationalism
Do Palestinians really support a two-state solution?
Clifford D. May
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The region we now call the Middle East is an elaborate mosaic. Among its peoples are the Arabs, denizens of the desert who became great conquerors and colonists. The Persians possessed a mighty empire in antiquity — and will again if Iran’s current rulers have their way. The most vibrant city of the Turks is Istanbul, the Christian capital known as Constantinople until it fell to Sultan Mehmed II in the 15th century. The Middle East also is home to such ethno-religious groups as Maronites, Druze, and Alawites; to powerful clans such as the Hashemites and the House of Sa’ud; to Kurds, a nation without a state, and to Jews, reestablished as a nation in their ancient homeland.
The other day, Newt Gingrich waded into this historical labyrinth, setting off a minor brouhaha by noting that only recently did Arabs on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean claim to constitute a distinct nation called “Palestine” — the name given to the area by Imperial Rome. On this basis, he referred to Palestinians as an “invented” people.
The accuracy of his statement is beyond dispute. In the wake of the Second World War, when the United Nations recommended partitioning Palestine into two states, it did not use the term “Palestinian” to refer to Arab-speaking residents. At that time, pan-Arabism, the idea of forming a single, united Arab nation, was far more compelling than any parochial identification. The question was how to divide what, for 400 years, had been a corner of the Ottoman Empire between the Arabs of Palestine and the Jews of Palestine. Of the two, the latter were, at that time, more commonly referred to as Palestinians. Their newspaper was the Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post), their contributions to the performing arts included the Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic), and their American-based charitable organization was the United Palestine Appeal.
From 1948 until 1967, Gaza and the West Bank were under Egyptian and Jordanian control respectively. No serious demands for a Palestinian state were heard. Only after Israel took possession of those territories in a defensive war against Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states did Palestinian nationhood become the central issue in what had been, until then, the Arab- Israeli conflict.
Gingrich was attacked from many quarters, among them the New York Times, where foreign-affairs columnist H. D. S. Greenway acknowledged that the former Speaker “is right that there has never been a state called Palestine” and that “Palestinian nationalism grew up as a mirror image of Israeli nationalism.” So what’s the problem? Greenway charges that Gingrich intended to “imply that the Palestinians are not worthy of a country of their own.”
Gingrich insists he meant no such thing. Anyone familiar with his thinking would not doubt that. After all, Americans are an invented people. Can you imagine Gingrich arguing that makes Americans less worthy of nationhood than, say, the Japanese?
Like most of us, Gingrich favors a two-state solution similar to the one the Palestinians were offered in 1948 and at Camp David in 2000. In these and other instances, the Palestinians said no. What does that imply? Perhaps that Palestinians — or at least those who lead them — are themselves insufficiently nationalistic.
That’s indisputably true of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Muslim Brotherhood group that rules Gaza. The Hamas Covenant invokes “the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind.” But that nation is not Palestine. It is the Islamic nation which is to be revived as a caliphate, an empire of which Palestine would be only a province.
The Hamas Covenant asserts without equivocation that “the Palestinian problem is a religious problem,” adding that there can be “no solution . . . except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” As for Israel, the Covenant minces no words: “Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Okay, but what about Hamas’s rival, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority? In recent years, Western diplomats have placed much hope in Palestinian Authority prime minister Salaam Fayyad, who, I think it fair to say, has made a serious attempt to build institutional and economic foundations upon which an independent and viable Palestinian state might rest.
But as my colleague Jonathan Schanzer last week pointed out in Foreign Policy magazine, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has been methodically undercutting and marginalizing Fayyad. And Washington, Schanzer observes, instead of providing Fayyad “the support he needs to weather the storm, has chosen to stand on the sidelines.”
It gets worse. Abbas has been refusing to meet with Israelis until and unless they make major concessions in advance. Over the weekend, Khaled Abu Toameh, the distinguished Israeli (and Arab and Muslim) journalist reported that, in addition, “Abbas’s Fatah faction has declared war on all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.” The Abbas/Fatah objection to such meetings, Toameh reports, is that they promote “the culture of peace” and are designed to “‘normalize’ relations between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Despite all this, there are many people who persist in the belief that the main obstacle to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israeli intransigence, the unwillingness of Israeli leaders to “take risks for peace.” Such delusions are perhaps unavoidable when a “peace process” is predicated not on verifiable history and observable reality but on myth, wishful thinking, and willful blindness.
