Some macroeconomists say if we just study
the numbers long enough we'll be able to design better policy. That's like
the sign in the bar: Free Beer Tomorrow.
For an economist, these are the best of times and the
worst of times. We live in the best of times because everyone wants to
understand what happened to the economy and what's going to happen next.
Is the mess we're in a market failure or a
government failure? Is the stimulus plan working? Would tax cuts for small
business spur employment? When will the job market improve? Is inflation
coming? Do deficits matter?
So many questions and so little in the way of
answers. And so it is the worst of times for economists. There is no
consensus on the cause of the crisis or the best way forward.
There were Nobel Laureates who thought the original
stimulus package should have been twice as big. And there are those who blame
it for keeping unemployment high. Some economists warn of hyperinflation
while others tell us not to worry.
It makes you wonder why people call it the Nobel
Prize in Economic Science. After all, most sciences make progress. Nobody in
medicine wants to bring back lead goblets. Sir Isaac Newton understood a lot
about gravity. But Albert Einstein taught us more.
But in economics, theories that were once
discredited surge back into favor. John Maynard Keynes and the view that
government spending can create prosperity seem immortal. I thought
stagflation had put a stake in the heart of this idea back in the 1970s.
Suddenly, he's a genius once again. F.A. Hayek, Keynes's more laissez-faire
sparring partner, is drawing interest. There are various monetarists to
choose from, too. Which paradigm is the "right" way to think about
the boom and the bust? Or are they all wrong?
I once thought econometrics—the application
of statistics to economic questions—would settle these disputes and the
truth would out. Econometrics is often used to measure the independent impact
of one variable holding the rest of the relevant factors constant. But I've
come to believe there are too many factors we don't have data on, too many
connections between the variables we don't understand and can't model or
identify.
I've started asking economists if they can name a
study that applied sophisticated econometrics to a controversial policy issue
where the study was so well done that one side's proponents had to admit they
were wrong. I don't know of any. One economist told me that in general my
point was well taken, but that his own work (of course!) had been decisive in
settling a particular dispute.
Perhaps what we're really doing is confirming our
biases. Ed Leamer, a professor of economics at
UCLA, calls it "faith-based" econometrics. When the debate is over
$2 trillion in additional government spending vs. zero, we've stopped being
scientists and become philosophers. Do we want to be more like France with a
bigger role for government, or less like France?
Facts and evidence still matter. And economists
have learned some things that have stood the test of time and that we almost
all agree on—the general connection between the money supply and
inflation, for example. But the arsenal of the modern econometrician is
vastly overrated as a diviner of truth. Nearly all economists accept the fundamental
principles of microeconomics—that incentives matter, that trade creates
prosperity—even if we disagree on the implications for public policy.
But the business cycle and the ability to steer the economy out of recession
may be beyond us.
The defenders of modern macroeconomics argue that
if we just study the economy long enough, we'll soon be able to model it
accurately and design better policy. Soon. That reminds me of the permanent
sign in the bar: Free Beer Tomorrow.
We should face the evidence that we are no better
today at predicting tomorrow than we were yesterday. Eighty years after the
Great Depression we still argue about what caused it and why it ended.
If economics is a science, it is more like biology
than physics. Biologists try to understand the relationships in a complex
system. That's hard enough. But they can't tell you what will happen with any
precision to the population of a particular species of frog if rainfall goes
up this year in a particular rain forest. They might not even be able to
count the number of frogs right now with any exactness.
We have the same problems in economics. The economy
is a complex system, our data are imperfect and our models inevitably fail to
account for all the interactions.
The bottom line is that we should expect less of
economists. Economics is a powerful tool, a lens for organizing one's
thinking about the complexity of the world around us. That should be enough.
We should be honest about what we know, what we don't know and what we may
never know. Admitting that publicly is the first step toward respectability.
Mr. Roberts is a research fellow at Stanford
University's Hoover Institution, professor of economics at George Mason
University and a distinguished scholar in the Mercatus
Center.
Big government liberals aren't going to like this.
From a new CNN poll:
A majority of Americans think the federal
government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national
poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a
CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the
federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate
threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of
those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the
question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly
7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights
of Americans.
[Those who do not believe that the federal
government—and the state and local governments—are threats to
their lives, liberty and property, are either deadbeats on the dole
(including the vast majority of government employees), (b)
mentally-challenged, or (c) completely oblivious to the world around them.]
2/25/2010: Obama's Political Skills Built on Hot Air By Ronald Kessler
Most
of us learned from our parents that you don’t put the cart before the
horse. That’s most of us. President Obama apparently never learned that
lesson.
The
latest example is Obama’s orchestration of a bipartisan healthcare
summit to listen to ideas from Republicans and come up with a new plan. But
days before the summit, Obama released his own version of a healthcare bill
that was even more costly than the ones passed by the House and Senate.
Obama’s
strange way of approaching governing goes back to his first days in office,
when he announced that he would close the prison camp at Guantánamo
Bay even though he had no idea where the prisoners would go.
More
recently, Obama let Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. designate Manhattan as
the location of a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed without checking
with law enforcement officials to see what impact such a trial would have on
the security of the city.
Obama’s
lack of basic executive competence should come as no surprise. Beyond his own
campaign and his senatorial office, Obama never ran anything.
Only
one of the measures Obama proposed as a U.S. senator was enacted: a bill to
“promote relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.”
It
would be difficult to imagine a more mediocre record. Yet with the help of
fawning reporters, Obama managed to parlay extraordinary speaking and
political skills into a presidential campaign built on hot air.
In
his memoir, Obama wrote an extraordinarily revealing passage. He recalled how
being a community organizer taught him different ways to motivate the
powerless and work the government to help them. As his chief example, he
cited an effort to remove asbestos from Altgeld
Gardens, an all-black public housing project on Chicago’s South Side.
After
three years working as an organizer, Obama could say he helped obtain grants
for a jobs program and got asbestos removed from some pipes in the project.
But as the Los Angeles Times noted, the “large-scale change that was
needed at the 1,998-unit project was beyond his reach.” To this day,
most of the asbestos remains in the apartments.
Despite
this failure, Obama devoted more than 100 pages of “Dreams From My
Father” to his experiences at Altgeld Gardens
and surrounding areas.
“When
classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer
did, I couldn’t answer them directly,” he wrote.
Instead,
he said, “I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the
White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.
Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the
country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I
would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.”
Thus,
Obama admitted that he accomplished very little but that he was able to cover
that up with fancy talk.
Now
Obama is bringing that same cynical approach to governing the country.
Instead of electing a president, America has elected a sloganeer.
Ronald
Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous
reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.
Bill Bonner, reporting from Baltimore, Maryland...
The depression is alive and well!
Unemployment claims just came in higher than
expected.
And new house sales in January were at their lowest
ever. Pundits were quick to blame the snow. But sales were off even in areas
that had better-than-usual weather.
Household income has gone nowhere in 10 years.
Stocks have suffered a lost decade too. And now Ben Bernanke says we'd better
be careful...because the recovery ain't no sure thing.
The Fed chief has no idea. But average people know
what's going on. They know how hard it is to find a job. If you're in the
building trades...or you have only a year or two of college...you're pretty
much out of luck. You may have to retire before you ever start work again.
That's why there was such a big drop in consumer
confidence.
But look on the bright side. Building more houses
for people who couldn't afford to live in them was not exactly the greatest
business strategy. And all those people who were appraising, mortgaging and
selling houses can now find more useful work. Real jobs. Doing something more
useful. What are those real jobs going to be? We don't know yet. But it could
take a long time to find out. And in the meantime, we have a depression on
our hands...
So, let's enjoy it...
How do you enjoy a depression? Well, the first
thing is to make sure you're not in its way...
Dear readers may not know this, but in addition to
writing The Daily Reckoning your editor also has a serious job...
Yes, in the morning he is a moral
philosopher...gratuitously insulting public officials, whole professions, and
entire nationalities. He is grateful to them all...they make life so
entertaining! Imagine what kind of world we would have if people minded their
own business and got on with their lives... People would be richer and
happier, we don't doubt it...but at whom could we point a finger and laugh?
No, dear reader, the world needs its bumblers,
fools, politicians (are we repeating ourselves?), grifters (sorry...we did it
again!), and megalomaniacs. It needs someone to challenge the gods from time
to time. Otherwise, the gods wouldn't have the fun of whacking them. And we
wouldn't have the fun of watching.
Nearly every reform proposal offered to fix
“the health-care crisis” calls for increased governmental control
of medicine. These proposals are the logical result of the belief that there
is a “right” to medical care. But there is no such right. Rights,
properly understood, do no include an entitlement to the services of others.
