Kah Zoohl List

... by replacing cars with low-emission unicorns powered by the renewable energy of rainbows!

2010-04-01T14:29:00.005-05:00

Happy April Fools day from the NRSC.

Scott Brown: The health care fight is not over

2010-03-30T22:04:00.004-05:00

Scott Brown has an Op-Ed in today's Boston Globe that's too good to do anything but quote in it's entirety:

By electing me to the US Senate, the people of Massachusetts sent a clear message: Washington needs to get its priorities straight. Voters believed I would be the best candidate to fight for jobs and a stronger economy, keep our country safe, and serve as the 41st vote against the health care reform legislation debated in the Senate.

After my election, Washington politicians began an aggressive push to bend the rules and force their unpopular health care bill on an unwilling nation. They went into secret negotiations to make up their own rules, and eventually found a way to circumvent the will of the people by using the reconciliation process to ram through their health care bill. For the last year, the American people have been shaking their heads at the closed-door meetings, sweetheart deals, and special carve-outs. It has been a very ugly process, and caused many Americans to lose faith in their elected officials in Washington.

This bill constitutes a massive increase in spending that our country can’t afford and will result in a huge expansion in the size and reach of the federal government. When this legislation is fully implemented, the real cost to taxpayers is $2.6 trillion over years. Instead of reforming the health care system and bending the cost curve down, we are doing the exact opposite.

Everywhere I go, people ask me what can be done about this now — after the president has signed it into law, and Nancy Pelosi and others are taking their victory laps.

For starters, we can work in a bipartisan manner to repeal the worst parts of this bill. Americans have been clear that they do not like its $2.6 trillion cost, the higher taxes on families and businesses, the runaway spending, the state mandates, the sweetheart deals, and overcharging students to pay for health care.

We should replace the worst parts of this legislation with solutions that would actually lower costs and improve the quality of care — such as allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines, measures that will prevent waste, fraud and abuse, support for increased prevention and wellness programs, and reforms to limit costly litigation and defensive medicine.

I am working on legislation that would allow states to opt out of this federal health care bill because states need flexibility, not a federal government takeover of health care. Instead, individual states should have the flexibility to solve the health care problems in a way that is best for their specific state, similar to the approach we took in Massachusetts that has resulted in a state-specific plan that covers 98 percent of our citizens without raising taxes.

I am also working to repeal the medical device tax. Massachusetts has more than 200 medical device manufacturers who employ tens of thousands of workers. The medical device tax will not only cost our state good-paying jobs when we can least afford it, but it will be passed along to consumers, who will pay more for necessary medical equipment.

At a time when unemployment in the Commonwealth is hovering at nearly 10 percent, the last thing we should be doing is slapping businesses and workers with higher taxes. I am leading a charge to take the billions of dollars sitting unused in the stimulus slush funds of federal bureaucracies and give immediate tax relief — as much as $100 a month — to every American worker so that they can support their families now and inject money into the economy rather than let it stagnate in Washington.

This disastrous detour of a health care bill has distracted the attention and energy of Congress for the past year. Now, it is time to listen to the people and focus on their top priority: jobs. It would be a mistake for the administration to try to ram through other items on the liberal agenda when so many Americas are struggling. Americans want their government to fully focus its attention on the economy and getting our citizens back to work.

Washington is broken. All across the country, people believe that their elected officials are working for themselves and not on behalf of their constituents. Only when we start heeding the will of the American people can we begin to restore faith in government, and it all starts with commonsense, practical solutions that will put Americans back to work and get our economy back on track.

Pants on Fire

2010-03-30T11:41:00.004-05:00

National Review Online graciously calls it the Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates. I'd prefer to invoke a little Rep. Joe Wilson and put it more simply as "President Obama, You Lie!":

HEALTH CARE MANDATES

STATEMENT: “We've got a philosophical difference, which we've debated repeatedly, and that is that Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it. And my belief is, the reason that people don't have it is not because they don't want it but because they can't afford it.” Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate, February 21, 2008.

EXPIRATION DATE: On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the individual mandate into law.

HEALTH CARE NEGOTIATIONS ON C-SPAN

STATEMENT: “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made.” January 20, 2008, and seven other times.

EXPIRATION DATE: Throughout the summer, fall, and winter of 2009 and 2010; when John McCain asked about it during the health care summit February 26, Obama dismissed the issue by declaring, “the campaign is over, John.”

RAISING TAXES

STATEMENT: “No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.” (multiple times on the campaign trail)

EXPIRATION DATE: Broken multiple times, including the raised taxes on tobacco, a new tax on indoor tanning salons, but most prominently on February 11, 2010: “President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.”

RECESS APPOINTMENTS

STATEMENT: Then-Senator Obama declared that a recess appointment is “damaged goods” and has “less credibility” than a normal appointment. August 25, 2005.

EXPIRATION DATE: March 27, 2010: “If, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”

BORDER SECURITY

STATEMENT: “We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. . . . That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws.” then-candidate Obama, discussing the need for border security, speaking in Miami on May 23, 2008:

EXPIRATION DATE: March 17, 2010: The Obama administration halted new work on a "virtual fence" on the U.S.-Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes.

GUANTANAMO BAY

STATEMENT: Executive Order stating, "The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." January 22, 2009.

EXPIRATION DATE: November 19, 2009: "Guantánamo, we had a specific deadline that was missed."

MILITARY TRIBUNALS

STATEMENT: “Somebody like Khalid Sheik Mohammad is gonna get basically, a full military trial with all the bells and whistles.” September 27, 2006

EXPIRATION DATE: Ongoing. “President Obama is planning to insert himself into the debate about where to try the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, three administration officials said Thursday, signaling a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash. Obama initially had asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to choose the site of the trial in an effort to maintain an independent Justice Department. But the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York.”

RECOVERY.GOV

STATEMENT: “We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.” – President Obama, January 28, 2009

EXPIRATION DATE: “More than two months after some of the funds were released, [Recovery.gov] offers little detail on where the money is going… The government [spent] $84 million on a website that doesn't have a search function, when its purpose is to ‘root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.’” April 2, 2009

Eighteen from his first 100 days:

1. "As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide."
2. "I will make sure that we renegotiate [NAFTA]."
3. Opposed a Colombian Free Trade Agreement because advocates ignore that "labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis."
4. "Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut."
5. "If we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it."
6. "Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."
7. "I want to go line by line through every item in the Federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work, and make sure that those that do work work better and cheaper."
8. "[My plan] will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell."
9. "Instead of allowing lobbyists to slip big corporate tax breaks into bills during the dead of night, we will make sure every single tax break and earmark is available to every American online."
10."We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress's seniority, rather than the merit of the project."
11. "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."
12. "Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe the United States has to be frank with the Chinese about such failings and will press them to respect human rights."
13. "We must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights."
14. "Lobbyists won’t work in my White House!"
15. "The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."
16. "I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills."
17. "Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." Obama is 1-for-11 on this promise so far.
18. A special one on the 100th day, "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do."

NRO goes on to also list "promises that expired during the campaign," but I'll leave off here.

Granted, if you've been reading this blog, none of this should come as a surprise. Reaching back to the height of the 2008 campaign:

September 16, 2008: And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying

October 22, 2008: For the record, Obama has no problem breaking his pledges

October 22, 2008: For the record, Obama regularly invents false claims

Dress Rehearsal

2010-03-25T11:54:00.004-05:00

As Billy Beck has said many times (including last summer over the Healthcare Townhall Outrage):

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war...

Democrats Fear For Families

Cantor Says Campaign Office Was Shot At, Accuses Dems of Exploiting Threats

Steny Hoyer: Members Are at Risk

Vandalism at 2 Western NY Democratic Offices

Brick Incident (in Western NY) Linked To Alabama Blogger

Vandals Hit at Least Five Dem Offices Nationwide, Threaten To ‘Assassinate’ Children Of Pro-Reform Lawmakers

Coffin Placed On Carnahan's Lawn

Let me be clear: I believe violence and destruction of private property is reprehensible. But, is it any surprise that when you screw with people's liberty, people get upset?

Particularly if the Democrats keep up this "cram it down their throat" style of governance, to pass unpopular "lurch towards socialism" bills, I expect this type of behavior to accelerate. And not because some pundit is stirring up their passions (as liberals will undeniably charge). No, it's because: People. Want. To. Be. Free.

Save Us, States!

2010-03-22T00:25:00.005-05:00

It is a shame the states have to be the ones to ensure the Constitution is followed, but may they succeed in doing so!

Virginia will file suit against the federal government charging that the health-care reform legislation is unconstitutional, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office confirmed last night.

Cuccinelli is expected to argue that the bill, with its mandate that requires nearly every American to be insured by 2014, violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The attorney general’s office will file suit once President Barack Obama signs the bill into law, which could occur early this week.

“At no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service,“ Cuccinelli said in a statement last night.

After the U.S. House's historic vote Sunday night passing the health care reform bill, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster issued the following statement:

"The health care legislation Congress passed tonight is an assault against the Constitution of the United States. It contains various provisions and federal mandates that are clearly unconstitutional and must not be allowed to stand.

Moments after Congress voted to approve President Obama's health care legislation, Florida's Attorney General announced he will file a lawsuit to declare the bill unconstitutional.

Bill McCollum will join Attorneys General from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Dakota and South Dakota to file a lawsuit against the federal government.

"The health care reform legislation passed by the U. S. House of Representatives this evening clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and infringes on each state's sovereignty," McCollum said in a statement distributed late Sunday night.

-

I'd advise New York, with our massive budget problems, and the additional budget stress ObamaCare will cause our state in unfunded expansions of Medicare and Medicaide, to join in, although I doubt NY AG Andrew Cuomo is any more concerned about our Constitutional rights than Obama or Pelosi. But in case he is, New Yorkers: here's the form to send him.

Intolerable.

2010-03-21T22:32:00.003-05:00

Dr. Feulner of Heritage lays it out as well as I possibly could:

Unconstitutional.
Against the clear will of the people.
Intolerable.

This must not stand.

Additionally:

Obamacare Isn’t Inevitable

Happy Warriors Still

Our Mission: Repeal It.

Democracy Denied

2010-03-19T00:47:00.004-05:00

Changing How Washington Works, for the Worse

Via Americans For Prosperity
H/T Smitty

The Extended Case Against the Healthcare Bill

2010-03-18T11:14:00.005-05:00

The Heritage Foundation notes: "there is no bill but the Senate bill" and that "a review of just how terrible it really is, is in order".

Their case against:

New Middle-Class Taxes: Throughout his campaign, President Barack Obama promised he would not raise taxes on American households making less than $250,000. The Senate bill shatters that promise. For starters, just look at the reason Trumka went to the White House yesterday: the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. This tax would overwhelmingly hit middle-class taxpayers. Taxes on prescription drugs, wheel chairs and other medical devices would also be passed on to all consumers, hitting the lower- and middle- classes the hardest.

Increased Health Care Costs: The Senate bill manifestly does nothing to bend the health care cost curve downward. According to the latest CBO report, the Senate bill would actually increase health care spending by $210 billion over the next 10 years. This follows a previous report from the President’s own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) showing the Senate bill would result in $234 billion in additional health care spending over 10 years.

Increased Health Insurance Premiums: The President initially promised that Americans would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their family health care costs. But under the Senate bill, premiums would go up for millions of Americans. In fact, according to the CBO, estimated premiums in the individual market would be 10–13 percent higher by 2016 than they would be under current law.

Increased Deficits: Despite claiming to be comprehensive health care reform, the Senate bill does not address the fact that Medicare’s current price-fixing doctor reimbursement scheme is set to reduce doctor payments by 21% this year. That simply is not going to happen. Congress will pass that fix separately. If that cost were included, Obamacare is already $200 billion in the red. Now throw in the fact that the Senate bill is paid for with another $463 billion in Medicare cuts to health care providers. CMS says if these cuts occur, one-fifth of all health care providers will face bankruptcy. That simply is not going to happen. Just like the doctor reimbursement cuts have never happened, the Obamacare Medicare cuts will never happen. So in reality, Obamacare will add almost $700 billion to our national deficit in the next ten years alone.

Increases Unemployment and Puts Millions of Americans on Welfare: According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA), a dynamic analysis of the tax hikes and deficits created by the Senate bill shows that an average 690,000 jobs per year would be lost if it became law. In addition, over half of all Americans who would gain health insurance through the bill (18 million out of 33 million) would do so by being placed on Medicaid, which is a welfare program.

Higher taxes, higher health care costs, higher health insurance premiums, higher deficits, more unemployment and more Americans on welfare. That is America’s future should the Senate Obamacare bill become law.

Quick Hits:
According to the Treasury Department, the National Debt has increased over $2 trillion over the 421 days since President Obama took office.

If the House does pass the Senate bill, dozens of conservative lawmakers and candidates have signed a pledge to back an effort to repeal the measure.

Yesterday Mark Levin posted the complaint his Landmark Legal Foundation will file in federal court if the House uses the Slaughter Rule to pass the Senate bill.

Over half of the Americans who gain health insurance through the Senate bill will not be able to get their drugs from Washington state Walgreens, since they announced yesterday that as of April 16th they will not accept any new Medicaid patients.

According to Gallup, Americans firmly prioritize the economy over the environment and fewer than half of Democrats now believe environmental protection is the more important goal.

Why You Should Oppose the Healthcare Bill (and call your congressperson right now!)

2010-03-17T23:56:00.005-05:00

The Democrats are poised to try to force the controversial Healthcare bill through by this ~~Saturday~~ Sunday, passing the Senate bill plus a number of "fixes" that they'd expect the Senate to pass through reconciliation. They're ready to use the shadiest of political tricks to make this happen -- as the Washington Post headline puts it: "House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it".

All this while the majority Americans oppose the bill.

My objections to the bill are many. But I've given a lot of thought to how to boil them down to a single, simple objection.

Fundamentally my biggest objection comes back to the principle which eminent economist F. A. Hayek so brilliantly captured in this bit from his book The Fatal Conceit:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Our country has more than 300 million people. What utter hubris that politicians think they can design a system that will adequately meet all their needs.

They can't, because it won't.

Healthcare is tremendously complex. Even if the House and Senate were comprised of the very smartest people in the United States, they absolutely can not understand each and every factor influencing all 300 million individuals' healthcare needs, wants, and choices.

So, what's the alternative?

The alternative is to get government out of the way, and let the free market work.

"But the free market has failed!" some object. No, it hasn't. We just don't notice when it's working.

An arbitrary example: Unlike the experience of most past generations of humanity, I would wager you didn't worry about if you'd be able to eat today. We have an abundance of those willing to exchange food for our money. That's the market at work. Two people, each working to satisfy his own self interest, and through trade they manage to make each other better off. You get food, which you wanted more than the money; they get money, which they wanted more than the food. Win-win.

And in a properly functioning market, there's competition, which give you choices. Maybe supermarket A charges a bit more but has fresher produce than supermarket B. That empowers you to decide which you want more - fresher produce or money left in your wallet. It also forces competitors - still acting out of self interest - to take your wants and needs seriously. Not because they altruistically care about you, but because if they don't, you have other options.

And the proper functioning of the healthcare market - particularly the health insurance market - is at stake with this bill.

Already government interference distorts the market here to our disadvantage. Most of us get our health insurance through our employer because their are antiquated tax benefits to doing so.

What this means is that we have fewer choices. We can only choose the insurance options our employers offer us. This often means you can only choose a plan from a single insurance provider. Imagine if you could only buy groceries from a single store. No longer could you choose preferences like more expensive but fresher fruit; and if the store raised prices, you'd have no where else to go.

Incredibly, the healthcare bill wants to take this existing choice-destorying system and double down on it. The bill will require all employers to provide healthcare insurance to their employees, meaning that that minority who actually choose from a larger array of health insurers when they purchasing health insurance in the individual market will no longer do so.

Additionally, every single American will have to purchase health insurance or face steep tax penalties and/or jail time. This is like if government told you not only do you only have a single grocery store to shop at, but you you are required to shop there or go to jail.

And they are adding new requirements around what must be included in health insurance plans. This is like the government telling you that you'd have to buy certain foods at that grocery store every time you go shopping. You're allergic to milk? Too bad - buying a gallon of milk every month is mandatory. (The country needs strong bones!) You hate the taste of tomatoes? Too bad - 3 tomatoes a month is mandatory. (We have a cancer epidemic! The country needs its lycopene!)

There is magic that happens when free people can make free choices in a market. It leads to producers and consumers each getting fair deals. It leads to innovation. It leads to prosperity.

The proposed legislation wants to takes us in the opposite direction. Fewer consumer choices. More government mandates. The result will be less innovation. Less prosperity. Worse healthcare outcomes.

If you care about what your healthcare choices will be, what your family's healthcare choices will be, and what the next generation's healthcare choices will be: Please, contact your Representative TODAY and tell them to oppose this proposed legislation!

Additional resources:

Cato Daily Podcast - Michael F. Cannon: ObamaCare Threatens Innovation

EconTalk: Roberts on Smith, Ricardo, and Trade - perhaps one of the best primers on the free market / trade out there

Cato Book Forum: From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity - particularly Arnold Kling's comments on what makes prosperity work around the 47 minute mark; his answer: "trial and error" which only works when there are choices

Healthcare posts on the Cafe Hayek blog

Stop Un-American Healthcare Tumblelog

The Cato Institute on Healthcare

Heritage - Fix Health Care Policy

Dennis Kucinich Sells Out His Principles

2010-03-17T11:21:00.006-05:00

It's not often Rep. Kucinich and I agree on much, but we did in February, when called attention to how the bill passed by the Senate (coming up for a vote now in the House) was essentially a boon to the insurance companies, as it requires every American to buy insurance from them, but does little-to-nothing to actually increase competition between them:

The entire health care debate was flipped upside down by insurance interests who were able to intervene so that the final product that was offered out of the Senate was nothing more than a sell-out to the insurance industry.

- Rep. Kucinich, February 4, 2010

And, as recently as a week ago:

This bill represents a giveaway to the insurance industry. $70 billion dollars a year, and no guarantees of any control over premiums, forcing people to buy private insurance, five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases.

- Rep. Kucinich, March 9, 2010

But, after getting worked over by the Whitehouse this week, compare and contrast:

In the past week it's become clear that the vote on the final health bill will be very close.
...
If my vote is to be counted, let it count now for passage of the bill.

- Rep. Kucinich, March 17, 2010

Way to abandon your principles, Rep. Kucinich.

Ironically, now it's myself and hyper-liberal Jane Hamsher who are agreeing:

Kucinich is voting for a bill he has repeatedly called corrupt and harmful to the people of his district.
...
Dennis Kucinich signed a pledge to vote against any bill that does not have a public option. Online supporters donated over $17,000 to him over the past two days as a direct response to his reiteration of that promise this week. It would be deceitful of him to keep that money now, as well as the $8,000 raised after he signed that pledge in July.

I think Kucinich's original call for, and Hamsher's continued push for, a "public option" is misguided.

But they were both right to claim that without a public option, the Senate bill now being considered in the House is a giant sell out to the insurance lobby. What a shame.

It's a sad day indeed to see that President Obama has apparently stolen Dennis Kucinich's spine.

Yay for the Micro-Processor

2010-03-03T20:11:00.002-05:00

Check out this Fire Control Computer video from 1953. Crazy stuff - and - my, how things have changed!

