Read it and weep.
change that defies belief
Surreal Spending
The House is poised to take a final vote on the compromise $800-billion spending bill on, appropriately, Friday the 13th, with the Senate likely to follow soon after.
In my 36 years in Washington, I have never seen such a surreal environment, with hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed taxpayer money being spent without committee hearings or even meaningful public debate over the thousands of new and expanded programs the bill funds. [Read more…]
Obamanomics
Obamanomics – mp3 audio
“It is absolutely true that we can’t depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth.”
Oh Please! With this intriguing bit of hyperbole, President Obama begins his justification for the stimulus package.
— AS IF we could depend on government AT ALL to create jobs or economic growth!
Governments redistribute a fraction of the dollars they collect, and consume the balance with overhead. The wealth that governments redistribute crowds out private sector opportunities at the point of redistribution, cuts off private sector opportunities at the point of collection, and costs an overhead bureaucracy that adds no productive capacity to society. It’s a loss proposition in the beginning, middle, and end.
Governments cannot create anything without first taking the means to do so from the private sector, a fact that completely eludes our leftist fear-mongering redistributer-in-Chief. And he seems like such a nice guy. Too bad his policies will bury us.
economists discredit stimulus
Bush’s fault?
– The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at about 12,400.
– The New York-based Conference Board said its consumer confidence index was at 110.3.– The Bureau of Labor Statistics had the unemployment rate at 4.6%
– According to CNN a gallon of gasoline, in January 2007, averaged about $2.20.
– Last Thursday at about 1 pm Eastern, the Dow had hit a bottom of about 10,500 before Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke intervened. That is a drop of about 15% in the Dow from two years ago.
– The Conference Board’s latest take on the pulse of consumer confidence had it at a very thready 56.9 in August – a drop of about 48%– The unemployment rate in August was reported at 6.1% by the BLS an increase of 33%.
Gasoline prices are at about $3.70 a whopping 68% jump.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Ma) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Ct) took control of the House and Senate Banking Committees.
Rep. George Miller (D-Ca) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Ma) took over their respective Labor Committees.Rep. John Dingell (D-Mi) and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) became chairs of the Energy Committees.
From: Mullings
Let’s be clear, the House controls spending, not the Senate, and not the Executive branch. Bush must have set that up in a prior incarnation.
President’s press conference
60% of Americans want tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and the President thinks he can do it with federal spending on roads and bridges. Rather than save the jobs that were lost, help the industries that have had to lay off, or directly help those people who have lost jobs, the President suggests those skilled workers go pick up shovels and join highway crews. Nice work if you can get it I suppose.
After the President’s first press conference, the message is obvious. The private sector will get no help from Washington in rescuing this economy. The help the Left have offered is meaningless and hopelessly out of step with people’s real needs.
The private sector must look within, use it’s own creative and productive capacities, decide what needs produced and served in America, and proceed to fill those economic needs. The private sector must find the capital, take the risks, reward the entrepreneurs, and create real solutions. In other words, do what only the private sector knows how to do.
Last night, the President who never actually worked in the private sector all but held a funeral for the American private sector. How would he even recognize a private sector job?
Washington is a town full of empty suits who’s only skill is an ability to promise to spend trillions of dollars that the country does not have, as fast as possible, to build the American socialist state. Forget that socialism can’t work. Forget that the wealth they intend to spend does not exist. The less American producers enable this madness, the better.
At the end of the day, we still have our freedom. The federal government cannot control us unless we consent. By refusing federal dollars, we refuse our consent to be controlled. If private citizens refuse federal health care programs, the feds will be powerless to stop them from seeking the health care of their own choosing. If private businesses refuse federal money, they will remain masters of their own destiny.
Obama desparately tried to convince us last night that we are helpless and that the federal government is our only savior. Don’t believe him for a second. The private sector is what enlivens America. Other things being equal, market valuations may indicate the economic value of a private firm. But other things are not equal at this time. At this time we have a majority party in power with the singular message that we have become worthless. What changed in the last year that made us worthless? The Democrats took power. I, for one, don’t believe a word of their message.
The Democrat message is intended to stampede people headlong into socialism and Obama tells us not to worry too much about the details of his stimulus plan. Do you think this is the governing wisdom that the Americans who put the Left in power really thought they were going to get? I don’t.