— William Dale, “Free Medicine“ [1994]
Nearly every reform proposal offered to fix
“the health-care crisis” calls for increased governmental control
of medicine. These proposals are the logical result of the belief that there
is a “right” to medical care.
But there is no such right. Rights, properly
understood, do not include an entitlement to the services of others.
Recall the Declaration of Independence. Thomas
Jefferson referred to a right to the pursuit of happiness, not an entitlement
to happiness. People possess a right to be left to guide their lives in the
manner they choose, so long as they do not impose by force their will on
others. Interactions with others must be voluntary.
The opposing view, so prevalent in America today,
is that human beings are entitled, by right, to certain goods and services
— and, thus, that others are required to provide them. Advocates of
this view argue that people have a right to such things as food, shelter, clothing,
education and, now, health care. Other people should be forced, by law, to
provide these things, they say; relationships should be coerced.
The fact that certain conditions must exist for one
to pursue one’s goals does not give one a right to force others to
satisfy those conditions. If it were otherwise, the right to liberty would
disappear. For if a person is given, by law, a right to the services of
another, then the person who is forced to provide the services is no longer
free — his right to liberty is gone.
Medicare and Medicaid
Why is there a health-care “crisis”? We
must go back to the year 1965 for the answer. For it was in that year that
Medicare and Medicaid were enacted.
The first result of these two programs was
dramatically rising health-care prices. According to Health One Corporation,
between 1940 and 1960, health-care spending rose modestly from 4 percent of
gross national product to 5.2 percent. According to the Health Care Financing
Administration, since 1960, the percent of gross domestic product spent on
health care has almost tripled — to 14 percent in 1992.
Medicare and Medicaid paid on a fee-for-service
basis — the more services provided, the more fees generated. Thus,
patients no longer needed to consider the price of services when treated. And
doctors, who generally opposed Medicare and Medicaid when they were being
considered, found them to be financial gold mines, as generous amounts of tax
monies flowed into their pockets for care the physicians used to provide
— voluntarily — for free or at reduced prices.
Rising prices pushed the cost of medical treatment
beyond the range of more and more people. But, unfortunately, the original
culprits — Medicare and Medicaid — were not identified as the
cause. The blame, instead, was placed on “the greed” of doctors
and hospitals. People’s “right to health care,” it was
said, was being violated by the medical profession.
Not only did prices rise dramatically as a result
of Medicare and Medicaid, they rose in unpredictable ways — ways which
distorted incentives for doctors and hospitals. Harvard sociologist Paul
Starr, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Social Transformation of
American Medicine , observes:
The incentives that favored hospital care promoted
the neglect of ambulatory and preventive services; the incentives that
favored specialization also caused primary care to be neglected. The same
reimbursement practices that encouraged . . . hospitals in wealthy areas to
expand caused financial difficulties for hospitals in poor neighborhoods.
Thus, as a result of these distortions in
incentives, the very people who were supposed to be helped by Medicare and
Medicaid, i.e., the poor, were actually the people being hurt the most.
Blaming the free market
Despite the fact that governmental policies have
caused the health-care “crisis,” public officials instead place
the blame on “the free market.” Here is how one Congressman
— Wisconsin Representative Robert Wise — put it: “The
American myth is that free markets and laissez faire will take care of the
health-care problem. It will not, and clearly that’s been
demonstrated.”
But Representative Wise is wrong — it has not
been demonstrated. In fact, what has been demonstrated is the failure of
governmental intervention in health care. And why has governmental
intervention in health care failed? Because it is based on the fallacious
notion that people have a “right” to health care.
Moreover, as Dr. Maurice Sislen
pointed out in the January 10, 1991, issue of The Wall Street Journal ,
“A huge, complex and ineffective policing system . . . has taken the
place of what used to be the doctor’s responsibility to his patient.
Probably only a practicing physician can fully appreciate the magnitude of
the economic waste and moral degradation involved.”
The solution to the so-called health-care crisis is
to rid ourselves of the cause of the problems — to dismantle
governmental involvement in health care, especially Medicare and Medicaid.
Only a complete separation of the state and the health-care market can permanently
solve the problem. Instead of asking for free medicine from the state, we
should be asking to free medicine from the state.
Mr. Dale is an M.D./Ph.D.
student at the University of Chicago. The research for this piece was done while
he was a research fellow at the Institute for Objectivist Studies.
[Once again, Congress demonstrates that
“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature
is in session.”]
Forty billion dollars. That’s roughly how
much cash Toyota has on its balance sheet, a fat bogey for trial lawyers.
Think this was not the animating purpose of the congressional hearings held
this week?
Talk about an absence of peer review. The witness
list bespoke a pure, unadulterated motive to flog the trial lawyer theory
that Toyota is concealing a mysterious, unreplicable
electronic flaw that causes its cars to accelerate uncontrollably. Aside from
Toyota executives and the ineffable Ray LaHood, the hearing panels consisted
of self-appointed Washington safety lobbyists with a long history of serving
trial lawyer interests, plus an Illinois professor who, in the great tradition
of “60 Minutes” and “Dateline NBC,” found a way to
sabotage a Toyota by disabling an electronic cross-check that’s
supposed to stop it from accelerating out of control (which is still not the
same as causing it to accelerate out of control).
Even grosser was the inclusion of Rhonda and Eddie
Smith, who told a tall tale about their runaway Lexus that must have had the
staffers who arranged their appearance laughing up their sleeves.
Ms. Smith described a car that kept accelerating to
over 100 mph as she stood on the brake, shifted into neutral, even shifted
into reverse. Her detailed narrative became absent of detail only on one
crucial point: How her harrowing ride came to an end. “After six miles,
God intervened. As the car came very slowly to a stop, I pulled it to the
left median.”
Perhaps the Almighty gently lifted Ms.
Smith’s foot off the gas (or disentangled it from an improperly fitted
floor mat) and dispelled from her head the illusion that she had ever shifted
the car out of drive.
Henry Waxman set the stage for the narrative,
designed to benefit those suing Toyota, by insisting that his selected panel
of witnesses would deliver compelling evidence that “Toyota vehicles
have a serious flaw in their electronic control systems that leaves them vulnerable
to sudden unintended acceleration.”
If any were in doubt, Rep. Paul Kanjorski used his
questions to launch a diatribe against tort reform, whose purpose he
suggested was to “just forgive these companies and let them kill our
people.”
Sean Kane, the doyen of trial lawyer-friendly
Safety Research & Strategies Inc., was the sole participant who went out
of his way to mention driver error—but only to dismiss the possibility,
along with a 1989 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that named
“pedal misapplication” as a leading cause of unintended
acceleration accidents.
His argument: Because vehicle technology has
changed so much due to electronics, the study is no longer valid. Huh? The
one thing that hasn’t changed is that the system, however it works,
still is designed to interpret a foot on the gas as instruction to
“Go.”
This kabuki was obviously designed to exploit what
Congress knew would be Toyota’s reluctance to blame its customers,
though Toyota USA President Jim Lentz did inject the term “pedal
misapplication,” quickly adding, “We are not here blaming
customers, but it does take place.”
One witness was present who had an unambiguous
professional and institutional duty to speak candidly about the role of
driver error. But Mr. LaHood, the nation’s transportation secretary,
was clearly more concerned with displaying his person to political advantage
than advancing a search for truth.
Nobody can or would rule out the possibility of an
electronic bug or electronic interference, but Toyota cannot say it has found
a defect when it hasn’t. And funny how a media that never shrinks from
assigning “pilot error” as the cause of deadly plane crashes
resists acknowledging that amateurs behind the wheel might be a cause of runaway
car crashes.
Auto companies don’t implement technology for
the fun of it. Electronics have taken over at the behest of emissions
regulators, not customers. Even so, the obsession with Toyota’s
drive-by-wire gas pedal is misplaced, since the driver’s foot in every
car nowadays is connected to a computer. And drive-by-wire will soon become
standard because an analog component merely complicates the job of adding
refinement to traction control, stability control and gear-shifting.
Unintended acceleration crashes are rare, but
they’re not freaky. Most kinds of accidents are caused by driver error
rather than equipment failure or defect. And even with the industry’s
forced diversion of investment dollars to fuel economy, car makers are
steadily bringing forth technology to save drivers from themselves.
Devices are now available to warn motorists when
they’re drifting out of lane, taking their eyes off the road, or when
another vehicle is in their blind spot. Some cars will even cut engine power,
apply the brakes and prime the airbags when a collision is imminent because,
say, a driver has mistakenly stomped the gas instead of the brake.
Will
Obama go on strike if ObamaCare dies?