The Human Cost of Protectionism

2010-02-13T23:26:00.002-05:00

Steve Landsburg on the very high humans-costs of legislating against child labor and in favor of protectionism.

(H/T: Don Boudreaux @ Cafe Hayek)

Fear the Boom and Bust

2010-02-06T20:18:00.006-05:00

"Fear the Boom and Bust", a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem:

(Note: You should really watch it full screen, in 720p)

When I first read Russ Roberts was doing a rap video, I was highly skeptical. But this thing turned out to be brilliant.

It has the wisdom of Robert's Cafe Hayek blog, the down-to-earth accessibility of Robert's EconTalk podcast, and the high quality production value you'd expect from "award winning director and media executive" John Papola.

If it's excellence also leave you looking for more, be sure to visit/watch:

The EconStories.tv website

The Cafe Hayek post about the video

John Papola's web page for the video

NPR/All Things Considers's coverage, Economists' Rap Battle Gains Cred From Ke$ha's Nod

PBS/NewsHour's coverage, Revisiting the Economics of John Maynard Keynes

B-Cast's interview with John Papola

Jeff Zucker Lies to Congress

2010-02-06T19:11:00.004-05:00

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): What about Boxee? Mr. Zucker you probably are in a better position to answer that. Did Hulu block the Boxee users from access to the Hulu programs?

Zucker (NBC): This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal.

First of all, deflecting the blame to "Hulu management" is disingenuous. NBC owns 32% of Hulu. And, back on February 20th 2009, when Hulu blocked Boxee, Hulu made it clear their hands were being forced by their content partners (eg. NBC!).

And, second of all, what Boxee was doing was in no way "illegal". That's a flat out lie.

Here's Boxee's response to the "illegal" accusation. Their key bit:

Boxee uses a web browser to access Hulu’s content – just like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Boxee users click on a link to Hulu’s website and the video within that page plays. We don’t “take” the video. We don’t copy it. We don’t put ads on top of it. The video and the ads play like they do on other browsers or on Hulu Desktop. And it certainly is legal to do so.

Finally, Harold Feld at Public Knowledge has more.

Filibusters and Raaaaacism (the forgotten saga of Trent Lott)

2010-01-12T00:54:00.008-05:00

Every day I become more convinced The Left is living in some bizarro world where world history officially begins on January 20, 2009 and nothing prior to that is relevant.

In the outrage du jour you've got the Harry Reid racist comments thing.

If, 8 years ago, a Republican Senator had said something similar, I bet Democrats would have demagogued it for all it's worth. Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened in 2002. Compare and contrast:

Obama, 2002:

The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.

Obama, 2010:

This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.

And if I can invoke the suddenly forgotten Trent Lott a second time, let's recall the phrase he introduced in 2005: "Nuclear Option".

Back in 2005, those days of yesteryear which liberals have somehow forgotten, 1 in 5 of Bush's Appellate Court nominees were being filibustered. The Republicans had a majority of votes in the Senate but not the 60 needed to end debate on these nominees. The "Nuclear Option" would have changed the Senate rules so only a majority would be required to end debate.

Fast forward to 2010 and now those 2005-obstructionist-liberals are all howling about how awful the filibuster is.

Two weeks ago blogger Uncle Jimbo did a solid fisking of most of these liberal commentators. And after reading his piece, I thought liberals would get their heads back on straight, but apparently not. Today I stumbled upon a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Geoghegan, "Mr. Smith Rewrites the Constitution."

I didn't know much about Thomas Geoghegan prior to reading his op-ed. Googling him reveals him to be a lawyer, author, and failed political candidate.

Allow me to add an item to that bio: Moron.

I'm not wild about name calling, but it gets the point across. Here's why: Only a moron makes vast claims about something being unconstitutional without having an inkling of understanding of the Constitution.

Had Geoghegan ever read the Constitution, he would have read Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2:

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.

That's as clear cut as it gets. If the Senate wants to have "Rules of its Proceedings" that dictate debate can only be cut off with a 60 (or 80! or 100!) vote super-majority, the Constitution gives that authority to the Senate. Period.

Here's the bottom line. Some of us remember 2001-2009. It really did happen. And the disconnect between then and now shows clearly that The Left doesn't care about racist remarks, they just demagogue them for political gain when it's convenient. And it shows they don't actually care about filibusters, they just want to get rid of whatever could possibly be in their way as they try to jam unpopular bills down the throats of the American people.

Dear Senators: Thanks for Not Caring

2009-12-20T16:47:00.005-05:00

In trying to call to voice my opposition to the Great Heathcare Monstrosity:

A.) ~~Senator~~ World Class Scumbag Chuck Schumer wants me to call back during normal business hours. Well, I'd love to, but you're the one who's party has decided to schedule votes for freaking ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.

B.) Senator Kirsten ("Chuck Schumer is soooo polite!") Gillibrand is marginally better. Her voice-mailbox is just full. Hopefully it's full via the likes of people like me who are expressing our utter disgust with what they are trying to jam down our throats during 1:00 AM votes.

You have my disgust and disdain forever, you socialist-coddling coward. (Quotes of the Day)

2009-12-20T15:21:00.004-05:00

Becky Hollibaugh, D.O., to Senator Ben Nelson (via Michelle Malkin):

Thank you, Ben, for forcing doctors like me to earn less than the repairmen who fix our appliances. Case in point: We recently had our dishwasher fixed. The repairman who came to our house charged $65 just to come and ‘diagnose’ the problem, then charged another $180 to ‘fix’ the problem. You and your fellow lawmakers have fixed MY going rate (Medicare) at $35 per-visit. Thank you for securing such a ‘lucrative’ rate for me! Thank you so much for making me–someone with 8 years of education!–make less than a mechanic or appliance repair technichian. And thanks especially for falling in line with Obama and the rest of the Democrats to make such a socialist system permanent.

You have my disgust and disdain forever, you socialist-coddling coward.

Bride of Rove:

We are watching the fall of a Republic and I loathe these politicians with the fire of a thousand suns. May they rot in hell for what they are doing to us.

R. Stacy McCain:

Speaking of radical rhetoric, I notice that ~~King Herod~~ Harry Reid plans to kill the babies by Christmas.

Frankly, even considering the strong language, I couldn't agree with them all more.

In 9 1/2 hours, at 1:00 AM on Monday morning, the Democrats are going to invoke cloture on this monstrosity of a bill and lurch America onto a path towards bigger and bigger government, bigger and bigger deficits, and less and less freedom & liberty.

The mantra of liberals when it comes to abortion has been that health decisions should be between a person and their doctor. Well, that's about to change dramatically. And with the government controlling the terms of our health care, how much liberty still remains? If they can dictate your health care coverage, what's out of bounds?

Likewise, if the Senate version's abortion provisions win out over the House version, my tax dollars - my hard earned tax dollars - will find themselves paying for abortions. My money going to killing the unborn. How repulsive.

Note to Senate Democrats (and any Republicans contemplating joining their betrayal of what made this country great): If you wish to violate my God-given rights, then you have my disgust and disdain forever and I shall loathe you with the fire of a thousand suns.

No, It's Not.

2009-12-19T14:02:00.003-05:00

That's my answer to this Cato ad, anyway:

And, FWIW, both CATO (here: http://healthcare.cato.org/) and the Heritage Foundation (here: http://fixhealthcarepolicy.com/) are excellent references for policy solutions, from a conservative perspective, that really could have a positive impact on health care "reform".

One of the things that drives me crazy is when liberals ignorantly blather on about how "conservatives don't have any solutions to these problems". Yeah, we do. And those two sites feature some of the best solutions.

Also, Heritage's header graphic neatly summarizes the differences in approaches between individual-empowering conservatives and government-growing liberals:

Trouble. Ben Nelson Sells Out.

2009-12-19T12:59:00.006-05:00

I'm outraged over the direction our country is headed with "healthcare reform."

Both the bill that passed in the House and the one that now looks destined to pass the Senate are direct attacks on your average American's liberty that are going to make health insurance more expensive and add new debt-riddled entitlement programs which will churn out greater and greater deficits at a faster and faster pace.

I haven't had time to blog about the issue though. Instead, to have something of a voice but at a lower time-cost, I started a "tumblelog" (mini-blog) at Tumblr to link to healthcare articles / blog posts / videos related to the subject. It can be found here: Stop Un-American Healthcare.

I've linked to a lot of stuff over there. Most of it I think it worth taking the time to review.

The bottom line for me is that while I agree with the end goal this legislation supposedly tries to accomplish -- more affordable coverage, broader coverage, etc. -- and stories of people with denied claims, etc. all breaks my heart too -- there is nothing about the legislation that I think will actually help. But there is a great deal it will do that will harm.

There will be new layers of government between the private citizen and his doctor as well as new layers of government between the citizen and his insurance. The bill drives decisions away from the individual and into the hands of the government. That pushes things in the wrong direction.

And, to boot, both bills are blatantly unconstitutional.

Today, (formerly?) "pro-life" Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who's hoped-for-opposition was one of the last great hopes in ending the threat to liberty that is the Senate bill, has decided to sell out his pro-life principles and integrity and support the Senate bill.

Blogosphere reaction to Nelson's Sell Out is has been apt:

Michelle Malkin has the full run down of this morning's Nelson betrayal.

Over at Townhall.com, Meredith Jessup points out that the Senate bill's "'Concessions' on Abortion = Zero" and asks "What Was Nelson's Price?".

At RedState, Dan Perrin notes that:

The question of whether we live in a country ruled by leaders who refuse to listen, but do what they believe is in their own interest, has been answered. Conservatives hate this bill. Progressives and liberals hate it too. The public is solidly against it. But it does not matter, apparently.

And also at RedState, Dan Spencer lays out what the Senate vote calendar will look like for this week, with final passage of the bill pending for 7PM on Christmas Eve. The crazy pace at which they are trying to jam this through should give everyone great pause.

Earlier this week President Obama said we "on the precipice" of this government-run healthcare overhaul. It appears, regrettably, that he's right. Both that it looks like this very well may happen and in his unintentional use of a word that means we're about to go through something hazardous.

Louise Slaughter's Ignorant Hubris

2009-12-18T12:35:00.003-05:00

Speaking of my local and awful representatives, until a few months ago I lived in NY-28, which is currently represented by Louise Slaughter.

There is some buzz today about Slaughter's post at the Daily Kos (liberal blog/hate site) about her introducing HR-4300 which would restrict credit card companies from charging rates higher than 16% APR.

That post, and her proposed bill, are an excellent example of the hubris and ignorance it takes to be a liberal.

First, you have to believe that voluntary agreements entered into by individuals and credit card companies are somehow the government's business.

No one forces someone to get a credit card. Nor does anyone force someone to get a credit card with specific APR terms. If people don't want credit cards with 25% or 30% or 100% or - heck - 200% - or whatever APRs, they don't have to get them.

The reality is that credit card agreements are a free and voluntary arrangement and should be none of the government's business.

Second, you have to believe that you can set interest rates for credit cards better than the market. Screw supply and demand - Slaughter knows better!

It begs the question, why 16%? Why not 12.5%? Why not 3%? Why not 18%? Following along with Slaughter's proposed claims that consumers are better off with 16% APR than 30%, should they be even more better off if rates are capped at 15.5% or 15% or 14% or 10% or 1%? Why not tell those evil credit card companies they can't even chard any interest. And late fees are evil too - no more late fees! Free credit for everyone! And also, free ponies, please.

Again, returning to reality, in a free market we have the "marvel", as Hayek put it, of the price system which can do a better job of coming up with the right interest rate than any individual ever could.

Third, you have to staunchly stay with stage-1 thinking. You can't think through things like "oh, if credit card companies can't have the option of charging higher interest rates, maybe they'll turn to higher annual fees or not offering credit to anyone with a moderate to high credit risk."

Returning a third time to reality, that's exactly what they'll do. The interest rates on credit cards reflect the cost of the risk of lending -- the risk you won't pay the lender back. If you're a high risk, perhaps because you missed a payment (and thus your rate increased), and the 16% APR doesn't cover the cost of your risk, no lender is going to offer you an unsecured credit line.

Finally, you have to think that people's irresponsibility makes the victims who need protected. Too irresponsible to pay off your balance each month? Victim! Too irresponsible to find a card with a lower rate? Victim! Too irresponsible to pay your card on time? Victim!

A final return to reality: If you can't manage your own finances, that's not the credit card companies, and it shouldn't be the government's job to nanny you.

Here's a much better idea than the Slaughter bill: First, Slaughter (and perhaps everyone in Congress) should be required to read Hayek (or at least Roberts) and Sowell. Then, every American carrying a credit card balance should be required to read Ramsey.

Why...

2009-12-17T19:37:00.001-05:00

... do I have to have this dirtbag as my senior senator?

Libertarians for Obama

2009-09-15T19:40:00.004-05:00

There was a moment during the 2008 campaign when there was this giant push that libertarians should seriously look at supporting Obama.

At the end of 2006, in the middle of what was that nearly three-year-long primary contest, Cato published Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas's "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat" and accompanying Cato Daily podcasts.

In early 2008, Cato drew attention to the comments of Scott Flanders, CEO of libertarian publisher R. C. Hoiles, who "reasoned that Obama is the best candidate to work on four top libertarian reforms: 1) Iraq withdrawal, 2) restoring the separation of church and state; 3) easing off victimless crimes such as drug use; 4) curtailing the Patriot Act."

And not longer after you had stuff happening like the launch of the Libertarians for Obama blog (tagline: Put aside your skepticism and read on.)

By September, you had people like Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution - a blog which I hold in high regard - making the case for Obama and having their case highlighted by The New York Times.

Fast forward to today.

I'm posting this blog post as a reminder for the next time libertarians start thinking "you know, voting for the most liberal member of the Senate is starting to make a lot of sense!"

Here we are, just shy of 8 months into his Presidency. We've seen the largest growth in government in 50-some years - and that's excluding whatever lurch awaits in his attempt to revamp healthcare via yet-more-government.

And, returning to Scott Flanders' laundry list:

1) We are still in Iraq
2) As the Washington Post reports today, Faith-based initiatives: still goin' strong. (And perhaps even stronger.)
3) And, did you really delude yourself that Obama would change drug policy? Puhleeze. Although, there is that whole Andrew Sullivan fiasco.
4) Which brings us to "Curtailing the Patriot Act." Um, not so much. I'll just quote today's AP headline: "Obama Supports Extending Patriot Act Provisions."

Mr. Flanders: You're oh-for-four. Zero. Out. Of. Four.

As Jon Henke rightly put it in July, here's the Obama response to libertarians: Thanks for the votes, now get lost.

Now, I'm something of a hybrid between a conventional conservative and a libertarian. I can appreciate the libertarian case for John McCain was pretty much nilch, and the case against McCain was tremendously strong. I, too, hate McCain-Feingold, and anyone willing to regulate our Free Speech Rights is no friend of our liberty.

However, please learn this lesson: A liberal is a liberal is a liberal as long as the day is long.

No matter how bad the conservative nominee, it can not justify voting - on a libertarian basis - for the liberal one.

And a second lesson: If you elect a liberal president, who has a liberal super-majority in the Congress, the policy they pass will not resemble what you want. Period.

Something for Sullivan to think about during his Mental Health Break

2009-09-12T15:23:00.005-05:00

Andrew Sullivan (political commentator/blogger for The Atlantic magazine), April 17th, 2009:

My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul.

Fast forward a few months. As reported by The Docket, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s news blog:

Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M. Sullivan won’t have to face charges stemming from a recent pot bust at the Cape Cod National Seashore — but a federal judge isn’t happy about it.

U. S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings says in his decision that the case is an example of how sometimes “small cases raise issues of fundamental importance in our system of justice.”

While marijuana possession may have been decriminalized, Sullivan, who owns a home in Provincetown, made the mistake of being caught by a park ranger with a controlled substance on National Park Service lands, a federal misdemeanor.

The ranger issued Sullivan a citation, which required him either to appear in U.S. District Court or, in essence, pay a $125 fine.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office sought to dismiss the case. Both the federal prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney said it would have resulted in an “adverse effect” on an unspecified “immigration status” that Sullivan, a British citizen, is applying for.

Read the judge's full opinion here. It's very much worth a read, particularly in noting that U.S. Attorney’s Office had other pot-bust cases they were going to prosecute before the same judge on the same day.

Sullivan's latest blog post says he's taking a "Mental Health Break." Here's hoping he'll spend some time during said break thinking about the repugnant hypocrisy of this.

(H/T Internet Scofflaw)

A rant: Buy.com won't let me ... buy

2009-04-15T18:24:00.005-05:00

So, I'm trying to buy some CyberPower UPSs for my work. I price out various online vendors, and Buy.com happens to have the best pricing when including shipping. So, I try to purchase the UPSs from Buy.com.

Problem: I'm using a personal Discover card which has my home address as a billing address, but I don't want these shipped to my home - I want them shipped to my employer's office.

Now I make similar purchases. All. The. Time. Places like Dell and Amazon and NewEgg let me purchase things with my personal Discover card and ship them to my office just fine, thankyouverymuch. But, when I try to check out, Buy.com refuses to let me do so because my shipping address doesn't match my billing address. I remember back like 9 years ago when a lot of vendors forced you to ship to your billing address, but then they started just asking for that three digit code on the back of your card and the world returned to normal.

So, what to do?

Well, I call up Discover. They let me register my office address with them and say that vendors shouldn't have a problem, so I should talk to Buy.com again.

Well, instead of calling Buy.com since their website flat out won't let me continue (and they don't actually list a phone number on their website, although it's 1-800-800-0800, fyi), I I notice Buy.com does offer to let you use PayPal. So - plan B. I check out with PayPal, which is set up to use my Discover card, and in PayPal I tell them to ship to my office address. Order accepted. Yay.

But - not so fast. I then get an e-mail stating that my order has been rejected, because the shipping address isn't a confirmed address with PayPal. Super.

So, now, although for a little while I thought I was sailing smoothly, I'm now actually back to square one. I want to buy these, with my personal Discover card, and ship to my office address.

So I call up Buy.com. I'm on hold about 15 minutes wondering again again why I'm putting myself through this for give them my money and being told over and over that I'm a "valued customer" - which isn't even true on two accounts. They won't let me be a customer (they won't take my money!), and a 15 minute wait means I'm really not valued.

I finally get to talk to someone. Or "talk" to them, because the woman's grasp on English... "naght szo grud." After a first failed attempt she pulls up my (now rejected) order. Then I explain what I'm trying to do.

She basically says their system is utterly unable to accept an order where the billing address is different from the shipping address if you're using Discover. It's ambiguous if I could use a different credit card brand and get better results, but she does try to steer me to some Buy.com "no payments for X days" plan. No, sorry, not interested. I tell her if they're unwilling to make this easy for me, I'm going to their competitors. I try to be semi-polite, but I basically hang up on her.

Now I'm in the process of ordering from Amazon. It's going to cost a little more, but I like Amazon - they let me ship things I'm buying for my company ... to my company. Scratch that - they let me buy things. Unlike Buy.com, which should seriously consider a name change.

Broken. Promises.

2009-03-30T00:00:00.002-05:00

While I detest the fact all sides seem to playing to the populist AIG outrage, the point remains - President Obama has avoided carrying through with anything he promised but would be difficult to accomplish. No leadership for change on earmarks. Keeping exactly the worst parts of the Bush Stimulus Agenda.

