Obama will win in 2012 "13 KEYS"

Elections expert who’s called every presidential race since ’84: Obama will win

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posted at 4:53 pm on August 30, 2011 by Allahpundit

“Even if I am being conservative, I don’t see how Obama can lose,” says Lichtman, the brains behind The Keys to the White House…
Working for the president are several of Lichtman’s keys, tops among them incumbency and the scandal-free nature of his administration.Undermining his re-election is a lack of charisma and leadership on key issues, says Lichtman, even including healthcare, Obama’s crowning achievement.
Lichtman developed his 13 Keys in 1981. They test the performance of the party that holds the presidency. If six or more of the 13 keys go against the party in power, then the opposing party wins.“The keys have figured into popular politics a bit,” Lichtman says. “They’ve never missed. They’ve been right seven elections in a row. A number that goes way beyond statistical significance in a record no other system even comes close to.”

They’ve been right seven elections in a row about the popular vote. See Wikipedia’s precis of what the Keys predicted for Bush and Gore in 2000. For fair-use reasons, I can’t excerpt Lichtman’s analysis of how the 13 Keys will play out for Obama next year, so follow the link up top and read through.

He’s got The One winning on nine of 13 counts:

1. No contested primary
2. Incumbency
3. No third-party candidate
4. Major domestic-policy changes in his first term
5. No social unrest
6. No major scandals
7. No major foreign-policy failures
8. Major foreign-policy achievements in his first term (killing Bin Laden)
9. Little charisma by his likely opponent


The GOP wins three categories:

1. The incumbent’s party lost seats in the last House election
2. The long-term economy looks poor
3. Little charisma by the incumbent

One other criterion, the state of the economy during the campaign, is undecided because no one knows yet how the short-term trends will look. In other words, if I’m reading this correctly, the GOP will be within one Key of winning the presidency if (a) economic indicators look bad next year, which is only too grimly plausible, and (b) they nominate someone charismatic, like, say, Rick Perry. (What the threshold is for measuring “charisma,” I have no idea.) In which case, how can Lichtman seriously say, “I don’t see how Obama can lose”? Especially since, surreally, he’s counting the stimulus, which the public reviles, and ObamaCare, about which the public is deeply suspicious, as a point in Obama’s favor because they are, after all, major “changes” to American domestic policy. By that standard, even the dumbest, most hated piece of legislation should be treated as an asset to a presidential campaign so long as it’s significant enough to constitute “major change.” If you flip that Key to the GOP, then you’ve got six for the Republicans — enough to take the White House by Lichtman’s own metrics.

All of which assumes, of course, that this will be an ordinary election like the past seven were. Maybe it will; maybe there’s no such thing as an extraordinary election. But the state of the economy is surely extraordinary, poised as it is for a double-dip, and unemployment is extraordinary compared to any other era over the past 75 years. That is to say, we’re assuming that these “Keys” are equally weighted in election after election, no matter the circumstances, when basic awareness of the current political climate suggests the two economic Keys will be weighted way more heavily than any of the others. Can’t wait to see how it plays out. If, heaven forbid, we do end up in another recession and The One wins anyway, then maybe Lichtman really is a genius.

TS - Historically Slow "Rebound"

An Unusual Economy?

By Thomas Sowell

8/30/2011

 

 

Americans today are alarmed that unemployment has stayed around 9 percent for so long. But such unemployment rates have been common for years in Western European welfare states that have followed policies similar to policies being followed currently by the Obama administration.

 

 

 

Many in the media are saying how unusual it is for our economy to be so sluggish for so long, after we have officially emerged from a recession. In a sense, they are right. But, in another sense, they are profoundly wrong.The American economy usually rebounds a lot faster than it is doing today. After a recession passes, consumers usually increase their spending. And when businesses see demand picking up, they usually start hiring workers to produce the additional output required to meet that demand.
Some very sharp downturns in the American economy, such as in the early 1920s, were followed quickly by bouncing back to normal levels or beyond. The government did nothing -- and it worked.
In that sense, this is an unusual recovery in how long it is taking and in how slowly the economy is growing -- while the government is doing virtually everything imaginable.
Government intervention may look good to the media but its actual track record -- both today and in the 1930s -- is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own.
Americans today are alarmed that unemployment has stayed around 9 percent for so long. But such unemployment rates have been common for years in Western European welfare states that have followed policies similar to policies being followed currently by the Obama administration.
Those European welfare states have not only used the taxpayers' money to hand out "free" benefits to particular groups, they have mandated that employers do the same. Faced with higher labor costs, employers have hired less labor.
The vast uncertainties created by ObamaCare create a special problem. If employers knew that ObamaCare would add $1,000 to their costs of hiring an employee, then they could simply reduce the salaries they offer by $1,000 and start hiring.
But, since it will take years to create all the regulations required to carry out ObamaCare, employers today don't know whether the ObamaCare costs that will hit them down the road will be $500 per employee or $5,000 per employee. Even businesses that have record amounts of cash on hand are reluctant to gamble it by expanding their hiring under these conditions.
Many businesses work their existing employees overtime or hire temporary workers, rather than get stuck with unknown and unknowable costs for expanding their permanent work force.
As unusual as 9 percent unemployment rates may seem to the current generation of Americans, unemployment rates stayed in double digits for months and years on end during the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration followed policies very similar to those of the Obama administration today. He also got away with it politically by blaming his predecessor.

Thomas Sowell

EPA - Scrub the Ba---rds

An EPA Moratorium

Obama has the power to delay new rules that will shut down 8% of all U.S. power generation.

 

Since everyone has a suggestion or three about what President Obama can do to get the economy cooking again, here's one of ours: Immediately suspend the Environmental Protection Agency's bid to reorganize the U.S. electricity industry, and impose a moratorium on EPA rules at least until hiring and investment rebound for an extended period.
The EPA is currently pushing an unprecedented rewrite of air-pollution rules in an attempt to shut down a large portion of the coal-fired power fleet. Though these regulations are among the most expensive in the agency's history, none were demanded by the late Pelosi Congress. They're all the result of purely bureaucratic discretion under the Clean Air Act, last revised in 1990.
As it happens, those 1990 amendments contain an overlooked proviso that would let Mr. Obama overrule EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's agenda. With an executive order, he could exempt all power plants "from compliance with any standard or limitation" for two years, or even longer using rolling two-year periods. All he has to declare is "that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so."
Both criteria are easily met. Most important, the EPA's regulatory cascade is a clear and present danger to the reliability and stability of the U.S. power system and grid. The spree affects plants that provide 40% of U.S. baseload capacity in the U.S., and almost half of U.S. net generation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the power supply, reported this month in a letter to the Senate that 81 gigawatts of generating capacity is "very likely" or "likely" to be subtracted by 2018 amid coal plant retirements and downgrades.
That's about 8% of all U.S. generating capacity. Merely losing 56 gigawatts—a midrange scenario in line with FERC and industry estimates—is the equivalent of wiping out all power generation for Florida and Mississippi.     In practice, this will mean blackouts and rolling brownouts, as well as spiking rates for consumers. If a foreign power or terrorists wiped out 8% of U.S. capacity, such as through a cyber attack, it would rightly be considered an act of war. The EPA is in effect undermining the national security concept of "critical infrastructure"—assets essential to the functioning of society and the economy that Mr. Obama has an obligation to protect.
He would also be well within the law to declare that the EPA's rules are technologically infeasible. Later this year, for example, the EPA will release regulations requiring utilities to further limit mercury and other hazardous pollutants. Full compliance will be required by 2015, merely 36 months after the final rule is public, and plants that can't be upgraded in time will be required to shut down.
Yet this is nearly impossible to achieve. Duke Energy commented to the EPA that its average lead time for retrofitting scrubbers was 52 months, including the design, purchase and installation of equipment and the vagaries of the environmental permitting process. For Southern Co., another big utility, it was 54 months, over 16 scrubber systems. Filter systems usually take anywhere from 34 to 48 months end to end.
The environmental regulatory system is so rigid that once a rule is in motion it is almost impossible to stop or roll back in a way that can withstand scrutiny in the courts. Mr. Obama allowed Ms. Jackson to begin the process, but we rehearse these details to show that he has the legal authority to minimize her damage. An executive order would not make these rules more rational or change them in any way. All it would do is delay them, giving businesses more time to prepare and to amortize the costs over a longer time.
The larger issue is whether the Administration's green campaign is more important than economic growth. The EPA's own lowball cost estimate for the mercury rule is $11 billion annually, though the capital expenditures to meet the increasingly strict burden will be far higher. That investment could be put to more productive uses than mothballing coal assets and replacing them with more expensive sources like natural gas. With nearly a tenth of America out of work, $11 billion year after year adds up.
We don't expect Mr. Obama to take our advice and tell his regulators to cool it, but no one should believe the excuse that his hands are tied. Whatever he decides will speak volumes about his real economic priorities.

