Global Warming Hoax: The Basics
Posted on July 30, 2014 by John Hinderaker in Climate
This video is a nice, four-minute summary of some of the basics of the global warming debate. It was shot at the Heartland Institute’s 9th International Conference on Climate Change, between July 7 and July 9. If you have followed the science closely, you won’t learn anything you didn’t already know. But it is a good introduction for those who are new to the science, and an enjoyable overview for anyone. I recommend it. It is also a good resource to share with your less well-informed friends, to give them a taste of climate realism:
Global Warming Basics 10
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
The Case For Israel
Bill Whittle in defence of Israel
The Case For Israel - BW Fierwall
Even before the recent Israeli ground and air operations in Gaza, the BDS movement – that would stand for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – was gaining traction… not just in France, or Germany, or Oman: right here in America.
BDS is being sold – as everything evil and stupid is being sold these days – as a moral good. The argument goes like this: Israel, a nation formed in response to the cold, concrete reality of extermination, has let its economic and military power go to its head. They, now, are the oppressors; they now are Goliath in a main battle tank facing a brave Palestinian David with a rock in his hand; they now are the racists. They now – Israel – are the Nazis.
Are they?
Here is Israel at the time of its formation by the United Nations in 1948. Actually, you can’t see it on this map because it’s so small – smaller than the state of New Jersey.
On that same year, the Arab nations surrounding the new country attacked what was then mostly small farming communities and tried to drive the Jews into the sea.
But The Israelis won.
The Arabs tried it again in 1967. The Jews beat them again. Then, in 1973, the Arabs tried again, launching a sneak attack on the holiest Jewish holiday – and the Jews won again.
Israel’s territorial gains did not come from Israel attacking the Arabs. They came from Israel being attacked by the Arabs.
And Israel has always tried to give the land back in exchange for peace, as it did when it voluntarily returned the Sinai Peninsula – which is bigger than Israel itself – back to the Egyptians who had tried to attack them from the Sinai, and likewise, they gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians who had attacked them – from the Gaza strip.
Since then, thousands – thousands! -- of rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from schoolyards and orphanages and hospitals in -- Gaza.
How many rockets and mortars would you allow to fall on your house by neighbors that have been swearing to kill you for 65 years? How many times will someone keep hitting you before you hit back?
The Palestinians daily call for the Jews to be driven into the sea. The Jews have one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. They could drive the Palestinians into the sea any time they wanted to. They don’t.
The instant that Hamas or Hezbollah get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they will do with it what they do every day with their rocks and mortars and missiles. They will use it. On Israel. The Israelis have an estimated 500 nuclear weapons and could destroy the Arabs any time they chose. They don’t.
Those are not Nazis. Those are moral, civilized people.
Israel is an island of civilization in a sea of barbarity, and that is why it is being targeted. Uncomfortable with those words, “civilization” and “barbarity?” Well, in Israel women can do whatever they please – including leading the state of Israel. In the surrounding Arab nations women are treated as chattel. They’re just property: useful for creating sons and carrying things.
In Israel, homosexuals are tolerated and celebrated as individuals – why, just as if they were real people! In the surrounding Muslim nations they are hung from construction cranes in public squares. In Israel, scientists at the University of Haifa are studying In-homogeneous tachyon dynamics. The latest scientific invention in the Arab world is a buzzer that goes off when a Muslim falls asleep against his prayer rug.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was used, in the main successfully, against racist South Africa. Racist South Africa used brutal force to suppress people along racial lines.
Israel, on the other hand, is the only nation in the entire Middle East where Arabs have a free and fair vote. Israel allows Israelis of any ethnicity to be elected to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament – including Arabs. So: If you’re in favor of equal rights for women, legal protections for homosexuals, advances in science, the arts and medicine, and political access and personal rights guaranteed by law -- you definitely should support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – for every nation in the region EXCEPT Israel.
Finally, I’ll just say this – because this is really what drives this whole thing. It is absolutely true that criticizing the actions of the State of Israel is not in itself anti-Semitism. Israel is as subject to criticism and condemnation as any other nation on earth.
But you cannot understand Israel’s actions without understanding the pervasive, unrelenting, hate that surrounds that outpost of civilization. From Hezbollah rockets made in Iran, to BDS sanctions made in Berkeley and Santa Monica, the attacks on this country and its people cannot be understood without getting to the bedrock essence of the nasty, petty, small and mean-spirited emotion that drives anti-Semitism.
And that emotion is Envy.
Genesis, Chapter 26, verses 12 through 16:
And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) And Aby melech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
That was thousands of years before there was a religion called Islam. And when the Israelis, as a gesture of peace and goodwill, turned over the Gaza Strip in 2005 the first thing these modern-day philistines did was smash the windows of the greenhouses that had been handed to them by other people’s labor. Once again, they filled wells in the desert with sand.
Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, by far the safest home the Jews have ever known was here in America. No doubt there was anti-Semitism here, but with a few exceptions it was golf-course anti-Semitism: disgraceful, but a long, long way from the pogroms and the death camps. Why was America such a safe home for the Jews? Well, because up until very recently --- 2008 let’s say – envy was not admired here in America. “Coveting” wasn’t sold here as a virtue, either.
So, to those American Jews who watched through the 1930’s and 40s and ask, “how could they have let that happen?” I would simply say, “How can you let this happen? Why do so many of you vote for this to happen – pay for it to happen?”
Tea Party Conservatives, like me – genuine friends of Israel and the Jewish people – look at you and think “It’s obvious you’ve lost your minds. Have you lost your souls as well?”
ON OCTOBER 8th, 1987, THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT DECLARED HAMAS TO BE A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.
CURRENTLY, THE GAZA STRIP IS ADMINISTERED BY A "UNITY GOVERNMENT" CONSISTING OF HAMAS AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY. DESPITE THE VIGROUS PROTESTS OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, THE "GRAVE CONCERN" OF 88 OUT OF 100 U.S. SENATORS, AN IN VIOLATION OF U.S. LAW PROHIBITING AID TO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA ALLOCATED $400,000,000 TO HAMAS THROUGH THE "UNITY GOVERNMENT."
Monday, July 28, 2014
Is the Fed fueling a giant stock market bubble?
Is the Fed fueling a giant stock market bubble?
John Maxfield , The Motley Fool 12:25 p.m. EDT July 27, 2014
Take a good look at the chart below and you'd be excused for concluding that we're in the midst of the greatest stock market bubble of all time. Not only has the S&P 500 fully recovered from the financial crisis, it's a staggering 30% higher than the peaks of the Internet and housing bull markets.
But is this really the case? With unemployment still above 6%, how could we find ourselves in the throes of yet another brewing catastrophe? Didn't investors and analysts learn anything from the past decade and a half?
While it requires some explanation, the answer is that we're most likely not experiencing another irrational inflation of stock prices. The market's record level is instead a predictable response to the Federal Reserve's policy of keeping interest rates at historically low levels.
The S&P 500 Since 1996(Photo: The Motley Fool)
Does monetary policy cause bubbles?