What would be an alternative? To say straightforwardly to the Palestinians: “If you want to develop as a nation and live in a state of your own, we will help you. But our support is not unconditional: You must be willing to compromise. You must be willing to make peace with the Israelis, who will be your neighbors. If, however, it is not Palestine to which you are committed but to a new anti-Western caliphate, and if building a Palestinian state is less important to you than ‘obliterating’ the State of Israel, we’re going to leave you on your own.”
What happens after that would be for Palestinians to decide and history to record.
Clifford D. May
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The region we now call the Middle East is an elaborate mosaic. Among its peoples are the Arabs, denizens of the desert who became great conquerors and colonists. The Persians possessed a mighty empire in antiquity — and will again if Iran’s current rulers have their way. The most vibrant city of the Turks is Istanbul, the Christian capital known as Constantinople until it fell to Sultan Mehmed II in the 15th century. The Middle East also is home to such ethno-religious groups as Maronites, Druze, and Alawites; to powerful clans such as the Hashemites and the House of Sa’ud; to Kurds, a nation without a state, and to Jews, reestablished as a nation in their ancient homeland.
The other day, Newt Gingrich waded into this historical labyrinth, setting off a minor brouhaha by noting that only recently did Arabs on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean claim to constitute a distinct nation called “Palestine” — the name given to the area by Imperial Rome. On this basis, he referred to Palestinians as an “invented” people.
The accuracy of his statement is beyond dispute. In the wake of the Second World War, when the United Nations recommended partitioning Palestine into two states, it did not use the term “Palestinian” to refer to Arab-speaking residents. At that time, pan-Arabism, the idea of forming a single, united Arab nation, was far more compelling than any parochial identification. The question was how to divide what, for 400 years, had been a corner of the Ottoman Empire between the Arabs of Palestine and the Jews of Palestine. Of the two, the latter were, at that time, more commonly referred to as Palestinians. Their newspaper was the Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post), their contributions to the performing arts included the Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic), and their American-based charitable organization was the United Palestine Appeal.
From 1948 until 1967, Gaza and the West Bank were under Egyptian and Jordanian control respectively. No serious demands for a Palestinian state were heard. Only after Israel took possession of those territories in a defensive war against Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states did Palestinian nationhood become the central issue in what had been, until then, the Arab- Israeli conflict.
Gingrich was attacked from many quarters, among them the New York Times, where foreign-affairs columnist H. D. S. Greenway acknowledged that the former Speaker “is right that there has never been a state called Palestine” and that “Palestinian nationalism grew up as a mirror image of Israeli nationalism.” So what’s the problem? Greenway charges that Gingrich intended to “imply that the Palestinians are not worthy of a country of their own.”
Gingrich insists he meant no such thing. Anyone familiar with his thinking would not doubt that. After all, Americans are an invented people. Can you imagine Gingrich arguing that makes Americans less worthy of nationhood than, say, the Japanese?
Like most of us, Gingrich favors a two-state solution similar to the one the Palestinians were offered in 1948 and at Camp David in 2000. In these and other instances, the Palestinians said no. What does that imply? Perhaps that Palestinians — or at least those who lead them — are themselves insufficiently nationalistic.
That’s indisputably true of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Muslim Brotherhood group that rules Gaza. The Hamas Covenant invokes “the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind.” But that nation is not Palestine. It is the Islamic nation which is to be revived as a caliphate, an empire of which Palestine would be only a province.
The Hamas Covenant asserts without equivocation that “the Palestinian problem is a religious problem,” adding that there can be “no solution . . . except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” As for Israel, the Covenant minces no words: “Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Okay, but what about Hamas’s rival, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority? In recent years, Western diplomats have placed much hope in Palestinian Authority prime minister Salaam Fayyad, who, I think it fair to say, has made a serious attempt to build institutional and economic foundations upon which an independent and viable Palestinian state might rest.
But as my colleague Jonathan Schanzer last week pointed out in Foreign Policy magazine, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has been methodically undercutting and marginalizing Fayyad. And Washington, Schanzer observes, instead of providing Fayyad “the support he needs to weather the storm, has chosen to stand on the sidelines.”
It gets worse. Abbas has been refusing to meet with Israelis until and unless they make major concessions in advance. Over the weekend, Khaled Abu Toameh, the distinguished Israeli (and Arab and Muslim) journalist reported that, in addition, “Abbas’s Fatah faction has declared war on all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.” The Abbas/Fatah objection to such meetings, Toameh reports, is that they promote “the culture of peace” and are designed to “‘normalize’ relations between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Despite all this, there are many people who persist in the belief that the main obstacle to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israeli intransigence, the unwillingness of Israeli leaders to “take risks for peace.” Such delusions are perhaps unavoidable when a “peace process” is predicated not on verifiable history and observable reality but on myth, wishful thinking, and willful blindness.