At least some people seem to be waking up to the fact that this guy promised the world, but if miserably failing to deliver.

Daily Beast's Big Fat Story: The Enablers

2009-03-29T01:06:00.004-05:00

To believe the Federal Government in general, and Democratic party politicians in particular, are not a major source of our current economic turmoil is to be woefully ignorant.

Nice round up by the Daily Beast today on "The Enablers":

Thanks: Rahm, Barney, Chris, and Chuck!

Quote of the Day

2009-03-15T14:41:00.004-05:00

From The Economist's "Fireside chat" podcast for March 13:

But Obama has a long history of saying the right things and not necessarily delivering on them.

It's at about the 4:50 mark:

They were talking specifically about Obama's education speech and his remarks in favor of merit pay and getting rid of bad teachers - concepts I strongly favor, but doubt Obama will actually come through on.

This discrepancy between Obama's rhetoric and action is rapidly becoming one of my top annoyances with him. Pass a nearly trillion dollar stimulus package that won't work, then hold a "fiscal discipline" summit. Talk on the campaign trail about cutting wasteful spending in Washington, then stand behind a budget with 9,000 earmarks. Talk about removing "ideology" from science in an embryonic stem cell move that was clearly all about ideology, not science.

I'm glad Obama favors merit pay, the ability for bad teachers to be fired, etc. And I really do hope he'll stand up the NEA teachers union to get these things implemented. (Unlikely, but even better, would be to move education back down to individual states and let states take care of this, but I digress.) But, I have absolutely no confidence he'll do so.

Three American Values, and David Brooks

2009-03-08T17:30:00.011-05:00

Some time ago (quite possibly two or three years ago) on an episode of the Observations Podcast, the Q and O guys pontificated about what they considered to be the three American values: Justice, Liberty, and Equality. Their discussion has stuck with me.

These three values are are displayed with prominence in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ...

In fact, beyond simply showing up as words, the values resonate through out that paragraph (and the rest of the Declaration for that matter). The securing of rights deals further with Justice, their unalienable status with Liberty, our right to life with Equality.

The values of Liberty and Justice also appear in the Pledge of Allegiance ("with liberty and justice for all"), and Equality was considered as being added to these before the pledge was finalized.

Each of these three values resonates through the American ethic today and has since our country's founding. But the three necessarily interfere with one another.

Before I get too far discussing the tensions between the three I should define what I happen to mean by each, because each is fairly nebulous with many options for interpretation.

Justice

By Justice, I mean "maintenance or administration ... by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments" if I can borrow part of a Merriam-Webster definition.

An instance I would consider to be within the realm of Justice would include if you are promised some amount of compensation for some amount of work, and you complete the work, that you are properly compensated, and that others then can't also lay claim to your compensation. Or, in another instance, that others are prohibited from causing you physical harm, and if do so, receive a suitable punishment.

I should mention that as a socially concerned Evangelical, I often hear the term "social justice" bandied about. "Social justice" has nothing to do with the Justice I am talking about here (and, I think, little to do with what our Founding Fathers were talking about in the Declaration.) That's to not say that "social justice" proponents have goals I disagree with - but I do dislike their terminology (and often I also dislike the means they propose to achieved their desired ends). So called "social justice" deals with what the Catholic Encyclopedia terms a "claim in charity" as opposed to a "claim in justice" (or likewise, "charity leads us to help our neighbour in his need out of our own stores, while justice teaches us to give to another what belongs to him.")

Again, charity is important, but it is not Justice as I'm defining it for the purpose of this post.

Liberty

To explain what I mean by liberty, I'll again cherry pick from M-W: "the quality or state of being free", "the power to do as one pleases", "the positive enjoyment of various ... rights and privileges".

This is all about being able do that which you desire without impediment by others, to "be free". If you want to paint your house red, and you have the means to do so, you can paint your house red. If you want to engage in an open market exchange, you are able to do so. If you want to share your wealth out of charity, you can do so. Etc, etc, etc.

Equality

I mean two related but perhaps slightly different concepts by Equality.

The first deals with impartiality. We should be impartial about things beyond someone's control and which aren't relevant when making decisions. So, one should not be able to able to discriminate based on race or ethnicity or creed because that violates equality in terms of impartiality. In this sense we are all "equal" in that we all, by virtue of being human, have access to the same set of unalienable rights.

The second deals with egalitarianism. This incorporates both the desire to provide equal privileges to all and to address the "gap" of "inequality" between individuals. We educate all children in this country out of this egalitarianism, so all persons have some degree of "equality of opportunity." Our progressive tax code is also based on this egalitarianism such that those with much are taxed more to give aid to those without (this is an attempt to achieve "equality of results/ends").

Now that you hopefully have some sense of what I mean by these concepts, I can get into how they conflict. Justice necessarily requires the State (or whomever is administering Justice) to be able to violate one's Liberty. Locking someone in jail clearly violates their Liberty, but punishing those who commit crimes is Just. Equality also conflicts with Liberty. Anti-discrimination laws violate a person's Liberty to discriminate on various criteria to achieve the goal of Equality in terms of impartiality.

Equality and Justice can also conflict. Progressive taxation, for example (and - to come back to my previous point on "social justice," which often involves calls for progressive taxation), takes away the merited rewards that should be protected by Justice for the sake of achieving the egalitarian ends of Equality.

Within the conflicting tensions between these values is where different political philosophies pop up. Referencing back to the Q and O podcast, the participants discussed how (typically) Liberals emphasize Equality above the other two, whereas Conservatives broadly champion Justice, and conservatives who would identify as Libertarians primarily care about Liberty.

Hopefully by this point you've come away from this post with something to think about, but I'm really just setting up the framework of these values for the purpose of evaluating a recent New York Times article by David Brooks - his Feb. 19 piece, "Money for Idiots". Keeping in mind that Brooks described himself as a "conservative moderate" on March 3 in his later article "A Moderate Manifesto", and he's the token conservative on PBS's NewsHour, let's consider exactly how "moderate" and exactly how "conservative" Brooks is.

"Money for Idiots" starts:

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It's based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.

So far so good. That's conservative red meat. It's Liberty (make your own decisions) and Justice (live with your decisions) all over the place.

Then:

Over the last few months, we've made a hash of all that. The Bush and Obama administrations have compensated foolishness and irresponsibility. The financial bailouts reward bankers who took insane risks. The auto bailouts subsidize companies and unions that made self-indulgent decisions a few decades ago that drove their industry into the ground.

The stimulus package handed tens of billions of dollars to states that spent profligately during the prosperity years. The Obama housing plan will force people who bought sensible homes to subsidize the mortgages of people who bought houses they could not afford. It will almost certainly force people who were honest on their loan forms to subsidize people who were dishonest on theirs.

These injustices are stoking anger across the country, lustily expressed by Rick Santelli on CNBC Thursday morning. "The government is promoting bad behavior!" Santelli cried as Chicago traders cheered him on. "The president ... should put up a Web site ... to have people vote ... to see if they want to subsidize losers' mortgages!"

After reading just the intro, I started thinking "Hey - Brooks is back!" After all his Palin bashing and what seemed to be his secret glee over the Obama win, I was hoping to be breathing a fresh breath of Brooks by the time I made it that far through the article — individual responsibility, apparent sneers at bailouts and the stimulus, Liberty. Justice. And, low on egalitarian Equality. He's a conservative again!

But, wait! Unfortunately, there's more:

Well, in some cases we probably do [have to subsidize irresponsible people's mortgages]. That's because government isn't fundamentally in the Last Judgment business, making sure everybody serves penance for their sins. In times like these, government is fundamentally in the business of stabilizing the economic system as a whole.

Sigh. He's back to his liberalism. He just chucked Liberty and Justice out the window to welcome in egalitarian Equality.

It's more anti-Justice, anti-Liberty through the rest of the article and Brooks concludes:

The nation's economy is not just the sum of its individuals. It is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we're all in this together. If their lives don't stabilize, then our lives don't stabilize.

Which, is basically a more elaborate way for Brooks to make a bad parody out of Patrick Henry's famous quote ... changing it to: "The government needs to give egalitarian Equality to the entire economy, or you get death."

David Brooks doesn't share a common outlook on these three American values with conservatives. He's willing to do away with the conservative push for Justice and Liberty for a little Equality. That's not the balance of a conservative, it's the balance of a liberal. Now if only the mainstream media would bring Brooks on their programs under the right label.

Related:
1. Bruce McQuain makes similar points to the above over at Q and O.
2. Brooks wins the "2009 Beclownment in Journalism Award". (H/T The Other McCain).
3. David Brooks: insane. Count me stuck on Reagan. (Also, H/T The Other McCain).

Update, 3/11: Michael Wade over at Q and O critiques the latest nonsense to come out of David Brooks which is continued criticism of faux capitalism from a faux conservative.

Bill Moyers, Hypocrite

2009-02-21T17:44:00.004-05:00

I make it no secret that I strongly dislike Bill Moyers.

What bothers me most about Moyers is how he presents himself as compared to the reality of what he is.

As Commentary Magazine describes:

Moyers is among the most sanctimonious individuals on television (quite a feat, given the competition). He presents himself as a champion of good government, an intrepid voice for integrity and honesty, ever on the lookout for people who would degrade our public discourse or act in a dishonorable manner.

I'd add to that that he's always pushing himself as an independently minded "journalist" who's only interested in the truth.

But the reality is that Moyers is a partisan hack. That doesn't mean he doesn't occasionally bring some important issue to light or that he's always wrong. But he does have an agenda. It's liberal. And his typical modus operandi is trying to make Republicans look foolish or corrupt.

And, this week, we're reminded that Moyers has been doing this since his days of working for the Johnson administration. Specifically, the Washington Post is reporting that:

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

A 2005 Wall Street Journal article sheds additional light on this:

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

And that's who Moyers is. Not a open minded "journalist." A man with an agenda to smear conservatives. Wether it's alleging a scandal without any evidence or trying to "out" gays in 1964, it's all for the same purpose with Moyers.

And, of course this "outing" business isn't the only example of Moyers acting badly during the LBJ years. As Mark Hemingway notes:

Moyers and J. Edgar Hoover worked together to illegally bug Martin Luther King jr. as well as leak unflattering information about political enemies to the press.

And, returning back to returning to the fore-quoted Commentary Magazine article:

Mr. Moyers was a key figure in the creation of the notorious “Daisy” ad, dubbed by the New York Times at the time as “probably the most controversial TV commercial of all time.” The ad featured a young girl plucking daisy petals as a countdown leads to her annihilation in a nuclear blast. The message was clear: this was the fate of the earth if Barry Goldwater were elected.

Moyers was, and is, a hypocrite and political hatchetman. He is no journalist.

“Let them eat pork”

2009-02-21T17:19:00.008-05:00

This was too good to pass up (because, you're wrong Senator Schumer, the American people do care) .

The Day TV Died

2009-02-20T18:33:00.004-05:00

Earlier this week, February 17th was supposed to be the end of analog TV broadcasting. But, that's all gotten pushed back until at least March 14th.

But today, February 20th, is the day that "TV of the future" died for me. Moving from analog broadcasting to digital is nice and good, but for the last 2 1/2 months I've been watching TV a different way - using software called Boxee to watch the shows provided by Hulu all on my AppleTV.

So, I've been watching TV streamed over the internet from the comfort of my couch. It has been fantastic. For the most part it's been everything I could have hoped. A broad selection of shows, all on-demand, with pauseable playback and "limited commercial interruption."

A few weeks ago I was home sick all week and I plowed through all three seasons of The Practice that Hulu has available. It was a huge improvement over the old days of avoiding boredom by suffering through whatever broadcast TV was showing (I'll take The Practice over Judge Judy any day).

But, that's all changed today. By demand of their content providers, Hulu has stopped allowing streaming to Boxee. You can still watch Hulu via your web browser, but no longer via Boxee.

This is a really bone-headed move by content providers. As another blogger puts it:

What will these Boxee users do instead of watching on Hulu? My guesses are:

1) Tivo/DVR the shows. Result: Ads are skipped altogether. No cable viewing.
2) BitTorrent. Result: Ads are non-existant. No cable viewing.
3) Doesn’t watch the show. Result: This hurts the media companies in several ways. Ads are not seen and no cable love because the show is not seen. The show ultimately becomes less popular, ad space is less valuable, less DVD box sets are sold, less syndication monies, etc., etc.

If you're a fellow Boxee+Hulu user (or, now, perhaps an ex-Boxee+Hulu user like me), I'd really encourage you to lodge a ranty complaint over on Hulu's blog. I'd really like to show Hulu and their content providers that this is no way to treat their users, and this is a big mistake.

Who Said It?

2009-02-17T21:45:00.003-05:00

Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

No, it's not some bitter Republican congressman after being left out in the cold, unable to actually provide any meaningful input to the "stimulus".

That quote belongs to President Obama. Ironic, no?

Of course the ordeal we've just witness involved so many pages of legislation passed in such a short time, there was no chance we could have really had "an exacting press corps" or "an informed electorate." And it will be no surprise when we realize the "true costs [were] buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars."

(h/t Mark Hemingway @ NRO's The Corner).

Stimulus Link Roundup

2009-02-16T23:09:00.011-05:00

Things worth reading about the Stimulus that I didn't manage to work into my last post.

What's In The Bill
- Michael Grabell, ProPublica: The Stimulus Plan: Where the Money Would Go
- Karen Yourish & Laura Stanton, The Washington Post: Taking Apart the $819 billion Stimulus Package

How We Got In This Mess In the First Place
- John B. Taylor, The Wall Street Journal: How Government Created the Financial Crisis; Research shows the failure to rescue Lehman did not trigger the fall panic.
- Scott S. Powell, Barrons: The Culprit Is All of Us; The government's meddling got us into this mess.
- Julia Finch, The Guardian: Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ...

Why It Won't Work
- Stephen Dinan, Washington Times: CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul
- Robert Stacy McCain, American Spectator: It Still Won't Work
- Mario Rizzo, ThinkMarkets: The Macroeconomic Knowledge Problem
- Russell Roberts, Cafe Hayek: Corrupt
- The Daily Beast Big Fat Story: Six New Stimulus Woes

What's Hiding In the Bill
- Betsy McCaughey, Bloomberg: Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan
- James C. Capretta, NRO's The Corner: The House’s Hidden Employer Mandate

What Should We Be Doing Instead?
- Alex Adrianson, Heritage InsiderOnline Blog: The Case for Free Market Solutions to the Economic Crisis
- Russell Roberts, NPR: Economists Offer 2 Takes On Obama Stimulus Plan
- Russell Roberts, Cafe Hayek: Inconceivable.

And, finally, the Wisdom of Hayek:

The theory [...] which I contend is largely the product of such a mistaken conception of the proper scientific procedure, consists in the assertion that there exists a simple positive correlation between total employment and the size of the aggregate demand for goods and services; it leads to the belief that we can permanently assure full employment by maintaining total money expenditure at an appropriate level. Among the various theories advanced to account for extensive unemployment, this is probably the only one in support of which strong quantitative evidence can be adduced. I nevertheless regard it as fundamentally false, and to act upon it, as we now experience, as very harmful.

- Friedrich August von Hayek, in hisNobel Prize Lecture. (h/t Don Boudreaux)

Final Plea Against The Largest Spending Bill In History

2009-02-16T20:20:00.005-05:00

With Obama about to sign this thing at an invitation-only event tomorrow, I'm days, if not weeks, late to post this, but here it goes: Here are my arguments for why H.R 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the "Stimulus" and gaining recognition as the "Generational Theft Act of 2009" is a really bad idea.

1. $787 billion (that's billion with a B!) is a lot of money.

And all that money has to come from somewhere. The government can either raise it by taxing or taking on debt. Or they can print more money. No one (or few people) are talking about the negative effects of these three possibilities. If we print more money, we get inflation. Borrowing more puts our credit rating at risk and leaves future taxpayers to have to cover the principal and the interest. And raising taxes moves capital from the private sector (the sector we are trying to stimulate!).

2. $787 billion is a lot of money.

OK, so, I repeat myself. But I want you to understand how big that number is. It's $787,000,000,000.00. If you had a pile of that much money in one dollar bills and you stacked it, you'd get about a fifth of the way to the moon. (So, it's literally an astronomical number).

If you had one second for each dollar in that sum, you'd have enough seconds to make up about 24,325 years. Humans started writing things down only 6,000 years ago. 24,325 years is a lot of seconds.

Put yet another way, with Obama's $500,000 executive salary cap now in place, using the $787 billion, you could hire 1,574,000 executives. That's a lot of fat cat executives making a cool half million a year.

Finally, the "Stimulus" costs about $5,700 per taxpayer. How many ways can you think of of how you might prefer to spend $5,700?

3. The government has a really poor track record.

Question: How well did the government do at spending vast sums of money on the Iraq War, Katrina recovery, and Boston's Big Dig?

Let's go ahead, and for the sake of argument, propose that by magic the Congress has really out done themselves here and only a mere 1% of this bill is going to get lost to fraud. But wait, 1% would be nearly 8 billion dollars. Add together the Gross Domestic Product of Nicaragua and Belize. You'll come to about 8 billion. More realistically (based on, say, Katrina figures), we'll see fraud and other waste eat up something like 12% of this bill. So, maybe $100 billion. Yes, billion.

Add on top of this the fact that the government wants to spend much of this as quickly as possible, and we're just setting ourselves up for poor oversight and fraud, waste, more fraud, and more waste.

4. The government doesn't have the information it needs.

Let's guess that between members of Congress, their advisors and the President and his advisors we've had 2,200 people work on this bill. Let's further suppose each of these people had equal weight in putting together the bill such that each person allocated the same amount of money within the bill. That means they each had to allocate more than $350 million. Now consider how you would allocate $350 million dollars - more than a third of a billion - to best help our economy. You probably have no idea. Neither, I'm sure, do they. It's just too much money to know how to precisely use it well. There's too much going on in the economy for an individual to know enough to make meaningful macroeconomic decisions like this. (Note: Arnold King expands on this argument better than I do, here.)

By contrast, when we interact with the economy as private citizens, amazing things happen. We all know our individual niche needs and desires and we can use the information we each individually have to produce some amazingly complex, but still largely efficient, systems. In fact, there are even rewards for being more efficient. But, when a relatively small number (say 2,200 instead of 300 million) are calling the shots they lack this information and these rewards for efficiency.

And to make matters worse, this bill was rushed. The bill was debated for less than an hour in the House to limit input from the Republicans. The pre-conference version of the bill was finalized less than 72 hours before the Senate voted on it. (And, if you could read the bill's legalese at a pace of one page per minute, it would take you more than 16 hours just to read the thing.) And if you divide the bill's cost by the number of seconds spent working on it, you come to one million dollars per second. How do you adequately put in safeguards for prudent spending when the rate is $1,000,000.00 / second?!

5. History says it won't work.

Despite (or because of) the massive spending of the New Deal, the Great Depression lasted ten long years. The Pelosi/Reid/Bush "Stimulus Checks" of last year haven't made a dent in this current recision. Neither have the hundreds of billions used under the TARP program.

Or, looking outside the U.S., Japan spent the 1990s trying to revamp their economy by Keynesian style defecit spending on infrastructure. It didn't work.

And finally, if you look at the historical data - government spending does not create jobs.