As an initial matter, it's important to appreciate that monetary policy itself doesn't cause bubbles. This may sound strange if you've read much about the financial crisis, given that the Fed is often blamed for both inflating and popping the housing bubble. But this narrative is flawed.
The argument goes like this: Following the bursting of the Internet bubble and 9/11, the central bank dropped short-term interest rates to the lowest level since 1958. This drove borrowing costs down and made it easier and more affordable for people to get mortgages and buy homes. Too many people proceeded to do so and a housing bubble ensued.
But the problem with this chain of events is that it excludes a number of critical pieces. Most importantly, it wasn't low interest rates that caused so much havoc; it was the proliferation of subprime mortgages.
At the time, much of the financial industry was operating under two fallacies. First, lenders believed that new derivatives and asset-backed securities had eradicated the risk of default. And second, while it seems absurd in hindsight, many of the best and brightest minds on Wall Street had concluded that housing prices would never stop going up -- or, at the very least, that they wouldn't decline simultaneously across the country.
The result was that these assumptions removed much of the incentive for lenders to monitor credit standards. If there's no fear of default, why not lend to anyone and everyone regardless of their income, assets, or credit score? And it was this behavior, and notably not the Fed's manipulation of interest rates, which fueled the housing bubble and laid the groundwork for the financial crisis.
But what about the stock market's record highs?
This isn't to say that the central bank can't distort asset values by way of monetary policy. Indeed, not only can it do so, but it can do so to a considerable degree.
"Monetary policy has powerful effects on risk taking," Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellenacknowledged in a speech earlier this month. "Indeed, the accommodative policy stance of recent years has supported the recovery, in part, by providing increased incentives for households and businesses to take on the risk of potentially productive investments."
This is exactly what's happened. As Josh Brown recounted earlier this year, "flows into equity funds went megapositive in 2013 while money going into bond funds slowed to a trickle." More specifically, he noted that stock funds have had $298 billion in inflows since the beginning of last year, while bond funds have had only $75 billion.
But that's as far as it goes. In other words, the fact that the Fed's monetary policies have caused stock prices to soar, doesn't mean there's a bubble.
The reason for this is simple. In order for there to be a bubble, asset prices must be more than inflated; they must be irrationally inflated. And, like I've discussed, this isn't the case. If anything, in fact, the increase in asset prices is entirely rational.
As Bloomberg's Noah Smith recently explained (emphasis added):
"The value of a financial asset is the discounted present value of its future payoffs, and when the discount rate -- of which the Fed interest rate is a component -- goes down, the true fundamental value of risky assets goes up mechanically and automatically. That's rational price appreciation, not a bubble."
Does this mean stock prices won't at some point deflate? No. In fact, you should probably assume they will. Stock prices correct all the time. But what's important to remember is that a correction isn't a bubble.
The Motley Fool is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
John Maxfield , The Motley Fool 12:25 p.m. EDT July 27, 2014
Take a good look at the chart below and you'd be excused for concluding that we're in the midst of the greatest stock market bubble of all time. Not only has the S&P 500 fully recovered from the financial crisis, it's a staggering 30% higher than the peaks of the Internet and housing bull markets.
But is this really the case? With unemployment still above 6%, how could we find ourselves in the throes of yet another brewing catastrophe? Didn't investors and analysts learn anything from the past decade and a half?
While it requires some explanation, the answer is that we're most likely not experiencing another irrational inflation of stock prices. The market's record level is instead a predictable response to the Federal Reserve's policy of keeping interest rates at historically low levels.
The S&P 500 Since 1996(Photo: The Motley Fool)
Does monetary policy cause bubbles?
As an initial matter, it's important to appreciate that monetary policy itself doesn't cause bubbles. This may sound strange if you've read much about the financial crisis, given that the Fed is often blamed for both inflating and popping the housing bubble. But this narrative is flawed.
The argument goes like this: Following the bursting of the Internet bubble and 9/11, the central bank dropped short-term interest rates to the lowest level since 1958. This drove borrowing costs down and made it easier and more affordable for people to get mortgages and buy homes. Too many people proceeded to do so and a housing bubble ensued.
But the problem with this chain of events is that it excludes a number of critical pieces. Most importantly, it wasn't low interest rates that caused so much havoc; it was the proliferation of subprime mortgages.
At the time, much of the financial industry was operating under two fallacies. First, lenders believed that new derivatives and asset-backed securities had eradicated the risk of default. And second, while it seems absurd in hindsight, many of the best and brightest minds on Wall Street had concluded that housing prices would never stop going up -- or, at the very least, that they wouldn't decline simultaneously across the country.
The result was that these assumptions removed much of the incentive for lenders to monitor credit standards. If there's no fear of default, why not lend to anyone and everyone regardless of their income, assets, or credit score? And it was this behavior, and notably not the Fed's manipulation of interest rates, which fueled the housing bubble and laid the groundwork for the financial crisis.
But what about the stock market's record highs?
This isn't to say that the central bank can't distort asset values by way of monetary policy. Indeed, not only can it do so, but it can do so to a considerable degree.
"Monetary policy has powerful effects on risk taking," Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellenacknowledged in a speech earlier this month. "Indeed, the accommodative policy stance of recent years has supported the recovery, in part, by providing increased incentives for households and businesses to take on the risk of potentially productive investments."
This is exactly what's happened. As Josh Brown recounted earlier this year, "flows into equity funds went megapositive in 2013 while money going into bond funds slowed to a trickle." More specifically, he noted that stock funds have had $298 billion in inflows since the beginning of last year, while bond funds have had only $75 billion.
But that's as far as it goes. In other words, the fact that the Fed's monetary policies have caused stock prices to soar, doesn't mean there's a bubble.
The reason for this is simple. In order for there to be a bubble, asset prices must be more than inflated; they must be irrationally inflated. And, like I've discussed, this isn't the case. If anything, in fact, the increase in asset prices is entirely rational.
As Bloomberg's Noah Smith recently explained (emphasis added):
"The value of a financial asset is the discounted present value of its future payoffs, and when the discount rate -- of which the Fed interest rate is a component -- goes down, the true fundamental value of risky assets goes up mechanically and automatically. That's rational price appreciation, not a bubble."
Does this mean stock prices won't at some point deflate? No. In fact, you should probably assume they will. Stock prices correct all the time. But what's important to remember is that a correction isn't a bubble.
The Motley Fool is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
“Pilgrims = Illegal Aliens”
“Pilgrims = Illegal Aliens”
And remember this from (immigrant!) Eugene Volokh:
I think, though, that the “Pilgrims = Illegal Aliens” equation illustrates the exact opposite. The whites immigrated to America — and took over the place. (I’m glad they did, but I can surely understand why the Indians might have disagreed.) Likewise, Jews immigrated to Palestine (adding vastly to the numbers already present), sometimes illegally — and eventually there were more Jews in some parts than Arabs, so Jews started running the place. Now Israelis are sensibly objecting to Palestinians’ asserted “right of return” to their and their parents’ homes, because if enough Palestinians are allowed to immigrate into Israel, they’ll start running the place.