Debt Primer

A Short Primer on the National Debt

With a return to 1990s growth rates, the debt-to-GDP ratio could drop to 56.7%, about where it was in 2000, in just one decade. By JOHN STEELE GORDON

With the national debt certain to be a front-and-center issue in the 2012 campaign, it is important to understand the true measure of its size. That size seems to vary considerably in news reports. Some news organizations use the debt held by the public, others use total debt. Still others report total future liabilities of the federal government, without making clear what, exactly, that means.
So, a few definitions. The total national debt of the United States is the sum of all federal bills, notes and bonds that have been issued by the Treasury and not yet redeemed. The publicly held debt is the sum of the Treasury securities held by individuals, financial institutions and foreign governments. (That's not just the Chinese, by the way. Both Great Britain and Japan are also major holders of U.S. debt, as are many other countries in lesser amounts.)
The intra-governmental debt is the sum of Treasury bonds held by agencies of the federal government, principally the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. The liabilities equal the future pensions, health care, Social Security payments, etc., that are promised under current legislation.
But while the Treasury securities bear the full faith and credit of the United States and any failure to pay the interest or redeem the principal in a timely fashion would be a default, the liabilities are liabilities only so long as current law remains unchanged. If, for instance, Congress were to adjust the formula by which Social Security cost-of-living increases were calculated or change the age of eligibility, future federal liabilities would shrink by trillions of dollars instantly.
Should the intra-governmental debt be counted when discussing the national debt? I think the answer is yes. As the Social Security surplus disappears (it did, at least temporarily, in 2010) as the baby boomers increasingly retire, the Treasury will be asked to redeem more and more of these federal bonds.
Congress will then have three options: cut spending elsewhere, raise taxes, or borrow the money in the bond market, thus converting the intra-governmental debt into publicly held debt. The last of the three options is the only plausible one and so the intra-governmental debt should be counted as though it were publicly held debt, as that's exactly what it will be in the fullness of time.       
 
And it's the climbing rapidly part that is worrisome, not the debt's current size relative to GDP. Indeed, the debt has been substantially higher by that measure in earlier times. In 1946, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, it was 129.98% of GDP. But while the debt had increased enormously during the war (it had been 50% of a much smaller GDP in 1940), it did not increase substantially over the next 15 years. It was $269 billion in 1946 and $286 billion in 1960. The American economy grew so much in those years that the debt, while slightly up in absolute terms, was down to only 58% of GDP by 1960.

The debt grew to $370 billion in the next decade, but again economic growth (and, towards the end of the 1960s, inflation) continued to reduce it relative to GDP. In 1970 it was a mere 39%, the lowest it had been since the depths of the Great Depression. And while the debt nearly tripled in the 1970s (to $909 billion), the raging inflation of that decade caused the debt to continue to decline to 34.5% of GDP.
When the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker broke the back of the 1970s inflation, the debt relative to GDP began to soar. Why? Because Washington continued to increase spending faster than government revenues increased (and revenues increased a whopping 99.4% in the 1980s thanks to the great boom that began in 1983). The debt was 58.15% of GDP in 1990, a full 24 percentage points above its 1980 low. It continued to increase dramatically in the early 1990s, reaching 68.91% of GDP in 1994.

But then a Republican Congress was swept into power that year, the first time the GOP controlled both houses of Congress since 1954, and President Clinton tacked sharply to the center. In the next six years, while revenues increased 61%, federal outlays increased only 22%. The years 1998-2000 actually showed the first surpluses in the federal budget in 30 years. And the debt, relative to GDP, declined between 1994 and 2000 to 57.3% from 68.91%.

That decline ended in 2001 following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and rising unemployment in the resulting recession. By 2003 the debt-to-GDP ratio had risen to 61.7%. Many blame the Bush tax cuts for adversely impacting federal revenues, causing the debt to spiral upwards. But that is just not true. Federal revenues declined by almost 12% in the early years of the decade, but when the tax cuts fully kicked in in 2003, the economy began to grow strongly again and federal revenues increased 44% in the next four years, while unemployment fell to 4.2% from 6.2%. Federal outlays in those four years increased by only 26.4%, and while the debt-to-GDP ratio increased to 64.8% by 2007, that was still well below what it had been in 1994.

Only with the severe recession that officially began in mid-2007 did the debt-to-GDP ratio begin to soar once more. It reached 67.7% by Oct. 1, 2008, near the end of the Bush administration. A year later, under President Obama, it was at 84.4%, a year later still 93.8%. It is headed quickly towards 100% and beyond without fundamental change in how Washington handles the public fisc.
But a president and a Congress committed to reforming Washington's ways face no insuperable problem getting the debt under control. No one expects the United States to pay off its debt (as we did in the administration of Andrew Jackson, the only time a major country has ever paid off its national debt). Even in a best-case scenario, the absolute size of the debt will not get smaller. But if we can summon the necessary political will, we can dramatically affect the measure of the debt burden that matters: the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Just do what we did after World War II, a period that saw its share of recessions and wars, both hot and cold: stop adding to the debt and let the growth of the GDP bring down the ratio.

If the country can experience GDP growth equal to what we had in the 1990s, the debt-to-GDP ratio would drop, in just a decade, to 56.7%, about where it was in 2000.

But that can only happen if the American electorate sends an unequivocal message in November 2012. Voters did exactly that in November 2010. Will they do it again?
 
Mr. Gordon is the author of numerous books, including "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt" (Walker, revised edition, 2010).

Social Degeration Part III

Social Degeneration: Part 3

By Thomas Sowell

8/18/2011

 