6. It's not stimulative.

At least not most of it. Most of it is useless pork. (Here are some more examples.)

Most seem to be putting the "stimulative" portions of the "stimulus" at about 20% of the bill. It makes you wonder why we aren't passing this bill instead.

And for the claims (falsehoods?) about how we, absolutely, positively, must pass this NOW and get money moving NOW, almost half the bill's spending doesn't take place until after 20 months.

Bruce McQuain of QandO puts it well when he terms the bill as "Long On Pork And Relief - Short On Stimulus And Jobs".

Stimulus, Illustrated

2009-01-31T23:52:00.005-05:00

My inspiration (and, data) comes from Suitably Flip's post by the same name. I wasn't wild about the style of his graphic (spheres? word art?), so I gave it my own make over.

Anyway, here's a graphic I think helps bring some perspective to the Stimulus (it's alternative name — the "Generational Theft Act of 2009" — is appropriately gaining ground) heading to the Senate. I think it's worth sharing. Click for larger.

Referenced "more info" links:

http://readthestimulus.org/

http://www.cato.org/fiscalreality

http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/stimulus/

My Thoughts Exactly - Wishing President Obama Well

2009-01-21T00:59:00.002-05:00

McQ at QandO:

Unlike the left, I’m not playing this "he's not my President" nonsense. I may not have voted for him, but he is my President. And I wish him well. That doesn't mean, however, that he has my blessing to do things to which I am philosophically opposed. I will vigorously oppose those things. What I don't plan on doing is descending into personal attacks and hate-filled rhetoric that so characterized much of the left's opposition this past 8 years. What I do plan on doing is reminding the left about how they acted in the same situation.

...

All of that said, I wish President Obama success on those things in which we find common ground. And I promise him dogged but respectful opposition to those on which we disagree. I understand, no matter how much we disagree, that in reality Barack Obama has the best interest of the country at heart. But the same stands true for me. However, as the left never seems to learn, opposition does not have to mean hate.

President Obama: You are my President and you have my best wishes. May God grant you the wisdom to sustain and improve the great country of ours over the next four years.

Thank You, President Bush

2009-01-21T00:46:00.004-05:00

I disagreed with many things President Bush did while in office. This TARP nonsense, particularly.

However, I don't think anyone on September 12, 2001 would have predicted we would be 7 years down the road without a single follow up domestic attack. For that Bush deserves a great deal of credit.

And so, mission #1: accomplished.

Farewell and thank you for your service, President Bush.

Notes on the Inauguration

2009-01-21T00:39:00.004-05:00

Racist prayer? Check.

Belittling a horrid caricature of your predecessor's policies (while your predecessor is there)? Check.

~~Classy~~ supporters? Check.

New website that's basically a campaign site, but paid for by the taxpayer? Check. In fact, double check.

If this is the new status quo, I'm hoping for a change.

The Message of King Missed in the Present?

2009-01-20T00:43:00.004-05:00

Wasn't Martin Luther King Jr.'s message precisely that we should look past skin color, to the content of an individual's character?

Why then are so many in such a frenzy over our first black president? I have no doubt that in the coverage of the inauguration tomorrow the media will focus squarely on Obama's skin color, rather than look past it.

Wouldn't King's dream be that we not care, at all, what color Obama is?

On the Tube, In the Tank

2009-01-19T23:52:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow's inaugural coverage:

Fox, quite reasonably is devoting 2 1/2 hours. PBS seems somewhat even keeled with 3 hours.

It's hard to believe that "hard to stay objective" NBC doesn't have the longest coverage, starting only at 10:30 AM and cutting off at 3:30 PM for a mere 5 hours.

So just how cool is he?", "Does it get any better, or more beautiful, or more spectacular, than this?" CBS comes in next. They're kicking things off at 9:30 AM and running until 3:30 PM for a total of 6 hours.

Finally, ABC, will get to lay claim to it's initials standing for the "Always Barack Channel," with their 7 hour love fest from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM. I suppose ABC taking the cake is fitting given how they dishonestly made Palin look like a fool to help seal the deal for Obama.

Oh, and it's worth mentioning tomorrow's Prime Time line up as well:

NBC has their 59 minute special, "NBC News Special: The Inauguration of Barack Obama".

PBS (on a sub-channel) will re-air their earlier coverage, and on their main channel present the 1 hour show "Frontline: Dreams of Obama."

CBS has their 61 minute special, "Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama".

And ABC again makes sure to take the cake with a 2 hour "The Neighborhood Ball: An Inauguration Celebration" featuring "an exclusive look inside the Presidential Inauguration Ball, from the President and First Lady's first dance of the night to President Obama's initial speech of the evening, along with appearances by celebrities and musicians." This to be followed by yet another hour of Obamarama in "ABC News Special: A Moment in History: The Inauguration of Barack Obama."

Refreshingly, Fox is leaving Prime Time alone.

Over the next four years, it certainly looks like we are going to need a larger tank.

Google thinks California's voters' votes shouldn't count

2009-01-17T17:03:00.004-05:00

Google, not content that their campaign against Proposition 8 failed, is now joining the legal battle to overturn the vote of the people of California.

A company working to overturn the vote of the California voters. This is shameful and disturbing.

As I've mentioned previously, I'd prefer Google (and any other company) to just stay out of the whole thing. I'd be equally uneasy if they had been (and were now) advocating in favor of Proposition 8. Technology companies should simply not be trying to set social policy. And taking it to this point where they are trying to overthrow the will of the people ... ugh.

Ask.com, anyone?

Also, if you want to support the effort to defend the California voters' decision, head over to the Alliance Defense Fund.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-27T17:36:00.004-05:00

I'm two days late - but I hope all had a very merry and blessed Christmas!

And, allow me to share my favorite version of the Christmas story:

[Jesus Christ,] being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
      and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
      in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
      to the glory of God the Father.

- Phillipians 2:6-11

Culture of Corruption

2008-12-10T01:28:00.003-05:00

For the 2006 mid-term elections, the Democrats successfully cast the Republicans as suffering from a "culture of corruption" between Foley an Abramoff, etc.

Should the Republicans want to reverse that game, today would have been a good day to start:

1. Rangel.
2. Blagojevich.

Also, per Blagojevich, looks like it's time for everyone's favorite game ... guess the party affiliation!

Newsweek's "religious case for gay marriage"

2008-12-10T00:26:00.004-05:00

Newsweek's cover story this week carries the tag line "Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side."

The article is ridiculous. I'd even go so far as to say "stupid." Not as in a 3rd grader dismisses something as "stupid" because they don't want to deal with something inconvenient but "stupid" as in utterly lacking intellectual rigor.

The article repeatedly parodies Scripture, taking some chunks way out of context and just plain making things up that aren't true.

For instance, did you know that the Apostle Paul only thought of marriage as an institution for people that couldn't control their sexual urges? The problem with that claim and most of the rest of the claims article author Lisa Miller makes are that they are just flat out wrong.

Albert Mohler has a good response to the article here, but the best response comes from Molly of getreligion.org in Sola scriptura minus the scriptura.

Quoting from the conclusion of later:

And yet preach with unhinged emotion is precisely what Miller does. She never once speaks with an actual opponent of same-sex marriage. She never once speaks with someone who knows anything about the Biblical model of marriage as understood for thousands of years. This piece is disgusting, unfair and unworthy of a high school graduate. It is the opposite of thought-provoking. It’s a post-frontal lobotomy exegesis of Scripture. This is journalism? This is how people are supposed to cover the news, today?

She actually uses Miss Manners to defend liturgical changes in marital rites. I mean, really. This is a serious topic. We have had the majority populace of three dozen states now vote to define marriage as a heterosexual union. I know the news industry is suffering but perhaps one reporter could go actually research what these people think.

Instead we learn nothing about the principled opposition to same-sex marriage and instead get blasphemy and some of the most cliched reading of Scripture to appear in print.

Well put, Molly.

Raising Keynes

2008-11-30T00:55:00.008-05:00

With Obama and the media raising FDR and his New Deal as the archetype to be imitated to get us out of our current economic problems, those on the right have been turning to the work of people like author and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Amity Shlaes for counter arguments.

This apparently has been driving Paul Krugman crazy. Krugman, of course, is a Nobel prize winning Princeton professor. But, he's also an appropriately liberal New York Times Op-Ed columnist, who's earned as much notoriety for his constant vitriol at any and every thing the Bush Administration has done as for anything bordering on economics.

Many of those on the left have been ignorantly dismissing anything Shlaes has to say because she comes from the right. I'm tempted to do about the same with Krugman (or anyone who publishes a book that puts a Vice President of our country in a Hitler mustache) but I've come to the conclusion they are both worth taking the time to read.

Having two intelligent, well informed, individuals arguing over what we should do to fix our economic woes is a welcome development for the health of the country.

At the center of their debate is Keynesianism - the economic theory put forward by John Maynard Keynes, that, to quote Wikipeida, "the state can stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector."

In any event, here are the links to the Shlaes v. Krugman debate so far, along with some additional links to outside commentary. It's my hope those crafting the Obama economic plans (and perhaps, in an attempt to be informed, the electorate, as well) are paying attention:

Shlaes v. Krugman

11/10, Paul Krugman - Franklin Delano Obama?

11/19, Amity Shlaes - Obama Will Take Us Backward By Channeling Keynes

11/19, Paul Krugman - Amity Shlaes strikes again

11/29, Amity Shlaes - The Krugman Recipe for Depression: Massive government spending is no solution to unemployment.

11/29, Paul Krugman - Changes in money-wages and Amity Shlaes

On the side lines

11/6, Eric Rauchway - Stop lying about Roosevelt’s record

11/29, Robert Stacy McCain - Amity Shlaes vs. Paul Krugman (which features, perhaps, the best write up of what makes capitalism work that I've read in recent history)

11/29, Don Boudreaux - Relative Price Adjustments and Aggregate Demand

Out of the fray, but on topic

3/20, Kim Phillips-Fein - Hard Times (a very critical review of Shlaes's book, The Forgotten Man).

11/21, Price Fishback - What Do the New Deal and World War II Tell Us About the Prospects for a Stimulus Package? (H/T, Cafe Hayek)

11/21, Tyler Cowen - The New Deal Didn’t Always Work, Either (H/T, Cafe Hayek)

Big Old Roundup

2008-11-16T20:57:00.011-05:00

Items of note from the last couple weeks:

5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions: 1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow; 2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory; 3. Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era; 4. A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year; 5. McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin

Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles. The political hypocrisy continues. Is this the change people were hoping for?

So far the Big Three bailout has been a no-go, which is a good thing. Some thoughts from Cato. And good arguments against bailing out the Big Three automakers: Here, and here (in the later, David Brooks (temporarily!) remembers he's a conservative).

Kathleen Parker still hasn't remembered that she's a conservative.

Russel Roberts, brilliant as always, argues the "credit crunch" is due to a lack of certainty, not a lack of liquidity. (Related - last Sunday on 60 minutes, Obama indicated he wanted to take an FDR-like "try things until it works" approach to the economy; that doesn't seem like it's going to help with the uncertainty - and it probably won't help generally.)

The Washington Post discusses liberal bias. Howard Kurtz appropriately asks aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?. Deborah Howell, WaPo Ombudsman, admits that "some of the conservatives' complaints about a liberal tilt are valid" and lists a slew of examples. I still don't think she fully gets it though - her article is titled "Remedying the Bias Perception," it should be titled "Remedying the Bias Problem." We're percieving it because it's real, Ms. Howell.

The best use yet for TARP's 700 billion.

Clintonite Rahm Emanuel. Clintonite (and lobbyist) Greg Craig. Clintonite John Podesta. Actual-Clinton Hillary Clinton. This "politics of the future" looks a lot like the politics of the past - say 1992 or so. As of 11/14, Politico points out "Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration." (Smarmily: "Thanks!")

With the Clinton pick - Some hope I can believe in for actually finishing the job in Iraq. Jonah Goldberg notes: "Obama's signature issue in the primaries was his "good judgment" to oppose the Iraq war. ... [Clinton] may have experience, he'd charge, but she lacked the wisdom to oppose the war. ... So now Barack Obama is going to appoint Hillary Clinton to be the chief architect of his foreign policy. Moreover, he picked Joe Biden to be his running mate and 'partner' in the White House explicitly because of his foreign policy experience and judgment. But wait: Joe Biden, too, supported the war".

The Left remains extremely hard to parody. Their outrage de jour yesterday was once again Sarah Palin, this time because she had the audacity to do an interview at turkey farm, where turkey-farm-activities actually occur. I guess they never knew where animal-based food comes from? More from John Hinderaker at Powerline.

The H. in Barack H. Obama continues, for me, to stand for hypocrite:
"We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.”

For all the talk of The Right being broken, it might also be worth looking at what's happening on The Left.

Obama the Question Mark Man

Hope, Change, and Rahm Emanuel

2008-11-07T22:52:00.005-05:00

One of these three things is not like the others.

John Edwards likes to say there are "two Americas". I'd like to propose there are two Barack Obamas.

One is the "post-partisan" and "new politics" guy full of "hope" and "change."

The other is the partisan, far-left, cut-throat politician seen via his voting record, his policy proposals, and his campaign tactics.

A big question that now presents itself is which of these two he will turn out to be once in the White House.

I think we should all reserve final judgment until after he's sworn in and actually done some things, but the initial signs are troubling.

Obama has tapped Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff.

Emanuel is no post-partisan hope-and-change politician. He's a hyper-partisan, Washington-insider Democrat, famous for his foul-mouthed abrasive style.

For those looking for a new kind of politics, Rahm Emanuel is very much like a Democratic version of Karl Rove or Tom Delay.

Consider some anecdotes:

The best Rahm Emanuel story is not the one about the decomposing two-and-a-half-foot fish he sent to a pollster who displeased him. It is not about the time - the many times - that he hung up on political contributors in a Chicago mayor's race, saying he was embarrassed to accept their $5,000 checks because they were $25,000 kind of guys. No, the definitive Rahm Emanuel story takes place in Little Rock, Ark., in the heady days after Bill Clinton was first elected President.

It was there that Emanuel, then Clinton's chief fund-raiser, repaired with George Stephanopoulos, Mandy Grunwald and other aides to Doe's, the campaign hangout. Revenge was heavy in the air as the group discussed the enemies - Democrats, Republicans, members of the press - who wronged them during the 1992 campaign. Clifford Jackson, the ex-friend of the President and peddler of the Clinton draft-dodging stories, was high on the list. So was William Donald Schaefer, then the Governor of Maryland and a Democrat who endorsed George Bush. Nathan Landow, the fund-raiser who backed the candidacy of Paul Tsongas, made it, too.

Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table.

- Elisabeth Bumiller, in the New York Times, 1997

[Chicago Democrats] captured the state Senate. This despite running a ticket made up of ward bosses' children and in-laws. I remember sitting on my couch in Chicago and thinking, "If the Democrats want to turn it around, they need to take some lessons from the machine around here. Chicago Democrats have no scruples. They treat political offices as feudal inheritances. They shake down contributors like a corrupt pope selling indulgences. They're sleazy, they're arrogant.

That night, on the northwest side, Rahm Emanuel was elected to Congress. A former Clinton whiz kid who'd gotten his start as a fundraiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel was connected -- in the three years after leaving the White House (where he'd helped push through NAFTA), he earned $16 million putting together Wall Street mergers. He was also zealously partisan. He had once owned a consulting business devoted to finding skeletons in Republican closets.

...

As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he raised millions of dollars by browbeating donors and candidates with cellphone calls that invariably ended, "F*** you. I love you." Emanuel was so effective that not only did his party win back Congress, he was able to get a Chicago Tribune reporter to write a book giving him most of the credit. Naftali Bendavid, the Tribune's deputy Washington bureau chief, was given "insider access" to Emanuel's operation, expecting to write a newspaper article. When the Democrats triumphed, he expanded it into "The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution."

...

Freed from the constraints of his stuffy newspaper, Bendavid is able to ratchet up the parental guidance rating from G to R, which is essential to any well-rounded profile of Emanuel. As they said about Buddy Hackett in Vegas, Emanuel works blue. "F***" is one of the most versatile words in English, but he seems to have discovered new grammatical and linguistic uses for it. Washington is "F***nutsville." A Republican congressman is a "knucklef***."

- Edward McClelland in Salon, May 2008

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon in October, and, as Republican Representative Chris Shays drives between churches in his affluent Connecticut district, he is talking about the possibility of being knifed. "Rahm Emanuel--if I got a knife, it would be in my belly," he says, referring to the combative head of the Democratic Caucus. "With Nancy," he continues, alluding to the House speaker, "it would be in my back." He then goes on to tell a story about an encounter that took place two years ago at the House gym. At the time, Emanuel was head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which was targeting Shays--a Rockefeller Republican who represents a Democratic district--for defeat. In the gym's locker room, Shays approached Emanuel and said he was "really disappointed" that, with so many races to choose from, the DCCC had chosen to target him. Emanuel, Shays recalls, "put his hands on both shoulders, looked at me square in the eyes, and said, 'Look, with all due respect, from one friend to another, we're going to spend a f*****g three million dollars to defeat you.' That was his words. Verbatim."

- Suzy Khimm, in The New Republic, Nov. 2008

With that in mind, President-elect Obama had a shortlist of one when it came to choosing his White House Chief of Staff; Rahm Emanuel, a politician so ferocious that even his own mother calls him by his nickname of "Rahmbo".

If the Democratic Congressman accepts the job as Mr Obama's enforcer, Mr Emanuel, universally characterised as a foul-mouthed attack dog who can end the career of anyone who stands in his way, will serve as a perfect counterpoint to the sugar-coated Mr Obama.

Mr Emanuel, 48, who served as an aide to President Clinton, has proved in the past that he bows to no-one when it comes to getting the job done, as Tony Blair discovered when he visited the White House at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

As he prepared for a public appearance with the president, Mr Blair was warned by Mr Emanuel: "This is important. Don't **** it up."

- The Telegraph, Nov. 2008

What is more, this is a guy who, upon learning about the Mark Foley sex scandal of 2006 "shopped it around" to news outlets for political advantage rather then bring it up with the Ethics committee. [1] Then, when Emanuel learned that Foley's replacement, Tim Mahoney, was having a sex scandal of his own, he "work[ed] with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign" [2].

And then we have this from ABC News:

President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.

Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint (click here to read) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) (click here to read) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention."

Washinton insider. Failed to stop corruption at Freddie Mac. Used one sex scandal for political gain, tried to cover up another. Plays abrasive, strong man, big money politics.

As David Keene puts it: "You might hire Rahm to blow up the bridge. I don't know if you’d hire him to build it."

Rahm Emanuel represents Washington at it's worst. This is not post-partisan. This is not change. This is not hope.

Election Postmortem

2008-11-07T20:05:00.005-05:00

Well, at long last, the 2008 election has come and gone. It seemed like it was the campaign that would never end, and it is a bit of a relief to have it now behind us.

Obviously, as a conservative, I'm disappointed with the result of the presidential race. Which ever way it had turned out, it was clear conservatives would need to start the fight not long after the election. The difference was that we'd need to challenge McCain about 30% of the time and Obama about 70% of the time.

We can now, of course, return to our more natural state of criticizing (rather than supporting) Senator McCain.