Barack Obama took office amid a real
crisis but has devoted the bulk of his efforts as president to the promotion of
massive expansions of government in order to deal with phony or speculative
crises, namely health care and “climate change.” Voters can tell
the difference, which is why they have dealt the president’s party a
series of stunning defeats in the few elections held over the past few
months.
Anatole Kaletsky of
London’s Times argues that Obama’s willful leadership is
producing a genuine, world-wide, all-encompassing crisis:
You may not have noticed, but today is
a very important day for US politics, world economic prospects and even for
the global balance of power between Western democracy and benign dictatorship
along Chinese lines. Why? Because today marks either the beginning of the end
of Barack Obama’ [sic] presidency, or the end of the beginning. . . .
If nothing is done to change the US
healthcare system, it can be stated with mathematical certainty that the US
Government and many leading US companies will be driven into bankruptcy, a
fate that befell General Motors and Chrysler largely because of their
inability to meet retired workers’ contractually guaranteed medical
costs. . . .
If [Obama] is unable to do this, he
will have almost no chance of passing any significant legislation on any
other issue--not on energy, budgetary responsibility, macroeconomic
management or even on such seemingly popular issues as bank regulation and
jobs.
In short, Mr
Obama has staked his entire presidency on today’s summit.
If you are not convinced, just listen
to the President’s own radio broadcast last weekend:
“What’s being tested in the healthcare summit is not just our
ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any
problem.” Consider what three years without effective government in
Washington could mean, not only for America but for the entire Western world.
The absence of effective US leadership
will dash any hopes of progress in foreign policy... But even more troubling
would be the economic and financial effects.
Yet there is no reason the failure of
ObamaCare has to mean “the absence of effective US leadership.”
Bill Clinton failed in his effort to wreck health care in 1993-94 but he was
able to govern quite effectively at least for the remainder of his first
term.
If ObamaCare dies and the president
thereafter fails to lead, it will be for one of two reasons: either Obama is
incapable of leading, or he chooses not to lead. Kaletsky
seems to be rooting for ObamaCare’s success
because it would prove Obama capable of leading. That quote from Obama seems
consistent with this: “What’s being tested in the health-care
summit is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to
solve any problem.”
Yet is the president really claiming
that if Congress does not enact ObamaCare, it will prove him incapable of
solving any problem? If he has so little confidence in his own abilities, he
ought to consider resigning. But really, it sounds more like a threat: Do
what I want, in my way, or I give up. I am unwilling to lead you people
unless you follow me where I want to go.
What Kaletsky
describes is a threat by the president of the United States to go on strike
if the American people do not submit to his wishes. This is arrogance, not
leadership--and rewarding such pigheadedness would only encourage more of the
same. Losing, by contrast, might actually be good for the president’s
character, helping him to develop the flexibility and humility necessary for
real leadership. If it doesn’t--if he makes good on his threat to go on
strike--the voters have the option of firing him 33 months hence.
Accountability
Journalism
The Associated Press’s Ricardo
Alonso-Zaldivar, previewing the health-care summit,
delivers a great illustration of why this genre of “reporting” is
so awful. It’s got both puffery and cynical attitudinizing, but very
little substance:
Cue the cameras. President Barack
Obama and his Republican arch foes will argue their case on health care
overhaul at a bipartisan summit expected to stretch out for a solid six hours
on live, daytime television Thursday for millions of Americans.
Expect them to collide, not come
together. Without a no-nonsense referee to slam the gavel on mind-fogging
jargon, not to mention apocalyptic rhetoric, some viewers might wish Judge
Judy was presiding.
Obama is hoping to resurrect his
signature issue and restore his reputation as a different kind of politician
who can deliver real results. Congressional leaders of both parties are
worried about self-preservation and political control in the November
elections.
Apart from the time and duration of
the meeting, these three paragraphs are entirely fact-free. The claim that
Obama hopes to “restore his reputation as a different kind of
politician who can deliver real results” is especially rich. Maybe he
once had a reputation as “a different kind of politician,”
whatever that means, but when has he ever delivered real results?
A New York Times story headlined
“Gentle White House Nudges Test the Power of Persuasion”
elaborates the point:
Tempers were fraying in the White
House Cabinet Room as night turned into morning on Jan. 15. President Obama
had been cloistered nearly all day with House and Senate Democrats, playing
“marriage counselor,” an aide said, as he coaxed, cajoled and
prodded them on a health care overhaul.
As the clock neared 1 a.m., the two
sides were at an impasse. Mr. Obama stood up.
“‘See what you guys can
figure out,’” one participant remembers him saying, adding that
the failed effort left the president mad. Another Democrat who was there,
Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, said Mr. Obama left
“frustrated that while he was putting out ways to bridge the problem,
we hadn’t reached a conclusion.”
Ever since his days as a young
community organizer in Chicago, Mr. Obama has held fast to the belief that by
listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to
get results, an approach that in Washington has often come up short.
As we noted in September 2008, it
turns out that Obama’s brief career as a “community
organizer” was notable for its utter lack of results as well. As The
New Republic reported back then, Obama “decided to leave community
organizing and go to law school.” Having acknowledged his failure, he
gave up, tried something different and succeeded. The sooner he follows such
a course again, the more likely he is to make his presidency a success.
We
Can Change, Really We Can
“The world’s leading
organization on climate change says it is working on a strategy to better police
the experts who produce its high-profile reports, to try to ensure they
adhere to rigorous scientific standards,” The Wall Street Journal
reports:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change needs to “leave no stone unturned to come up with a set of
measures so this can be ensured,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations-sponsored
organization, said. . . .
The move by Mr. Pachauri
and other IPCC leaders to step up oversight and enforcement of the
panel’s existing policies follows a string of revelations that have
prompted criticism of the organization, which won a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
for its report that year concluding that climate change is
“unequivocal” and is “very likely” caused by human
activity.
“We certainly don’t feel
comfortable with the loss of even one iota of trust,” Mr. Pachauri said. “We are grappling with this issue
and we’ll come up with some measures.”
It seems to us that if the IPCC really
wanted to be credible, it would start by replacing Pachauri
and retracting its 2007 report, in particular the claim that the evidence for
global warming is “unequivocal.” On the strength of the IPCC’s authority, lots of people said very foolish
things (remember Ellen Goodman’s claim that skepticism was tantamount
to Holocaust denial?).
If climate science is to command any
respect, it needs to repudiate its past corrupt ways and start over. As
Walter Mead has observed, “Ultimately, the most telling argument
against global warming is the lack of seriousness with which the greens themselves
have approached the issue.” Pachauri’s
promise to do good science starting now is nowhere near enough.
[I have known this for years and, as someone who typically works at
home, I have also practiced napping. My motto is “Sleep when
you’re tired and work when you’re alert.” I’m more
productive and less likely to make errors.]
An hour’s nap can
dramatically boost and restore brain power, according to a new study from the
University of California reported Monday.
The study, from the
department of psychology at UC Berkeley, suggests taking a brief siesta not
only refreshes the mind, but can also make you smarter.
And those who work long
days without a rest become more sluggish, the study said. Pulling an
all-nighter, for example, decreased the brain’s ability to learn by
nearly 40 percent in those observed.
“Sleep not only
rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but ... it moves you beyond where
you were before you took a nap,” said Matthew Walker, the study’s
lead investigator.
Walker and his team will
go on to investigate whether the reduction of sleep experienced by people as
they get older is related to the documented decrease in our ability to learn
as we age.
The findings come as
other reports cited a study which linked insomnia and sleep deprivation to
the shrinking of grey matter in the brain.
The research, led by Dr.
Ellemarije Altena at the
University of Cambridge, found that chronic insomnia compromised brain
capacity and had consequences for decision-making.
2/21/2010
2/19/2010: The VAT Commission
Desperately seeking cover for
tax increases on the middle class.
A couple of trillion dollars in new deficit
spending later, President Obama yesterday signed an executive order creating
a Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Yes, that’s really what he called it. And you
wonder why Americans are cynical about politics?
Having proposed peacetime records for spending as a
share of the economy—more than 25% of GDP this year and next—Mr.
Obama now promises to make “the tough choices necessary to solve our
fiscal problems.” And what might those choices be? “Everything’s
on the table. That’s how this thing’s going to work,” Mr.
Obama said.
By “everything,” Mr. Obama means in
particular tax increases. The President vowed in 2008 that he wouldn’t
raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, but that’
looking to be as forlorn a hope as peace in Palestine...
Democrats are likely to outnumber Republicans 10-8,
which further tilts the commission toward those who want to take federal
taxes from the modern average of about 18.5% of GDP to 25% or more. The real
name for this exercise should be the VAT Commission, as in the value-added
tax it is likely to propose...