What would be an alternative? To say straightforwardly to the Palestinians: “If you want to develop as a nation and live in a state of your own, we will help you. But our support is not unconditional: You must be willing to compromise. You must be willing to make peace with the Israelis, who will be your neighbors. If, however, it is not Palestine to which you are committed but to a new anti-Western caliphate, and if building a Palestinian state is less important to you than ‘obliterating’ the State of Israel, we’re going to leave you on your own.”
What happens after that would be for Palestinians to decide and history to record.
The Black Occupy Protester -- Missing in Action
By Larry Elder
Thursday, December 22, 2011
As "Person of the Year," Time magazine named "The Protester." The subhead read, "From the Arab Spring to Athens, From Occupy Wall Street to Moscow."
Well, yes, but what about the lack of American black protesters? Good Lord, where is the racial diversity/inclusion/proportional representation?
Back in the day, the tea party's alleged lack of black participants was beyond worrisome to the media. The lack of black faces in the crowd allowed the major media to describe the tea party as racially exclusionary, if not ... racist!
"Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement," said Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., "would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree." Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. said tea partiers can "go straight to hell." A New York Times op-ed described tea partiers as "overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do."
So the formula is set: Lack of blacks plus "overwhelmingly white" equals racism. Right? Not so fast.
This formula does not apply to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is as white as an Idaho picket fence. A Washington Post opinion piece cites a survey that found "African Americans, who are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street." And blacks are 25 percent of New York City's population. Occupy Wall Street was a home game for them. By contrast, 6 percent of tea party supporters, according to an April 2010 Gallup poll, are black. That's almost four times the number of blacks who make up Occupy Wall Street.
Why so few blacks in the Occupy movement?
A Washington Post opinion piece offered one reason -- black resignation: "Perhaps black America's absence is sending a message to the Occupiers: 'We told you so! Nothing will change. We've been here already. It's hopeless.'"
But blacks view the economy differently -- and a lot more optimistically -- than do whites.
Despite around 16 percent unemployment, as compared to the 8.6 percent national rate, and nearly 50 percent black teenage unemployment, blacks feel better about the economy than do whites. A February 2011 Washington Post survey found that 24 percent of blacks were "very" or "somewhat satisfied" with the economy, compared to 12 percent of whites. A recent NBC poll found that by a lopsided 73 percent to 19 percent, most Americans considered the country on the "wrong track." But not blacks. Forty-nine percent of blacks think the country is "headed in the right direction" versus 38 percent who do not.
Then there's the President Barack Obama factor. For some blacks, joining the Occupy protests would be an admission that Obama has failed to deliver on his promises to make things better, to squash special interests, to diminish the influence of lobbyists, etc. It's not hard for a black Obama lefty (redundancy intentional) to rationalize: "I thought a black president would make a real, actual, touchable difference in my life. He has not. But he's trying. He inherited a mess that those awful Republicans left him. So, he deserves re-election." How else to explain that while 57 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy, 86 percent of blacks approve?
The real reason for the lack of black participation, or lack of participation by anyone else in the Occupy movement, should be simple: a complete rejection of its sole unifying theme, which seems to be "give me some of what 'they' have."
The real reason to reject the Occupy movement is that complaining about "inequality" without regard to how the haves became the haves is a time-waster. Those in the top earning demographic have some things in common: They are more likely than the non-top-20-percenters to have at least a college degree; are married; work long hours; and did not inherit, marry, steal or win their wealth.
The problem is blacks reject the Occupy movement, but not the party whose values reflect its unifying "victicrat" theme. Yet Democrats and the Occupy movement share a common philosophy. Obama said to the Occupiers, "You're the reason I ran for office."
Both believe in empowering government to address "inequality" by redistributing wealth. Both believe that those who achieve great wealth do so through exploitation, which justifies the claim others make on the money.
The economy of the early '80s saw higher inflation, interest rates and unemployment than during the so-called Great Recession. But unlike Obama, President Ronald Reagan deeply and broadly cut taxes, continued deregulation and slowed down the rate of domestic spending. The result? Black adult and teen unemployment fell dramatically, much faster than it did for white adults and teens.
The real question is not why so few blacks belong to the Occupy movement. The real question is why so many blacks still belong to the Democratic Party.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
As "Person of the Year," Time magazine named "The Protester." The subhead read, "From the Arab Spring to Athens, From Occupy Wall Street to Moscow."
Well, yes, but what about the lack of American black protesters? Good Lord, where is the racial diversity/inclusion/proportional representation?