The bottom line is that for all the good that immigration can do (and I’m an immigrant to the U.S., who is very glad that America let me in, and who generally supports immigration), unregulated immigration can dramatically change the nature of the target society. It makes a lot of sense for those who live there to think hard about how those changes can be managed, and in some situations to restrict the flow of immigrants — who, after all, will soon be entitled to affect their new countrymen’s rights and lives, through the vote if not through force.
I sometimes pose for my liberal friends a stylized thought experiment. Say that they live in a country of 3 million people (the size of New Zealand) where 55% of the citizens are pro-choice and 45% are pro-life (1.65 million vs. 1.35 million). Now the country is facing an influx of 1 million devoutly Catholic immigrants, who are 90% pro-life. If these immigrants are let in and become citizens, the balance will flip to 2.25 million pro-life to 1.75 million pro-choice (56% to 44% pro-choice); and what my friends might see as their fundamental human right to abortion may well vanish, perfectly peacefully and democratically.
It’s unlikely that any constitutional protection will stand in the way: Even constitutions can be amended, and new judges can be appointed. Nor can one rely on “education” or “assimilation” — what if the immigrants simply conclude that their views on abortion are just better than the domestic majority’s? I think many of the current residents may rightly say “We have nothing against Catholics; but we don’t want our rights changed by the arrival of people who have a different perspective on the world than we do.”
Letting in immigrants means letting in your future rulers.
If today’s immigrant wave were likely to vote Republican, all right-thinking people would be demanding deportations and a mile-wide belt of barbed wire and minefields along the border.
The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less
The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less
By ANNA BERNASEK JULY 26, 2014
Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention.
But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American
household has been getting poorer, too.
The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in
2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to
a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a
household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which
there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But
during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased
substantially.
The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile.
(For households at that level, 95 percent of the population had less wealth.) It
found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth
increased 14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like
Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth
for the richest 1 percent of households.
For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has
occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had
been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for
households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical
households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing
wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even
earlier.
“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at
the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of
Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.
The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one
point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the
population is losing, surely something is amiss.
Correction: July 27, 2014
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the households
discussed in part of a study conducted by the Russell Sage Foundation. The
households had greater wealth than 95 percent of the population, not 94
percent.
A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2014, on page BU6 of the New York edition
with the headline: The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less.
By ANNA BERNASEK JULY 26, 2014
Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention.
But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American
household has been getting poorer, too.
The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in
2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to
a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a
household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which
there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But
during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased
substantially.
The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile.
(For households at that level, 95 percent of the population had less wealth.) It
found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth
increased 14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like
Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth
for the richest 1 percent of households.
For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has
occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had
been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for
households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical
households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing
wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even
earlier.
“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at
the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of
Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.
The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one
point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the
population is losing, surely something is amiss.
Correction: July 27, 2014
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the households
discussed in part of a study conducted by the Russell Sage Foundation. The
households had greater wealth than 95 percent of the population, not 94
percent.
A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2014, on page BU6 of the New York edition
with the headline: The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less.
Eric Cantor's Replacement "Calls Out Obama"
Rep. Scalise Calls Out Obama:
‘First White House In History Trying To Start Narrative Of Impeachment’
10:43 AM 07/27/2014
Brendan Bordelon
New House GOP Whip Steve Scalise called President Obama’s extended discourse on his own impeachment nothing but a political game, noting this “might be the first White House in history trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president.”
Scalise spoke with Fox New’s Chris Wallace on Sunday about the president’s impending plan for executive action on immigration — which many suspect will include amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
“You’re already suing the president for overreach,” Wallace noted, asking if House Republicans will consider impeachment should the White House move around Congress on yet another major issue.
“You know what, this might be the first White House in history that’s trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president,” Scalise said incredulously. “Ultimately, what we want to do is see the president follow the laws.”
“We’ve made it clear we’re going to put options on the table to allow the House to take legal action against the president when he overreaches his authority,” he continued, noting the Supreme Court and others have routinely found against President Obama’s expansive view of his own powers.
“But impeachment is off the table?” Wallace pressed.
“Well, the White House wants to talk about impeachment,” Scalise replied. “Ironically, they’re going out and trying to fundraise off of that too.”
“Look, the White House will do anything they can to change the topic away from the president’s failed agenda,” the House Whip explained. “People are paying higher costs for food, for healthcare, for gas at the pump. And the president isn’t solving those problems. So he wants to try to change the subject.”
‘First White House In History Trying To Start Narrative Of Impeachment’
10:43 AM 07/27/2014
Brendan Bordelon
New House GOP Whip Steve Scalise called President Obama’s extended discourse on his own impeachment nothing but a political game, noting this “might be the first White House in history trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president.”
Scalise spoke with Fox New’s Chris Wallace on Sunday about the president’s impending plan for executive action on immigration — which many suspect will include amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
“You’re already suing the president for overreach,” Wallace noted, asking if House Republicans will consider impeachment should the White House move around Congress on yet another major issue.
“You know what, this might be the first White House in history that’s trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president,” Scalise said incredulously. “Ultimately, what we want to do is see the president follow the laws.”
“We’ve made it clear we’re going to put options on the table to allow the House to take legal action against the president when he overreaches his authority,” he continued, noting the Supreme Court and others have routinely found against President Obama’s expansive view of his own powers.
“But impeachment is off the table?” Wallace pressed.
“Well, the White House wants to talk about impeachment,” Scalise replied. “Ironically, they’re going out and trying to fundraise off of that too.”
“Look, the White House will do anything they can to change the topic away from the president’s failed agenda,” the House Whip explained. “People are paying higher costs for food, for healthcare, for gas at the pump. And the president isn’t solving those problems. So he wants to try to change the subject.”
EMP ATTACK - Glen Reynolds
Why You Should Worry About EMP
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86
Book by Bill Quick: Lightning Fall
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86
Book by Bill Quick: Lightning Fall
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Why a 15 Year Mortgage ???
A Mortgage That Feeds Your Piggy Bank
25 Jul 18, 2014 1:15 PM EDT
By Megan McArdle
This summer, we finally decided to take the plunge we’d been contemplating for a while: converting our 30-year mortgage to one with a 15-year payoff. It’s a big step. Our payments will go up somewhat (the PITI -- principal, interest, tax, and insurance -- will rise by 19 percent), and every financial analyst I know is mentally screaming in anguish at the thought of taking money I could be investing, and pouring it into earlier payoff of a low-interest (low, tax-deductible interest) loan.
Nonetheless, we decided to take the plunge. And since it’s the sort of switch that might benefit some users, I thought I’d run through the reasons you might want to consider it:
•
• If you’ve built some equity, or had a high interest rate, your payments won’t increase that much. Before the refinance, we’d been paying a substantial extra sum on the principal every month. In 3 1/2 years, we’d paid down about a seventh of our mortgage balance. That might not sound like that much, but it meant that with the interest deduction, our payment only increased a few hundred dollars a month. Yet it delivered almost half the benefit of making a whole extra payment every month.