...Poor Francis Fukayama.
In 1992, he looked at what communism had wrought
and proclaimed “the end of history.” The commies had capitulated.
The Berlin Wall had come down. Even the ‘red’ Chinese had turned
a shade of maroon or mauve.
It seemed like history had come to an end...with
the indisputable triumph of US-style democracy.
He wasn’t the first to think history had come
to a halt. Hegel and the early Marxists were convinced that the last chapter
was the one in which the proletariat took command of the government - which
they supposedly did after the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia.
But the trouble with history is that it just keeps
rolling along. Since 1992, we’ve probably seen as much history as in
any other 18-year stretch...save perhaps the war years of the last century.
There was the communications revolution...the rise of the Internet...the
dot.com bubble...9/11...the bubble in residential real estate...the Iraq
War... the “Great Recession”...the banking crisis...the rise of
China...
Even the things that Fukayama
cited as proof that history had come to an end have made history. The former
soviet republics - Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgystan
- did not progress towards the perfection of liberal democracy. All have
retrogressed into various forms of autocracy, petro-nationalism...and
authoritarian centralism.
What lessons does Fukayama
take from this? How about the obvious one: that he was a fool...and that
history doesn’t come to a stop just because an American intellectual
can’t imagine it going forward?
Nope.
“As we move forward, it is the important to
keep in mind the simple power of the idea of a government by, for, and of the
people. We need to match those high ideals with unglamorous but steady investments
in institution-building if liberal democracy is to deliver on its
promises...”
What? What is wrong with these people...? David
Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Francis Fukayama...here
are people who are paid to have opinions, ideas, thoughts. Why can’t
they come up with anything better than this sugary puff claptrap? His
conclusion is as weak and empty as a congressman’s head...with not a
single, solid idea in it.
Who is ‘we?’ Who knows? And what is the
promise of democracy? We never knew it made any promises to anyone. People
use democratic governments just like they use any other form of government -
that is, like a thief uses a crowbar...to try to get something. Otherwise,
why would the democrat bother to vote? The cripple expects someone to pay for
his wheelchair. The imperialist wants someone to pay for his foreign wars.
The social worker wants one of her metier stationed
in every schoolroom and household - ready to make sure every adult wears his
seatbelt and every child is treated with Ritalin.
Democracy starts off well enough. In small units it
even works passably well. A town meeting is a fairly decent forum for
discussing where to locate the new dump. But as it grows bigger and older the
town meeting inevitably degrades until it is dominated by mobs, lobbyists and
lunkheads.
Even if we believed democracy was the final and
most perfect form of government we would still have no idea what Fukayama is talking about when he mentions investing in
“institution-building.” You have a suspicion that he
doesn’t know what he is talking about either.
He doesn’t say so, but we imagine he means
American-style institutions in foreign countries...as if that were possible.
The US Congress, for example?
We rest our case.
The IRS Audit:
At the end of the tax year, the IRS
office sent an Auditor to examine the books of a local hospital. While the
IRS agent was checking the books he turned to the CFO of the hospital and
said, “I notice you buy a lot of bandages. What do you do with the end
of the roll when there’s too little left to be of any use?”
“Good question,” noted the
CFO. “We save them up and send them back to the bandage company and
every now and then they send us a free box of bandages.”
“Oh,” replied the auditor,
somewhat disappointed that his unusual question had a practical answer. But
on he went, in his obnoxious way.
“What about all these plaster
purchases? What do you do with what’s left over after setting a cast on
a patient?”
“Ah, yes,” replied the CFO,
realizing that the inspector was trying to trap him with an unanswerable
question . “We save it and send it back to the manufacturer, and every
now and then they send us a free package of plaster.”
“I see,” replied the
auditor, thinking hard about how he could fluster the know-it-all CFO.
“Well,” he went on, “What do you do with all the leftover
foreskins from the circumcisions you perform?”
“Here, too, we do not
waste,” answered the CFO. “What we do is save all the little
foreskins and send them to the IRS Office, and about once a year they send us
back an Auditor.”
2/17/2010: from Best of the Web: A creepy--but
hilarious--look inside the Obama cult
by James
Taranto
Somehow we ended up on the email list
for Tikkun, the Jewish-themed far-left magazine edited
by Michael Lerner. (You may remember Lerner as the originator of the phrase
“the politics of meaning,” for which then-First Lady Hillary
Clinton had a brief enthusiasm around 1993.) Yesterday brought an email
touting a Puffington Host post by Lerner
titled “Reviving the American Liberal Movement.”
We knew this was going to be good when
we read in the email that Lerner was unhappy with the headline:
By the way, Rabbi Lerner’s
article was originally called:
Reviving the Spirit after
Post-Traumatic Obama Abandonment Syndrome: Developing a Strategy for ailing
and despairing Liberal and Progressive Movements in the U.S. Huff Post turned
it into milquetoast with its title. Still, please read the story itself.
And indeed the article, describing a
Monday conference Lerner held in San Francisco, is a doozy--an
inside look at a political phenomenon that, while tiny and marginal, is
somewhat disturbing nonetheless. “The politics of meaning” seems
to refer to a mental attitude characterized by the complete absence of
healthy boundaries between the public and the private, the personal and the
political. When Obama’s critics mock his backers for seeing the president
as their personal savior, it sounds like right-wing crankery.
But Lerner admits that, at least in his crowd, they are quite on target:
“What do we in the liberal and
progressive world do now, if we face three, or hopefully seven, years of an
Obama presidency?”
The first step toward answering that
question was to grieve what we had lost, honestly acknowledging the painful,
for many quite humiliating, fact that after having built so many walls of
self-protection against allowing ourselves to get sucked into some new moment
of idealism, we had allowed those walls to come down as we became energized
about Obama, only to find that once again our hopes had been dashed. . . .
What happened in Obama’s first
year is that most of those who had allowed themselves to hope began to appear
to themselves and others as naïve fools, and the humiliation that they
experienced will take some years and psychologically or spiritually
sophisticated interventions. . . .
So, the most important first step for
liberals and progressives is to explain to themselves and each other that
history is not over, that the Obama years still retain some possibilities,
and even though we need to give up our (often unconscious) fantasy that Obama
was our messiah who would save us and the world, we can and must still retain
our understanding that the suffering in this world through poverty and
oppression, the destruction of the environment and the possibility of ending
all human and animal life on the planet Earth, and the survival of our own souls
and mental health requires that we revive a movement based on love, kindness,
generosity, ecological sanity, and caring for each other, including everyone
on the planet.
Yikes, we’d hate to hear what
Step 2 is!
Lerner writes that “most people
have a strong voice in our consciousness telling us that ‘everyone is
just out to promote their own narrowly conceived self-interest and that they
will seek to manipulate or even dominate you unless you can more effectively
manipulate and dominate them first.’” But “there’s
another voice in most people that advises them . . . that safety and security
can sometimes be achieved much more effectively by communicating genuine
love, caring and a generosity of spirit and of deed toward others.”
To put it more succinctly, people can
be both selfish and generous. By presenting this utter commonplace in terms
of voices inside people’s heads, he gives it the appearance of
insanity, which to him no doubt looks like profundity. But Lerner sees what
he calls “the Generosity world view,” as a political program. One
might say he wants the Golden Rule enacted into law. But the Golden rule
advises each of us about what to “do unto others.” It is not a
call for the government to do unto all of us.
And actually, our Golden Rule caricature
makes Lerner look more reasonable than he actually is. Among other things, he
urges Congress to enact “educaiton [sic]
reform to teach students that what should count in life is to maximize our
own and each other’s capacities tor [sic] be loving, kind, generous,
caring for each other, ethically and environmentally responsible, and filled
with gratitude and awe at the grandeur of the universe.”
Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid should get
right on that! After all, the schools are already doing such a bang-up job of
teaching kids how to spell. (But is our Lerners
learning?)
Anyway, read the whole thing. We
did--we laughed, we cringed. We hope Lerner’s followers get the help
they need to overcome their Obama-induced depression. The first step is
admitting they have a problem. Check. The second step, however, is
understanding the nature of the problem, which in this case consists of
unrealistic expectations of politics--and not just unrealistic political
expectations, but the expectation that politics can provide personal meaning
and salvation.
Lerner suggests that the cure for this
ailment consists in “psychologically or spiritually sophisticated
interventions.” We have a better prescription: Get a life.
If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,
incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms,
in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and
heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever
increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more
of our freedom.
Magicians have long known that distracting an
audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to
political magic.
Alarms ranging from “overpopulation” to
“global warming” and crusades ranging from “affordable
housing” to “universal health care” have been among the
distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a
long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and,
if necessary, hate other people.