Back in the day, the tea party's alleged lack of black participants was beyond worrisome to the media. The lack of black faces in the crowd allowed the major media to describe the tea party as racially exclusionary, if not ... racist!
"Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement," said Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., "would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree." Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. said tea partiers can "go straight to hell." A New York Times op-ed described tea partiers as "overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do."
So the formula is set: Lack of blacks plus "overwhelmingly white" equals racism. Right? Not so fast.
This formula does not apply to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is as white as an Idaho picket fence. A Washington Post opinion piece cites a survey that found "African Americans, who are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street." And blacks are 25 percent of New York City's population. Occupy Wall Street was a home game for them. By contrast, 6 percent of tea party supporters, according to an April 2010 Gallup poll, are black. That's almost four times the number of blacks who make up Occupy Wall Street.
Why so few blacks in the Occupy movement?
A Washington Post opinion piece offered one reason -- black resignation: "Perhaps black America's absence is sending a message to the Occupiers: 'We told you so! Nothing will change. We've been here already. It's hopeless.'"
But blacks view the economy differently -- and a lot more optimistically -- than do whites.
Despite around 16 percent unemployment, as compared to the 8.6 percent national rate, and nearly 50 percent black teenage unemployment, blacks feel better about the economy than do whites. A February 2011 Washington Post survey found that 24 percent of blacks were "very" or "somewhat satisfied" with the economy, compared to 12 percent of whites. A recent NBC poll found that by a lopsided 73 percent to 19 percent, most Americans considered the country on the "wrong track." But not blacks. Forty-nine percent of blacks think the country is "headed in the right direction" versus 38 percent who do not.
Then there's the President Barack Obama factor. For some blacks, joining the Occupy protests would be an admission that Obama has failed to deliver on his promises to make things better, to squash special interests, to diminish the influence of lobbyists, etc. It's not hard for a black Obama lefty (redundancy intentional) to rationalize: "I thought a black president would make a real, actual, touchable difference in my life. He has not. But he's trying. He inherited a mess that those awful Republicans left him. So, he deserves re-election." How else to explain that while 57 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy, 86 percent of blacks approve?
The real reason for the lack of black participation, or lack of participation by anyone else in the Occupy movement, should be simple: a complete rejection of its sole unifying theme, which seems to be "give me some of what 'they' have."
The real reason to reject the Occupy movement is that complaining about "inequality" without regard to how the haves became the haves is a time-waster. Those in the top earning demographic have some things in common: They are more likely than the non-top-20-percenters to have at least a college degree; are married; work long hours; and did not inherit, marry, steal or win their wealth.
The problem is blacks reject the Occupy movement, but not the party whose values reflect its unifying "victicrat" theme. Yet Democrats and the Occupy movement share a common philosophy. Obama said to the Occupiers, "You're the reason I ran for office."
Both believe in empowering government to address "inequality" by redistributing wealth. Both believe that those who achieve great wealth do so through exploitation, which justifies the claim others make on the money.
The economy of the early '80s saw higher inflation, interest rates and unemployment than during the so-called Great Recession. But unlike Obama, President Ronald Reagan deeply and broadly cut taxes, continued deregulation and slowed down the rate of domestic spending. The result? Black adult and teen unemployment fell dramatically, much faster than it did for white adults and teens.
The real question is not why so few blacks belong to the Occupy movement. The real question is why so many blacks still belong to the Democratic Party.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Obamacare Abominations
By John Stossel
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
President Obama says his health care "reform" will be good for business.
Business has learned the truth.
Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding.
Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company's health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, "the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, 'We've gone to seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can't tell you.' I think that just kind of sums up the uncertainty."
Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, added that Obamacare makes it impossible to achieve even basic certainty about future personnel costs:
"If I was trying to get you to fund a new business I had started and you asked me what my payroll was going to be three years from now per employee, if I went to the deepest specialist in the industry, he can't tell me what it's actually going to cost, let alone what I'm going to be responsible for."
You would think a piece of legislation more than a thousand pages long would at least be clear about the specifics. But a lot of those pages say: "The secretary will determine ..." That means the secretary of health and human services will announce the rules sometime in the future. How can a business make plans in such a fog?
John Allison, former CEO of BB&T, the 12th biggest bank in America, pointed out how Obamacare encourages employers not to insure their employees. Under the law, an employer would be fined for that. But the penalty at present -- about $2,000 -- is lower than the cost of a policy.
"What that means is in theory every company ought to dump their plan on the government plan and pay the penalty," he said. "So you don't really know what the cost is because it's designed to fail."