•
• Your interest rate decreases dramatically. We had a pretty good mortgage rate -- for 2010. But our new rate drops that interest rate by a full point, saving us thousands a year. Oh, sure, we’ll lose some of our tax deduction. But we’ll still have thousands of extra dollars in our pocket over the long term.
•
• Over the life of your loan, you’ll save 65 percent of your total interest costs. On a 30-year loan at current rates, you’ll pay almost $300,000 in interest costs on a $350,000 loan, versus about $100,000 on a 15-year loan. The benefit comes from two things: shortening the payment term, and lowering your interest costs. I don’t know about you, but I could find something to do with an extra $200,000.
•
• Interest rates are going to have to go up sometime soonish. Mortgage rates are not at their all time lows (more’s the pity). But they’re still very low, and by refinancing now, you can lock in 3 percent or so. As inflation rises, this will ultimately mean that your mortgage loan is practically free. But this state of affairs cannot last forever; the Federal Reserve will eventually be pulling back on credit, and you will not be able to get such a good deal. Why not lock it in now?
•
• Enjoy the benefit of forced savings. If you’re like me, and you get excited by the first of the month because it means you can make your extra mortgage payment and watch the loan balance go down, then maybe you don’t need this. But if you’d like to save, but somehow never get around to it, a 15-year mortgage basically pays you to exercise a little more self-discipline.
•
• Stabilize your housing costs. Obviously, this is a long-term goal. But going into your 50s with the house paid off means that no matter what else happens, you can’t lose your house. The average renter spends about 25 percent of their budget on shelter; for the average homeowner with a mortgage, that drops to 20 percent. But for those without a mortgage, that figure is only 11 percent. Knocking almost 10 percent out of your budget makes you much more resilient in the face of job loss or other troubles -- and gives you extra money to pay college tuitions, or take that cruise you’ve been thinking about.
Of course, a 15-year mortgage isn't for everyone. Here are some reasons you might not want to take one on:
•
• Your mortgage payment is already stretching your budget. If you have a very high interest rate, refinancing to a 15-year could actually save you money. But most people don’t have a 7 percent mortgage any more. So most people are going to see their payment go up. If your mortgage is already at the limit of what you can afford to pay, then you won’t be able to swing this.
•
• You’re planning to move in a few years. Mortgages come with fees. You’ll earn those back pretty quickly with a lower interest rate, but not instantly. We figure it will take us a little less than three years to recoup our refinancing costs, which included points to buy down our rate. That’s fine with us, because we love our house and have no intention of moving. But if you think you’ll be moving before you recover your closing costs, then leave well enough alone.
•
• You’re still underwater. If you don’t have equity in your house, you probably won’t be able to refinance, though you should check with the bank that holds the loan.
•
• Your credit has gotten worse since you took out your mortgage. A lot of people have had setbacks in the last few years -- job loss, business failures. If you’re among them, and your travails have dinged up your credit, then you probably won’t get a good deal on your interest rate -- though it can’t hurt to check.
•
• Your income is highly variable, or your industry is unstable. If you’re in a troubled business, or region, then you may want to keep your lower payment as insurance. Instead, thinking about paying extra on the mortgage every month. Even a few dollars helps.
One final caveat: You shouldn’t think of this as a substitute for other savings, but an addition. You don’t want to end up with most of your savings locked up in home equity, which will be hardest to access when you most need it: during a recession. Refinancing to a 15-year should come after you’ve ensured that you’re putting away 15 percent of your income toward retirement, and 5 percent into emergency funds and other savings.
But if you’re already saving what you should, consider adding a 15-year mortgage to your savings plan. You have nothing to lose but your mortgage-interest tax deduction.
To contact the author of this article: Megan McArdle at mmcardle3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net.
25 Jul 18, 2014 1:15 PM EDT
By Megan McArdle
This summer, we finally decided to take the plunge we’d been contemplating for a while: converting our 30-year mortgage to one with a 15-year payoff. It’s a big step. Our payments will go up somewhat (the PITI -- principal, interest, tax, and insurance -- will rise by 19 percent), and every financial analyst I know is mentally screaming in anguish at the thought of taking money I could be investing, and pouring it into earlier payoff of a low-interest (low, tax-deductible interest) loan.
Nonetheless, we decided to take the plunge. And since it’s the sort of switch that might benefit some users, I thought I’d run through the reasons you might want to consider it:
•
• If you’ve built some equity, or had a high interest rate, your payments won’t increase that much. Before the refinance, we’d been paying a substantial extra sum on the principal every month. In 3 1/2 years, we’d paid down about a seventh of our mortgage balance. That might not sound like that much, but it meant that with the interest deduction, our payment only increased a few hundred dollars a month. Yet it delivered almost half the benefit of making a whole extra payment every month.
•
• Your interest rate decreases dramatically. We had a pretty good mortgage rate -- for 2010. But our new rate drops that interest rate by a full point, saving us thousands a year. Oh, sure, we’ll lose some of our tax deduction. But we’ll still have thousands of extra dollars in our pocket over the long term.
•
• Over the life of your loan, you’ll save 65 percent of your total interest costs. On a 30-year loan at current rates, you’ll pay almost $300,000 in interest costs on a $350,000 loan, versus about $100,000 on a 15-year loan. The benefit comes from two things: shortening the payment term, and lowering your interest costs. I don’t know about you, but I could find something to do with an extra $200,000.
•
• Interest rates are going to have to go up sometime soonish. Mortgage rates are not at their all time lows (more’s the pity). But they’re still very low, and by refinancing now, you can lock in 3 percent or so. As inflation rises, this will ultimately mean that your mortgage loan is practically free. But this state of affairs cannot last forever; the Federal Reserve will eventually be pulling back on credit, and you will not be able to get such a good deal. Why not lock it in now?
•
• Enjoy the benefit of forced savings. If you’re like me, and you get excited by the first of the month because it means you can make your extra mortgage payment and watch the loan balance go down, then maybe you don’t need this. But if you’d like to save, but somehow never get around to it, a 15-year mortgage basically pays you to exercise a little more self-discipline.
•
• Stabilize your housing costs. Obviously, this is a long-term goal. But going into your 50s with the house paid off means that no matter what else happens, you can’t lose your house. The average renter spends about 25 percent of their budget on shelter; for the average homeowner with a mortgage, that drops to 20 percent. But for those without a mortgage, that figure is only 11 percent. Knocking almost 10 percent out of your budget makes you much more resilient in the face of job loss or other troubles -- and gives you extra money to pay college tuitions, or take that cruise you’ve been thinking about.
Of course, a 15-year mortgage isn't for everyone. Here are some reasons you might not want to take one on:
•
• Your mortgage payment is already stretching your budget. If you have a very high interest rate, refinancing to a 15-year could actually save you money. But most people don’t have a 7 percent mortgage any more. So most people are going to see their payment go up. If your mortgage is already at the limit of what you can afford to pay, then you won’t be able to swing this.