Most right-leaning blogs have had the common courtesy of congratulating President-Elect Obama. I'm refraining to do so. I will firmly honor him as my President, as he was legitimately elected and I fully honor the office which he will hold. But I withhold my congratulations because I believe he fundamentally ran a less-than-honorable campaign that deserves rebuke, not praise. Congratulations are simply not in order when you unleash your supporters to do a character assassination in an attempt to silence a critic. This is America, we should be above thug-like campaigns.

I do wish our President-Elect the best. I hope is really is able to bring the country together and heal our political divides. I also hope he's granted the wisdom required to navigate our country's significant foreign policy challenges, and I wish him success in keeping our country safe and restoring our economy.

Realistically though, I doubt he'll have success with most of the above because I believe he'll pursue a far-left agenda that will alienate conservatives and fail to meet America's challenges. But I would be glad to be wrong. Perhaps he will govern as a moderate and/or perhaps my ideology is incorrect. I would rather be wrong and see my country prosper than vice-versa.

Finally, to the degree you hear pundits announcing the death of the GOP and conservatism, or speaking about a "mandate" to President-Elect Obama, don't bother listening to them.

Obama received only 2% more of the vote than President Bush in 2004. Bush mistakenly read his results as a "mandate" and tried to spend his "political capital" fixing social security, which promptly failed because 51-53% of the vote does not give you a strong "mandate."

Furthermore, according to exit polls 34% of Americans self identify as "conservative", the same percent as in 2004, and a full 12 points higher than those that self-identify as a "liberal."

Another thing to ignore the pundits ranting about is how this election had "record turn out." In fact, it did. But by a negligible amount. According to CNN right now, with 99% of precincts reporting, (and ignoring the about 1% of votes that went to 3rd parties in both 2004 and 2008), there have been about 122 million votes in 2008. In 2004 there were 121 million votes. I welcome one million new voters, but that's an increase of about 1% which doesn't even keep up with the rate of population growth.

A few final thoughts:

1. The polls - both exit and regular type - were pretty much dead on. This is a huge improvement from 2004.

2. The PUMA (pro-Hillary, anti-Obama) people made a lot of noise, but pretty clearly, didn't make much of an impact in the overall vote.

3. If I hear anyone moan about "why can't we just elect a 'moderate'" during the next four years, I may lose it. America - you had your chance and you made your choice. John McCain has a long history of being a moderate who works across party lines and only won the Republican nomination because of his support from independents. I suspect he will probably be the most centrist presidential candidate most will see in their lifetime. And, America, you decided against him.

4. The "Bradly Effect" is officially dead. We can all be glad about this. There are still pockets of racism in America to be confronted, but they are clearly growing more and more irrelevant.

5. I was quite glad to see the homosexual marriage bans all passed, and the losses in the House and Senate weren't quite as bad as I imagined they'd be.

6. A question: why don't we consider it racist to celebrate the fact Obama is our first black president? Wouldn't it be the actual fulfillment of King's dream to, in fact, ignore his skin color and instead judge solely on the "content of his character"? If McCain had won, we would be condemning anyone who was going around saying "Oh, thank God we elected a white man" and yet millions are saying the exact same, with only the race changed.

7. Finally, if you are a McCain supporting Evangelical in despair, allow me to encourage you. While we are here on Earth, being stewards and ambassadors, elections are important. But - I'm reminded of Michele McGinty's words to Thompson and Huckabee supporters at the end of their primary runs. Our hope comes not from an election, a president, or anything having to do with politics. Our hope is in Christ. Our God is much bigger than any of this, and He remains on the throne! In 1,000 years, we'll be in Heaven and probably laughing at how much we cared about the outcome of an election, if it's even worth our while to think about it at all. For those that believe, the most important "change" has already come!

Election Night Bingo

2008-11-04T18:14:00.003-05:00

I'll be playing "election night bingo" based on phrases and topics I expect the media to harp on all night. Should you want to join in, head here to print off some Bingo cards.

Final-Moments-Prior Roundup

2008-11-04T00:10:00.004-05:00

Hope for McCain from Rasmussen; Also: the rose-colored view.

Palin healthy Also: 100% cleared of all ethics charges. (As Glenn Reynolds notes, conveniently late).

Sorry, But Obama Scares Me too.

Obama on ... Obama ... are we really going to elect this guy? (Or, perhaps better asked - which version of Obama are the American people going to elect?)

Voting fraud continues.

Obama's grandmother passes. He has my condolences for this tragedy in his personal life. I appricate Ed Morrissey's admonition to his commenters that they "get classy and stay that way."

Closing Thoughts on the Presidential Election

2008-11-03T00:14:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow, Americans will head to the polls and cast their votes for one of two viable candidates: John McCain or Barack Obama.

John McCain is not my ideal candidate, but represents an agenda I think all moderate and conservative voters should be much more interested in.

Barack Obama - by measure of his associations, his voting record, or his proposed policies - would be the most liberal president we've ever had. Some of you may read that and think I'm exaggerating or using hyperbole. I am not. Barack Obama is an excellent politician who has done a tremendous job during the campaign convincing Americans he is moderate and reasonable. But he is not.

On social policy, the issue most important to me is abortion, because literally at stake is life and death. I believe any rational person should be able to discern the scientific case that life begins at conception.

Even if you aren't pro-life, most moderate voters want abortion to at least have some restrictions, like parental notification. But Obama has pledged that "the first thing I would do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." The FOCA would remove all restrictions on abortion, from parental notification to re-legalizing so called "partial birth abortion" which is much more accurately described as infanticide.

Obama's ultra-liberal dedication to abortion even includes his vote against a bill in the Illinois Senate that would have required doctors to provide medical care for babies that survived botched abortions.

On foreign policy, we are now winning in Iraq thanks to the The Surge, a strategy McCain advocated at great risk to his political career. Had we followed Obama's plan we would have begun a withdrawal of troops prior to even attempting The Surge and Iraq would be in shambles, with Al-Qaeda strengthened. Senator Obama has next to no foreign policy, military, or executive experience. Making him president while engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seems downright dangerous.

On economic policy - the area that seems to be ruling the day, we have Obama proposing a redistributionist tax policy that would literally cut checks to "working families" while ramping up hundreds of billions of dollars of new spending to be paid for exclusively by the top 5% of income earners (or, if you go with this cut off of "$250,000" - the top 1.5% of income earners.) The top 5% of income earners, today, already pay 60% of the personal income tax burden (while making only 20% of the country's income - a disparity of 3:1). Does that seem fair to you?

By contrast, John McCain wants to lower taxes across the board and reduce government spending - starting with reforming earmarks.

Analysis by economists indicates that Obama's policies will actually slow the economy, while McCain's will help it grow. This is probably best demonstrated by the following chart which I'm stealing from here:

From the study from which that chart is generated:

When fully phased in, and all economic adjustments are made, the McCain tax plan would increase the private sector portion of GDP relative to the baseline by about 2.7 percent, and the Obama tax plan would reduce private sector GDP by about 3.5 percent, a significant 6.2 percent difference in output and income between the two plans. (See Chart 1.) The difference in private sector capital accumulation would be 15.8 percent or $4.1 trillion in favor of McCain. Hourly wages before-tax would be up 2.2 percent under McCain, down 2.6 percent under Obama, a 4.8 percent difference. Hours worked would be 0.5 percent higher under McCain, and 1 percent lower under Obama.

I do not want to see this recession continue for four years, do you?

Voter Fraud

2008-11-02T19:36:00.002-05:00

Voter fraud has been in the new lately. Largely because of ACORN, and ACORN, and ACORN, and ACORN (and it's not like that's the completion of ACORN fraud reports, but I think I've made my point).

It's something to take seriously.

John Fund has recently released a new book documenting serious cases of voter fraud and their implications. I suggest taking some time and listening to his lecture at the Heritage Foundation about the book. It's fairly depressing, but important to realize.

Something seriously needs to be done to address this.

The Voter Fraud Squad is compiling information about all these voter fraud cases. It's unfortunate this site is able to exist. It's worth keeping an eye on.

Their parent organization provides some steps you should take should you see vote fraud happening.

The McCain Campaign has also launched a "Honest and Open Elections Hotline": 1-866-976-VOTE.

A search for "obama voter fraud hotline" doesn't turn up a similar number for Obama (although it does turn up allegations the Obama campaign has engaged in voter fraud - hopefully untrue, although his record of dirty politics and campaign funding of ACORN makes me hesitant to dismiss it out of hand). If such a number does turn up, it would be great if someone could post it in the comments.

All Politics is Local

2008-11-02T17:09:00.007-05:00

With the election around the corner, I thought I'd share the list of local candidates I plan to vote for.

By the way, if you are also a Monroe County resident, I'd encourage you to stop by the Monroe County Board of Elections website where you can download what your ballot will look like. (Knowing who is on your ballot before you get into the booth is always a plus.)

Representative in Congress, New York's 28th District

My choices are between Louise Slaughter and David Crimmen. I'll be voting for Crimmen who's far more conservative than Slaughter, and, unlike Slaughter, was opposed to the bailout.

State Senator, New York's 56th District

My choices are between Richard Dollinger and Joseph Robach.

Dollinger is fairly sparse on explaining his views on the issues. Like Dollinger, I'm pro-lower-property-taxes, pro-jobs, pro-reform, and pro-education.

But, in his attack ads, he attacks Robach for being pro-life, and his "pro-jobs" message focuses around a "living wage" and being against free trade.

I have a very difficult time voting for a politician at any level that doesn't recognize the sanctity of life. And, I'm afraid economic policies like a living wage and ending free trade will doom the current recession into a depression the way Smoot-Hawley did in 1930.

But, I don't intend to vote for Robach.

Robach clearly doesn't understand the limits of the U.S. Constitution (nor do most of New York's state politicians), having voted in favor of the state budget that included the clearly un-Constitutional "Amazon Tax."

Additionally, Robach was one of the "grantmaker" sponsors of Rochester's 2007 Image Out festival. Image Out is a Gay & Lesbian film festival, which included live nude performances (this link is not appropriate for minors or work) and outright pornography. His support of this work pretty clearly shows he doesn't hold the same values I do.

I wish there was some alternative 3rd party (preferably libertarian) candidate I could vote for here. Since there isn't, I won't be voting for anyone.

Member of Assembly, 131st District

Here my choices are Susan John or Jeffery Morrow.

Neither does a particular good job of explaining their policy positions. Morrow actually lists none, while John weaves hers throughout her biography.

In a previous election cycle, an attack ad against John showed how she had voted right in line with the NY Assembly Democrats something like 95% of the time. Coupling that with her self-praise for passing the increased NY minimum wage law (my thoughts on the national minimum wage increase here), her desire for more government control of healthcare, and her endorsement by radically pro-abortion groups like NARAL and NOW, she's right out of contention with me. She also voted for the Amazon-tax-containing state budget.

And, on a personal note, I actually mailed Susan John a letter about policy issues earlier this year and she never bothered to do me the courtesy of responding.

I'll consider voting for Morrow, simply because I'd like to see John unseated, but it's unlikely I'll vote for him unless/until I find out where he actually stands on the issues.

There is a third party candidate for this seat as well, Rafael Colon. But he's apparently been caught in a bribe/corruption scandal - so that's going to be a "no".

County Clerk

County Clerk is one of those positions that seems like it would be better to be an executive appointment rather than an elected position. A candidate's political views don't matter as much as they are just competent at the clerk's executive responsibilities.

The choices are Cheryl Dinolfo and Thomas Hasman. Dinolfo is the Republican incumbent and Hasman a Democratic challenge.

Dinolfo took the somewhat controversial step of suing the state DMV to stop licenses from being granted to illegal immigrants. Said licenses could have been used to allow illegal immigrants to collect welfare, buy firearms, vote, or other activities which recognize a NYS drivers license as proof of legal residency, so I support Dinolfo's move here.

Unfortunately for Dinolfo, Hasman makes a convincing case that he's more qualified and brings up the fact that under Dinolfo's leadership, social security numbers have repeatedly made their way onto County Clerk run websites. That's unacceptable. He also terms the Governor's attempt to make drivers licenses available to illegal immigrants "misguided" so I trust he'll maintain that stand should it be attempted again.

As a result, I'll be throwing my vote Hasman's way.

State Supreme Court Justice, 7th Judicial District

The rest of these are all judges. Like the County Clerk, I wish these were just appointments by some executive. Voting for judges is incredibly frustrating. By virtue of a judge's role, they can't actually tell you how they would rule in cases, so there are no positions on issues to decide by.

We get to pick choices from Joanne Winslow, Paul Riordan, Robert Lunn, and Elma Ann Bellini.

The Democrat & Chronicle has a write up on all four.

They all seem qualified. I'm most skeptical of Joanne Winslow, as she's received a glowing review from the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, which is concerning to me because the advances towards gay marriage (with which I disagree) have all come from the courts.

I'm leaning towards voting for Robert Lunn, who's the incumbent, on the basis that if he were making awful rulings someone would be making a stink about it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He is also the highest rated by the Monroe County Bar Association.

I'm also leaning towards Bellini who's won the support of the Republican, Independence, and Conservative parties.

And, both Lunn and Bellini won the endorsement of the Democrat & Chronicle. The D&C tends to have endorsements that are more liberal than conservative, so the shared endorsement of Republican Party, Conservative Party, and D&C provides a nice "tri-fecta" of endorsements that encourages me these two would be solid jurists.

County Court Judge

The only candidate is Frank Geraci. He had the endorsement of the Conservative, Independence, Democratic, and Working Families parties, which speaks well for him.

The D&C also endorsed Geraci, and I don't see any objection to voting for him.

Family Court Judge

There are two candidates, and we vote for two. The candidates are Joan Kohout and Gail Donofrio. Kohout is endorsed by the Democrats; Donofrio by the Republicans. The Independence, Conservative, and Working Families parties all support both.

The D&C has good things to say about Kohout and Donofrio and I don't see an objection to voting for either of them.

Proposition 8 Roundup

2008-11-02T16:46:00.005-05:00

Jennifer Roback Morse explains: 8 Is Not Hate.

Maggie Gallagher makes one of the most thoughtful cases for Proposition 8 (and thus, against gay marriage) I think I've ever encountered. It's summary text is as follows:

Marriage between a man and a woman is rooted in our nature--''in biology, not bigotry''--sex between men and women makes babies, society needs babies, and babies need a father as well as a mother. But the proponents of same-sex marriage want the government to declare in law that there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex unions, and anyone who thinks otherwise is promoting bigotry. This will have major ramifications for those who believe in marriage in the traditional sense--especially religious citizens and organizations.

Finally, Evangelical Outpost presents an argument in favor of Proposition 8 along with a counter argument in reply. Yay for discourse.

Not the Fault of Deregulation

2008-11-02T16:21:00.005-05:00

There is a growing effort from those on the left to blame our current economic problems on "deregulation."

According to leading Democrats:

House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank: "This is the fruit of decades of 'leave the market alone, don’t regulate it. It will take care of itself' ... Clearly we’ve got to get some regulation here."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The Bush Administration’s eight long years of failed deregulation policies"

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer: "A stark failure of the economy and this administration’s laissez faire, take the referee off the field, let anyone do whatever they want to do and everything will be fine"

As the Heritage Foundation puts it though, "The problem with the Democrats' 'deregulation did it' meme is that it didn’t happen – deregulation that is."

Although nowhere near being a socialist "command economy", the United States economy is quite heavily regulated, and a lot of new regulations have been put into place under the Bush administration, like Sarbanes Oxley.

Which is not to say that Bush has deregulated some things, but even far-left Democratic senators like Chuck Schumer have been pro-deregulation in recent times.

Furthermore, government interference with the economy shares a large share of the blame for the mess we are in.

I've stumbled across a number of solid articles that correct the record on this dubious "deregulation caused this" claim, which I think are worth sharing:

First, an editorial titled Is Capitalism Dead? explains the (well intentioned) role the government played in ultimately bringing down the housing market. It begins:

Is this the end of American capitalism? As financial panic spread across the globe and governments scrambled to contain the damage, reality seemed to announce the doom of U.S.-style free markets and President Bush's ideology. But this is wrong in two ways. The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government's failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets.

A Union-Tribute editorial expands on this, beginning with "The mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is no orphan. It has many fathers, and deregulation of financial markets isn't one of them." and concluding "Appallingly, some Democrats still claim that deregulation fomented by Republicans and greedy investors caused the meltdown. Never mind that the policy of spreading homeownership around to folks who couldn't afford it will cost millions their homes and taxpayers an extra $700 billion."

Finally, I think Don Bourdeaux makes the case extremely well in a letter he sent to the Washington Times:

Your equating George W. Bush with FDR is spot-on ("Franklin Delano Bush," October 20). Both presidents recklessly increased government's role in the economy - a move that proved (in FDR's case) and will prove (in Bush's case) to do nothing but saturate the economy with such uncertainty as to frighten away entrepreneurs and investors.

But popular history will almost surely remember Bush, not as a second FDR, but as a second Herbert Hoover. The myth will be made that Bush was a staunch free-marketeer who was succeeded in the Oval Office by a charismatic saint whose hyperactive interventions saved the economy (even though precious little evidence of economic salvation will appear in the data). History will forget Bush's interventions just as it has forgotten Hoover's - as it has forgotten that Hoover signed the largest tariff hike in U.S. history; as it has forgotten that Hoover tried to create jobs by deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans; as it has forgotten that Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; as it has forgotten that, with the Revenue Act of 1932, Hoover raised the top marginal tax rate on personal incomes from 25 percent to 63 percent (in addition to raising the corporate-tax rate).

History will repeat itself, blaming capitalism for a problem caused and intensified by government interventions.

Update: Amity Shlaes responds to a critic, and expands on the forgotten history mentioned by Don Boudreaux.

Sarah Palin is Not Stupid

2008-11-02T10:03:00.005-05:00

The thing I've found most grating during the course of this campaign is the meme that Sarah Palin is stupid, which the likes of Saturday Night Live have been more than happy to make a mainstream notion.

The editing hactchet job and unanswerable questions of the Gibson interview didn't help, of course. And Palin's poor performance in the Couric interviews really didn't help her case.

But what's embarrassing for our country is how many voters haven't looked past two bad interviews and a handful of insulting SNL skits to reach their conclusions about if Palin has what it takes.

Palin's biggest accomplishment so far in office has been her work on the Natural Gas Pipeline. She freely admits there is much more to do to complete it, but the work she has finished so far is impressive. Alaska has been working for 30 years to implement such a pipeline, and she's finally been able to bring people together to make it happen. IBD has a great write up about the pipeline here, which actually pre-dates her being added to the ticket.

The pipeline will actually go through Canada to reach the continental United States. I don't know why the campaign doesn't raise this point to demonstrate the actual foreign policy experience she has had as a governor.

Without a doubt, her experience on the pipeline project demonstrates her clear capability to serve as a vice president.

What shows she would be a great vice president is her dedication to integrity. Between her many years a mayor her time as governor, she served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She grew tired of the corruption she saw there - much of which was within her own Republican party - and ultimately resigned from the position in protest.

As governor she continued showing integrity by running on a platform of reform (which is not uncommon) and actually carrying through with reforms (which is uncommon). Under her leadership, she took the oil companies to task and worked with the legislature to pass a sweeping ethics reform bill.

Despite this, the left continues to smear her as unintelligent and "dangerously unprepared." This reminds me of the obnoxious slams against Bush's intelligence for the past 8 years.