Editor’s note: This article is Part III in a series. Click here to read Part I. Click here to read Part II.
The orgies of violent attacks against strangers on the streets -- in both England and the United States -- are not necessarily just passing episodes. They should be wake-up calls, warning of the continuing degeneration of Western society.
As British doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple said, long before these riots broke out, "the good are afraid of the bad and the bad are afraid of nothing."
Not only the trends over the years leading up to these riots but also the squeamish responses to them by officials -- on both sides of the Atlantic -- reveal the moral dry rot that has spread deep into Western societies.
Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don't cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.
In England, the government did not call out the troops to squash their riots at the outset. The net result was that young hoodlums got to rampage and loot for hours, while the police struggled to try to contain the violence. Hoodlums returned home with loot from stores with impunity, as well as bringing home with them a contempt for the law and for the rights of other people.
With all the damage that was done by these rioters, both to cities and to the whole fabric of British society, it is very unlikely that most of the people who were arrested will be sentenced to jail. Only 7 percent of people convicted of crime in England are actually put behind bars.
"Alternatives to incarceration" are in vogue among the politically correct elites in England, just as in the United States. But in Britain those elites have had much more clout for a much longer time. And they have done much more damage.
Nevertheless, our own politically correct elites are pointing us in the same direction. A headline in the New York Times shows the same politically correct mindset in the United States: "London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain." There is not a speck of evidence that the rioters and looters are troubled -- unless you engage in circular reasoning and say that they must have been troubled to do the things they did.
In reality, like other rioters on both sides of the Atlantic they are often exultant in their violence and happy to be returning home with stolen designer clothes and upscale electronic devices.
In both England and in the United States, whole generations have been fed a steady diet of grievances and resentment against society, and especially against others who are more prosperous than they are. They get this in their schools, on television, on campuses and in the movies. Nothing is their own fault. It is all "society's" fault.
One of the young Britons interviewed in the New York Times reported that he had learned to read only three years ago. He is not unique. In Theodore Dalrymple's book, "Life at the Bottom," he referred to many British youths who are unashamedly illiterate. The lyrics of a popular song in Britain said, "We don't need no education" and another song was titled "Poor, White and Stupid."
Dr. Dalrymple says, "I cannot recall meeting a sixteen-year-old white from the public housing estates that are near my hospital who could multiple nine by seven."
In the United States, the color may be different but the attitudes among the hoodlum element are very similar. In both countries, classmates who try to learn can find themselves targeted by bullies.
Here those who want to study in ghetto schools are often accused of "acting white." But whites in Britain show the same pattern. Some conscientious students are beaten up badly enough to end up at Dr. Dalrymple's hospital.
Our elites often advise us to learn from other countries. They usually mean that we should imitate other countries. But it may be far more important to learn from their mistakes -- the biggest of which may be listening to fashionable nonsense from the smug intelligentsia.
These countries show us where that smug nonsense leads. It may be a sneak preview of our own future.
"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

Social Degeneration Part II

August 28, 2011

Social Degeneration Part 2

By Thomas Sowell

8/17/2011

 

Editor’s note: This article is Part II in a series. Click here to read Part I.
Although much of the media have their antennae out to pick up anything that might be construed as racism against blacks, they resolutely ignore even the most blatant racism by blacks against others.
That includes a pattern of violent attacks on whites in public places in Chicago, Denver, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Kansas City, as well as blacks in schools beating up Asian classmates -- for years -- in New York and Philadelphia.
These attacks have been accompanied by explicitly racist statements by the attackers, so it is not a question of having to figure out what the motivation is. There has also been rioting and looting by these young hoodlums.
Yet blacks have no monopoly on these ugly and malicious episodes. Remarkably similar things are being done by lower-class whites in England. Anybody reading "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple will recognize the same barbaric and self-destructive patterns among people with the same attitudes, even though their skin color is different.
Anyone reading today's headline stories about young hoodlums turning the streets of London into scenes of shattered and burning chaos, complete with violence, will discover the down side of the brotherhood of man.
While the history and the races are different, what is the same in both countries are the social policies and social attitudes long promoted by the intelligentsia and welfare state politicians.
A recent study in England found 352,000 households in which nobody had ever worked. Moreover, two-thirds of the adults in those households said that they didn't want to work. As in America, such people feel both "entitled" and aggrieved.
In both countries, those who have achieved less have been taught by the educational system, by the media and by politicians on the left that they have a grievance against those who have achieved more. As in the United States, they feel a fierce sense of resentment against strangers who have done nothing to them, and lash out violently against those strangers.
During the riots, looting and violence in England, a young woman was quoted as saying that this showed "the rich" and the police that "we can do whatever we want." Among the things done during these riots was forcing apparently prosperous looking people to strip naked in the streets.
The need to bring people down in humiliation that marked the mass violence against the Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago, and that later marked the Nazi persecutions of the Jews in Germany, is still alive and well in people who resent those who have achieved more than they have.
A milder but revealing episode in England some time back involved burglars who were not content to simply steal things but also vented their hostility by scrawling on the wall: "RICH BASTARDS."
In the United States, young black thugs attacked whites with baseball bats and took their belongings in Denver, while voicing their hatred of whites. But it is all a very similar attitude to what has been found in other countries and other times.
Today's politically correct intelligentsia will tell you that the reason for this alienation and lashing out is that there are great disparities and inequities that need to be addressed.
But such barbarism was not nearly as widespread two generations ago, in the middle of the 20th century. Were there no disparities or inequities then? Actually there were more.
What is different today is that there has been -- for decades -- a steady drumbeat of media and political hype about differences in income, education and other outcomes, blaming these differences on oppression against those with fewer achievements or lesser prosperity.
Moreover, there has been a growing tolerance of lawlessness and a growing intolerance toward the idea that people who are lagging need to take steps to raise themselves up, instead of trying to pull others down.
All this exalts those who talk such lofty talk. But others pay the price -- and ultimately that includes even those who take the road toward barbarism.

TS - Social Degragation Part I

August 28, 2011

By Thomas Sowell

8/16/2011

Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race.
After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence -- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places -- Philadelphia's black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.
"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy," the mayor said. He added: "You have damaged your own race."
While this might seem like it is just plain common sense, what Mayor Nutter said undermines a whole vision of the world that has brought fame, fortune and power to race hustlers in politics, the media and academia. Any racial disparities in hiring can only be due to racism and discrimination, according to the prevailing vision, which reaches from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Just to identify the rioters and looters as black is a radical departure, when mayors, police chiefs and the media in other cities report on these outbreaks of violence without mentioning the race of those who are doing these things. The Chicago Tribune even made excuses for failing to mention race when reporting on violent attacks by blacks on whites in Chicago.
Such excuses might make sense if the same politicians and media talking heads were not constantly mentioning race when denouncing the fact that a disproportionate number of young black men are being sent to prison.
The prevailing social dogma is that disparities in outcomes between races can only be due to disparities in how these races are treated. In other words, there cannot possibly be any differences in behavior.
But if black and white Americans had exactly the same behavior patterns, they would be the only two groups on this planet that are the same.
The Chinese minority in Malaysia has long been more successful and more prosperous than the Malay majority, just as the Indians in Fiji have long been more successful and more prosperous than the indigenous Fijians. At various places and times throughout history, the same could be said of the Armenians in Turkey, the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Parsees in India, the Japanese in Brazil, and numerous others.
There are similar disparities within particular racial or ethnic groups. Even this late in history, I have had northern Italians explain to me why they are not like southern Italians. In Australia, Jewish leaders in both Sydney and Melbourne went to great lengths to tell me why and how the Jews are different in these two cities.
In the United States, despite the higher poverty level among blacks than among whites, the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994. The disparities within the black community are huge, both in behavior and in outcomes.
Nevertheless, the dogma persists that differences between groups can only be due to the way others treat them or to differences in the way others perceive them in "stereotypes."
All around the country, people in politics and the media have been tip-toeing around the fact that violent attacks by blacks on whites in public places are racially motivated, even when the attackers themselves use anti-white invective and mock the victims they leave lying on the streets bleeding.
This is not something to ignore or excuse. It is something to be stopped. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia seems to be the first to openly recognize this.
This needs to be done for the sake of both black and white Americans -- and even for the sake of the hoodlums. They have set out on a path that leads only downward for themselves.