•
• You’re planning to move in a few years. Mortgages come with fees. You’ll earn those back pretty quickly with a lower interest rate, but not instantly. We figure it will take us a little less than three years to recoup our refinancing costs, which included points to buy down our rate. That’s fine with us, because we love our house and have no intention of moving. But if you think you’ll be moving before you recover your closing costs, then leave well enough alone.
•
• You’re still underwater. If you don’t have equity in your house, you probably won’t be able to refinance, though you should check with the bank that holds the loan.
•
• Your credit has gotten worse since you took out your mortgage. A lot of people have had setbacks in the last few years -- job loss, business failures. If you’re among them, and your travails have dinged up your credit, then you probably won’t get a good deal on your interest rate -- though it can’t hurt to check.
•
• Your income is highly variable, or your industry is unstable. If you’re in a troubled business, or region, then you may want to keep your lower payment as insurance. Instead, thinking about paying extra on the mortgage every month. Even a few dollars helps.
One final caveat: You shouldn’t think of this as a substitute for other savings, but an addition. You don’t want to end up with most of your savings locked up in home equity, which will be hardest to access when you most need it: during a recession. Refinancing to a 15-year should come after you’ve ensured that you’re putting away 15 percent of your income toward retirement, and 5 percent into emergency funds and other savings.
But if you’re already saving what you should, consider adding a 15-year mortgage to your savings plan. You have nothing to lose but your mortgage-interest tax deduction.
To contact the author of this article: Megan McArdle at mmcardle3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net.
Obama’s Tranquility
Obama’s Tranquility
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On July 20, 2014 @ 1:34 pm In Culture,Politics,Terrorism,The War | 87 Comments
Barack Obama’s team recently took credit for improving the “tranquility of the global community,” and the president made it clear just what a calm place the world has become during his tenure.
But this summer Obama’s tranquil world [1] has descended into medieval barbarism in a way scarcely seen in decadces. In Gaza, Hamas is banking its missile arsenal in mosques, schools and private homes; even Hitler did not do that with his V2s. Hamas terrorists resort to trying to wire up animals [2] to serve as suicide bombers. Aztec-style, they seek to capture Israeli soldiers to torture or trade — a sort of updated version of parading captive soldiers up the Templo Mayor [3] in Tenochtitlan.
Hamas cannot build a hotel, but instead applies its premodern cunning to tunneling [4] and killing in ever more insidious ways. Yet it proves incompetent in doing what it wishes to do best — kill Jewish civilians. Its efforts to kill Jews while getting killed in the process earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse [5] of the contemporary world who would have applauded Hitler in 1945 as an underdog who suffered greatly as he was overwhelmed by the Allies that he once tried to destroy.
In Paris, just seventy years after the Holocaust, sympathetic rioters hit the streets to cheer on Hamas’s efforts to kill more Jews with their crude versions of Vergeltungswaffen [6]. The passive French solution apparently is once again to encourage Jews to leave the country, given the growing number of new Nazis in their midst. Whether Hamas or Putin, the European response is always the same: why cannot they just go away to bother to some Jews or Americans, and leave us alone?
Russian operatives, role-playing as Ukrainian separatists [7], shot down a civilian airliner, then tried to doctor the debris field, then let the bodies decay, and now are looting the wallets of the dead. You cannot get much less tranquil than that.
In Iraq, ISIS, not content with the usual Middle East savagery, resorts to warring on religious icons, as if torture and murder of the living do not offer enough outlet for their barbarity. They blow up mosques, shatter tombs, and deface graveyards, in their eagerness to restore the 7th century. All that seems more Dark Age than merely medieval.
Iran just missed our “deadline” [8] that was supposed to result in fewer centrifuges in exchange for suspending the sanctions. No sane person now believes that the Iranians will stop nuclear enrichment, or will not get a bomb, or will not threaten to use it when they get one. What will Secretary Kerry do, now that the currency of “red lines,” “deadlines” and “step-over lines” has been all used up?
On the southern border, parents in Central America send unescorted preteens northward among thugs, rapists, and murderers, in hopes that their offspring will survive and thus either anchor their own immigration or at least send back money from the north. Somehow that reality is lost in all the talk about the “children” — the abject callousness of the parents, the greedy cynicism of Central American governments, the shameless duplicity of Mexico that facilitates the transit of children, and the wink-and-nod demographic angling of the Obama left. Add it all up and we see tens of thousands of children manipulated as mere pawns, as racialists, the callous, and the conniving all call others the very names that properly fit only themselves.
Why go into the torturing, dismemberment and gassing in Syria, or the random savagery of Libya, or what the cartels do each day in Mexico?
In short, outside the rather limited Western world of democracy and free market capitalism, the world — Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East — is a very untranquil place, where the strong dictate to the weak and the weak suffer as they must.
The West is not perfect. It is aging and tired. But right now Obama’s mythical vision of global tranquility exists only in the Westernized world, the result of an aberrant 2,500-year tradition that most of the world despises even as it incompetently seeks to emulate it or travel to it — or just destroy what it cannot have.
Some tranquility.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/obamas-tranquility/
URLs in this post:
[1] Obama’s tranquil world: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gingrich-obama-mind/index.html
[2] trying to wire up animals: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10977818/Donkey-suicide-bomb-stopped-by-Israeli-troops-in-Gaza.html
[3] Templo Mayor: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/11/greatest-aztec/draper-text
[4] to tunneling: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/07/18/israel-must-destroy-hamas-tunnels-no-matter-how-long-it-takes/
[5] earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/07/18/cnn-reporter-israelis-are-scum/
[6] Vergeltungswaffen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-weapons
[7] role-playing as Ukrainian separatists: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/191947/
[8] just missed our “deadline”: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/07/18/white-house-extends-iran-nuclear-deadline-by-four-months/
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On July 20, 2014 @ 1:34 pm In Culture,Politics,Terrorism,The War | 87 Comments
Barack Obama’s team recently took credit for improving the “tranquility of the global community,” and the president made it clear just what a calm place the world has become during his tenure.
But this summer Obama’s tranquil world [1] has descended into medieval barbarism in a way scarcely seen in decadces. In Gaza, Hamas is banking its missile arsenal in mosques, schools and private homes; even Hitler did not do that with his V2s. Hamas terrorists resort to trying to wire up animals [2] to serve as suicide bombers. Aztec-style, they seek to capture Israeli soldiers to torture or trade — a sort of updated version of parading captive soldiers up the Templo Mayor [3] in Tenochtitlan.
Hamas cannot build a hotel, but instead applies its premodern cunning to tunneling [4] and killing in ever more insidious ways. Yet it proves incompetent in doing what it wishes to do best — kill Jewish civilians. Its efforts to kill Jews while getting killed in the process earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse [5] of the contemporary world who would have applauded Hitler in 1945 as an underdog who suffered greatly as he was overwhelmed by the Allies that he once tried to destroy.