The most politically effective totalitarian systems
have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their
resentment or hatred at other people-- under Communism, the capitalists;
under Nazis, the Jews.
Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is
directed at the infidels in general and the “great Satan,” the
United States, in particular. There some people have been induced to give up
not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow
against those they have been taught to hate.
We have not yet reached these levels of hostility,
but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment
plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent.
One of the most audacious attempts to take away our
freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called “health
care reform” bills that were being rushed through Congress before
either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to
discover all that was in it.
For this, we were taught to resent doctors,
insurance companies and even people with “Cadillac health insurance
plans,” who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our
freedom to make our own medical decisions-- on which life and death can
depend-- was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in
Washington. Only the recent Massachusetts election results have put that on
hold.
Another dangerous power toward which we are moving,
bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell
people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being
directed against “the rich.”
The distracting phrases here include
“obscene” wealth and “unconscionable” profits. But,
if we stop and think about it-- which politicians don’t expect us to--
what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn’t we consider it great if every
human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could
rival the Taj Mahal?
Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be
reduced--and increasing a country’s productivity has done that far more
widely than redistributing income by targeting “the rich.”
You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when
profits are called “unconscionable” but taxes never are, even
when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more
to the prices we have to pay than profits do.
The assumption that what A pays B is any business
of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to
politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive. It will
not apply to everyone all at once. Like the income tax, which at first
applied only to the truly rich, and then slowly but steadily moved down the
income scale to hit the rest of us, the power to say what incomes people can
be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all
dependents and supplicants of politicians.
The phrase “public servants” is
increasingly misleading. They are well on their way to becoming public
masters-- like aptly named White House “czars.” The more they can
get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from
their increasing control of our own lives-- but only if we sell our freedom
cheap. We can sell our birthright and not even get the mess of pottage.
2/15/2010: Making Unemployment Obsolete By Robert
Ringer
Even though Social Security and Medicare guarantee
to bankrupt America, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are
scores of other government programs that are both immoral and costly - and
that need to be abolished.
Take unemployment benefits, for example. If Obama
and progressives on both sides of the aisle continue with their never-ending
extensions of unemployment benefits, we will look back on 2009 as the good
old days, a time when we had only a 10-20 percent unemployment rate (depending
on how one wants to calculate it). That’s right, unemployment benefits
make the average worker worse off, not better, because, like minimum-wage
laws, they cause unemployment.
The fact is that when many people say they
can’t find a job, what they really mean is they can’t find the
job they want, at the wage they want, under the working conditions they want.
Which means that high unemployment is, to a great extent, a result of workers
simply refusing to accept low-paying jobs, preferring instead to live off
government largesse.
Worse, when the government “creates a
job,” it simply overpays someone to do work for which there is little
or no demand in the marketplace. And since the government has no resources of
its own, the money to pay the person who performs the job must come from
newly printed dollars, borrowing, or taxing productive workers.
Which is why it is impossible for government jobs
programs to “stimulate the economy.” It doesn’t matter
whether you call a new program a “stimulus package,” a
“jobs bill,” or an Obama Scam, the result is the same - a
negative impact on the economy.
I thought about the high unemployment rate a great
deal over the past several weeks as snowstorms blasted the Middle Atlantic
States and East Coast, because it gave me the opportunity to observe the free
market at work on a micro scale. One of the things that many people
don’t grasp is that the marketplace consists not only of goods and
services, but labor as well. The free market is, in fact, a big hodgepodge of
these three commodities mixed in with the unique wants, needs, desires,
personalities, and financial situations of each consumer.
When the first big snowfall hit, my wife spotted a
fellow with a snow blower removing the snow from our neighbor’s
driveway. I was picturing being socked in for a week or more, so I
represented a strong demand for someone willing to do the hard labor of
removing snow from my driveway.
I asked the guy if he would shovel our driveway
and, if so, how much he would charge. He quoted us $100, which seemed kind of
high, but I wasn’t about to let him slip away. He had the supply, and
the demand on my end was high. So, a hundred bucks it was. No government
involvement, no regulations, no price controls, and, best of all, I think it’s
safe to assume that no taxes will be paid on the money I paid him. I made
sure to get his telephone number, figuring I would call him the next time we
had a major snowfall.
Sure enough, a few days later, an even bigger
snowstorm hit. I called the fellow who had shoveled our driveway for $100,
but got no answer, so I left word to have him call me. He never returned my
call, which I suspected was because the snowstorms had created a high demand
for his services.
Then, lo and behold, a kid came to our door and said
that his dad had a snow blower and would remove the snow from our driveway
for $20. I couldn’t believe it. Without government regulation to thwart
him, here was a man who was undercutting the first snow-removal guy by 80
percent. Can anything be more beautiful than watching the free market in
action? Again, I got his telephone number after he finished our shoveling
driveway.
Enter snowstorm number three. After two days of
nonstop snow, I called my $20 guy again, figuring that because of the depth
of the snow, he might decide to raise his price to $40 or $50. But I never
found out, because his voice mail answered. I left word, but, again, no
return call.
Staring at two feet of snow in my driveway, I was
getting a bit concerned. Then, out of the blue, a lady came to my door and
said that her husband had a snow plow and she wanted to know if I would like
him to remove the snow from our driveway. Price: $65.
I quickly wondered to myself if I should I take a
pass on this opportunity and try again to connect with my $20 guy. But then
the thought occurred to me that he might be too busy with other customers to
ever get back to me. Or what if he’s discovered that his price was way
under the market and has raised it to $75?
Like any consumer, I pieced all of these factors
together in my mind, then added in the biggest factor of all - that the
solution to my problem was right in front of me. No delay, no gamble, no
stress - $65 it was.
The free-market aspect of my snow-shoveling
experiences is obvious. But what I found even more interesting is that a
handful of men (and women) chose to go out in the snow and cold, freeze their
butts off, and work themselves to the point of exhaustion for a couple
thousand dollars a day, while 99.99 percent of those who say they can’t
find a job chose to sit home and do ... whatever.
If compassionate politicians are really serious
about lowering unemployment, good first and second steps would be to
eliminate unemployment benefits and abolish minimum-wage laws. Follow that
with slashing the corporate tax rate to 10 percent (for starters), and
unemployment would very quickly become an anachronism. The free market really
does work. It’s just not the way progressives would like it to work.
[once in a while, he does the right
thing, even if it is for purely political reasons]
Among the many groups that
opposed Barack Obama’s presidential race, few were more certain or
vehement than gun rights organizations. “Barack Obama would be the most
anti-gun president in American history,” the National Rifle Association
announced. “Obama is a committed anti-gunner,” warned Gun Owners
of America.
So it’s no stunner
that after a year in office, the president is getting hammered by people who
have no use for his policy on firearms. The surprise is that the people
attacking him are those who favor gun control, not those who oppose it.
Obama’s record on
this issue has been largely overlooked -- except by the Brady Center to
Prevent Gun Violence, which recently issued a report card flunking him on all
seven issues it deems important. Said President Paul Helmke,
“If I had been told, in the days before Barack Obama’s
inauguration, that his record on gun violence prevention would be this poor,
I would not have believed it.”
Had he listened to the
candidate in 2008, he would have believed. At a September campaign rally in
rural Virginia, Obama declared unequivocally, “I believe in the Second
Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not
take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take
your handgun away. … There are some common-sense gun safety laws that I
believe in. But I am not going to take your guns away.”
The Brady Center must have
hoped he was being less than honest. And he was: He had no intention of
pushing those “common-sense” laws he had previously favored. On
the list of issues for which Obama is willing to put himself on the line, gun
control ranks somewhere below free trade with Uzbekistan.
So he has proposed nothing
in the way of new federal restrictions on firearms. Even the “assault
weapons” ban signed by President Clinton -- and allowed to expire in
2004 -- has no visible place on his agenda.
Not only that, he’s
approved changes that should gladden the hearts of gun-rights supporters, a
group that includes me. He signed a law permitting guns to be taken into
national parks. He signed another allowing guns as checked baggage on Amtrak.
He acted to preserve an existing law limiting the use of government
information on firearms it has traced.
Still, the NRA is not
rushing to recant. A spokesman admits the president has signed some
provisions it favors, but notes that they were attached to legislation he
wanted, making them hard to veto. Says Andrew Arulanandam,
“He has disappointed us with his appointments,” particularly
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, neither a
darling of the shooting set.
But those are petty
matters given Obama’s overall refusal to do anything to advance gun
control. On this issue, he took such a strong, clear position during the
campaign that he has no room to maneuver. That was not accidental. It was
deliberate -- the equivalent of burning his ships to eliminate the option of
retreat.