GW - Wisconsin - Liberal"s Waterloo

Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo

By George F. Will, Published: August 24

MADISON, Wis.
The residues of liberalism’s Wisconsin Woodstock — 1960s radicalism redux: operatic lamentations, theatrical demonstrations and electoral futilities — are words of plaintive defiance painted on sidewalks around the state capitol. “Solidarity forever” was perhaps painted by a graduate student forever at the University of Wisconsin. “Repubs steal elections” is an odd accusation from people who, seeking to overturn the 2010 elections, cheeredDemocratic lawmakers who fled to Illinois — a congenial refuge for labor-subservient Democrats — in order to paralyze the duly elected legislature. The authors of the sidewalk graffiti have at least read Jefferson: “The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants.” The tyrant is “$cott Walker American Fa$ci$t.”
Who, on a recent morning, was enjoying the view and the turn of events. From the governor’s mansion on the shore of sparkling Lake Mendota you can see on the far shore the famously liberal university, from which came many of those who protested his “budget repair” bill that already seems to have repaired many communities’ budgets, in addition to the state’s.
Ostensibly, the uproar was about Walker’s “assault” — Barack Obama’s hyperbole — on union rights. Walker’s legislation does limit the issues subject to collective bargaining and requires teachers and most other public employees to contribute more of the costs of their health and pension plans. Hitherto, in Wisconsin’s school districts, teachers contributed on average 5 percent or less to their health-care premiums.
Having failed to prevent enactment of the Walker agenda voters had endorsed, unions and their progressive allies tried to recall six Republican senators. If three had been recalled, Democrats would have controlled the Senate, and other governors and state legislators would have been warned not to challenge unions. Fueled by many millions of dollars from national unions and sympathizers, progressives proved, redundantly, the limited utility of money when backing a bankrupt agenda: Only two Republicans were recalled — one was in a heavily Democratic district, the other is a married man playing house with a young girlfriend. Progressives also failed to defeat a Supreme Court justice.
An especially vociferous progressive group calls itself “We Are Wisconsin.” Evidently not.
During the recall tumult, unions barely mentioned either their supposed grievance about collective bargaining, or their real fears, which concern money, particularly political money. Teachers unions can no longer bargain to require school districts to purchase teachers’ health insurance from the union’s preferred provider, which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars and reducing teacher layoffs. Also, unions must hold annual recertification votes.
And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.
Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.
Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.
Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.
As the moonless night of fa$ci$m descends on America’s dairyland, sidewalk graffiti next to the statehouse-square drinking fountain darkly warns: “Free water . . . for now.” There, succinctly, is liberalism’s credo: If everything isn’t “free,” meaning paid for by someone else, nothing will be safe.
georgewill@washpost.com

Irene - A Black Swan ???

James Pethokoukis

Will Hurricane Irene be a black swan for the U.S. economy?

Aug 25, 2011 15:01 EDT

• 
  
• The U.S. economy is growing very slowly, just 0.4 percent in the first quarter, 1.3 percent in the second. And it might not do a whole better the rest of the year. That’s a problem. A recent study from the Federal Reserve finds that that since 1947, when two-quarter annualized real GDP growth falls below 2 percent, recession follows within a year 48 percent of the time. (And when year-over-year real GDP growth falls below 2 percent, recession follows within a year 70 percent of the time.

So while we may be in a recovery, it’s a fragile one, at best. In short, nothing can go wrong or we’ll end up back in recession. That’s a big reason everyone is so focused on Europe and its ongoing sovereign debt and banking troubles. And why problems at Bank of America cause flashbacks of 2008.
But what about the nasty storm making its way up the East Coast? What’s the potential it causes enough economic damage and disruption to nudge the American economy back into a downturn? Well, I suppose the worst-case scenario would be a direct strike on New York City. That would be pretty bad:

In the city, a hurricane’s storm surge would cause sudden, extensive flooding, submerging much of Lower Manhattan and crippling the subway system and tunnels.
The powerful winds would uproot thousands of trees, down power lines and send debris flying in all corners of the city. And those winds could shatter windows on skyscrapers, especially in the taller buildings that would bear the brunt of powerful gusts that occur at higher elevations. The canyons of Manhattan could magnify the winds, and would be a deadly place for anyone caught beneath the raining glass.
Other comparisons to Hurricane Katrina are hard to ignore. Katrina, the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history, caused insured losses of more than $40 billion in 2005. AIR Worldwide, a firm that models disaster scenarios for insurance companies, has said that a repeat of the Long Island Express would cost $33 billion if it happened today. In the most dire projections, a direct hit on New York City could cost upwards of $100 billion.
The impact would be felt long after flood waters recede. Coch predicts that the salt water in the subway would corrode the switches and cripple the system for months or years, and disable much of the communications infrastructure in Lower Manhattan. “In 1893, Wall Street was cut off from the rest of the country when the telegraph lines went down,” he said. “Imagine what would happen now when the fiber optic cable failed.”

Sounds a lot worse than Hurricane Katrina given the incredible importance of Manhattan to the U.S. and global economy. Tough to quantify, of course. But, for comparison purposes, here is a Congressional Research Service analysis of the economic impact of Katrina in 2005:

Since the storm, a number of economic forecasters have adjusted their predictions to reflect its effects. Most indicate that, as a result of the storm, national economic growth is expected to be 0.5%-1.0% slower than in the second half of 2005. However, as economic activity recovers in the affected region, and rebuilding begins, growth in the first half of 2006 is now expected to be more rapid than was previously forecast.

Back in 2005, the economy was growing at a 3-4 percent clip. Today, it’s less than 2 percent. Maybe even less than 1 percent. It seems pretty clear a devastating hit on the Big Apple might well send the economy back into recession. And given the current fragility of consumer and business confidence, how likely is it that the economy would quickly bounce back into growth in a quarter or two? Here’s how Japan is doing, by the way, after its pair of natural disasters earlier this year:

Five months after a tsunami and nuclear meltdown assailed Japan, the economy has been pummelled by fresh blows. Share prices have followed global stockmarkets down, with the Nikkei 225 index revisiting its nadir in the days after the earthquake in March. As if the fears about a global slowdown that have depressed equity investors were not enough, the yen has been soaring, which will hurt Japanese exporters. Adding to the pain, Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, downgraded Japan’s debt rating one notch to Aa3 on August 24th because of its huge public debt and chaotic politics.

cbo - The Numbers ????

Krauthammer’s Take

By NRO Staff

Posted on August 25, 2011 5:43 PM

From Wednesday night’s Fox News All-Stars:

On the Congressional Budget Office’s new deficit numbers:

It has to accept all the assumptions it’s given.

So in some way it’s garbage in and garbage out.
The reason its deficit projection for the next decade is relatively low, the $3.3 trillion, [is] in part because of the deals the Republicans have forced on the president this year, but also in part it has to accept the assumption under the current law, [that] the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of next year …

Of course, nobody will permit the expiration of the cut on the middle class. That is where the money is. Obama of course wants to retain it — as the Republicans do. That is where the money is. It’s $3 trillion. The [Bush tax] cut on the rich is only $0.8 [trillion]. So if you add it together …  we’ll be at $6.5 trillion — under the best of circumstances — of debt [increases] over the next decade. That’s immense.

On the Pentagon’s overdue annual report on China’s military strength:

There are two questions with China. The capacity — its capacities and its intentions. And everybody pretends that its intentions are obscure. It is not. It is obvious that China wants to dominate its region. There might be a question as to whether ultimately it wants to challenge us on a global level the way the Soviets did in the Atlantic and other places, but if it happens it’s half a century away. What we’re talking about is now, in the next decade or two.

Obviously it wants us out of the western Pacific, which we have dominated. It’s our waters. It’s our pond. And China’s developing all these weapons systems, which would be a way to deny us access. You’ve got the cyberspace [capacities], the outerspace, the surface ships, the submarines, the aircraft carrier, the ship-to-ship missiles, the J-20 fighter. All of these would be weapons systems that would make it difficult or dangerous for America to enter the [Pacific Rim] waters.
It [China] wants to dominate its region. It has claims on the waters that a lot of countries in Southeast Asia are claiming. And that’s its objective.

The huge increase in its capacities is aimed clearly at making it its waters and not ours. And that’s the obvious coming threat.

ck - BMB's "Bad Luck"

August 19, 2011 12:00 A.M.

 
Bad Luck? Bad Faith?
 