In Paris, just seventy years after the Holocaust, sympathetic rioters hit the streets to cheer on Hamas’s efforts to kill more Jews with their crude versions of Vergeltungswaffen [6]. The passive French solution apparently is once again to encourage Jews to leave the country, given the growing number of new Nazis in their midst. Whether Hamas or Putin, the European response is always the same: why cannot they just go away to bother to some Jews or Americans, and leave us alone?
Russian operatives, role-playing as Ukrainian separatists [7], shot down a civilian airliner, then tried to doctor the debris field, then let the bodies decay, and now are looting the wallets of the dead. You cannot get much less tranquil than that.
In Iraq, ISIS, not content with the usual Middle East savagery, resorts to warring on religious icons, as if torture and murder of the living do not offer enough outlet for their barbarity. They blow up mosques, shatter tombs, and deface graveyards, in their eagerness to restore the 7th century. All that seems more Dark Age than merely medieval.
Iran just missed our “deadline” [8] that was supposed to result in fewer centrifuges in exchange for suspending the sanctions. No sane person now believes that the Iranians will stop nuclear enrichment, or will not get a bomb, or will not threaten to use it when they get one. What will Secretary Kerry do, now that the currency of “red lines,” “deadlines” and “step-over lines” has been all used up?
On the southern border, parents in Central America send unescorted preteens northward among thugs, rapists, and murderers, in hopes that their offspring will survive and thus either anchor their own immigration or at least send back money from the north. Somehow that reality is lost in all the talk about the “children” — the abject callousness of the parents, the greedy cynicism of Central American governments, the shameless duplicity of Mexico that facilitates the transit of children, and the wink-and-nod demographic angling of the Obama left. Add it all up and we see tens of thousands of children manipulated as mere pawns, as racialists, the callous, and the conniving all call others the very names that properly fit only themselves.
Why go into the torturing, dismemberment and gassing in Syria, or the random savagery of Libya, or what the cartels do each day in Mexico?
In short, outside the rather limited Western world of democracy and free market capitalism, the world — Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East — is a very untranquil place, where the strong dictate to the weak and the weak suffer as they must.
The West is not perfect. It is aging and tired. But right now Obama’s mythical vision of global tranquility exists only in the Westernized world, the result of an aberrant 2,500-year tradition that most of the world despises even as it incompetently seeks to emulate it or travel to it — or just destroy what it cannot have.
Some tranquility.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/obamas-tranquility/
URLs in this post:
[1] Obama’s tranquil world: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gingrich-obama-mind/index.html
[2] trying to wire up animals: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10977818/Donkey-suicide-bomb-stopped-by-Israeli-troops-in-Gaza.html
[3] Templo Mayor: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/11/greatest-aztec/draper-text
[4] to tunneling: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/07/18/israel-must-destroy-hamas-tunnels-no-matter-how-long-it-takes/
[5] earn it sympathy from the morally obtuse: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/07/18/cnn-reporter-israelis-are-scum/
[6] Vergeltungswaffen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-weapons
[7] role-playing as Ukrainian separatists: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/191947/
[8] just missed our “deadline”: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/07/18/white-house-extends-iran-nuclear-deadline-by-four-months/
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Where Do You Live Mark Z. ???
Where Do You Live Mark Z. ???
Bill Whittle on Limosine Leftists
Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.
Today I want to make three points regarding the current, artificially created emergency on the southern border, as children are used as innocent pawns to force an issue in order to gain political power.
First.
President Obama has said that if congress does not act, he will, through executive order, simply dictate a solution.
Godwin’s Law states that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the likelier it is that someone will invoke the Nazis. Invoking the Nazis is considered bad form, you see – it’s a sign of desperation and hyperbolic exaggeration.
Well, I’m not going to invoke the words “Nazi” or “Hitler.”
So: shortly after assuming power, the legally appointed chancellor of Germany and the leader of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was faced with a looming national crisis. The National Socialist Chancellor appeared before the democratically elected parliament of the German Republic, known as the Reichstag. This Chancellor asked them to vote on what became known as the Enabling Act of 1933. It was pretty simple, really: he asked the legislature to approve his ability to create law on his own – through what could be best described as emergency executive orders. The Reichstag approved this request by the National Socialist Chancellor of Germany, giving him the power to dictate law as he saw fit.
The constitutionally limited, democratically elected German Republic simply voted itself out of existence, and half of the representatives of the Reichstag were cheering the National Socialist leader of their own party as they did so.
Now, of course, that could never happen here – not in America. Why if an American President were to stand before congress and tell the legislative body that he would assume the power to write his own laws if they did not provide the legislation he desired – well, here in America that President would be booed and mocked and jeered out of the room – he’d be arrested and impeached. Right?
((CLIP))
Second.
If these children – these innocent pawns in both international and domestic politics – are granted Amnesty through executive order, then what about their parents? Are they to live here as orphans? And what about the tens of millions of people who have been living here for decades, in many cases? Surely they deserve amnesty too. But where do we draw the line? If you’ve been here for ten years you can stay, but if you’ve been here for nine years, eleven months and twenty nine days you have to go home? Surely that’s not fair. So if you get here before a certain date you can stay, but after that arbitrary date you have to be deported? And since we don’t have any documentation on when these people actually arrived here…
And if these thirty million or so Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and so on deserve US Citizenship, how are they different then their relatives at home? Is it a Western Hemisphere privilege? What about the starving masses in Africa? Why do Mexicans deserve amnesty and not Nigerians?
Why do we grant amnesty to some people with children in need, and not any of the other six and a half billion or so who also have children and are also in need. What about them? Why are they excluded?
If we were discussing blanket amnesty for 30 million white German, British, Czech and Polish businessmen: people who knew how to make money and wanted to come here with capitol, business plans and a tradition of hard work – you know, 30 million Republican voters – would they get a blanket amnesty through illegal executive order from this President. And if not, then is this really about immigration? Or is it about a domestic political power base?
Third.
Where do you live, Mark Zuckerberg?
Like America, you’re rich. I don’t have a problem with that: you earned your 30 billion dollars and the very nice house that you live in. But I want to know where you live – not just generally. I want the exact address. Because I want to put up flyers all around your neighborhood – and on the internet, so it can go all around the world – telling people that you don’t believe in borders, walls, locked doors or property rights. I want every homeless person in America – in fact, everyone in greater need than you – to know that they can come to your home, walk in the front door, hit the refrigerator and sit on the couch and watch your amazing home theater.
Because I suspect that if people were to do to your home and property what you advocate is already happening to the non-billionaires living on our southern border – you know, armed bands of people breaking into their houses, destroying their property, murdering them and their families and leaving the odd dead body in their back yards – I don’t think you or any of your rich liberal friends would live up to your principles of no borders, no walls, no lines, no security, and no such thing as an illegal person.
We all know that should someone try to get onto your property, Mr. Zuckerburg, the police, or more likely your private, armed security force would arrest that person before they got within a half-mile of your house. They’d ask for identification, and if a homeless person said they had a right to live in your house, the police would ask for documentation. And when the visitors to your house could not provide documentation, men with guns would take them away.