The bloom is definitely off the One’s rose, and what’s left is a thorny totalitarian.
division in the name of diversity
The Left’s obsessions with race, economic class, gender, sexual preference, national origin, handicap status, and political action, guarantee that there will be nothing bipartisan, post-partisan, or unifying, about their majority governance of America. It is absurd to expect unification from people who think about little else than what divides us. From their elite perch on high they see redistribution of wealth from one American to another as an equalizing force that sets right the unjust and immoral hierarchy of different economic outcomes. The facts that the world values and rewards people differently, that people have different productive capacities, and that the Left’s arbitrary uncoupling of productive capacity from financial reward actually creates more division, all seem to escape them. Maybe after they turn productive Americans into another minority group they will see the wreckage their policies have always caused. Fortunately, notwithstanding the dictates from our new Leftist government, Americans will continue to order themselves, value themselves, and think for themselves. At the rate things change these days, it won’t take long before the futility of Obamanomics becomes apparent even to the Left.
Misunderstanding Rush Limbaugh
[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]
Today the Los Angeles Times devoted a portion of its front page and more than a thousand words to Rush Limbaugh, and like most liberal media organs that have examined what we might call the Limbaugh phenomenon, they fail in their effort to help readers understand it. This is a failure that might have been avoided had the writers merely listened to his program.
The article quotes Rich Bond, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The question is,” Bond says, “are we going to have an all-white-man litmus test under the Republican Party? Or is there room for diverse opinion on environmental issues, on the issue of right to life, the issue of taxes and spending?”
Thus the article advances the notion that Limbaugh’s views are retrograde, that today’s Republicans should somehow reach accommodation with those who advocate for increased government regulation on environmental issues, increased taxes and government spending, and, worst of all, abortion on demand.
Rubbish. As anyone who listens to Limbaugh’s program with any regularity can attest, he is not the least bit interested in finding accommodation with policies that are corrosive to freedom at best and immoral at worst. He has no interest in expanding the Republican Party by making it more like the Democrat Party. Rather, he seeks to expand it by persuading his listeners of the superiority of conservative principles, which, far from being “all-white” as Bond claims, are unbound by race or ethnicity. Limbaugh may find that this task grows easier as Americans come to realize the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress will not be delivering the peace and prosperity they so lavishly promised.
–Jack Dunphy
Update: Readers here on Patterico may not be familiar with my writing for National Review Online and Pajamas Media, but as I once explained on NRO (here and here), I was once a squishy-headed liberal, the kind of person who, had the Internet been around in those medieval times, would have written the sort of snarky, conservatives-are-evil comments that surely will soon be appended to this post. Needless to say, I’m not any longer, and I grateful to Mr. Limbaugh for his contributions to my education.
Obama goes to the bully pulpit
Barack Obama Washington Post Editorial
re: “…the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action…”
It’s not enough that the Democrats have control of the House, control of the Senate, control of the Presidency, and a liberal majority on the Supreme Court?
When did a limp-wristed majority afraid to act on its’ own beliefs become “partisan gridlock?” You can’t blame Republicans for the Democrats’ lack of courage to support their own convictions.
And elevating Republicans’ reasonable disagreement with socialist programs to the virtual level of a thought crime is frankly Orwellian. If socialist programs had ever accomplished what they set out to do, anywhere, anytime in history that they have been tried, Republicans would probably sign on. But we’ve been down this road of failed big government responses to economic crisis, and many people who lived through the Great Depression are still alive to attest to those socialist failures. The way to stimulate our economy is to get government off our backs and allow people to keep the fruits of their labors.
The stimulus plan the President brought out of the House is built on False Dilemmas, ineffective solutions, poor returns on the dollar, and arbitrary market dislocations. It benefits one class – the government bureaucrat class. Everyone else loses.
Great. The American people get the government they deserve. And the government they got is Democrats who don’t need Republicans to pass their stimulus plan. What they need is to grow a pair, men and women alike, and pass their plans in the light of day as THEIR plans, and be judged by THEIR plans’ results as Democrats. And if they can’t muster the testosterone to be held accountable for their own plans, they have no one to blame but themselves.
And Republicans need to grow some pairs too. Conservative philosophy is worth standing on. They must hold the line and not agree to another dollar of spending or taxation. It would be a big mistake for them to try to blend in with Democrats at this juncture. Look what happened the last time a Republican tried to pass himself off as a Democrat – the McCain campaign lost definitively. Tax and spend is a guaranteed loser for a Republican.