Obama blames a recalcitrant providence and an unpatriotic opposition for his woes.

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, got the economy moving again. . . .  But over the last six months, we’ve had a run of bad luck.”
— President Obama, Decorah, Iowa, August 15

A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment, 0.9 percent growth, and an economic outlook so bad that the Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates at zero through mid-2013 — an admission that it sees little hope on the horizon?

Bad luck, explains our president. Out of nowhere came Japan and its supply-chain disruptions, Europe and its debt problems, the Arab Spring and those oil spikes. Kicked off, presumably, by various acts of God (should He not be held accountable too?): earthquake and tsunami. (Tomorrow: pestilence and famine. Maybe frogs.)

Well yes, but what leader is not subject to external events? Were the minor disruptions of the current Arab Spring remotely as damaging as the Arab oil embargo of 1973–74? Were the supply disruptions of Japan 2011 anything like the Asian financial collapse of 1997–98? Events happen. Leaders are elected to lead (from the front, incidentally). That means dealing with events, not plaintively claiming to be their victim.

Moreover, luck is the residue of design, as Branch Rickey immortally observed. And Obama’s design for the economy was a near–$1 trillion stimulus that left not a trace, the heavy hand of Obamacare, and a flurry of regulatory zeal that seeks to stifle everything from domestic energy production to Boeing’s manufacturing expansion into South Carolina.

He sowed, he reaps.

In Obama’s recounting, however, luck is only half the story. His economic recovery was ruined not just by acts of God and (foreign) men, but by Americans who care nothing for their country. These people, who inhabit Congress (guess what party?), refuse to set aside “politics” for the good of the nation. They serve special interests and lobbyists, care only about the next election, place party ahead of country. Indeed, they “would rather see their opponents lose than see America win.” The blaggards!
For weeks, these calumnies have been Obama staples. Calumnies, because they give not an iota of credit to the opposition for trying to promote the public good, as presumably Obama does, but from different premises and principles. Calumnies, because they deny legitimacy to those on the other side of the great national debate about the size and scope and reach of government.

Charging one’s opponents with bad faith is the ultimate political ad hominem. It obviates argument, fact, logic, history. Conservatives resist Obama’s social-democratic, avowedly transformational agenda not just on principle but on empirical grounds, as well — the economic and moral unraveling of Europe’s social-democratic experiment, on display today from Athens to the streets of London.
Obama’s answer? He doesn’t even engage. That’s the point of these ugly accusations of bad faith. They are the equivalent of branding Republicans enemies of the people. Gov. Rick Perry has been rightly chided for throwing around the word “treasonous” in reference to the Fed. Obama gets a pass for doing the same, only slightly more artfully, regarding Republicans. After all, he is accusing them of wishing to see America fail for their own political gain. What is that if not a charge of betraying one’s country?

The charge is not just ugly. It’s laughable. All but five Republican members of the House — moderate, establishment, tea party, freshman alike — voted for a budget containing radical Medicare reform knowing it could very well end many of their careers. Democrats launched gleefully into Mediscare attacks, hardly believing their luck that Republicans should have proposed something so politically risky in pursuit of fiscal solvency. Yet Obama accuses Republicans of acting for nothing but partisan advantage.

This from a man who has cagily refused to propose a single structural reform to entitlements in his three years in office. A man who ordered that the Afghan surge be unwound by September 2012, a date that makes no military sense (it occurs during the fighting season), a date not recommended by his commanders, a date whose sole purpose is to give Obama political relief on the eve of the 2012 election.

And Obama dares accuse others of placing politics above country?

A plague of bad luck and bad faith — a recalcitrant providence and an unpatriotic opposition. Our president wrestles with angels, monsters of mythic proportions.

A comforting fantasy. But a sorry excuse for a failing economy and a flailing presidency.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2011 the Washington Post Writers Group.

BMB's WWII Analogy

August 24, 2011 4:00 A.M.

 
The False WWII Analogy
 
Obama’s America is more like Attlee’s Britain than Truman’s America.

Since 2009, the example of the economic boom following World War II has been used by Keynesians to justify their record “peacetime” levels of borrowing intended to lift the U.S. out of the doldrums. Indeed, the more the contemporary borrowing fails, the more the vast indebtedness of the war years is invoked to reassure us. On occasion a wry lament follows that if only a spaceship full of dangerous aliens were to appear, we might have the requisite excuse to follow our grandfathers into a new collective frenzy of economic stimulus and public debt.

Citing the benefits that accrued from World War II, of course, is ironic for lots of reasons — aside from the horror of 50 million dead.

Modern liberalism has argued that defense spending, in all its manifestations, is ipso facto an uneconomical use of national resources. Money spent building an artillery gun and training a youth to fire it supposedly could be better spent subsidizing higher education or producing a hybrid car — as if the modern college turns out better disciplined, more motivated, and better educated young people than does the Marine Corps or Air Force; as if deterring aggression is more costly than meeting it on the battlefield at a disadvantage; as if the habitual exactness and lasting skills acquired in building a huge fleet carrier are comparable to those required for building a Chevy Volt.
For decades the liberal argument was that the New Deal cured the Depression. But in a new twist, the war has suddenly been reinvented to support the current arguments of the new Keynesians — despite the irony in the embrace of the old right-wing argument that it was the World War II defense spending, not FDR’s New Deal, that finally got America out of a near-decade-long depression.

In ingenious fashion, the new argument insists that the second downward spiral of 1937–38 — formerly ostensible proof that five years of the New Deal and of anti-business rhetoric had not worked — should be attributed only to FDR’s lacking the will or political muscle to stay the course and accelerate deficit spending, redistribute more income, and grow far bigger government. Then luckily the war came along. That crisis provided the necessary political landscape, which had been lacking during the supposed Keynesian backsliding of Roosevelt’s second term, to force through the long-awaited New New Deal. At last, the really big scare allowed the really big borrowing, and the result was the really big prosperity for the next half-century.

But as many have pointed out, there are all sorts of problems with this account. During World War II, the American public scrimped and saved. If household income increased, so did household savings — not surprisingly, given the rationing of many consumer goods and total unavailability of others. Washers, dryers, hot-water heaters, vacuum cleaners — all those and more were bought for the first time after the war, and often without borrowing.

In other words, there was plenty of private postwar investment capital and household money waiting to be tapped when the shooting stopped and millions came home — especially for basics such as new cars, trucks, tractors, and appliances.
But now? Household credit-card and mortgage debt, for all the new frugality, remain high. Consumers are strapped, even those who have jobs and have not lost thousands in collapsed home equity and depleted 401(k) retirement plans, or made nothing in years from near-zero-interest savings accounts. In other words, we do not have a long-deprived public, flush with years of hoarded cash, just waiting with pent-up demand to buy brand new labor-saving devices and shiny new vehicles produced in converted tank and bomber factories. There is no need to add that in a pre–Great Society America, without food stamps, two to three years of unemployment insurance, and housing subsidies, there might have been more incentive to hustle for jobs.

Moreover, the world abroad in 1946 was hardly similar to the world in 2011. Review the prior status of our present global competitors: India was a backward colony and in civil turmoil. War-torn China was about to embark on the most self-destructive social experiment in human history. Two-thirds of a centrally planned Soviet Union was in shambles. Western Europe was near starving after years of bombing and Nazi strangulation. The future export powerhouses of Japan and Germany were in ruins. Brazil was pre-modern. The miracles of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea were still imaginary. A victorious Britain was full of self-doubt and exhausted, busy dismantling its colonial empire and nationalizing its steel, transportation, health, and energy industries.
I
n the immediate postwar years, only a capitalist, self-confident America was poised to supply foreigners with much-needed manufactured goods, expertise, and capital to raise the world from ruin. And from the profits, we were able to pay down our own staggering and unsupportable wartime-incurred debt. Note as well that in 1946 a self-sufficient oil-producing America was not guzzling down a half-trillion dollars’ worth of imported oil each year.