Christopher Hitchens probably addressed the Bush Derangement Syndrom best when he confronted Bill Maher with:

I've seen you make about five George-Bush-IQ jokes per night. There's no one I know who can't do it. You know what I think? - this is now the joke that stupid people laugh at. It's the joke that any dumb person can laugh at because they think that they ... can prove they're smarter than the president (like the people that make booing and mooing noises in your audience ... none of whom are smarter than the president).

Let's move past calling people names. Bush isn't stupid. Neither is Sarah Palin. I can respect that each hold views that the left disagree with - but let's have a substantive debate on those issues. Deriding people as "stupid" should be left to those still in 3rd grade who haven't grown up yet.

The Worst of All Tax Policies

2008-11-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

For decades, voters have had to balance proposed increases in government spending against the necessary increases in taxes they would require. Government growth has been tempered by voters asking "yeah, that sounds nice, but how much will it cost me, the taxpayer?"

There are some who are suggesting Obama's plan to only raise taxes on the top 5% of earners is nothing but a typical empty campaign promise. But let's suppose Obama is telling the truth. That if elected he and the Congress will change the tax laws so that:

No family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase [and] the typical middle class family will receive well over $1,000 in tax relief under the Obama plan.

Such a change would turn the temperance of voters asking themselves "how much will government program X cost me, the taxpayer?" completely on it's head because only 1.5% percent of households (which I'll equate with Obama's use of "family") make more then $250,000.

Apparently, no longer would 98.5% of the population need to worry about increased taxes for the increased spending Obama is pushing for.

This shifting the tax burden for new spending to the top 1.5% reeks of "tyranny of the majority" and ominously brings to mind the Alexis de Tocqueville quote: "The American democratic experiment will succeed until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. Then it will collapse."

And all this does call into question exactly how Obama will pay for the $430 billion a year of spending increases he proposes.

In 2006, 43% of the government's $2.4 trillion tax revenues came from individual income taxes. (With 15% from corporate income taxes and the remaining 42% from "other taxes").

Let's assume these percentages remain under a hypothetical Obama administration. That would mean Obama needs to raise individual income taxes by $185 billion - all of which would only be paid by the top 1.5% of income earners.

Now I'll be charitable in my analysis here. In addition to the $250,000 figure, Obama has also thrown around the figure of the "top 5%." So, let's actually be more generous and say this $185 billion will all be paid by the top 5% of income earners, not just the top 1.5%.

For 2006, the top 5% paid more than 60% of all personal income taxes - in dollars (rather than a percent), that's somewhere a bit higher than $625 billion. Adding this $185 billion would pump up the total personal income tax revenues by about 15%, from $1.04 trillion to $1.23 trillion. Adding this $185 billion strictly to the burden of the top 5% of income earners would mean that instead of paying 60% of income taxes, they would pay approximately 66%. That means the top 5% (which would include households making $150,000 and up) would be responsible for two-thirds of personal income tax revenue.

That's right:
5% paying two-thirds.

By contrast, let's look at the bottom 40% of households. Allow me to simply quote a recent Weekly Standard article:

The lowest 40 percent of income earners as a group actually receive net payments from the federal income tax system. (They get 3.8 percent of total federal income tax revenues instead of paying any income taxes.) The middle 20 percent of income earners pay 4.4 percent of federal income taxes. Thus the bottom 60 percent of income earners together, on net, pay less than 1 percent of all federal income taxes. (These workers earn 26 percent of national income.)

The data show that the top 1 percent of income earners now pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, which is almost double their share of the national income. The top 10 percent pay 71 percent of federal income taxes, though they earn just 39 percent of the nation's pretax income.

At what point do even liberals realize this would be grossly unfair?

When you add in the fact that Obama is going to these lower income families a refundable tax credit (meaning that if the tax credit makes you have a negative tax liability, the government gives you the money for the credit, not just reduces your tax burden to zero), what we are really looking at here is, in fact, redistribution. Or, in Obama's words, sharing the wealth.

As Don Boudreaux clarifies, this isn't pure socialism, but:

This "socialism-lite," however, is as specious as is classic socialism. And its insidious nature makes it even more dangerous. Across Europe, this "mild" form of socialism acts as a parasitic ideology that has slowly drained entrepreneurial energy – and freedoms – from its free-market host.

Could it happen in America? Consider the words of longtime Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas: "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." In addition to Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs, the gathering political momentum toward single-payer healthcare – which Obama has proclaimed is his ultimate goal – shows the prescience of Thomas's words.

The fact that each of us depends upon the efforts of millions of others does not mean that some "society" transcending individuals produces our prosperity. Rather, it means that the vast system of voluntary market exchange coordinates remarkably well the efforts of millions of individuals into a productive whole. For Obama to suggest that government interfere in this process more than it already does – to "spread" wealth from Joe to Bill, or vice versa – overlooks not only the voluntary and individual origins of wealth, but the dampening of the incentives for people to contribute energetically to wealth's continued production.

Good News From Iraq

2008-11-01T21:49:00.002-05:00

Only 7 combat deaths, only 5 of the 18 provinces remain in need of being turned over to Iraqi control.

As you vote on Tuesday, you may want to consider that if we had followed Barack Obama's judgement on "The Surge", it would have never happened. We would have left Iraq before The Surge was even attempted. We would have been defeated, leaving an unstable country ripe for further instability in the Middle East and Al Qaeda celebrating.

Gladly, President Bush followed the advice of Senator McCain.

Closing Arguments from National Review

2008-11-01T21:17:00.002-05:00

From The Choice:

The press has ruled that discussion of [Obama's] extensive association with radicals is outside the bounds of polite society, although his history surely demonstrates at the very least that he has followed a policy of having no enemies to the left — and indicates that he probably shared more of their views than he now lets on.

The platform on which Obama is running is troubling enough. He advocates higher tax rates than any Democratic presidential candidate of the past 20 years has called for. He favors a health-care plan that would move millions of Americans from the private plans they prefer to a government system — and, in the long run, would reduce the quality and raise the cost of health care. He is more hostile to trade liberalization than any presidential nominee of either party within the last 70 years. He supports taxpayer funding of abortion. He seeks judges who “empathize” with liberal causes rather than feel themselves bound by the text of the Constitution. And with a stronger liberal base in Congress than any Democratic president has had in at least 40 years, he would have a good chance to get much of this domestic agenda accomplished.

His chief foreign-policy commitments have been to meet with America’s enemies — one could be forgiven for wondering whether he even thinks in terms of America’s having enemies — and to abandon Iraq. If he had prevailed on Iraq over the last three years, we would have lost a war that we now appear to be winning.

...

McCain has a solid record of opposing economically damaging tax increases. He has always opposed abortion. He has advanced a creative free-market health-care policy, even if he has not done much to defend it against Obama’s dishonest attacks. He is a scourge of wasteful spending and a resolute free trader. He says that he will look for judges who have demonstrated their fidelity to the Constitution as written. We have our differences with McCain, as do most conservatives, on such issues as immigration and stem cells. On each of these issues, however, Obama is at least as mistaken.

We have no doubt that if McCain is president we will find much to criticize. But we will be confident that we have the right commander-in-chief and that liberals do not have a free hand to remake our country. In this election we support Senator McCain and urge all conservatives to do so as well.

And from Top Ten Reasons to Vote for McCain/Palin, A Last Minute Round Up:

If Barack Obama is elected president and Democrats control large majorities in the House and Senate, the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate will move the country decisively in the direction of dying Europe — low productivity, high joblessness, low birth rates, high taxes, and limp foreign policies. The triumvirate will do this at a time when a vibrant America is more necessary than ever — with Iran seeking nuclear weapons, Pakistan teetering, al-Qaeda regrouping, China and Russia telegraphing hostility, and Iraq just barely emerging into the sunshine. This election has become about far more than John McCain versus Barack Obama; it has become about whether the United States will remain the champion of freedom — economic and political — or whether we will join the queue of formerly great nations now struggling to pay for all the social welfare “benefits” their aging and lazy populations demand.

Not His Brother's "Keeper"

2008-11-01T20:11:00.004-05:00

In the climax of his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama proclaimed:

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief — I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper — that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

And at the Saddleback Debate, Obama opined: "we still don't abide by that basic precept of Matthew: that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me; that basic principle applies to poverty."

I reject the notion that it's the fundamentally the government's job to be my or anyone else's "keeper." But what I embrace is the idea we, acting as individuals, should have a concern for our common man - especially our families - and engage in private acts to make the world a better place.

Barack Obama seems to reject that later idea - namely, engaging in private acts to care for one's family and common man.

Item 1:

Based on the Obamas' tax returns, from 2000 to 2004, Barack Obama had an average income just shy of the $250,000 he considers "wealthy". During that time he, on average, gave under 1% of his income to tax deducible charity. In 2005 and 2006 his percentage of givings did climb, although so did his massive earnings. (And, if I'm ever pulling down a cool million a year like the Obamas, I certainly hope I'll be giving more than a paltry 4.7% of it to charity.)

Item 2:

In August, the press found Barack Obama's half-brother, George. For all his talk about us being our "brother's keeper," Barack Obama hasn't done anything to help his brother living in Africa on less than a dollar a month.

Item 3:

Originally I didn't think too much of the George Obama situation, and actually dismissed it when a friend of mine brought it up in conversation. The two brothers didn't grow up with each other. They've visited a few times, and George has a mention in one of Barack Obama's memoirs, but they are separated by an ocean and aren't particularly close.

Why I mention it now, is that Obama apparently has a pattern of ignoring the needs of his relatives.

We find out today that Obama's aunt has been living in Boston for at least four years. In state-funded public housing. And as an illegal immigrant.

Why hasn't Barack Obama been helping her? Between his wealth and legal connections, couldn't he have helped her be here legally or at least be in living conditions better than public housing?

Obama is now claiming he wasn't aware his aunt was in the United States. Which, if true, raises additional questions about Obama's family connections. If you lived in the United States - and you were close enough to your aunt to have her attend your swearing in as a Senator in 2004 - don't you think you'd be aware of if your aunt moved from Kenya to the U.S.?

But the bottom line is that Obama himself is not his brother's keeper and does not, himself, "abide by that basic precept of Matthew." Before jacking tax rates up on the wealthy to "spread the wealth around" to the less fortunate, perhaps Obama should take a moment to abide by a second precept from Matthew.

In Search Of: Non-Political Tech Companies

2008-10-30T22:49:00.005-05:00

As I write this, I'm on my Mac at home, posting to a Google hosted blog. Ugh.

Google recently announced their position against California's Proposition 8:

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Apple has done the same:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

I will leave writing a post with a detailed explanation of my position on "gay marriage" for a later date, but in short I'm in favor of protecting marriage per it's historical, traditional, Judeo-Christian definition. I hold this view because my Christian faith unambiguously informs me of the proper definition of marriage, as well as for purely secular/pragmatic reasons.

But, what concerns me even more than the fact that Apple and Google took this position in favor of gay marriage is the fact they took a position at all.

Having giant corporations put huge sums of cash behind social-issue political causes gives me pause. This isn't an issue that affects how well Google can provide search or Apple can make iPhones. Google and Apple, in my opinion, have no business injecting themselves into this issue.

It would take 10,000 individuals giving $20 to pro-Position 8 organizations to offset what Google and Apple did. Do we really want tech companies crowding out the advocacy of thousands of individuals?

I'm about to find out exactly how entrenched I am in Apple and Google technology. Anyone have any suggestions for a search engine from a company that doesn't stick it's nose where it doesn't politically belong? Same for an alternative place to easily move this blog to.

And, Apple: I was planning on buying an iPhone in January with money from an expected bonus from my employer. That's no longer going to happen.

I think it's worth pointing out that unlike Google and Apple, McCain and Obama are both in favor of the traditional, opposite-sex, definition of marriage. Well, sort of for Obama, who's contradicted himself on the issue, so I'm not sure exactly what to think. He said at the Saddleback debate that marriage was just between a man and woman, and told gay rights groups he only favored civil unions, but now it seems he's coming out in favor Proposition 8? (Huh? Is this a huge flip-flop or just an extremely nuanced position he holds? Or, he's just been lying again?)

At least Rick Warren is holding the line. As apparently are these two bloggers who are also responding to Google's misplaced advocacy.

Finally, let me clear up some of the absolute wrongness from Google's announcement:

... there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text

This is absolute FUD. Proposition 8 would change things back to how Californians voted for them to be in 2000. There is zero "encroachment". Furthermore, it's not ambiguously written. It is wored identically to the proposition approved in California in 2000 by nearly 2/3 of California voters: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” How is that "ambiguous"?!

... it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 is neither "chilling" nor "discriminatory." Even should Proposition 8 pass, California law would continue to be that “domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits” as married individuals. The only thing that would change is the legal definition of "marriage."

While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality.

This is absolute bull. If Google "respected" beliefs on "both sides", they'd keep themselves out of the debate. You can't respect the pro-Proposition-8 viewpoint while simultaneously donating $100,000 to defeat the proposition.

And, again, should the proposition pass, domestic partners would retain "equality" under the law to married individuals.

We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

The proposition does NOT eliminate anyone's fundamental rights. I don't think heterosexuals even have a "fundamental right" to have their marriage be recognized by the government. Governments happen to, but it's not because it's a "right." Furthermore, should you allow the argument that everyone has "rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love" - to be logically consistent, you'd need to allow pedophiles the right to marry kids they love and/or immediate family members to marry each other should they be "in love". I know that sounds over the top, but I challenge anyone who disagrees to show me how that's not the logical extension of that argument.

Google making such a FUD-filled, and, frankly, dishonest, statement about Proposition 8 really turns me off to the Google brand. So much for "don't be evil."

Fred Thompson on McCain

2008-10-28T01:27:00.005-05:00

Fred Thompson does an excellent job layout out the case of McCain, which is one part fantastic, and one part utterly frustrating because the McCain campaign hasn't been able to make nearly as good of a case for itself on their own in the last however-many-months.

The full twelve minute (and high def) version of Fred's speech is available here.

Obamanomics for dummies

2008-10-28T01:21:00.002-05:00

Marxism, brought to you by the year 2001

2008-10-27T23:33:00.007-05:00

Conservatives should be able to show that Barack Obama's economic policies are so far to the left that moderate Americans should want to reject them without ignorantly and wrongly invoking "Marxism."

Through the magic of Google's 2001 search engine index and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, let's travel back to 2001. This is a time well before any ignorant people on the right were trying to tie Obama to Marxism.

In 2001 you could find a page titled "Workers Power Global | Marxism for Beginners". This is the website of an actual Marxist group.

This particular page from their website details the Workers Power's rejection of the "reformist strategy" of the UK's Socialist Labour Party.

Their rejection of SLP's agenda boils down to basically two points. First, the SLP wasn't calling for a total end to private property and the SLP wanted to work through existing government structures via "reform" rather than radical (militant) revolution.

Aside from the stray Che flag, I see nothing linking Obama to a call for government owning the means of production or violent overthrow of the government.

So, I submit to you that Obama is not a Marxist.

However, what Obama is calling for does fit in exactly with what the SLP was calling for in 2001.

As Workers Power put it in 2001:

The reformist strategy rests on three fundamental beliefs:
the idea that what is wrong with capitalism is how it distributes the wealth it creates;

that political reforms can ensure a redistribution of wealth and transform capitalism into a society in which injustice, inequality and the social conflict they generate will cease;

given parliamentary democracy, all these changes can be brought about legally and without violence.

That is Obama to a tee. Let's look at actual Obama quotes:

To Bill O'Reilly, Obama admits he wants to shift wealth from those "sitting pretty" to"people who are having a tough time affording college," to "people who ... don't have health care," to "people who are trying to figure out how they are going to pay the bills," and to the "waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips".

To "Joe the Plumber", Obama admits he wants to "spread the wealth around" to "all these folks who are bus drivers, teachers, autoworkers who make less" and "the waitress, that I just met over there who's things are slow."

To Charlie Gibson, Obama admits "I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair. ... What I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it."

Quite clearly, Senator Obama thinks, like the SLP, that "what is wrong with capitalism is how it distributes the wealth it creates."

But, unlike a Marxist, he's happy to, as the SLP wanted to, bring about "all these changes" "legally and without violence."

In fact, that's what this weekend's 2001 audio clip of Obama is precisely talking about. Do you bring about "redistributive change" (his words - not mine!) through the courts or though "political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers"?

Senator Obama is not a Marxist. But, he does find today's capitalist system to be "not fair" and wants to, through legal means, bring about "redistributive change". This is the agenda of the Socalist Labour Party, the party that in 2001 couldn't gain more than 3% of the vote in the much more "pro-big-government" United Kingdom.

Wake up, America. Hiking up taxes on 5% to give away money to the remaining 95% is unjust and un-American. Obama's economic policies aim to redistribute. I thought we were a country that rewarded success.

Roundup 10/27

2008-10-26T22:21:00.006-05:00

Items from the weekend that I find to be of quotable worth.

1. The real record of "free market" economic policies:

The main finding is that—after adjusting the Census Bureau data for three key factors—inflation-adjusted median household income for most household types increased by roughly 44 percent to 62 percent from 1976 to 2006.

- Where Has All the Income Gone?, Terry J. Fitzgerald - Senior Economist at the The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (H/T Cafe Hayek)

2. On media bias and the duping of America:

Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny.

...

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government.

- The Obama Temptation, Mark Levin at The Corner

3. A real, number-crunching, look at the candidate's tax plans:

... [thus] one dollar I earn today will yield my kids:

(1-t1){[1+r(1-t2)(1-t3)]^T}(1-t4).

For my illustrative calculations, let me take r to be 10 percent and my remaining life expectancy T to be 35 years.

If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.

Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.

Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario. In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent.

- My Personal Work Incentives, Greg Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard University

4. Will Obama govern as a moderate? Unlikely:

So why would any conservative think that Obama—friend of Ayers, Khalidi, Meeks, Pfleger, and Wright, veteran of mysterious campaigns in which rivals in 1996 and 2004 simply dropped out or were forced out, erstwhile advocate of repealing NAFTA, controlling guns, stopping new drilling and nuclear plants, zealot for bringing all troops home by March 2008, advocate of a trillion dollars in new spending, and raising the tax burden on the 5% who now pay 60% of the aggregate income taxes, supporter of more oppression studies and racial reparations—would not likewise try to govern as he has lived the last 20 years?

Why would anyone think that an Obama would not wish to enact the visions of those who first backed him—the Moveon.org crowd, ACORN, The Huffington Post, Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi, a Chris Dodd or Barney Frank—rather than the late pilers-on like Colin Powell or Scott McClellan? We should remember that, unlike the cases of Carter and Clinton, Obama would have both houses of Congress, and a (Republican) precedent of the federal government intervening into the free market, in the manner of 1932.

- Questions Still Not Answered, Victor Davis Hanson at Pajamas Media

5. Topics the mainstream media refuse to touch:

The MSM has decided that nothing and no one is going to stop Barack Obama from being elected. Not even a great story sure to sell a lot of papers. In fact, there are numerous stories about Barack Obama the MSM is ignoring right now: Obama and Vera Baker ... Obama and Ayers ... Obama and Rashid Khalidi ... Obama and Odingo ... Donor Fraud ... Obama’s Destitute Brother George

- Spiked! (Stories the press is sitting on until after the election), John @ Verum Serum

6. Total loss of discourse is becoming much too common of an occurrence on the left:

I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left's decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The vileness of much of what passes for political "argument" on the Left has to be seen to be believed. The worst impulses of human nature have been not just unleashed, but rewarded. If you haven't looked at web sites like Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, you have no idea what the phrase "gutter politics" really means.

Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin. It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan's video, would look like. Frankly, I can't imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes--the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

Barbarians at the Gates--of the White House - John Hinderaker @ Powerline

7. Even more on media bias and the legitimate implications of Obama's many radical political relationships:

The larger point is that the very existence of so many of these radical political partnerships (and that is what they are, significant political partnerships, not mere "marginal relationships," as Smith would have it) reveals a systematic pattern–a pattern that shows Obama to be a man of the left–so far left that he long had one foot out of (but also one foot in) the conventional Democratic mainstream. It’s true that the McCain campaign has not effectively made this point. Yet my Corner colleague Andy McCarthy has eloquently complained about that. The most important point is what Obama’s many radical political partnerships reveal about his overall perspective, and how his radicalism ties in to, and helps explain, even his more conventional-seeming Democratic liberalism. I have written extensively about all of this.

Racial or liberal? It’s not an either/or. What’s certain is that Obama is not the post-ideological, post-partisan pragmatist he presents himself as. The press has shamefully colluded in that false presentation.

- Bias Unmasked, Stanley Kurtz @ National Review Online

8. Now even liberal journalists are recognizing how far in the tank their colleagues are. I give you A:

If you were going to events during the primaries, what you saw was that the executive editors and the top people at the networks were all rushing to Obama events, bringing their children, celebrating it, saying they were, there's this part of history. I think they plugged into the Obama narrative in a way that they said, “you know what, out with the past.” And they've been very critical of President Bush and Senator McCain, as an extension of Bush, playing into the Obama campaign theme. I don't think there's any question about this. The American people are smart, they can see this. That's why Obama's on every magazine cover -- I've spend too much time in airports, you walk through there, it's like you're walking through an Obama campaign event. So, there's no question in my mind the media has been more supportive of Senator Obama.

- (Liberal NPR journalist) Juan Williams, H/T NewsBusters)

9. And B:

If there's any doubt there was a double standard [in the media's coverage] in this race, it is completely laid to rest by this because there is no way that this can be ignored.

- (Liberal columnist) Kirsten Powers, H/T NewsBusters

10. Obama's hardball tactics against those that dare to challenge him continue unabated:

This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely at best, for the duration of the remaining days until the election.

- The Obama Campaign, in retaliation to perhaps the only media interview they've had that asked real questions of Joe Biden (to which, Biden lied himself out of answering). H/T Monica Crowley

Independent Voters: What I don't understand

2008-10-22T00:18:00.003-05:00

Dear independent voters,

Please enlighten me: What I simply don't understand is why you are thinking about voting for Barack Obama.

If you were someone on the left, someone who thinks bigger government is better government, someone who thinks "spreading the wealth" is a good idea, someone who thinks Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are the best thing since sliced bread: OK, I get it, you and Senator Obama share the same ideology. You hold common values and policy positions. Knock yourself out with an Obama vote.

But if you are independent?

OK, let's start with McCain. If you are an independent, why wouldn't McCain be your guy? This is a Senator who's keystone pieces of legislation are named in the form McCain-Democrat. McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, etc., etc.

As a conservative I still cringe at about 30% of the things that come out of McCain's mouth because so much of his policy positions are distinctly un-conservative. I've railed against McCain right here on this blog, and if he were to win the presidency, I'm sure I'd so again. I only support McCain because's he's the least anti-conservative candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning.

McCain originally earned the title of "Maverick" as a pejorative because he so often took the offensive against Republican people and positions. He is the very definition of a "moderate" politician.

So, maybe you don't like his choice of Palin. But you should. She, like you, has an independent streak. She took on members of her own party. She formed an administration that consisted of Independents, Republicans, and Democrats. If you want a "Washinton outsider", well, there is exactly one person out of both tickets that meets that requirement - and it's Sarah Palin.

What is more, it was you, the independents, that made McCain the frontrunner for the GOP presidential choice. McCain won the New Hampshire primary but didn't come in first among self described Republicans. He also took the South Carolina primary, but again, didn't come in first among self described Republicans. It was you, the independent voters, that picked McCain for the Republican party.

But now you're putting your support behind Obama?! This confuses me in so many ways.

For starters, don't you realize how liberal he is?

I've always imagined "independent voters" as a bunch that are sick of politicians lying to them, doing whatever shady things they can to win, promising change and reform and bipartisanship and then governing from the ideological extremes.

But Barack Obama is that kind of politician. And I think you could claim he is the very worst of that kind of politician because of the degree to which he tries to cover up the fact he is that kind of politician.

OK, so maybe that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom and the media's Obama narrative: So, please, hear me out on this.

First all, for all his talk about a "new politics", Obama has happily engaged in "old" dirty trick politics when it's been to his political advantage.

Obama has also routinely falsely make things up out of whole cloth when it's been to his political advantage. Put most starkly - he has no problem lying to you. And, given his history of breaking pledges, Senator Obama's word certainly doesn't seem very trustworthy.

As if making things up and saying false statements weren't bad enough, Obama also has no problem leveling hypocritical attacks against his opponents.

And how do you get, as an independent voter, get past Obama's thug-like attempts to silence his critics?

Finally, there are all the (overplayed) Obama connections. I don't want to get deep into these, but please take a serious moment to consider the following: Would you be comfortable sitting through Rev. Wright's sermons? Would you be comfortable attending a political event hosted by William Ayers? Would you be comfortable having Tony Rezko spending $625,000 to help you complete a deal on a house?

None of those seem to me like situations independent voters would be comfortable with.

Barack Obama can deliver an amazing speech and has run a tremendously well executed campaign to make people believe he is a "post-partisan" moderate fighting to bring hope and change. But he's not. He is simply a typical liberal politician using the worse kinds of political techniques of hypocrisy, spreading falsehoods, and intimidation to try to bring a distinctly non-moderate agenda to Presidency.

I ask again - if you are an independent voter supporting Barack Obama... why?

For the record, Obama is no moderate

2008-10-22T00:15:00.004-05:00

Senator Obama attempts to present himself as "post-partisan" and moderate. But he is not.

This is a candidate who has a more liberal voting record than Hillary Clinton. (Or any member of the Senate for that matter.)

Senator Obama likes to throw around the whole "McCain voted the same way as Bush 90 percent of the time" claim. I'm skeptical of the facts behind that because Presidents don't vote in the Senate ... but, if you are giving weight to the report that came to that conclusion, consider for a moment that it also shows that Senator Obama voted with fellow Democrats in the Senate 97 percent of the time.

That's voting 97% percent of the time with the party that, in it's two years of control over the Congress, has brought the approval rating of the Congress to its lowest levels in history (which stands right now around 14%).

It confuses me to no end that voters apparently want to send even more Democrats to the Congress and give Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi a president of the same party who won't get in the way of their extreme, left-of-center, agenda.

Does the average American really believe in redistribution and "spreading the wealth around"? I really hope not.

For the record, Obama is no stranger to "dirty politics"

2008-10-22T00:14:00.003-05:00

In his autobiographies, Obama recounts how, in his first election (a paltry dozen years ago), he swayed people over to vote for him on his message of hope and change.

The truth is quite different.

As the New Yorker reports: "Privately, however, [Obama] unleashed his operators. With the help of the Dobrys, he was able to remove not just Palmer's [his primary political opponent] name from the ballot but the name of every other opponent as well." Hardly "hope and change" - all he did was kick everyone off the ballot so he ran unopposed.

And that example of Obama's embrace of "dirty-trick" politics is not an outlier. It was simply one of many examples that were regular occurrences over Obama's political career. As the Wall Street Journal points out:

The act of throwing an incumbent off the ballot in such a fashion does not fit neatly into the narrative of a public-spirited reformer who seeks to make people less cynical about politics.

But Mr. Obama's offenses against the idea of a "new politics" are many, and go well beyond hardball election tactics.

...

The most dramatic examples of Mr. Obama's commitment to old-style politics are his repeated endorsements of Chicago's machine politicians, which came in opposition to what people of all ideological stripes viewed as the common good.

In the 2006 election, reformers from both parties attempted to end the corruption in Chicago's Cook County government. They probably would have succeeded, too, had Mr. Obama taken their side. Liberals and conservatives came together and nearly ousted Cook County Board President John Stroger, the machine boss whom court papers credibly accuse of illegally using the county payroll to maintain his own standing army of political cronies, contributors and campaigners.

And it doesn't end there. In March 2007, Obama endorsed Dorothy Tillman, another clearly corrupt "Machine" politician running against a reform-minded independent candidate, Pat Dowell.

Despite the media narative to the contrary, Barack Obama certainly did not "rise above" the scandals of Chicago politics. He was right there, in the midst of it.

For the record, Obama has repeatily attempted to silence his critics

2008-10-22T00:13:00.007-05:00

I know many staunch libertarian voters will conciencously decide to not cast their vote for McCain in November because of McCain-Feingold. It is one of several reasons I've waivered between voting for McCain or no one (and by "no one" I mean "probably Bob Barr").

Anyone concerned about free speech should certainly not vote for Obama though.

Throughout his campaign, Obama has resorted to heavy handed ("thug" seems like an apt description) tactics to silence the speech of those he disagrees with - often invoking government agencies to do this work for him.

To start things off, it's worth taking note that during the primary, apparently, Pro-Hillary Clinton Blogspot/Blogger-based blogs and Facebook accounts regularly were taken offline.

Now maybe that wasn't the result of official Obama-Campaign actions. But the all of the following were:

1. The Obama campaign launched an all out attack on journalist Stanley Kurtz. First they started with a smear campaign, calling Kurtz "slimy," a "smear merchant", and a "character assassin". Then, by way of an "Obama Action Wire" they tried to strong arm WGN radio in Chicago from allowing Kurtz to make an appearance on a talk radio show.

2. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Obama campaign threatened radio stations with legal action if they didn't stop playing an NRA ad. The rather chilling text of the legal letter Obama's legal team sent included:

For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.

...

Because you need not air this advertisement, your station bears responsibility for its content when you do grant access. See Felix v. Westinghouse Radio Stations, 186 F.2d 1, 6 (3rd Cir.), cert denied, 314 U.S. 909 (1950).

Moreover, you have a duty "to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising" Licensee Responsibility With Respect to the Broadcast of False, Misleading or Deceptive Advertising, 74 F.C.C.2d 623 (1961).

Failure to prevent the airing of "false and misleading advertising" may be "probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility." Cosmopolitan Broad. Corp. v. FCC, 581 F.2d 917, 927 (D.C. Cir. 1978).

Some freedom of speech that allows!

3. The Obama campaign tried to use the Department of Justice to silence the American Issues Project from running an ad about Ayers, and even went after AIP's top donor.

4. Just days ago, Obama again is trying to use the Department of Justice to silence critics. This time it's against politicians who dared to criticize ACORN.

5. In Missouri, the Obama campaign attempted to assemble "The Barack Obama Truth Squad" - a collection of sheriffs and prosecutors who would target anyone the campaign deemed to be spreading false information about Obama. These actions led Missouri goveernor Matt Blunt to release a statement with the following:

[...] and Obama, and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill, have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson's thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.

Anyone who cares about free speech and dissent should be seriously concerned about an Obama presidency.

Probably the biggest threat to free speech looming in front of us would be bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. In fairness, Obama has released a statement saying he does not favor "reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters." In the same statement though, he calls for more government involvement in media ("Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets").

It's also really hard for me to imagine a President Obama vetoing a Fairness Doctrine bill from the Congress after he's voted down the line with his Democratic Senate colleauges 97% of the time.

And what's more, how important would the Fairness Doctrine even be if Obama is using the DOJ to go after those he disagrees with as he is today?

For the record, Obama has made numerous hypocritical attacks

2008-10-22T00:12:00.013-05:00

This campaign has shown that Obama hypocritically attacks his opponents for things that are equally true of himself.

As a few of many examples:

In the primary, he attacked Hillary Clinton for "taking money from oil companies", but by the same standard by which he leveled his attack, Obama, too, was "taking money from oil companies".

Now in the general election campaign, he has attacked McCain because's McCain's chief strategist own a lobbying firm ... but the same is true of Obama's chief strategist.

He even attacked both McCain and Clinton with this line back in February: "Unlike Senator Clinton or Senator McCain, we haven't taken a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs," which was just outright false.

One of the most recent attacks has been against McCain running negative ads, but Obama's spent more on negative ads than any other candidate in history.

The extent of Obama's hypocrisy even goes so far that he smears people while trying to "fight the smears" about himself.

For the record, Obama has no problem breaking his pledges

2008-10-22T00:12:00.012-05:00

In 2004, Obama publicly said he "ruled out" running for President in 2008 because: "if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people."

Even up to January 2006 he continued to pledge to serve his full 6 year Senate term and not run for President on on the Meet the Press:

Obama: "I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed."

Russert: "So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?"

Obama: "I will not."

Relating to a different pledge, this past month, Obama raised $150 million. That's almost double what McCain is legally restricted from raising for the entire general election campaign.

The reason for this disparity is that Obama broke his pledge to, with McCain, accept public financing for their campaigns. In his own words, Senator Obama put it this way: "I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

For the record, Obama regularly invents false claims

2008-10-22T00:12:00.007-05:00

Following the Saddleback Civil Forum, the Wall Street Journal pointed out:

It is telling that, when asked at the Saddleback Forum last weekend to name an instance in which he had worked against his own party or his own political interests, he didn't have a good answer. He claimed to have worked with his current opponent, John McCain, on ethics reform. In fact, no such thing happened. The two men had agreed to work together, for all of one day, in February 2006, and then promptly had a well-documented falling-out. They even exchanged angry letters over this incident.

Obama's "imaginative" response about a time he crossed party lines is far from the only time Obama invented totally false claims to bolster his positions.

Also at Saddleback, he invented fake statistics about abortion.

In a speech about the economy he falsely claimed "American families, since George Bush has been in office, have seen average family incomes go down $2,000."

And the trend continued with him lying about political realities in Columbia so he could slam free trade in the final debate.

He's even been so brash as to put together an ad praising himself for voting for a bill that ... he never voted for.

And then there are things Obama has been less than honest about. For instance, take Obama's claim that "the statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach." In Obama's speech on race though, Obama seems to contradict himself though, having said "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."

What is more, Obama's own book - "The Audacity of Hope" - is titled after a Wright sermon that includes "statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy."

Regardless of if you label these invented claims just "misleading" or outright "lies," the clear fact is that Obama has no problem telling you things that are just plain false.

(And, for a even more comprehensive list of Obama falsehoods, might I suggest you check out this site.)

Sweet on Obama Sixteen

2008-10-20T22:32:00.004-05:00

This is humorous. Well, sort of. It's also disturbing that the media is so in the tank this can exist:

The Media Research Council and News Busters are doing a NCAA-bracket style Sweet On Obama Sixteen poll to vote on the most over the top and in-the-tank for Obama:

The American people in poll after poll and in greater and growing numbers are railing against the egregious liberal bias of the press. And nowhere are the media more horrendously slanted than in their coverage of the presidential campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. They are (to say the least) very, very sweet on him.

The MRC has put together this college basketball tournament-style bracket event, the Sweet-On-Obama Sixteen Media Bias Tournament, so that these angered members of the media’s audience can vote for who gives Sen. Obama the most loving and fawning coverage of all.

Voting for the Sweet-On-Obama Sixteen begins on Monday, October 6th and lasts for one week.

On Monday, October 13th we will announce the Round One winners – those who have advanced to the Enamored Eight. Voting for the Enamored Eight begins then and lasts throughout that week.

On Monday, October 20th, we will make known the names of those who have advanced to the Infatuated Four, and begin that week’s voting to determine who will square off in the finals.

We will announce those winners on Monday, October 27th and begin a week’s worth of voting to determine the Media’s Most Valuable Partisan (MVP), to be proclaimed with much fanfare on Monday, November 3rd. Who in the press gets the greatest thrill up his or her leg in covering their favorite candidate? Now it can be decided.

This week they are down to the "Infatuated Four." I'm pulling for Chris "thrill up my leg" Matthews.

For this week: Vote early. Vote often.

Capital Sell Off

2008-10-20T21:56:00.004-05:00

I can't help put think that at least part of the volatility in the markets is due to the fact it looks increasingly likely that Obama will be president. I suspect that if he wins, there will be continued major sell offs of anything taxed under capital gains tax laws between election day and inaugural day. After all, Obama wants to nearly double the capital gains rate (for "fairness"!)

If you're in a selling mood already, and you're given the option of giving the government 15% of your profit now or 28% of your profit in a few months, well, it's not exactly rocket science.

What's wrong with fighting for a plumber?

2008-10-20T00:04:00.003-05:00

Especially a plumber who wants to work hard towards one day owning and expanding his own plumbing business?

Geez. Poor Joe the Plumber.

And, Senator Obama: If you're going to ostensibly claim you're running to help the working class, you could at least pretend to not be such a snob.

David Crimmen for Congress!

2008-10-14T23:58:00.006-05:00

The congressional district I live in now is pretty much a text-book case of what gerrymandering looks like:

My House rep. is Louise Slaughter, and she's won handily in the last two elections about 75% to 25%.

This cycle, David Crimmen, apparently, is challenging her. What's unfortunate is it took me about 10 minutes using Google to figure out if Slaughter actually had an opponent, and if so, who he was.

Crimmen is someone I can get behind though. He's entire campaign site seems to be a Blogger-hosted blog with a handful of entries. I wish he had a more traditional campaign site (that I could actually use to send his campaign a few bucks). But, his post on the bailout is excellent:

This $700 Billion Dollar bailout is a slap in the face to both fair markets and the taxpayer. What is this number actually based on? “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” This might be funny if it weren't so revolting. Then when Congress couldn't get the bill passed the first time they just loaded it up with billions in so-called "sweeteners". According to Bloomberg.com: "Senators attached a provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that passed tonight by a vote of 74-25."

...

Not surprisingly New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D) whom Crimmen is challenging voted for the bill both times. Louise Slaughter may think that bigger government simply throwing money at the problem is the solution, but then again it's leadership like that that got us here. It's up to us to remember that come election day.

David: consider this post me throwing the tiny amount of pull my blog has behind your campaign. I'd love to see you take Slaughter's seat. The history of our district and your lack of much of a campaign don't leave me too optimistic though.

Ayers & Discourse

2008-10-14T23:03:00.004-05:00

Following my previous post - something I want to point out. The Bill Ayers thing is a subject that, if done right, I think could qualify as valid political discourse.

If McCain had launched his political career at, and then repeatedly teamed up politically with, an unremorseful abortion bomber, I don't think anyone on the left would dispute it's relevance to the campaign.

Who you associate yourself with politically speaks to your values and judgment. Those are valid issues to put on the table. And the Ayers scenario and the made up McCain scenario are not cases of association fallacy (or, commonly, "guilt by association"). Assuming Obama shares the same views as Bill Ayers would be an association fallacy. Pointing out Obama repeatedly teamed up with someone way out of the mainstream is not.

But, with people yelling "Kill Him!" about Bill Ayers at campaign rallies, the McCain campaign clearly hasn't handled this the right way. You can't blame a campaign for everything someone says, but they clearly fanned the flames that led to the possibility of such out bursts.