Of course, then every employee would turn to the government-subsidized health insurance. Maybe that was the central planners' intention all along.
An owner of 12 IHOPS told me that he can't expand his business because he can't afford the burden of Obamacare. Many of his waitresses work part time or change jobs every few months. He hadn't been insuring them, but Obamacare requires him to. He says he can't make money paying a $2,000 penalty for every waitress, so he's cancelled his plans to expand. It's one more reason why job growth hasn't picked up post-recession.
Of course, we were told that government health care would increase hiring. After all, European companies don't have to pay for their employees' health insurance. If every American employer paid the $2,000 penalty and their workers turned to government for insurance, American companies would be better able to compete with European ones. They might save $10,000 per employee.
That sounded good, but like so many politicians' promises, it leaves out the hidden costs. When countries move to a government-funded system, taxes rise to crushing levels, as they have in Europe.
Whalen sees Obamacare as a crossing of the Rubicon.
"We've had an agreement in this country, kind of unwritten, for the last 50 years, that we would spend about 18 to 19 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) on the federal government. This is a tipping point. This takes us to 25 to 30 percent. And that money comes out of the private sector. That means fewer jobs. This is a game-changer."
He means it's a game-changer because of the cost. But the law's impenetrable complication does almost as much damage. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute is right: If you wonder why businesspeople are not investing and reviving the economy, the answer lies in all the question marks that Obamacare and other new regulations confront them with. Higgs calls this "regime uncertainty." It's also what prolonged the Great Depression.
No one who understands the nature of government as the wielder of force -- as opposed to the peaceful persuasion of the free market -- is surprised by this.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
President Obama says his health care "reform" will be good for business.
Business has learned the truth.
Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding.
Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company's health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, "the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, 'We've gone to seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can't tell you.' I think that just kind of sums up the uncertainty."
Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, added that Obamacare makes it impossible to achieve even basic certainty about future personnel costs:
"If I was trying to get you to fund a new business I had started and you asked me what my payroll was going to be three years from now per employee, if I went to the deepest specialist in the industry, he can't tell me what it's actually going to cost, let alone what I'm going to be responsible for."
You would think a piece of legislation more than a thousand pages long would at least be clear about the specifics. But a lot of those pages say: "The secretary will determine ..." That means the secretary of health and human services will announce the rules sometime in the future. How can a business make plans in such a fog?
John Allison, former CEO of BB&T, the 12th biggest bank in America, pointed out how Obamacare encourages employers not to insure their employees. Under the law, an employer would be fined for that. But the penalty at present -- about $2,000 -- is lower than the cost of a policy.
"What that means is in theory every company ought to dump their plan on the government plan and pay the penalty," he said. "So you don't really know what the cost is because it's designed to fail."
Of course, then every employee would turn to the government-subsidized health insurance. Maybe that was the central planners' intention all along.
An owner of 12 IHOPS told me that he can't expand his business because he can't afford the burden of Obamacare. Many of his waitresses work part time or change jobs every few months. He hadn't been insuring them, but Obamacare requires him to. He says he can't make money paying a $2,000 penalty for every waitress, so he's cancelled his plans to expand. It's one more reason why job growth hasn't picked up post-recession.
Of course, we were told that government health care would increase hiring. After all, European companies don't have to pay for their employees' health insurance. If every American employer paid the $2,000 penalty and their workers turned to government for insurance, American companies would be better able to compete with European ones. They might save $10,000 per employee.
That sounded good, but like so many politicians' promises, it leaves out the hidden costs. When countries move to a government-funded system, taxes rise to crushing levels, as they have in Europe.
Whalen sees Obamacare as a crossing of the Rubicon.
"We've had an agreement in this country, kind of unwritten, for the last 50 years, that we would spend about 18 to 19 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) on the federal government. This is a tipping point. This takes us to 25 to 30 percent. And that money comes out of the private sector. That means fewer jobs. This is a game-changer."
He means it's a game-changer because of the cost. But the law's impenetrable complication does almost as much damage. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute is right: If you wonder why businesspeople are not investing and reviving the economy, the answer lies in all the question marks that Obamacare and other new regulations confront them with. Higgs calls this "regime uncertainty." It's also what prolonged the Great Depression.
No one who understands the nature of government as the wielder of force -- as opposed to the peaceful persuasion of the free market -- is surprised by this.
North Korea: The Kim is Dead, Long Live the Kim
By Austin Bay
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
For the second time in two decades, North Korea's hereditary communist state confronts dynastic change -- and the civilized world, wary of the chronically belligerent realm's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, draws a guarded breath.