Like every other limousine leftist, you are a hypocrite who says one thing to look and sound good in public, and then does precisely the opposite – the exact thing he condemns other people, like people on the border in Arizona and Texas for doing when it’s someone else’s house and property, and not their own.
That’s not moral goodness. It’s not kindness. It’s not selflessness. It’s a pose. It’s Unearned Moral Superiority.
It’s a lie. And you know it, and I know it. And now everybody knows it.
Bill Whittle on Limosine Leftists
Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.
Today I want to make three points regarding the current, artificially created emergency on the southern border, as children are used as innocent pawns to force an issue in order to gain political power.
First.
President Obama has said that if congress does not act, he will, through executive order, simply dictate a solution.
Godwin’s Law states that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the likelier it is that someone will invoke the Nazis. Invoking the Nazis is considered bad form, you see – it’s a sign of desperation and hyperbolic exaggeration.
Well, I’m not going to invoke the words “Nazi” or “Hitler.”
So: shortly after assuming power, the legally appointed chancellor of Germany and the leader of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was faced with a looming national crisis. The National Socialist Chancellor appeared before the democratically elected parliament of the German Republic, known as the Reichstag. This Chancellor asked them to vote on what became known as the Enabling Act of 1933. It was pretty simple, really: he asked the legislature to approve his ability to create law on his own – through what could be best described as emergency executive orders. The Reichstag approved this request by the National Socialist Chancellor of Germany, giving him the power to dictate law as he saw fit.
The constitutionally limited, democratically elected German Republic simply voted itself out of existence, and half of the representatives of the Reichstag were cheering the National Socialist leader of their own party as they did so.
Now, of course, that could never happen here – not in America. Why if an American President were to stand before congress and tell the legislative body that he would assume the power to write his own laws if they did not provide the legislation he desired – well, here in America that President would be booed and mocked and jeered out of the room – he’d be arrested and impeached. Right?
((CLIP))
Second.
If these children – these innocent pawns in both international and domestic politics – are granted Amnesty through executive order, then what about their parents? Are they to live here as orphans? And what about the tens of millions of people who have been living here for decades, in many cases? Surely they deserve amnesty too. But where do we draw the line? If you’ve been here for ten years you can stay, but if you’ve been here for nine years, eleven months and twenty nine days you have to go home? Surely that’s not fair. So if you get here before a certain date you can stay, but after that arbitrary date you have to be deported? And since we don’t have any documentation on when these people actually arrived here…
And if these thirty million or so Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and so on deserve US Citizenship, how are they different then their relatives at home? Is it a Western Hemisphere privilege? What about the starving masses in Africa? Why do Mexicans deserve amnesty and not Nigerians?
Why do we grant amnesty to some people with children in need, and not any of the other six and a half billion or so who also have children and are also in need. What about them? Why are they excluded?
If we were discussing blanket amnesty for 30 million white German, British, Czech and Polish businessmen: people who knew how to make money and wanted to come here with capitol, business plans and a tradition of hard work – you know, 30 million Republican voters – would they get a blanket amnesty through illegal executive order from this President. And if not, then is this really about immigration? Or is it about a domestic political power base?
Third.
Where do you live, Mark Zuckerberg?
Like America, you’re rich. I don’t have a problem with that: you earned your 30 billion dollars and the very nice house that you live in. But I want to know where you live – not just generally. I want the exact address. Because I want to put up flyers all around your neighborhood – and on the internet, so it can go all around the world – telling people that you don’t believe in borders, walls, locked doors or property rights. I want every homeless person in America – in fact, everyone in greater need than you – to know that they can come to your home, walk in the front door, hit the refrigerator and sit on the couch and watch your amazing home theater.
Because I suspect that if people were to do to your home and property what you advocate is already happening to the non-billionaires living on our southern border – you know, armed bands of people breaking into their houses, destroying their property, murdering them and their families and leaving the odd dead body in their back yards – I don’t think you or any of your rich liberal friends would live up to your principles of no borders, no walls, no lines, no security, and no such thing as an illegal person.
We all know that should someone try to get onto your property, Mr. Zuckerburg, the police, or more likely your private, armed security force would arrest that person before they got within a half-mile of your house. They’d ask for identification, and if a homeless person said they had a right to live in your house, the police would ask for documentation. And when the visitors to your house could not provide documentation, men with guns would take them away.
Like every other limousine leftist, you are a hypocrite who says one thing to look and sound good in public, and then does precisely the opposite – the exact thing he condemns other people, like people on the border in Arizona and Texas for doing when it’s someone else’s house and property, and not their own.
That’s not moral goodness. It’s not kindness. It’s not selflessness. It’s a pose. It’s Unearned Moral Superiority.
It’s a lie. And you know it, and I know it. And now everybody knows it.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Axing the Tax Carbon Tax Torn Asunder Down Under
Axing the Tax Carbon Tax Torn Asunder Down Under
Did you hear that last night? The sound of a million green activists crying out in terror? Australia just abolished its tax on carbon on a 39 to 32 vote. Prime Minister Tony Abbott campaigned on this repeal, and after two years of debate, he can now claim victory on the issue. The FT reports:
The senate voted by 39 to 32 on Thursday to repeal carbon pricing following months of bitter wrangling between opposition parties and the government over the measure, which was introduced two years ago.
“What’s gone today is not a policy to reduce emissions. What’s gone today is the world’s biggest carbon tax,” said Mr Abbott, who campaigned in last year’s election to “axe the tax”.
The green agenda was toxic for the government that brought it in and materially contributed to Abbott’s victory. The biggest consequence for the green movement won’t be the relatively trivial amount of carbon emissions that repeal of the law entails; it’s the political shadow over the green agenda worldwide. The core green strategy is to tax and harass “bad” energy sources ranging from coal to oil and so forth, while showering subsidies on “good” energy technologies like solar and wind. This will drive investment away from “bad” (but relatively efficient) methods of energy generation to “good” (but inefficient and expensive) ones.
What the aborted Australian experiment with this system shows is that consumers really, really hate the higher energy bills that this approach involves. Very affluent voters may not notice the size of their energy bills, but the hard pressed middle and lower middle classes emphatically do. That (and the effects on job creation of higher taxes and energy prices) made opposition to the Australian green program a huge vote winner for Abbott’s party.
That suggests that the green agenda in developed countries worldwide is in deep trouble—that Europe isn’t a trendsetter but an outlier. And it suggests that Canada and the U.S., two other large energy producing economies whose politics and culture aren’t all that dissimilar from Australia’s, could be heading the same way. Without the energy titans of the English speaking world on board, the conventional global green program is DOA.
From our point of view, this strengthens the case we’ve been making all along: Greens who seriously care about the future of the planet need to shift their ground, embrace the information revolution, and look for ways to help a new and more energy efficient economy to emerge. That, in turn, will accelerate the world’s transition to a more sustainable—and more affluent and faster growing—economy.