In short, in 2011 there is nothing that suggests the present massive borrowing will lead us to anything like the prosperity of the postwar years — a time when social spending and entitlements accounted for 30 percent, not 70 percent of the annual federal budget; when households both had cash and were eager to buy long-denied items; when America did not import high-cost oil (having recently supplied 80 percent of its wartime allies’ oil needs from domestic production); and when an unscathed industrial-powerhouse United States was alone on top of the world.

But if we must go back to the post–World War II era for an example to enlighten us about what the current Obama policies presage, then the similarities to the present are not to be found in 1940s America. A better guide is Clement Attlee’s 1946 United Kingdom, which, like Obama’s 2011 America, sought to retrench from the world scene, lead from behind, and establish a much-vaunted high-tax, big-government, cradle-to-grave redistributive welfare state — one whose legacy we have just witnessed in London’s streets.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

View of Middle East War

It’s a Real War, Stupid. A Big War. A Worthy Challenge for America

Posted By Michael Ledeen On August 22, 2011 @ 6:31 pm In Uncategorized | 84 Comments

^[1]
If we are going to win in the Middle East, we have to get the context right.  As I wrote in The War Against the Terror Masters ^[2], long before the invasion of Iraq, we cannot just “do” a country like Iraq, or today, Syria, and then move on.  That’s one of the strategic mistakes Bush, Rice, Hadley, Cheney and Rumsfeld made.  They  viewed Iraq in isolation.  They thought they could just “do Iraq,” and then consider their options.  We then belatedly discovered (even though our enemies publicly announced what they were going to do) that Iraq and Afghanistan could not have decent security so long as Syria and Iran actively supported terrorists in those countries.   American soldiers and countless Iraqi and Afghan civilians have paid a terrible price for our failure of vision.
The regional war has expanded, but we still look at each battle field in isolation, rather than seeing the war whole:

• Israel has been  invaded, and is under constant rocket attack;

• The shooting war in Libya, where American pilots and trainers  conducted operations, and others trained and helped organize the anti-Qadaffi campaign;

• We have declared diplomatic and economic war on the Assad regime in Syria, just as we began with Qadaffi’s regime in Libya;

• The war against the Kurds:  Turkey now routinely bombs and invades PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, while Iran shells and invades the same region.  We are directly involved on this battlefield;  we’ve been providing intelligence to the Turks on the Kurds since at least 2007;

• The violence against our troops, and against our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, is relentlessly increasing.

To date, insofar as we have had a regional strategy,  it has largely been based on wishful thinking, even when applied to more than one  problem at a time.  The administration hoped that Syria would choose friendship with us rather than strategic alliance with Tehran, that Tehran would accept our “outstretched hand” rather than continue to wage its 32-year old terror war against us, that Turkey would be our proxy ambassador to Syria and Iran, helping us to “peel off’ Assad from the mullahs and to convince Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be reasonable about nukes, and that Obaman diplomacy would bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  None of it worked.
To be sure, there was nothing new about most of that;  Obama was simply embracing the failed dreams of the two Bushes and the Clintons.  The only difference was timing:  the others slowly came to believe that a Grand Bargain with Iran and Syria was doable, while Obama started with that fantasy.  All believed—and perhaps some of our policy makers still believe—that Turkey was a friend and would support our goals.
What happens when an administration’s dreams are shattered?   In a very important article ^[3] in the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes and Tom Jocelyn suggest the administration may have drawn the obvious conclusions from the failure of wishful thinking, and may now be changing course.  “With the public accusations that Iran is harboring the next generation of al Qaeda leadership and is facilitating the operation of al Qaeda’s key pipeline for funding and operatives,” they suggest, “the Obama administration seems to be saying that this conciliatory approach has now come to an end.”  It’s a bit clearer with Syria;  we are now publicly committed to regime change in Damascus.
Whatever Obama’s intentions, he has certainly laid the groundwork for more vigorous action against Syria and Iran, whose bonds are so intimate they constitute a single strategic enemy of the United States.  The Iranian regime is fighting feverishly to save Assad:  committing billion of dollars, sending Damascus weapons and technology to censor and monitor internet and cellular communications, dispatching Quds Force killers (some of whom are Syrian Kurds, so that if they’re captured Assad and Khamenei can blame Kurdish “terrorists”), and even publicly warning the Turks to butt out.  If Tehran has to choose between Syria and Turkey, the mullahs will choose Syria.
It’s easy to understand Khamenei’s anxiety, now on public display as he sends a new ambassador—Mohammadreza Raouf Sheybani, a notoriously tough Revolutionary Guards veteran –to Damascus in the middle of Ramadan.  Iran has long waged war through Syrian-based proxies, from Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad and Hamas, and on to terror groups with secular, rather than Islamist, ideologies.  In all probability, Syria and Iran have conducted a joint nuclear program.  The fall of Assad and his replacement by a less Iranian-compliant government would be a catastrophe for Khamenei:  it would be a terrible blow to Hezbollah and the other terror proxies.  It would deep-six whatever nuclear schemes are in the works, and it would undoubtedly send a powerful emotional charge through the ranks of the Iranian opposition.  If the regime can be beaten in Damascus and Homs, they will reason, why not in Tehran and Tabriz?
Khamenei’s worries about Syria are likely a component of the new assault against Israel as well.  Such an ambitious action is at least in part designed to mobilize the region against the Zionist entity, and forget about the poor Syrian people.  On the other hand, the fall of Qadaffi is bad news for the whole collection of Middle Eastern tyrants, whether Sunni or Shi’a, in Tehran or Riyadh.  They all  know that American power brought him down, and they all saw the ferocity with which his opponents fought to bring down his regime, just as they see the remarkable courage of tens  of thousands of Syrians taking to the streets, even though suffering and death await them.  And they remember the similar scenes in Iran, which in so many ways inspired the insurrections across the Arab world.
The short march to the best available outcome right now runs through Damascus to Tehran.  Regime change in Syria and Iran would be a godsend for our travails in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for the increasingly irrelevant peace process.  Unlike Libya, we should not resort to military means to bring down Assad and Khamenei;  in addition to sanctions, we need to support political revolution in both countries.  And while we’re at it, American support for the Kurds is long overdo.  They are critical components of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.  Despite ongoing spats, they have long cooperated in a regional strategy aimed at gaining autonomy in all four countries, pending the opportunity to test the possibility of a Kurdish state.  They are very well informed, and they are good fighters (ask the Turks and the Iranians, both of whom are badly bloodied when they venture into Kurdish territory).  The Kurds should be part of our political strategy.
When Obama says that the future of Iran and Syria will be determined by the people of those countries, he never says what we all know to be true:  those people have already decided what they want, and we should help them achieve it.  Our successful support of dissident democratic groups in the Soviet Empire provides many of the guidelines:  build strike funds for Syrian and Iranian workers;  find ways to help the dissidents communicate with one another to organize more effective protests and confrontations;  make their cause a daily talking point for all our national security officials, civilian and  military, both in their statements to media reporters and via our national radio and tv stations from VOA to Farda.
As we do that, we need to have a serious conversation with the Saudis.  King Abdullah was one of the first national leaders to yank his ambassador from Damascus, demonstrating his disgust with Assad, and it may well have been a turning point for others as well.  But the kingdom remains the major financier of radical Islamic mosques and schools (and a forthcoming book in England ^[4] revives suspicions of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 operation), which are an assembly line—not the only one, but certainly the biggest–for the next generation of terrorists.  That has to stop, and we need to make them stop it.  That demarche, and whatever actions necessary to accomplish its goals, must be high on our strategic to-do list.
Yes, it’s a lot to do.  But it’s a big war.  And we’re a big country.  It’s a challenge worthy of us, and we should embrace it.