Kim Jong Il, the squirrelly tinpot with a yen for kidnapping movie starlets, died last week. North Korea's propagandists tell us the deceased thug passed on the family tyranny (complete with various extortion and smuggling rackets) to his third son and designated heir, Kim Jong Un. (May we call him KJUN for short?)
The propagandists have dubbed the 27-year old KJUN, who was educated in an elite Swiss school and purportedly loves basketball, "The Great Successor." KJUN's preceding Kim dynasts flashed grandiose monikers. Dynastic founder Kim Il Sung (KIS), the Josef Stalin comrade who started the Korean War, favored Great Leader. The belated Kim Jong Il (OK, KJI) usually went by Beloved Leader, but bore other assorted titles, including "Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love," "The Sun of Socialism" and, my favorite, "Great Sun of the 21st Century."
Great Sunset or imminent black hole is more like it. As the 21st century has progressed, prospects for tyrants like the Kims have dimmed. KIS and KJI both vowed to crush South Korea. They failed. In fact, their own Marxist utopia is a dystopia, where 2 million to 3 million people face starvation and a working filament light bulb is a luxury item.
Five years ago, China reinforced its troop contingents in its North Korean border region, not to fend off a U.S. or Japanese attack, but to keep North Koreans from fleeing the Great Kims' Stalinist hellhole. The military, however, eats decently (often stealing aid donor food), the dynasts enjoy caviar, and their scientists conspire with Iran to produce nuclear warheads.
Now, KJUN assumes power.
Or so the propagandists assure us.
KJI's sons one and two -- respectively, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chul -- have what sex therapists call "numerous issues." At least, that's the semi-official rumor. However, both are older than KJUN. Nam (a half-brother) was once deemed heir apparent, though after his father settled on KJUN, Nam disavowed any interest beyond his playboy lifestyle and mistresses. Yet multiple heirs to the throne is an old-time prescription for gruesome family murder. Ottoman sultans, to secure their thrones, had loyal soldiers strangle their brothers, sometimes in the seraglio with the concubines. In those days, sibling rivalry was a recipe for civil war. This scenario, however, seems unlikely. Why, if his crown rests uneasy, KJUN has his father's generals, secret police and commandos.
"His father's generals" is the important phrase in the previous sentence. No one really knows if his father's generals are baby-faced KJUN's generals. What these armed, slate-faced and secretive men think of The Great Successor, much less how they perceive the world, is a 4- to 5-trillion-dollar mystery. Four to 5 trillion is one wild estimate floating around of the cost of a reignited Korean War that puts the global powerhouse economies of South Korea, Japan and China at risk.
The senior generals in the army high command are Kim Jong Il's real heirs. We can speculate that they value their lives and privileges, which so far have depended on the Kims' criminal empire. But the generals know China has changed, drastically, and prospered. After suffering several vicious attacks during the last two years, South Korea no longer sends stringless cash north.
In late 2010, the South Korean government outlined a long-term plan for Korean reunification. It emphasized the South's immense strength and the North's evident weakness, portraying South Korea as the future, the Kims' regime as a dead-end past. It was the kind of political program that might give forward-thinking North Korean generals the bold idea to unseat Un and dim the Kims for good.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
For the second time in two decades, North Korea's hereditary communist state confronts dynastic change -- and the civilized world, wary of the chronically belligerent realm's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, draws a guarded breath.
Kim Jong Il, the squirrelly tinpot with a yen for kidnapping movie starlets, died last week. North Korea's propagandists tell us the deceased thug passed on the family tyranny (complete with various extortion and smuggling rackets) to his third son and designated heir, Kim Jong Un. (May we call him KJUN for short?)
The propagandists have dubbed the 27-year old KJUN, who was educated in an elite Swiss school and purportedly loves basketball, "The Great Successor." KJUN's preceding Kim dynasts flashed grandiose monikers. Dynastic founder Kim Il Sung (KIS), the Josef Stalin comrade who started the Korean War, favored Great Leader. The belated Kim Jong Il (OK, KJI) usually went by Beloved Leader, but bore other assorted titles, including "Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love," "The Sun of Socialism" and, my favorite, "Great Sun of the 21st Century."
Great Sunset or imminent black hole is more like it. As the 21st century has progressed, prospects for tyrants like the Kims have dimmed. KIS and KJI both vowed to crush South Korea. They failed. In fact, their own Marxist utopia is a dystopia, where 2 million to 3 million people face starvation and a working filament light bulb is a luxury item.