Also, since the campaign started hitting on the Ayers connection prior the the previous debate, McCain really should have brought it up, in an intelligent and discourse-respecting way, at the debate. Something like "Senator Obama: you present yourself as someone moderate and 'post partisan.' How then do you reconcile your willingness to freely associate yourself with, for political purposes, a whole laundry list of people way out of the mainstream, like Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Tony Rezko?"

Of course, I'd really encourage McCain to take a different route. He could make the same point about Obama's judgment and willing association with unsavory characters - but without invoking the topic of a domestic terrorist (which is what gets the ignorant right into such a frenzy) - by asking something like: "Senator Obama: The American people know my ticket wants to reform Washington. You claim you want to work for reform as well. But why should the American people believe you since, in 2007 you endorsed Dorothy Tillman for re-election? The people of Chicago's 3rd Ward were able to see Tillman's corruption and vote her out office. Why weren't you able to see that she was corrupt?"

Discourse Off Course

2008-10-14T21:37:00.007-05:00

When someone has to write a blog post clarifying who a campaign rally participant was yelling "Kill Him" about, something has gone seriously askew.

The media seems more interested in covering the morons doing this kind of nonsense that are supporting McCain, but it's going on on both sides (I present exhibit A for instance). I raise this point not to try to get into a shouting match about which side may or may not be worse, but because it's awful on both sides - and that's a problem.

And, yes, Rachel Maddow, when you invite David Frum on your show so you can use him as a tool to beat on the McCain campaign and instead he decides to show you are part of the discourse problem, he's hitting the nail on the head.

Is it any wonder we have people who want to vote for Obama "because of his policies" but obviously have no idea what his policies are?

Or, from the latest CBS poll, that 1 in 25 Americans are bothered that "Obama is a Muslim"? (Apparently, about 4 times that - about 13% - still think Obama is a Muslim. How nice of that ignorant 9% to not hold their ignorant perceptions against him.) And more than half of voters think McCain is more likely than Obama to raise taxes!? (McCain doesn't want to raise taxes on anyone, Obama's at least admitting that he wants to dramatically raise taxes on the top 1 in 20 Americans.)

Of course, CBS (like all major outlets) is part of the problem too. Without even touching the topic of media bias, I present this graphic that I ripped off their website while reading their poll:

Politics should be about ideas, not a "horse race". Media outlets cover the "horse race" because it's easy. You run some polls, you bring on some pundits to guess at why things changed. Actually taking time to look into issues might require some work, so they shy away. Night after night: new poll, same punditry, same ignorant public. If you're lucky, you get a new soundbite with the poll (and clearly, sound bites are sufficient to understand proposals for 700 billion dollar government actions).

One of the most frustrating things I've heard in this entire campaign season is friends of mine telling me how Tina Fey has "nailed" her impression of Sarah Palin. Yeah, Tina Fey looks similar, and her impressive talents at vocal impersonation do a great job, but the Palin she "plays" is a moron. Sarah Palin is no moron, but my friends are taking their cues about Palin from a late night comedy show. Of course this says nothing about the greater concern that a great swath of "young people" are choosing the Daily Show and Colbert Report as their primary news sources. Splendid.

Now I don't want to pretend like lack of civil discourse is anything new. We can trace the tradition back to at least 1800 and James Callender. But, this is America - shouldn't we be making progress?

Can we all come together and denounce:

: Attack ads that are deliberately misleading, believing moronic spam e-mails about a candidate's religion (or, really, anything in a moronic spam e-mail?!), listening to "the haters" - like Coulter and Olbermann, voting for someone because of stupid "soft issues" like they're my same race/gender/whatever, they'd be fun to have a drink with, etc., and reading blogs that start rumors like this one.

Please?!

Update: Foolishly I headed over to Eric Massa's "diary" (blog) which is hosted at the Daily Kos. Here is an ad from their side bar:

If you think that's funny, I'm going to say that you're what's wrong with today's politics.

And a challenge to the Daily Kos and Eric Massa: Do you think that ad is appropriate to be shown on your blog? Do you think that helps promote civility?

Eric Massa

2008-10-12T22:29:00.006-05:00

Up until I last year I lived in New York congressional district 29. Two years ago, the contest was between Republican Randy Kuhl (incumbent) and Democrat Eric Massa. This year's election reprises that contest.

In 2006, the Iraq War was "pre-surge," still making daily newspaper headlines, and deeply unpopular. Massa's campaigned tried to seize on the unpopularity of the war and ran on a "I served in the military, and I'm against the war" platform. The race was within a couple points and it took a couple days after the election to figure out exactly who won.

My favorite moment of the entire campaign was getting a voicemail message on my cell from a Massa supporter who wanted me to vote for Massa because Kuhl voted in favor of "CAFTA: The Columbian Free Trade Agreement" which would "ship our jobs to Columbia".

Not being utterly ignorant, I knew the bill was the Central America Free Trade Agreement (or, actually - the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement). And having a basic grasp of simple economics, such as the principle of comparative advantage, I'm also not ignorant enough to think free trade is a raw deal. For those and a number of other reasons, I voted Kuhl.

Kuhl is nothing to write home about. He resembles everything I hate about the Republican party. In a debate this past week on a local Rochester TV station, Kuhl basically refused to admit that all the pork he's brought back to the district is, in fact, pork. And, as of tonight, doing a Google search on "Kuhl" and "pork" turns up a post on my blog as the top hit (in which I take Kuhl to task for his porking).

And yet, somehow, Massa winds up being even worse than Kuhl in my book.

Let me see if I can explain using this handy diagram of Massa's campaign (click for a larger version):

At some point, Eric Massa got a hold of a picture of Randy Kuhl and President Bush smiling in the back seat of a limo together. Massa uses this image in several of his TV ads and apparently, has a giant wall sized poster of it that he takes around with him.

Apparently, he thinks the good people of NY-29 can be swayed over like a bunch of 4 year olds using the juvenile logic of "see! see! see! Bush is like soooo evil, and Kuhl is like Bush and so Kuhl is evil. Look, look! They were even in a limo together! And they're smiling!!!!!!"

Those of us that aren't 4 years old say "Wow. Two politicians of the same political party were in a car together. And, what's the big deal again?"

Massa also continues to be anti-war and anti-trade. Given our success in Iraq but the trouble in our economy, I find the anti-trade position to be the more concerning of the two. A few weeks ago I responded on YouTube to his anti-trade ad with the following that I'll quote here:

In 1930, in an attempt to help a troubled economy, the government followed the advice Eric Masssa is advocating in this ad: to move away from free trade towards protectionism.

The result was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, one of the central causes of the Great Depression.

By contrast, the United States saw great economic gains from NAFTA, a policy established under President Clinton!

Our current economic issues come from HUD, Freddie, and Fannie pushing subprime loans, NOT free trade.

I'll at least give Massa the benefit that he allows comments on his videos.

Perhaps the most concerning thing about Massa though, beyond his juvenile "Bush = Kuhl" rhetoric and stance on free trade, is that in his ads he promotes himself as an "independent voice" but he'd be nothing of the sort.

Massa's campaign is being supported by groups that are left-wing (like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and far-left-wing (like the Daily Kos). These groups aren't giving Massa massive amounts of campaign cash to be "an independent voice."

They want him to be their voice and give left-wing Democrats even further control over the Congress. Or, as Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas, puts it:

We have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement's backs and crush their spirits. In the White House, that means getting Obama a broad popular and geographic mandate for change. In the House, that means annihilating the Republican caucus and working toward a 100-seat Democratic majority. In the Senate it means getting to a 60-seat filibuster proof majority.

Any typically Republican voters considering "going Democrat" this cycle may want to think about if they really want to see a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats in Congress under the control of Nancy "you have to rip their face off" Pelosi and Harry "this war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything" Reid.

Finally, I'll leave you with a YouTube video I put together of Massa flatly lying about the Bush record on taxes. I did feel a little out of place putting together something that's an awful lot like an attack ad, but I'm so sick of hearing liberal politicians slander the "Bush tax cuts" as tax cuts that were only for the "super rich" that I thought it important to call one of them out on this:

Pro-Palin Mainstream Media Article!

2008-10-05T17:59:00.003-05:00

As I read this, I could barely believe it.

Granted, the Telegraph isn't in the US, but I'm still counting it as part of the "mainstream media" in general.

This article hits on all the facts about Palin I learned about her during my year pulling for her to be the VP candidate, but which US media outlets don't bother mentioning. This is all the stuff they should have covered upon her formal entrance onto the national stage, when the media instead decided to focus exclusively on Bristol Palin's pregnancy and if Sarah Palin could be a mother and the Vice President.

Highlights (which is actually most the article, because it's that good):

It is clear that few in America, let alone Britain, have any idea what to make of Sarah Palin. The Republicans' vice-presidential candidate confounds the commentators because they don't understand the forces that shaped her in the remote state of Alaska.

Thus, most coverage dwells on exotica - the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband - combined with befuddlement at how a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a few years.

But, having worked with Alaskans, I know something of the challenge she has faced, and why - contrary to what Democrats think - it could make her a powerful figure in the White House.

The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry, where holding on to a licence requires considerable nous and networking skills.

Her rise from parent-teacher association to city council gave her a natural political base in her home town of Wasilla. Going on to become mayor was a natural progression. Wasilla's population of 9,000 would be a small town in Britain, and even in most American states.

But Wasilla is the fifth-largest city in Alaska, which meant that Palin was an important player in state politics.

...

Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. ...

Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state's share of energy revenues.

This agenda, pursued throughout Palin's commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.

With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska's energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes - the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having "no international experience" particularly absurd.

At least there is one outlet out there that's not in the tank (even if it isn't located in the US).

Boudreaux on Greed

2008-10-05T17:55:00.003-05:00

This is why I wish all politicians, and McCain especially, would stop blaming our economic problems on "Greed":

"Greed" certainly can be unleashed to do harm, but it can also be harnessed to do good. Any compelling explanation of any observed economic reality must take "greed" as a given while identifying the specific incentives provided by prevailing social institutions. If these institutions make serving the needs of others the best path to personal gain, then "greed" is harnessed for human betterment. But if these institutions make predating on others - either through force or fraud, or either intentionally or unintentionally - the best path to personal gain, then "greed" will indeed lead people to act destructively. In either case, though, it is the institutions and their accompanying incentives, rather than "greed," that explain economic reality.

Ayers, Todd Palin, AIP

2008-10-05T17:12:00.004-05:00

Marc Ambinder notes Democrats are now trying to use a moral-equivalence argument about Todd Palin's membership to the Alaskan Independence Party to dismiss Obama's ties to unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers.

Ayers founded a group that performed bombings and killed people. Obama certainly wasn't part of that (as he likes to say, he was 8 years old at the time), but the fact that Obama launched his campaign at the home of Ayers raises significant concerns about Obama's judgement and what he's willing to do out of political expediency. Obama's continued connection to Ayers throughout his adult political life (see Stanley Kurtz's excellent coverage of this here, here, and here, and Fausta's Blog's roundup retort to yesterday's dismissive article on the Ayers connection in the New York Times here) raises even more concerns.

Contrast Obama's deliberate connections with Ayers for political reasons with Sarah Palin's husband having membership during parts of the 90s with a political party that seems a bit out of the mainstream to most Americans, but which is mainstream enough in Alaska to have had Walter Joseph Hickel, a member of their party, elected Governor in the late 60s and then again during the early 90s.

A lot of what the AIP stands for is stuff I stand for. Personal liberty. Smaller government. There does seem to be a push by some in the party for a secessionist movement to make Alaska no longer part of the United States. But that doesn't seem to be a central and firm part of their platform. The official position on this seems to be just to let Alaskans have a vote on this since they feel they were robbed of such an opportunity to decide themselves at the time of statehood.

Especially considering that Hickel - again a member of their party that ran under their party - was against secession, puts a pretty big block to the claim that the entirety of the party is pro-secession. And furthermore, other than Todd Palin's brief association with the AIP, there doesn't seem to be any actual evidence that Todd Palin was in favor of secession.

The two events are hardly equivalent.

The Democrats Think You're Stupid

2008-10-05T16:13:00.006-05:00

At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with.

The Democratic National Committee is running smear sites peddling outright distortions any informed voter should be able to see through.

The first DNC smear site is "ExxonMcCain":

The premise of that site is to distort McCain's proposal to lower the overall corporate tax rate (which would benefit all corporations, so ExxonMobile - being a corporation - benefits as a side effect) into some huge hand out to oil companies. Biden and Obama like to talk about McCain's "tax cut for the oil companies" too, which is a deliberate effort to mislead; but this site takes it to a whole different level.

(And, by the way, for 2007, if you combine amount of taxes paid by the bottom half of all tax filers, you'll come to an amount that's still less than the amount of taxes ExxonMobile paid. [1])

The second DNC smear site is "The Next Cheney"

Sarah Palin = Dick Cheney. Riiiiiight. The conventional wisdom among the DNC is that Cheney is in cahoots with Big Oil, and the biggest stretch they make on this smear site is that Palin is too. In fact, Palin pushed for (and succeeded with) a $1200.00 Alaska Resource Rebate paid for out of oil company profits. Give me a break.

They DNC is at best twisting the truth and it would not be unfair to say they're lying. That should give you pause about letting their candidates take control of both chambers of the Congress and the presidency.

Where did Joe Biden's Money Go?

2008-10-04T11:32:00.004-05:00

Sarah and Todd Palin released their 2006 and 2007 tax returns yesterday, which the [sarcasm] unbiased Associated Press [/sarcasm] took to mean that they were hiding something because they released them on a Friday.

A few weeks ago Joe and Jill Biden released their tax records. Also on a Friday, but shockingly, no accusation of them trying to hide something. But media bias isn't where I'm trying to go with this post.

Today I took a fresh look at the Bidens' tax records and came out wondering the following: Where did Joe Biden's money go?

In a press release from about a year ago, Biden takes pride in having one of the lowest net worths in the US Senate:

In a 2005 ranking of the 100 senators for wealth, [Biden] was 99th. In other words, unlike most other presidential contenders, he isn't a millionaire.

"He's not even close," said David Wilhelm, who was Biden's campaign manager during his first run for the presidency in 1987 and is now a senior adviser to Biden.

Biden comes across as "a middle-class guy with middle-class aspirations, sometimes middle-class resentments," Wilhelm said.

In fact, Open Secrets puts Biden's net worth between about negative $300,000 and a positive $275,000. They go ahead and sort of average that down to a net worth of approximately $0.

Here is where I'm left scratching my head. Biden has been a Senator since 1973. Senators make a nice chunk of change - a lot more than the middle class on main street do (to use the political parlance of our times). The Bidens' tax returns released a few week ago go back just 10 years but show that in that 10 years, the Bidens have pulled in approximately $2.5 million.

Let's put $2.5 million in perspective. The Census Bureau pegs median income just north of $50,000. If you reasonably assume the median American household only has income while working, and that your average worker works about 50 years (say ages 20 to 70), a lifetime of household income comes to ... $2.5 million.

So in 10 years, the Bidens made as much money as the median American household makes in their lifetime. Putting it another way, the Bidens make five times more than the median American household per year.

But, curiously, despite making a rather substantial amount of money, the Bidens have no net worth. How does that happen?

I don't want a vice president making decisions about our economy when he apparently can't even keep his household finances in order.

Katie Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions

2008-10-01T23:16:00.004-05:00

Ugh. In my now more than 13 months of pulling for Sarah Palin, I've seen her do great interviews. I'm not sure what happened, but it's been painful to watch her in these Katie Couric interviews.

In any event, while Palin's answers to Katie Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions have been wanting to say the least, at least they appear to me to be factually accurate. Joe Biden's have contained important factual inaccuracies. Of course Katie Couric doesn't try to play "gotcha" with Biden, so most people won't realize this.

On abortion, Biden tries to sing the praises of what's commonly thought of as the trimester-based balancing test, specifically referring to "the first three months," "the second three months," and "the third three months" and various restrictions attaching to each.

This is the "first three months" myth, as described below:

In its new poll, the AP presented poll respondents with this highly misleading characterization of Roe v. Wade: "The 1973 Supreme Court ruling called Roe v. Wade made abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal."

The real Roe decision legalized abortion for any reason up to "viability." "Viability" refers to the capacity of the baby to survive independently of the mother (with technological assistance), which is reached in the latter portion of the second trimester (about five and one-half months). Roughly ten percent of all reported abortions, or approximately 130,000 a year, occur AFTER the first three months. (The Court also required states to allow abortion for "health" reasons even AFTER "viability." The Court defined "health" to include "all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient.")

The Supreme Court itself has emphatically repudiated the "first three months" misconception again and again. For example, in the 1992 Casey ruling, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, and explicitly held that the abortion "right" applied with equal force at every point prior to "viability," adding, "We reject the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe."

In the Supreme Court's most recent abortion ruling, in 2000, the Court even struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortion, which is a method used in the fifth month and later, as inconsistent with Roe v. Wade. At least 68 percent of the public favors a ban on partial-birth abortion.

Characterizing Roe as legalizing abortion "in the first three months" or "in the first trimester" was formally declared erroneous in the early 1980s by senior news executives of the Associated Press, The New York Times, and other major organs of the news media. A directive by Louis Boccardi, then executive editor of the Associated Press, dated September 4, 1981, said, "The [Roe v. Wade] decision is often misreported, even now. . . . For summary purposes, you can say the court legalized abortion in 1973. . . . Thus, it's wrong to say only that the court approved abortion in the first three months. It did that, but more."

So, Joe Biden is in favor of the conventional-wisdom-version of Roe v. Wade, but doesn't actually understand the real ruling. Where's Katie Couric with a smarmy follow up question of "what other Supreme Court decisions do you not actually understand, Senator Biden?"

Next we come to Church-State Separation.

Biden:

The best way to look at it is look the every state where the wall's not built. Look at every country in the world where religion is able to impact ... the governance. Almost every one of those countries are in real turmoil.

The problem is not religion impacting governance. Our country's government was impacted by religion. Profoundly. Our primary founding document, the Declaration of Independence invokes our Creator as the source of our rights.

Britain's governance was profoundly impacted by religion during the abolitionist movement.

The US and UK: in real turmoil! News to me.

What Caused This Crisis?

2008-10-01T00:49:00.003-05:00

If I can find the time I'll try to write up some in-depth comments on what I've been able to digest about the causes for the current economic situation that's prompted "the bailout".

At this point, I largely blame about equally both government and private firms for both engaging in taking on too many subprime mortgages to get low income individuals into houses. The government both adopted policies that encouraged/forced this behavior, but private firms were engaging it in for their own benefit regardless of that. The subprime mortgage arrangements worked as long as house prices continued to grow, but house prices had grown too high and needed a correction which made the whole subprime setup fail. And hard.

For now I'll defer any future discussion of the topic to the following:

Arnold Kling discusses the housing market developments in an excellent and timely episode of EconTalk: Kling on Freddie and Fannie and the Recent History of the U.S. Housing Market. I highly urge people interested in understanding this state of affairs to listen to it.

Some background on Kling:

Arnold Kling is an independent scholar who writes about a wide variety of economic issues. He was an economist on the staff of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1980-1986, and served as a senior economist at Freddie Mac from 1986-1994.