Let a thousand Flowers Bloom - BMB YAB

Browse phrases beginning with: [A][B][C][D][E][F][G][H][I][J][K][L][M][N][O][P][Q][R][S][T][U,V][W][X,Y,Z]

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Let a thousand flowers bloom

Ron Bloom Obama's Labor Czar (and communist sympathiser (ex Union leader)

quoted Mao as he resigned his Administration post.

 

Meaning

Encourage many ideas from many sources.

Origin

Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Let a hundred flowers blossom". This slogan was used during the period of approximately six weeks in the summer of 1957 when the Chinese intelligentsia were invited to criticize the political system then obtaining in Communist China.

The full quotation, taken from a speech of Mao's in Peking in February 1957, is:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

It is sometimes suggested that the initiative was a deliberate attempt to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime. Whether or not 

it was a deliberate trap isn't clear but it is the case that many of those who put forward views that were unwelcome to Mao were executed.

Let a thousand Flowers Bloom - BMB YAB

Let a thousand flowers bloom

Meaning

Encourage many ideas from many sources.

Origin

Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Let a hundred flowers blossom". This slogan was used during the period of approximately six weeks in the summer of 1957 when the Chinese intelligentsia were invited to criticize the political system then obtaining in Communist China.

The full quotation, taken from a speech of Mao's in Peking in February 1957, is:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

It is sometimes suggested that the initiative was a deliberate attempt to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime. Whether or not 

it was a deliberate trap isn't clear but it is the case that many of those who put forward views that were unwelcome to Mao were executed.

PN - 2010 Election Preview - REMEMBERED

How Do You Stop an Elephant Charging?

Democrats are running out of time to find an answer.
    •    By PEGGY NOONAN


Eight weeks out and you don't have to be a political professional to feel what's in the air: The Republicans have a big win coming.
The question in the House races is: Will they get to 218? Will Republicans pick up the 39 seats they need to win control of the 435-member chamber?

Another way of asking: Is this 1994 again?
 
That year the Republicans swept the House races, picking up 52 seats and getting, for the first time in 40 years, a Republican majority and a Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich. Even then-Speaker Tom Foley (D., Wash.), lost his seat that year. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi is famously in no danger—she won her seat with 72 % of the vote in 2008—but it probably means something that she appears to have gone missing from the national scene. CBS, in March, had her at 11% approval among registered voters.)

A Gallup survey of registered voters this week had Republicans beating Democrats in a generic ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%. In the 68-year history of that poll, the GOP had never led by more than five points. RealClearPolitics has Republicans ahead in 206 races and Democrats ahead in 194, with 35 too close to call. The Cook Political Report puts 68 Democratic House seats "at substantial risk," while judging less than a dozen GOP seats to be in real trouble. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made news a few weeks ago by conceding the obvious: that the Republicans could take the House. Top Democrats have told the same to Politico.

The news is so good it's prompting mutterings on the right: The liberal media are trumpeting the inevitable GOP triumph to make the base complacent and the party peak early. Anything but a Democratic debacle will be spun as proof that Obama's support, while soft, endures. "The Republicans had a typical off-year chance to win back power and failed. The reason? Voters just don't trust them."

The Democrats are not without resources.

The first is money, and the second is troops. The Wall Street Journal's Neil King Jr. notes that in many of the closest races this year the Democrats have more cash on hand, and in 20 of those races "the Democrat has at least a four-to-one cash advantage over the Republican candidate." The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it has nearly $17 million more to spend on key House races than its GOP counterpart. Then there are the unions: "The AFL-CIO says it will spend more than $40 million to back candidates and mobilize residents of union-member households to vote in November, overwhelmingly in support of Democrats."

What's going to happen? I put the question to one of the architects of the 1994 Republican win, the conservative activist Grover Norquist, a contributor to the Contract with America, member of the Gingrich kitchen cabinet, and founder, 25 years ago, of Americans for Tax Reform. In conversations over those years, I've found him to be among the most insightful political observers in Washington.

So, is this 1994 again?

"It could be, and it looks like it," he said. He noted that Republicans in 1994 were not polling this well and this strongly this early.

There are parallels, he said, between '94 and '10. One is determination. The Republican Party establishment sets its mind specifically to winning back the House in '94—"before that, it had seemed impossible"—and is doing so again. Both 1994 and 2010 were preceded by striking off-year GOP victories in New Jersey and Virginia, which signaled a coming Republican wave. In 1994 the Republican theme "was not just 'Vote against Clintonism,' it was 'Vote for the Contract with America.'" The Republicans are putting together a 2010 contract and plan to unveil it in late September, as they did in '94. The first contract, says Mr. Norquist, was "not a campaign tool but a governing tool." He remembered data that said before the '94 election, less than 20% of voters had heard of it. But after the election the media made the contract famous. "It was a great gift to the Republicans," he said, because it forced them into a semblance of unity by making them focus on a specific agenda.

But there are differences between 1994 and 2010. For one, this time around "the Democrats can see what's coming." They didn't see the Republican wave rising in 1994 until it was too late. "When you see something coming a mile away, you can build a ditch to keep it away." Democrats, he says, have put aside a lot of money for negative ads in the last days of the campaign. "For a year, Democratic strategists said 'We'll pass health care, they'll love us.' 'Recovery summer, they'll love us.' 'We'll run against Wall Street, they'll love us.'" These "narratives" failed. "The one thing they have left is: 'We will put together a lot of cash and run a lot of negatives ads showing why it's not policy that counts, it's that the Republican candidate had a DUI 10 years ago.'"

Another difference between '94 and '10: "There wasn't a Tea Party movement in '94." There was a Perot movement, which was "much less visible and organized." Ross Perot backed the Republican House effort in 1994. "This time we have a thousand mini-Perots"—Tea Party leaders—"who are against the Democrats and for the Republicans." Their rallies, Mr. Norquist says, are gaining strength.

Republicans, he argues, must determine to stay focused, and not become distracted by issues that are not central to the campaign. "There's the danger of getting sidetracked by shiny things," he says, citing Arizona's immigration law, or "the mosque in Manhattan." These issues do not win new votes, "they only please voters you already have." Mr. Norquist says: "Harry Reid is stapled at the forehead and the hip to Obama, and it's hurting him. But Gingrich says the most important issue of the day is the mosque, and Reid gets new life out of it: 'I strongly differ with the president's statement on the mosque!' It gives Democrats the chance to say, 'I'm not like Obama!'"

Another distraction: "All the time and effort turned into rehabilitating George W. Bush. His former aides are out there arguing about who should get credit for the surge. What? . . . For those who believe Bush was doing something useful and central to jam it into the middle of this election—we lost the past two elections because independents didn't like Bush!" The rehabilitation effort loses potential votes, wins no new ones, and distracts from central themes. Mr. Norquist offers a prediction: "Watch CBS try to get Bush family and friends to do interviews to insert Bush back into the campaign the weekend before the election."
 
What should Republicans focus on? "Spending per se is a palpable issue. The central question is not only taxes or the deficit, it's spending, and you can see this in polls. . . .

There is not a Democrat who can say, 'I was not part of the spending explosion that threatens you and your country.' It's the one thing they can't defend themselves against. They don't want to stop spending."

First Use Tax Reciets wisely - BEFORE You Ask For More

My Response To Buffett And Obama

Before you ask for more tax money from me, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely.