Five years ago, China reinforced its troop contingents in its North Korean border region, not to fend off a U.S. or Japanese attack, but to keep North Koreans from fleeing the Great Kims' Stalinist hellhole. The military, however, eats decently (often stealing aid donor food), the dynasts enjoy caviar, and their scientists conspire with Iran to produce nuclear warheads.
Now, KJUN assumes power.
Or so the propagandists assure us.
KJI's sons one and two -- respectively, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chul -- have what sex therapists call "numerous issues." At least, that's the semi-official rumor. However, both are older than KJUN. Nam (a half-brother) was once deemed heir apparent, though after his father settled on KJUN, Nam disavowed any interest beyond his playboy lifestyle and mistresses. Yet multiple heirs to the throne is an old-time prescription for gruesome family murder. Ottoman sultans, to secure their thrones, had loyal soldiers strangle their brothers, sometimes in the seraglio with the concubines. In those days, sibling rivalry was a recipe for civil war. This scenario, however, seems unlikely. Why, if his crown rests uneasy, KJUN has his father's generals, secret police and commandos.
"His father's generals" is the important phrase in the previous sentence. No one really knows if his father's generals are baby-faced KJUN's generals. What these armed, slate-faced and secretive men think of The Great Successor, much less how they perceive the world, is a 4- to 5-trillion-dollar mystery. Four to 5 trillion is one wild estimate floating around of the cost of a reignited Korean War that puts the global powerhouse economies of South Korea, Japan and China at risk.
The senior generals in the army high command are Kim Jong Il's real heirs. We can speculate that they value their lives and privileges, which so far have depended on the Kims' criminal empire. But the generals know China has changed, drastically, and prospered. After suffering several vicious attacks during the last two years, South Korea no longer sends stringless cash north.
In late 2010, the South Korean government outlined a long-term plan for Korean reunification. It emphasized the South's immense strength and the North's evident weakness, portraying South Korea as the future, the Kims' regime as a dead-end past. It was the kind of political program that might give forward-thinking North Korean generals the bold idea to unseat Un and dim the Kims for good.
Canada and the Kyoto Protocol: Who Says Quitters Never Win?
By Rachel Marsden
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
In a victory for common sense, America's top trading partner has become the first country to bail on the Kyoto Protocol before the nearly $7 billion in noncompliance costs comes due next year. Thus ends a pointless and pricey exercise in martyrdom.
Having committed to reducing 1990-level carbon emissions by 6 percent, Canada somehow managed to go in the other direction by about a third. Not that anyone in Canada would have noticed by any tangible common-sense measure, except perhaps for all the Canadian plants and trees quietly cheering the abundance of carbon dioxide and overproducing fresh oxygen as a result.
So what, exactly, is the valid scientific reason for which a well-managed country with a natural-resource-based economy would purposely choose to sacrifice its competitive advantage amid economic uncertainty, particularly when oil and natural-resource competitor Russia has a mandate to reduce its emissions by exactly zero, and America wisely didn't even sign the agreement?
Environmentalism is all feel-good fun and games until taxpayers get mugged. Times and priorities have changed, and scammy nonsense like taxing and trading in plant food credits has lost its luster. Protesters are already complaining about Wall Street. We really don't need yet another (and even dodgier) market system for them to whine about.
Carbon reduction is just a luxury pastime, and arguably a useless one. Where can you breathe better -- "carbon-dumping" Canada, or Europe? I rest my case.
European countries have long been proudly fiddling with carbon credits both amongst themselves and on the world stage. Good for them. Given the current economic state of the euro zone, it's obvious they've been busy debating wallpaper samples while the bulldozer rolls full speed toward the house. Good luck saving the world when you can't pay the rent. Europe will probably keep trying to impose its moral example through climate-change activism, even when it's in debt to China and Russia, both of which have zero Kyoto obligations.
A developed country under the carbon tax system can choose to offset its guilt with actions rather than cash transfers to less-industrialized countries. Nice racket. So Canada may have been able to reduce its billions owed with "do-gooder credits," furiously running around the world planting trees, French-kissing rainbow trout, hosting one rock concert on arctic ice floes featuring Bono for every gigatonne of carbon spewed, or something else equally absurd.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated at a Toronto press conference last week that his government was committed to working with the private sector in the ongoing development of emissions-reduction technology, thereby differentiating between a heartfelt, morally genuine effort and a crippling political imposition.
Existing gentlemen's agreements between provinces and American regions on emission reduction might be a fun distraction from practical life, like a badminton league or hockey pool. They should never have been parlayed into something that costs anyone more than a beer, let alone billions.