In terms of actual policy,
rather than his previous record, Obama is a long way from being anti-gun.
This is not because he has fond memories of sitting in a deer stand as a lad
in Hawaii or of talking shotguns with Dick Cheney. It’s because his
mother didn’t raise a fool.
Like some other Democrats,
he may recall that in 1994, after banning “assault weapons,” they
lost the House for the first time in 40 years. Obama knows that anyone who
staunchly favors banning guns won’t vote Republican no matter what. But
some independents who are protective of their weapons may vote Democratic if
that issue is off the table.
Off the table is exactly
where he intends to keep it. Last year, 65 House Democrats wrote Holder
vowing to “actively oppose” any effort to restore the assault
weapons ban. The president has enough trouble getting legislation that enjoys
overwhelming support in his party. He is not about to pick a fight with
centrist Democrats over gun control.
Opponents of gun control
should not rely on Obama’s innermost sentiments on the subject. He obviously
doesn’t cherish the right to keep and bear arms. But for those who
favor Second Amendment rights, here’s the nice thing about having such
a canny politician in the White House: He doesn’t have to.
Two polls released today give us a peek at the
political peril that confronts Obama and the Democrats. Gallup shows him in a
statistical tie with a generic Republican opponent in 2012. (Republicans
narrowly favor Mitt Romney over Sarah Palin, but the results are within the
margin of error.) In short, voters are very open to a change in the Oval
Office.
Even more ominous, the Quinnipiac poll reports:
American voters remain deeply divided about
President Barack Obama’s job performance, giving him a 45 – 46
percent job approval, but disapproval of both Democrats and Republicans in
Congress tops 2-1. This could explain why only 2 percent trust government to
do what is right almost all of the time, and 16 percent trust government to
do right most of the time, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released
today.
In other words, they haven’t embraced his
big-government fetish. The details are even worse for the president: by a
54-to-35 percent margin, they oppose ObamaCare; by a 44-to-41 percent margin,
they disapprove of his handling of the economy; only 37 percent rate his
handling of the deficit as good or excellent; and by a 49-46 percent margin,
they oppose ending “tax cuts for couples earning over $250,000
annually.” Bottom line: they don’t like what he is doing.
These polls are two sides of the same political
coin. Obama ran as a moderate, governed as an ultra-liberal, and lost the
majority of the country’s support in the process. (Only 40 percent of
independents approve of his job performance.) He thinks the problem is a
failure to communicate. The problem, however, appears to be that he has
communicated all too well his infatuation with growing the size of government
and the nation’s debt. He can change or hope the public does. But maybe
he’s content to have just one term.
2/9/2010: A DEA officer stops at a ranch in
Texas, and talks with an old rancher. He tells the rancher, “I need to
inspect your ranch for illegally grown drugs.” The rancher says,
“Okay, but do not go in that field over there,” as he points out
the location.
The DEA officer verbally explodes saying,
“Mister, I have the authority of the Federal Government with me.”
Reaching into his rear pants pocket, he removes his badge and proudly
displays it to the rancher. “See this badge? This badge means I am
allowed to go wherever I wish...on any land. No questions asked or answers
given. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand? “
The rancher nods politely, apologizes, and
goes about his chores.
A short time later, the old rancher hears
loud screams and sees the DEA officer running for his life chased by the
rancher’s rather large bull. With every step the bull is gaining ground
on the officer, and it seems likely that he’ll get gored before he
reaches safety. The officer is terrified. The rancher throws down his tools,
runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs, “Your BADGE! Show
him your BADGE!”
Summary: “Private-sector unionism is adversarial...
Public-sector unionism... is not adversarial but collusive... The results are
plain to see. States like New York, New Jersey and California, where
public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and
pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite
sucking the life out of the private-sector economy... Americans have been
steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where
public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower... Public-sector
unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from
taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic
Party...”
Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United
Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order
of things.
That’s no longer clear. Last month, the Labor
Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year
and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That’s
down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953-54.
But union membership is still growing in the public
sector. Last year, 37.4 percent of public sector employees were union
members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time
in history, a majority of union members are government employees.
In my view, the outlook for both private- and
public-sector unionism is problematic.
Private-sector unionism is adversarial. Economic
studies show that such unions do extract premium wages and benefits from
employers. But that puts employers at a competitive disadvantage. Back in the
1950s, the Big Three auto companies dominated the industry and were at the
top of the Fortune 500. Last year, General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt
and are now owned by the government and the UAW. Ford only barely escaped.
Adversarial unionism tends to produce rigid work
rules that retard adaptation and innovation. We have had a three-decade
experiment pitting UAW work rules against the flexible management of
Japanese- and European-owned non-union auto firms.
The results are in. Yes, clueless management at the
Detroit firms for years ignored problems with product quality and made
bonehead investment mistakes. But adversarial unionism made it much, much
harder for Detroit to produce high-quality vehicles than it was for
non-unionized companies.
As economist Barry Hirsch points out, non-union
manufacturing employment rose from 12 million to 14 million between 1973 and 2006.
In those years, union manufacturing employment dropped from 8 million to 2
million. “Unionism,” Hirsch writes, “is a poor fit in a
dynamic, competitive economy.”
Moreover, federal laws passed since the 1950s now
protect workers from racial and sex discrimination, safety hazards and
pension failure. They don’t need unions to do this any more.
Public-sector unionism is a very different animal
from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive.
Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can
extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits -- and can
promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.
The results are plain to see. States like New York,
New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face
enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public
sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector
economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such
states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and
taxes are much lower.
Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly
president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the
decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the
power -- and dues income -- of public-sector unions.
One-third of last year’s $787 billion stimulus
package was aid to state and local governments -- an obvious attempt to
bolster public-sector unions. And it was a successful one: While the private
sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen.
The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month,
and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to
19 percent during the recession.
Obama and his party are acting in collusion with
unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008
campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating
machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor
belt to the Democratic Party.
But it may not turn out to be a perpetual-motion
machine. Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who
depend on the private sector for their livelihoods. The next Congress may not
be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by
public-sector unions. Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for
$100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s. Or they
may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas.
Obama’s Democrats have used the financial
crisis to expand the public sector and the public-sector unions. But voters
seem to be saying, “Enough.”
NO
WONDER THE TEA-PARTY CROWD is boiling: Congress, like King Louis XIV, is so
insulated from the world at large that, despite sympathetic mouthing and multi-billion-dollar
stimulus bills, it has spent freely on itself throughout the recession.
While most
Americans have been making tough choices in their daily lives, Congress has
been spending on itself and its institutions as though nothing ever happened.
In fiscal 2007 though 2009, when businesses were slashing overhead and laying
off hundreds of thousands of workers each month to stay afloat; when
households were penny-pinching to keep food in their freezers; when charities
were being overwhelmed by pleas for bread and shelter, the legislative branch
raised outlays for itself by nearly 10%, to $4.7 billion.
This covers
salaries, basic office expenses, trips to the gym for lawmakers and their
staffs, maintenance, security of buildings and grounds, and the operations of
the Library of Congress, Government Accountability Office and Government
Printing Office.
The
estimate for fiscal 2010, which ends Sept. 30, is $5.5 billion -- up more
than 15% in a single year. In short, Congress has operated as though the recession
was meant for me and you, not them.
President
Obama’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget, in a largely symbolic gesture just
in time for the midterm election season, suggests the House pare its salaries
and expenses by 5%, to $1.4 billion. The Senate would enjoy an increase in
salaries and expenses of roughly 3%, to $191 million.
How
dramatically out of character it would be for the House to comply or the
Senate to voluntarily reduce its own budget. The members mostly behave like
the colleague of the fictional Sen. Jack S. Phogbound
of Dogpatch who, in a 1947 Li’l
Abner comic strip, caved in to the backwoods
legislators’ demand for a $2 million earmark to build Phogbound University in exchange for a key vote -- one to
keep congressional proceedings from being broadcast on the radio.
Phogbound’s colleague reasoned, “It
isn’t as though it were my money -- it’s just the
taxpayers’ money.”
Even if
Congress were to scramble aboard the austerity bandwagon, it’s probably
too late to avoid being flayed by the tea-flinging rabble-rousers. According
to the Progressive Policy Institute -- a nonpartisan think tank trying to
puzzle out what it calls “a third way beyond the liberal impulse to
defend the bureaucratic status quo and the conservative bid to simply dismantle
government” -- the unemployment rate will climb to around 10.5% by the
third quarter of this year and remain in the high 9% range in November, when
Americans head to the polls.