By HARVEY GOLUB

Over the years, I have paid a significant portion of my income to the various federal, state and local jurisdictions in which I have lived, and I deeply resent that President Obama has decided that I don't need all the money I've not paid in taxes over the years, or that I should leave less for my children and grandchildren and give more to him to spend as he thinks fit. I also resent that Warren Buffett and others who have created massive wealth for themselves think I'm "coddled" because they believe they should pay more in taxes. I certainly don't feel "coddled" because these various governments have not imposed a higher income tax. After all, I did earn it.
Now that I'm 72 years old, I can look forward to paying a significant portion of my accumulated wealth in estate taxes to the federal government and, depending on the state I live in at the time, to that state government as well. Of my current income this year, I expect to pay 80%-90% in federal income taxes, state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state estate taxes. Isn't that enough?
Others could pay higher taxes if they choose. They could voluntarily write a check or they could advocate that their gifts to foundations should be made with after-tax dollars and not be deductible. They could also pay higher taxes if they were not allowed to set up foundations to avoid capital gains and estate taxes.

Today, top earners—the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more—pay 20% of all income taxes, and the 3% who earn more than $200,000 pay almost half. Almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all. Clearly they earn less and should pay less. But they should pay something and have a stake in our government spending their money too.
In addition, the extraordinarily complex tax code is replete with favors to various interest groups and industries, favors granted by politicians seeking to retain power. Mortgage interest deductions support the private housing industry at the expense of renters. Generous fringe benefits are not taxed at all, in order to support union and government workers at the expense of people who buy their own insurance with after-tax dollars. Gifts to charities are deductible but gifts to grandchildren are not. That's just a short list, and all of it is unfair.
Governments have an obligation to spend our tax money on programs that work. They fail at this fundamental task. Do we really need dozens of retraining programs with no measure of performance or results? Do we really need to spend money on solar panels, windmills and battery-operated cars when we have ample energy supplies in this country? Do we really need all the regulations that put an estimated $2 trillion burden on our economy by raising the price of things we buy? Do we really need subsidies for domestic sugar farmers and ethanol producers?
Why do we require that public projects pay above-market labor costs? Why do we spend billions on trains that no one will ride? Why do we keep post offices open in places no one lives? Why do we subsidize small airports in communities close to larger ones? Why do we pay government workers above-market rates and outlandish benefits? Do we really need an energy department or an education department at all?

Here's my message: 

Before you "ask" for more tax money from me and others, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely.

Then you'll need less of my money.

Mr. Golub, a former chairman and CEO of American Express, currently serves on the executive committee of the American Enterprise Institute.

BMB Compares Himself to MLK Jr

 Keith Koffler on August 13, 2011, 1:58 pm

At least it wasn’t Jesus.

At a small, exclusive New York City fundraiser Thursday night featuring the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Obama compared himself and his agenda to that of Martin Luther King Jr.

And now that King has his own memorial on the Mall I think that we forget when he was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times. 

There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry.  But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.  But it doesn’t bend on its own.  It bends because all of us are putting our hand on the arc and we are bending it in that direction. 

And it takes time.  And it’s hard work.  And there are frustrations.

Mr. Obama, I knew Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was a friend of mine . . .
(and you sir are no MLK....)

Individual Mandate - UNCONSTITUTIONAL ?????

A bad week for the White House got worse Friday

when a federal appeals court in Atlanta struck down the "individual mandate" portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Whatever else it portends, the 2-1 decision by a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals guarantees that the United States Supreme Court will have to resolve this legal dispute on its merits, probably by next spring.

Even if they want to, the justices in Washington won't be able to duck this one.

It took the 11th Circuit 304 pages to announce its findings and conclusions in Florida et al. v. Dept of Health and Human Services:

The "individual mandate" provision of the law, which requires the uninsured to buy health insurance, violates the Constitution

because it is beyond Congress' power to regulate such activity.

But other provisions of the new law, including its expansion of Medicaid coverage, which also were struck down by a Florida trial judge in January, are permissible.

In other words, as bad as this ruling may be for supporters of the Affordable Care Act, it could have been much worse.
 

CK - Super-Committee (Maybe!)

August 5, 2011 / 5 Menachem-Av, 5771
How the super-committee can strike a Grand Bargain
By Charles Krauthammer



http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Conventional wisdom holds that the congressional super-committee established by the debt-ceiling deal to propose further deficit reduction will go nowhere. 

I’m not so sure. There is a grand compromise to be had. 

It does, however, require precise sequencing.  

To succeed it must proceed in three stages:

(1) Tax Reform.

True tax reform that removes loopholes while lowering tax rates is the Holy Grail of social policy. It appeals equally to left and right because, almost uniquely, it promotes both economic efficiency and fairness. 

Economic efficiency — because it removes tax dodges that distort capital flows (and thereby diminish productivity) while cutting marginal tax rates (thereby spurring growth). 

Fairness — because a corrupted tax code with myriad breaks grants deeply unfair advantage to the rich who buy the lobbyists who create the loopholes and buy the lawyers who exploit them.

Which is why the 1986 Reagan-Bradley tax reform was such a historic success. It satisfied left and right, promoted efficiency and fairness, and helped launch two decades of almost uninterrupted economic expansion.

But didn’t that agreement take years to hammer out? Yes. 
Today, however, the elements are already laid out by the Simpson-Bowles commission. 

The super-committee doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. It simply has to make choices.

(2) Revenue Neutrality.

Every dollar of revenue raised by stripping out a loophole is to be returned to the citizenry in the form of lower tax rates. Initial revenue neutrality avoids ideological gridlock over tax hikes and ensures perfect transparency during any later alterations of that formula.

Start with the obvious boondoggles, from the $6 billion a year wasted on ethanol subsidies to your Democratic perennials — corporate jets, oil-company breaks, etc. That’s the fun part. Unfortunately, whacking that piñata yields but pennies on the dollar. 
The real money is in the popular tax breaks: employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Altering some of these heretofore politically untouchable tax breaks would alone be a singular achievement.
I’d suggest abolishing the health-care exclusion, which encourages wasteful medical spending. 
I would also gradually abolish the mortgage-interest deduction. Start by excluding second homes and mortgages greater than, say, $500,000. Lower that threshold by $100,000 chunks as the housing market meets certain threshold indexes of recovery.

As for charitable contributions, here I go soft. I’d leave the deduction intact on the Madisonian grounds that subsidizing private charity — donations to institutions chosen by the citizens, not the state — disperses power and strengthens civil society, the principal bulwark against state domination.
Your preferences will be different. So will the super-committee’s. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is to make choices that are deep, radical and revenue-neutral.
But, you say, is not the committee’s mission to reduce debt? This, as yet, does nothing. Correct. But it’s the indispensable premise for achieving the ultimate in debt reduction:

(3) The Grand Bargain.

Once you have serious revenue-neutral tax reform in place, 
the ideological horse-trading that is required for massive deficit reduction — 
tax hikes vs. entitlement reform — can begin.

Republicans will resist the former, Democrats the latter. But tax-reform-first makes possible the compromise that eluded John Boehner and Barack Obama. Boehner was willing to increase revenue by $800 billion. Obama was reputedly ready to raise the Medicare age and change the Social Security cost-of-living formula.

Remember: Tax reform will already have slashed rates radically. In one Simpson-Bowles scenario, the top rate plunges to 23 percent. Conservatives could at that point contemplate increasing net revenue by slightly tweaking these new low rates, say, back to Reagan’s 28 percent, still much lower than the current 35 percent and Obama’s devoutly desired 39.6 percent. The deviation from revenue neutrality would yield new tax receipts for the Treasury, in addition to those resulting from the economic growth stimulated by the lower rates.

Democrats would have to respond by crossing their own red line on entitlements. That means real structural changes. That means raising the Medicare and Social Security ages, indexing them to longevity (until 70 becomes the new 65) and changing the inflation formula. Perhaps even means-testing Social Security (after one has recouped what one originally paid in).

The result of such a grand bargain would be debt reduction on a scale never before seen. World confidence in the American economy would rise dramatically. Best of all, we would be back on the road to national solvency.
It can be done. In three months. In three stages.