Canadian opposition parties predictably whined about not being allowed to tag along with the environment minister to the recent Durban summit, where they were hoping to run around profusely apologizing for the government's lack of sensitivity in saving Canadian taxpayers a multibillion-dollar bill.
The Liberal Party's environment critic, Kirsty Duncan, accused Harper's government of ignoring the "science" of this. "While the world emits 48 gigatonnes of carbon each year," she wrote, "most models suggest that emissions need to drop to 44 gigatonnes by 2020 to maintain a likely chance (66 percent) of remaining under 2 degrees Celsius."
Harper should have responded that this overwrought, overfunded reasoning can be alleviated, according to bought scientific consensus, by running 6 million to 11 million barrels of Canadian crude (or Molson Canadian beer) over a leftist brain at 40 degrees Celsius to maintain a 66 percent chance of reducing its temperature to 38 degrees Celsius by 2020.
The Socialist NDP official opposition leader added: "While the Harper Conservatives are causing Canada to fall behind, the rest of the world is moving forward in the new energy economy."
Good for "the rest of the world." Have fun playing with your new taxes. The rest of us have real problems to deal with.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
In a victory for common sense, America's top trading partner has become the first country to bail on the Kyoto Protocol before the nearly $7 billion in noncompliance costs comes due next year. Thus ends a pointless and pricey exercise in martyrdom.
Having committed to reducing 1990-level carbon emissions by 6 percent, Canada somehow managed to go in the other direction by about a third. Not that anyone in Canada would have noticed by any tangible common-sense measure, except perhaps for all the Canadian plants and trees quietly cheering the abundance of carbon dioxide and overproducing fresh oxygen as a result.
So what, exactly, is the valid scientific reason for which a well-managed country with a natural-resource-based economy would purposely choose to sacrifice its competitive advantage amid economic uncertainty, particularly when oil and natural-resource competitor Russia has a mandate to reduce its emissions by exactly zero, and America wisely didn't even sign the agreement?
Environmentalism is all feel-good fun and games until taxpayers get mugged. Times and priorities have changed, and scammy nonsense like taxing and trading in plant food credits has lost its luster. Protesters are already complaining about Wall Street. We really don't need yet another (and even dodgier) market system for them to whine about.
Carbon reduction is just a luxury pastime, and arguably a useless one. Where can you breathe better -- "carbon-dumping" Canada, or Europe? I rest my case.
European countries have long been proudly fiddling with carbon credits both amongst themselves and on the world stage. Good for them. Given the current economic state of the euro zone, it's obvious they've been busy debating wallpaper samples while the bulldozer rolls full speed toward the house. Good luck saving the world when you can't pay the rent. Europe will probably keep trying to impose its moral example through climate-change activism, even when it's in debt to China and Russia, both of which have zero Kyoto obligations.
A developed country under the carbon tax system can choose to offset its guilt with actions rather than cash transfers to less-industrialized countries. Nice racket. So Canada may have been able to reduce its billions owed with "do-gooder credits," furiously running around the world planting trees, French-kissing rainbow trout, hosting one rock concert on arctic ice floes featuring Bono for every gigatonne of carbon spewed, or something else equally absurd.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated at a Toronto press conference last week that his government was committed to working with the private sector in the ongoing development of emissions-reduction technology, thereby differentiating between a heartfelt, morally genuine effort and a crippling political imposition.
Existing gentlemen's agreements between provinces and American regions on emission reduction might be a fun distraction from practical life, like a badminton league or hockey pool. They should never have been parlayed into something that costs anyone more than a beer, let alone billions.
Canadian opposition parties predictably whined about not being allowed to tag along with the environment minister to the recent Durban summit, where they were hoping to run around profusely apologizing for the government's lack of sensitivity in saving Canadian taxpayers a multibillion-dollar bill.
The Liberal Party's environment critic, Kirsty Duncan, accused Harper's government of ignoring the "science" of this. "While the world emits 48 gigatonnes of carbon each year," she wrote, "most models suggest that emissions need to drop to 44 gigatonnes by 2020 to maintain a likely chance (66 percent) of remaining under 2 degrees Celsius."
Harper should have responded that this overwrought, overfunded reasoning can be alleviated, according to bought scientific consensus, by running 6 million to 11 million barrels of Canadian crude (or Molson Canadian beer) over a leftist brain at 40 degrees Celsius to maintain a 66 percent chance of reducing its temperature to 38 degrees Celsius by 2020.
The Socialist NDP official opposition leader added: "While the Harper Conservatives are causing Canada to fall behind, the rest of the world is moving forward in the new energy economy."
Good for "the rest of the world." Have fun playing with your new taxes. The rest of us have real problems to deal with.
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