Democrats don’t need bi-partisan support to enact their plans, and each time they ask for it, Republicans should lock their mouths shut and throw away the key. The change Republicans need in Washington is to quit the spending spree that went on under President Bush, learn when to keep their mouths shut, and start acting conservatively.
Also See: Alyssa Lappen on Stimulus Plan
Also See: The Fierce Urgency of Pork
Bush: 8 years of global cooling
Stealth Care
Stealth Reform, by Grace Marie-Turner
Congressional leaders are arguing over whether they’ll get a comprehensive health reform bill passed this year or next. But, in fact, major health reform is speeding through Congress in two bills that are on the fast track to enactment — SCHIP and the economic stimulus bill.
Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to children in families well into middle-income ranges passed the Senate yesterday and will likely be signed into law by President Obama early next week. In some states, children in families earning $100,000 or more would be eligible for taxpayer-supported insurance, as would adults already receiving it, clearly changing the mission of the program.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked, “Is the real intent of this legislation to replace the private health care system with a government-run health care system?” The response from Senate Democratic whip Richard Durbin (D-IL) was that he didn’t want to “trap people into private health insurance.” Heaven forbid!
Nine Senate Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats in favor of the SCHIP expansion; 40 Republicans crossed over and joined nearly all Democrats in passing the nearly-identical House version of the bill last week.
Nonetheless, the partisanship in the debate was evident: Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was “disgusted” by the way Democratic leaders handled the debate. “It does not bode well for cooperative work in the coming months,” he told The Washington Post.
But the real game-changing health provisions are in the economic stimulus bill, where millions of Americans would be added to Medicaid and other taxpayer-financed health programs — without committee hearings or virtually any debate.
Here are some, but by no means all, of the health reform provisions in this gargantuan economic spending bill: [Read more…]
Essay Contest Winners
Ian Stodghill won 1st in the high school division and Henry Imperial won 1st in the middle school division of the Elbert County Republican Women’s Essay Contest. The winners earned cash prizes and got to read their essays to an assembly of about 100 parents, teachers and community leaders.
(click to enlarge)
Ian Stodghill’s Essay mp3 file
Henry Imperial’s Essay mp3 file
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High School Winners (from right to left)
- 1st, Ian Stodghill – Dear Trail Home School
- 2nd, Michael Weichselberger – Agate
- 3rd, Deanna Acosta – Legacy Academy
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Middle School Winners (from left to right)
- 1st, Henry Imperial – Legacy Academy
- 3rd, Kate Melman – Kiowa
- 2nd, Briana Vullo – Big Sandy
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Orders
I’m reading Samuel Huntington’s, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996. It seemed like an appropriate subject to engage at this time of rapid reorientation of power structures within America. On the strong possibility that any comment I might have on such a grand subject would involve inserting one or both feet in my mouth, I will take my time with this subject. Meanwhile, check out Kissinger’s recent essay, The chance for a new world order.
Muslim strategic goal in America
“4- Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America:
The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.”
An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America (English translation begins on page 15.)
Obama’s Inaugural Address
Barak Obama’s Inaugural Address
I liked the speech. I liked that he brought in so many fundamental American values and images. I like that he kept his goals, for the most part, above the level of entrenched partisan solutions. It was a good start.
The biggest obstacle to Obama’s “post-partisan” vision will be the hard left. Reaching out to Republicans will be easy because half of them are liberals already, and the other half will respond to reason. The hard left, however, will be difficult to bring into a bipartisan coalition. Convincing them of the value of American institutions such as the market, or the value of individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and investment, or the end of victimization and racial thinking, will be sea-change challenges that the hard left will fight tooth and nail.
the content of its’ character
Presidential elections consistently reveal the near 50/50 split in American political sentiment between the left and the right. In the RMN today, Mike Rosen described the audience split between conservative Fox News and the rest of the liberal networks at 2 million for Fox News and 25 million for the rest. This split is 7% to 93%.
Let’s assume that politically slanted journalism is persuasive, if only because the thousands of journalists and journalism students desperately need it to be so. And let’s assume that the average intelligence of people is uniform across the political spectrum.
It is fair to conclude that the 93% of the media that is liberal is as effective as the 7% of the media that is conservative. In other words, conservative media is approximately 13 times more persuasive than liberal media.
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more truthful than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times better written than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more logical than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media is 13 times more realistic than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media can predict the future 13 times more accurately than liberal media?