The
forecast allows for the continued impact of the last year’s $787
billion stimulus. But the folks at PPI think the stimulus was designed
poorly, as evidenced by the relatively scant 600,000 jobs it has saved or
created so far. According to my solar-powered calculator, that’s
$655,000 per job. Better, says the PPI, to have given direct aid to the
states, which now must slash workers to balance their budgets, worsening the
employment outlook. The president, aware that the initial dose of stimulus
proved a dud, is proposing a $100 billion booster shot. Economist Robert
Gordon of Northwestern University, speaking last week at a PPI news
conference on the employment outlook, estimated that the government would
have to spend at least $150 billion to curb rising joblessness.
PPI’s
pessimistic view is that we will be lucky to be down to 8% unemployment by
2011.
HIGHER
TAXES, REQUIRED TO pay down our debt, will be a further drag on the economy
and private-sector job creation in the years ahead. One would hope, then,
that President Obama would rouse his inner Ronald Reagan and attempt to shrink
the federal government. He easily could save us billions of dollars each year
if, in addition to promoting thrift in the House, he were to eliminate one or
two executive-branch departments. Instead, he has roused his inner Al Gore,
who spearheaded the drive to “reinvent government.”
Obama says
in his budget that he plans to deliver high-performance government, but the
document tolerates many wasteful redundancies. For instance, three separate
departments are spending hundreds of millions each to promote renewable
energy programs: the Department of Energy and the Agriculture and Interior
departments.
Interior
and Agriculture are expending millions of dollars each on water-conservation
and water-quality programs. Agriculture is spending billions on food programs,
and the Commerce Department is spending millions on fish management.
I’m not claiming to be an efficiency expert, but wouldn’t it make
sense to fold the Interior Department into the Agriculture Department and
give Agriculture authority for the fishing industry?
2/3/2010: I
finally figured out the correct term for Obama:
“Ventriloquist Dummy-in-Chief.”
Just like any
other dummy, Obama can’t speak without a ventriloquist; they use a
euphemism and call them “teleprompters.”
2/3/2010:
Incentive to pay the
“voluntary” income tax?
The Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC
#24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division.
The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen
inch barrel, modified choke, Wilson Combat Ghost Ring rear sight and XS4
Contour Bead front sight, Knoxx Reduced Recoil
Adjustable Stock, and Speedfeed ribbed black forend, are designated as the only shotguns authorized
for IRS duty based on compatibility with IRS existing shotgun inventory,
certified armorer and combat training and protocol,
maintenance, and parts.
2/3/2010:
SEIU Fat Cats Behind First Lady’s
Anti-Obesity Campaign
by Michelle Malkin
Behind every seemingly
good deed in the Obama White House, there’s a deep-pocketed, left-wing
special interest. Take first lady Michelle Obama’s crusade against
childhood obesity. Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved
nutrition in the schools? Think purple -- as in the purple-shirted army of
the Service Employees International Union. Big Labor bigwigs don’t care
about slimming your kids’ waistlines. They care about beefing up their
membership rolls and fattening their coffers.
Mrs. Obama earned a State
of the Union address shout-out from her hubby for taking on the weighty
public policy issue of students’ physical fitness. The East Wing is now
in full campaign mode -- leaning on the nation’s mayors, traveling with
the surgeon general and meeting with Congress and cabinet members to
reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era Child Nutrition Act, which provides
government-subsidized meals to more than 30 million children. It’s part
of the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed
“cradle-to-career” agenda for America’s youth.
For decades, school
administrators have criticized this Great Society relic for outgrowing its
initial conception. The program was originally created to use up post-World
War II food surpluses. In the late 1970s, New York principal Lewis Lyman
skewered it as a federal “boondoggle” in a seminal essay for the
education journal Phi Delta Kappan. But Democrats demagogued the GOP’s responsible attempts at
financial reform during the Clinton years as “starving the
children.” While spending on youth nutrition and wellness have ballooned,
so have the kids. Nearly one-third of U.S. children are now overweight or
obese. The feds spend $15 billion a year on nutrition in schools; the White
House wants at least a $1 billion increase this coming fiscal year.
The well-intended program
to feed poor kids has morphed into an untouchable universal entitlement with
a powerful school-lunch lobbying coalition of Department of Agriculture
bureaucrats, food-service industry executives and union bosses. Enter the
SEIU. Headed by the White House’s most frequent visitor, Andy Stern,
the powerful labor organization representing government and private service
employees has an insatiable appetite for power and growth. Working alongside
the first lady, the SEIU unveiled a major ad campaign this week demanding
reauthorizing and funding increases in the Child Nutrition Act.
What’s in it for Big
Labor? SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman explains: “A more
robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and
WIC (the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) is critical
to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity and providing fair wages and
healthcare for front line food service workers(emphasis added).”
There are 400,000 workers
who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens
of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more.
“More robust expansion” of the federal school-lunch law means a
mandate for higher wages, increased benefits and government-guaranteed health
insurance coverage (the more luxurious the better now that SEIU has
negotiated its Cadillac Tax exemption from the Democrats’ health care
takeover bill).
The SEIU’s front
group, “Campaign for Quality Services,” is clamoring for
“the right to sick days and training” for school food-services
workers. Never ones to let a crisis go unexploited, SEIU sent its members to
lobby in front of Chicago public schools last year and scare parents into
supporting their labor agenda. They accused the school system of “putting
our kids at risk” during flu season by resisting the SEIU’s sick
day coverage demands. “Without sick days, I can’t take a day off,
so I have to bring germs to school,” an SEIU janitor lamented.
Along the same lines, they
are casting food-services workers as indispensable saviors. The union has
rallied behind P.R. efforts casting them as superheroes “serving
justice, and serving lunch.” Opposing the union means opposing
children’s health. SEIU propaganda features New Jersey school cafeteria
workers like Leslie Williams of Orange, N.J., lamenting: “I love my
work, but it’s getting harder to prepare nutritious meals on the low
budget we’re working with. … It breaks my heart to see a child
who’s hungry. As I see it, part of my job is to make sure the kids are
well-fed.”
Actually, that’s the
primary job of parents. Mom? Dad? Remember them? But the more responsibility
we demand of parents, the less power and influence SEIU bosses are able to
grab. Unionized school dietician and nutrition jobs are booming. And in addition
to school breakfast and lunch, the SEIU is now pushing subsidized dinner
plans and summer food service to create a “stronger nutrition safety
net.” Translation: Perpetual employment for big government and its
public employee union au pairs.
Cede the children, feed
the state.
2/3/2010:
Global Warming Update by
Walter E. Williams
John Coleman, founder of
the Weather Channel, in an hour-long television documentary titled
“Global Warming: The Other Side,” presents evidence that our
National Climatic Data Center has been manipulating weather data just as the
now disgraced and under investigation British University of East Anglia
Climate Research Unit. The NCDC is a division of the U.S. National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. Its manipulated climate data is used by the
Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is a division of the National
Aeronautical and Space Administration. John Coleman’s blockbuster five-part
series can be seen here.
The Coleman documentary
presents research by computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified
Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo.
During the 1960s and into the 1980s, the number of stations used for
calculating global surface temperatures was about 6,000. By 1990, the number
of stations dropped rapidly to about 1,500. Most of the stations lost were in
the colder regions of the Earth. Not adjusting for their lost made
temperatures appear to be higher than was in fact the case. According to
Science & Environmental Policy Project, Russia reported that CRU was
ignoring data from colder regions of Russia, even though these stations were
still reporting data. That means data loss was not simply the result of
station closings but deliberate decisions by CRU to ignore them in order to
hype their global warming claims. D’Aleo and
Smith report that our NCDC engaged in similar deceptive activity where they
have dropped stations, particularly in colder climates, higher elevations or
closer to the polar regions. Temperatures are now simply projected for these
colder stations from other stations, usually in warmer climates.
Mounting evidence of
scientific fraud might make little difference in terms of the response to
manmade global warming hysteria. Why? Vested economic and political interests
have emerged where trillions of dollars and social control are at stake.
Therefore, many people who recognize the scientific fraud underlying global
warming claims are likely to defend it anyway. Automobile companies have
invested billions in research and investment in producing “green cars.”
General Electric and Phillips have spent millions lobbying Congress to outlaw
incandescent bulbs so that they can force us to buy costly compact
fluorescent light bulbs (CFL). Farmers and ethanol manufacturers have gotten
Congress to enact laws mandating greater use of their product, not to mention
massive subsidies. Thousands of major corporations around the world have
taken steps to reduce carbon emissions including giants like IBM, Nike,
Coca-Cola and BP, the oil giant. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Dell have vowed
to become “carbon neutral.”