- Could it be that conservative media has 13 times less propaganda than liberal media?
Whatever the reason, and it’s probably a combination of things, when measured by effect, conservative media has 13 times more influence.
It would be interesting to look at comparative advertising rates between liberal and conservative media to see if they support this theory. Since conservative media is, minute for minute, much more influential than liberal media, one would expect its’ advertising rates to be significantly higher.
Leadership
President Bush’s remarks about American moral authority
Remarks from President Bush’s last press conference, 1/12/09, responding to a question from a Washington Post reporter.
This excerpt hardly sounds like the apologia that the press characterized this press conference. The press, apparently still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome will simply not permit positive views of Bush to go unchallenged. At some point in the next 4 years, people are going to start expecting the left to do something other than elevate themselves on the perceptions of others failures that they like to talk about. I’m sure everyone hopes they get it right, but their stampede toward socialism on the brink of a hyperinflation is a poor start.
bureaucracy
West Elbert County Sun, 1/8/09
- “Extensive sampling at the ranges and elsewhere on the property have shown a level of contamination that is much less than we anticipated, and except for the bullet impact backstops, much less than we have ever seen at shooting ranges.”
- “None of the lab-confirmed samples have triggered the level of concern we established with the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment, 1100 ppm lead in soil, nor even the department’s default level of 400 ppm. Therefore 40+ years of shooting by the Boy Scouts has not generated a significant hazardous condition, as one might otherwise expect.”
- “Jeffrie Hermann, executive director of the BSA Denver Area council, noted that the BSA has incurred more than $600,000 in expenses to date on this special use permit application[.] ” Note: This does not include costs for shooting range relocations and the indefinite future costs of regulatory compliance.
Case SU-08-0032, Special Use Review Permit, Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch Shooting Facility
Complainants have succeeded in diverting hundreds of thousands of present and future charitable dollars that could have benefited the Scouts, into county, state and federal regulatory industries, and accomplished nothing.
If the scouts ever need shooters to come out and fire off a few rounds in the direction of the complainants when the winds are just right for maximum sound effect, I’m available.
“There cannot be any doubt that this bureaucratic system is essentially antiliberal, undemocratic, and un-American, that it is contrary to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution, and that it is a replica of the totalitarian methods of Stalin and Hitler. It is imbued with a fanatical hostility to free enterprise and private property. It paralyzes the conduct of business and lowers the productivity of labor. By heedless spending it squanders the nation’s wealth. It is inefficient and wasteful. Although it styles what it does as planning, it has no definite plans and aims. It lacks unity and uniformity; the various bureaus and agencies work at cross-purposes. The outcome is a disintegration of the whole social apparatus of production and distribution. Poverty and distress are bound to follow.”
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!
Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.”
Bureaucracy, Von Mises.
Winter trees
Happy New Year!
“progress”
“The average man of the present age [1948] has a metaphysic in the form of a conception known as “progress.” It is certainly to his credit that he does not wish to be a sentimentalist in his endeavors; he wants some measure for purposeful activity; he wants to feel that through the world some increasing purpose runs. And nothing is more common than to hear him discriminate people according to this metaphysic, his term for less worthy being “unprogressive.” Richard M. Weaver
The operative metaphysic for many became the environment, which ought to be objectively measurable, but defies agreement. Moreover, many of its’ adherents believe humanity and the environment are antithetical, that our existence necessarily harms the environment.
When God was the operative metaphysic, the majority of people incorporating God’s metaphysic would generally follow a benign course toward other people. This was because people were made in God’s image. Political decisions tended to favor the demographic majority.
Now that the majority accepts a metaphysic they believe to be opposed to mankind, and that same majority believes in growing and using the power of government, it follows that we should expect more political decisions to go against the interests of people. On a fundamental level, this may help explain why we already have so many regulations and so much government action that is hostile to our well being.
In terms of stewardship, preservation, efficacy, sound economics, husbandry, accountability, oversight, and pretty much every other concept that engenders wisdom, government runs a distant second to all other forms of organized human action. Who will protect the environment from the institutionalized, heavy handed, non-adaptive, one-size-fits-all, modus operandi of government?
Creative men and women will synthesize the protection of themselves with the protection of the environment, and they’ll have to overcome the negative effects of government and the ministrations of progressives to do it.
“That government is best which governs least.” Thomas Paine