Then there’s Chicago
Climate Futures Exchange that plans to trade in billions of dollars of
greenhouse gas emission allowances. Corporate America and labor unions, as
well as their international counterparts have a huge multi-trillion dollar
financial stake in the perpetuation of the global warming fraud. Federal,
state and local agencies have spent billions of dollars and created millions
of jobs to deal with one aspect or another of global warming.
It’s deeper than
just money. Schoolteachers have created polar-bear-dying lectures to frighten
and indoctrinate our children when in fact there are more polar bears now
than in 1950. They’ve taught children about melting glaciers. Just
recently, the International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit that
their Himalayan glacier-melting fraud was done to “impact policy makers
and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
What would all the
beneficiaries of the global warming hype do if it becomes widely known and
accepted that mankind’s activities have very little to do with the
Earth’s temperature? I don’t know but a lot of people would feel
and look like idiots. But I bet that even if the permafrost returned as far
south as New Jersey, as it once did, the warmers and their congressional
stooges would still call for measures to fight global warming.
2/2/2010:
Deep Thoughts on Coexistence
by Mike Adams
I’m having
difficulty understanding why the last two parking spaces in the parking lot
in front of the Cameron School of Business were taken up by a single car this
morning. It’s even more perplexing that the car is a Prius. If you
can’t fit a Prius into one space, should you really be driving at all?
I understand why people
buy the Prius. It’s because they want to preserve Mother Earth for
future generations. You don’t want to hog up everything for yourself.
So, why can’t you fit that little car into one parking space?
Isn’t single parking a better way to make sure you aren’t hogging
up more scarce resources than you should?
And what about that bumper
sticker that says “Coexist” on the back of the Prius that is
currently double parked in front of the business school? How can we coexist
if you can’t keep your Prius in a single parking space?
I have a bumper sticker
that says “Protected by Glock” on my Honda. Am I more or less
likely to be car jacked than the guy who has a “Coexist” bumper
sticker?
Is there really any better
way to coexist than having a concealed weapons permit? Don’t these
permits have a better track record of preventing crimes than the United
Nations does in regard to preventing wars?
Recently, one of my
students asked his professor whether the United Nations could have prevented
World War II if it had been established prior to 1945. She got mad and
refused to answer his question. How can we coexist when our progressive
professors refuse to answer questions calmly and without anger?
Woodrow Wilson was a
progressive. He also went into World War I thinking it would be the war to
end all wars. How is that working out so far?
Why did Woodrow Wilson
undo years of Republican progress on race by re-segregating the civil
service? Did he think we could all get along better if blacks and whites were
segregated? Did he think that was best because blacks are intellectually
inferior to whites?
If Woodrow Wilson were
alive today would he drive a Prius with a “Coexist” bumper
sticker? Would he double park his Prius in front of the United Nations
building in Manhattan?
Why is the guy who sports
a “Coexist” bumper sticker always the same guy who wants to ban a
nativity scene from the public square?
Do you mind if I put a
“Honk if I’m paying your mortgage” bumper sticker next to
your “Coexist” bumper sticker? How about a “Keep honking,
I’m reloading” sticker? Could my bumper stickers coexist with
your bumper stickers?
How can we coexist if you
keep trying to force me to buy into a government health insurance plan I do
not want? Why do you insist that I say “yes” when I keep saying
“no”?
Would the world be a
better place if rape victims would just say “yes”? Would it help
them “coexist” with rapists?
Aren’t rapists, like
all other criminals, just victims of society? Don’t they deserve
treatment in a single payer system just like the victim of rape?
A Muslim-American called
my office screaming one day because he thought I called the prophet Mohammad
a “queer.” But I didn’t call Mohammad a
“queer.” I probably called him a pedophile. Regardless, how can
we coexist if you think you have a right to live in this country but have no
corresponding duty to learn English?
The angry Muslim started
to use threatening language when he called me on the phone. I told him that
if he came after me I would let him choose the weapon I would use to protect
myself. I asked whether he would prefer a .44 magnum or a .45 ACP. He hung up
and never called back. That day, my Smith and my Springfield helped make the
world a better place. You could say they helped promote coexistence.
Isn’t a woman who
drives a Prius more likely to get an abortion than a woman who drives an SUV?
Why can’t the feminist coexist with the fetus? What is all this
“my body, my choice” nonsense?
My neighbor is opposed to the
Second Amendment. He used to have an “Obama” sign in his yard.
Now he has a “Coexist” sticker on his car. I plan to put one of
those signs in my yard that says “My neighbor wants to ban all guns.
His house is unarmed. Out of respect for his views I promise not to protect
him” with a big arrow pointing to his house.
I think people with
“coexist” bumper stickers are probably the people Muslims would
most like to kill – because of their views on gay rights and abortion.
So, maybe they should take the Muslim portion off their “Coexist”
stickers.
Maybe
“O-exist” is the best kind of sticker for today’s
progressives. Doesn’t it make sense given the name of their true
Messiah?
2/1/2010:
Obama Lied: Welcome to the ‘Lawyer
Economy’
If You Need Legal Advice,
You Need a Good Lawyer. If You Want to Run an Economy and Create Jobs, Run
away from them!
By Wayne Allyn Root, 2008
Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee
You know what they say
about lawyers…their greatest talent is their ability to quote their
fees without smiling. Well after watching Obama’s State of the Union
speech last week, you can add a new talent to the list: Obama should win an
Academy Award for the role of a lawyer lying about the true “state of
the union.”
Obama said that his
stimulus added 2 million jobs. Really? Where? In some alternate universe?
Certainly not in America. We’ve actually lost several million jobs
since Obama passed his stimulus plan. There is no hard evidence that any
private sector jobs were created. Just another lawyer lie.
Obama said that he was
freezing discretionary income to reduce the deficit. Really? So with
Obama’s version of math, saving a few billion dollars will cut a $1.6
trillion deficit? Just another lawyer lie.
To further prove my point,
only one week after stressing deficit reduction in his State of the Union
address, Obama released the biggest budget in U.S. history ($3.8 trillion)- complete
with the biggest deficit in U.S. history ($1.6 trillion). Give Obama credit-
when he lies, he really lies big!
Obama talked about
creating jobs. But the problem is that government doesn’t create jobs.
Government spending and record deficits takes money away from the private
sector- thereby killing job growth. Obama’s proposed tax increases are
in actuality what is stopping business from adding jobs. Just another lawyer
lie.
Obama talked about helping
small business by making it easier for banks to offer loans. Ask any small
business owner- they will tell you that access to bank loans is the smallest
piece of the puzzle. Obviously Obama is trying to help small business,
without ever actually speaking to a small business owner. Ironically, it is
Obama’s universal health care, tax and spend, cap and trade, card
check, and expansion of government that are standing in the way of a small
business recovery. With friends like Obama, who needs enemies? Just another
lawyer lie.
Obama said that any
student that takes out student loans and goes to work for government, should
have their student loan forgiven. Only in Obama’s radical socialist
world does that make sense. Mr. Obama forgot to mention that there are
already almost 20 MILLION government employees on the federal, state and
local level. And that it is their bloated, obscene salaries, pensions and
free health care that is bankrupting America. He forgot to mention that each
new government employee adds to our deficit. States have no idea how to pay
for their current government employees. Why on earth would anyone want to
encourage the hiring of more? Obama is trying to obscure the difference
between jobs that cost taxpayers nothing (private sector jobs)…versus
jobs that cost taxpayers money and lead to higher taxes and record deficits
(government jobs).
Obama said that the
recession is over. Well maybe it’s over for Obama’s biggest
campaign contributors (who are living on stimulus and bailouts)…but
it’s certainly not over on Main Street. We are far from out of this
economic Armageddon. And by the way Mr. Obama…it’s not a
recession. It’s a depression. Just another lawyer lie.
Obama is living proof of
that famous saying…You know what the difference is between a lawyer and
a liar? The pronunciation.
Now don’t get me
wrong. I like some lawyers. I count lawyers among my best friends. My sister
is an attorney. My daughter Dakota intends to get a law degree (which I
encourage). My personal attorney is my most trusted advisor. When any of us
needs an attorney, we want a good one. But let’s be honest- lawyers are
paid to twist the truth around to the point where you no longer recognize it.
That’s their job. Creating jobs, running businesses, running an
economy- those are all far afield of their areas of expertise.
That explains our problem-
our country is being run by lawyers who know nothing about how to run an
economy; nothing about how to run a business; nothing about how to motivate
small business; nothing about how to create a job; and who now longer
recognize the truth.
Wayne Allyn Root was the
2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate.
His new book - The
Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God,
Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts talks about his hopes to make America far more
Libertarian.
For more Wayne visit his
web site at: ROOTforAmerica.com
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