Published on July 17, 2014 11:42 am
Did you hear that last night? The sound of a million green activists crying out in terror? Australia just abolished its tax on carbon on a 39 to 32 vote. Prime Minister Tony Abbott campaigned on this repeal, and after two years of debate, he can now claim victory on the issue. The FT reports:
The senate voted by 39 to 32 on Thursday to repeal carbon pricing following months of bitter wrangling between opposition parties and the government over the measure, which was introduced two years ago.
“What’s gone today is not a policy to reduce emissions. What’s gone today is the world’s biggest carbon tax,” said Mr Abbott, who campaigned in last year’s election to “axe the tax”.
The green agenda was toxic for the government that brought it in and materially contributed to Abbott’s victory. The biggest consequence for the green movement won’t be the relatively trivial amount of carbon emissions that repeal of the law entails; it’s the political shadow over the green agenda worldwide. The core green strategy is to tax and harass “bad” energy sources ranging from coal to oil and so forth, while showering subsidies on “good” energy technologies like solar and wind. This will drive investment away from “bad” (but relatively efficient) methods of energy generation to “good” (but inefficient and expensive) ones.
What the aborted Australian experiment with this system shows is that consumers really, really hate the higher energy bills that this approach involves. Very affluent voters may not notice the size of their energy bills, but the hard pressed middle and lower middle classes emphatically do. That (and the effects on job creation of higher taxes and energy prices) made opposition to the Australian green program a huge vote winner for Abbott’s party.
That suggests that the green agenda in developed countries worldwide is in deep trouble—that Europe isn’t a trendsetter but an outlier. And it suggests that Canada and the U.S., two other large energy producing economies whose politics and culture aren’t all that dissimilar from Australia’s, could be heading the same way. Without the energy titans of the English speaking world on board, the conventional global green program is DOA.
From our point of view, this strengthens the case we’ve been making all along: Greens who seriously care about the future of the planet need to shift their ground, embrace the information revolution, and look for ways to help a new and more energy efficient economy to emerge. That, in turn, will accelerate the world’s transition to a more sustainable—and more affluent and faster growing—economy.
Published on July 17, 2014 11:42 am
Are Obama’s Advisers Unhinged?
Are Obama’s Advisers Unhinged?
July 9, 2014 5:10 am
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Surely reports that President Obama is going down to Texas at the height of the Katrina-like border debacle to raise money at the home of the popular but often polarizing filmmaker and Quentin Tarantino–collaborator Robert Rodriguez are the stuff of right-wing mythology?
No one could be so politically dense as to head south in the direction of this catastrophe only to pull up short to huckster campaign funds — while under a lingering cloud that such special-interest money solicitation in the past typically has taken precedence over national security (cf. the need to retire early on the night of Benghazi in order to prep for an important fundraiser the next day in Las Vegas, where the selfish go to blow their kids’ tuition money).
That the Obama money-raiser is purportedly being hosted by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez also cannot be true. The latter is famous for ultra-violent exploitation films of just the sort that gun-control liberals have insisted glorify (true) assault-weapon violence for profit and influence the deranged to translate such violent fiction into murderous fact.
More disturbing at this volatile time of national tensions on the border is the fact that Rodriguez directed the Machete andMachete Kills movies, which offered cheap exploitation about the immigration debate, caricaturing any who disagreed with the present policy of non-enforcement as more or less evil, Neanderthal-like racists and demented militiamen worthy of death (cf. the pseudo/spoof racist trailer for one of the films that envisioned killing border-enforcement politicians).
What would the media have thought if George W. Bush went to Louisiana during Katrina only to avoid New Orleans and the devastation, instead raising campaign cash (at $32,000 a head) at the home of a right-wing filmmaker of violent films that tended to glorify gunplay and to reduce controversies over disaster relief into caricatures of culpable dependents?
In short, it would be impossible to dream up a worse mercenary presidential trip — in terms of morally indifferent omission and self-interested commission — at this critical time than what Obama supposedly now intends.
Surely, the junket will be canceled out of embarrassment or quietly recalibrated — or perhaps the entire story about the trip is simply an urban legend.
July 9, 2014 5:10 am
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Surely reports that President Obama is going down to Texas at the height of the Katrina-like border debacle to raise money at the home of the popular but often polarizing filmmaker and Quentin Tarantino–collaborator Robert Rodriguez are the stuff of right-wing mythology?
No one could be so politically dense as to head south in the direction of this catastrophe only to pull up short to huckster campaign funds — while under a lingering cloud that such special-interest money solicitation in the past typically has taken precedence over national security (cf. the need to retire early on the night of Benghazi in order to prep for an important fundraiser the next day in Las Vegas, where the selfish go to blow their kids’ tuition money).
That the Obama money-raiser is purportedly being hosted by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez also cannot be true. The latter is famous for ultra-violent exploitation films of just the sort that gun-control liberals have insisted glorify (true) assault-weapon violence for profit and influence the deranged to translate such violent fiction into murderous fact.
More disturbing at this volatile time of national tensions on the border is the fact that Rodriguez directed the Machete andMachete Kills movies, which offered cheap exploitation about the immigration debate, caricaturing any who disagreed with the present policy of non-enforcement as more or less evil, Neanderthal-like racists and demented militiamen worthy of death (cf. the pseudo/spoof racist trailer for one of the films that envisioned killing border-enforcement politicians).
What would the media have thought if George W. Bush went to Louisiana during Katrina only to avoid New Orleans and the devastation, instead raising campaign cash (at $32,000 a head) at the home of a right-wing filmmaker of violent films that tended to glorify gunplay and to reduce controversies over disaster relief into caricatures of culpable dependents?
In short, it would be impossible to dream up a worse mercenary presidential trip — in terms of morally indifferent omission and self-interested commission — at this critical time than what Obama supposedly now intends.
Surely, the junket will be canceled out of embarrassment or quietly recalibrated — or perhaps the entire story about the trip is simply an urban legend.
The Moral Crisis on Our Southern Border
The Moral Crisis on Our Southern Border
July 10, 2014 8:33 am
A perfect storm of special interests have hijacked U.S. immigration law.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs facility in Brownsville, Texas. Photo via Getty Images
No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals — most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens — are streaming across America’s southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the U.S.
For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spin-offs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru.
Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America, which they have often been taught back home is the source of their misery. They either believe that America’s supposedly inadequate social safety net is far better than the one back home, or that its purportedly cruel free market gives them more opportunities than anywhere in Latin America — or both.
Mexico strictly enforces some of the harshest immigration laws in the world that either summarily deport or jail most who dare to cross Mexican borders illegally, much less attempt to work inside Mexico or become politically active. If America were to emulate Mexico’s immigration policies, millions of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. immediately would be sent home.
How, then, are tens of thousands of Central American children crossing with impunity hundreds of miles of Mexican territory, often sitting atop Mexican trains? Does Mexico believe that the massive influxes will serve to render U.S. immigration law meaningless, and thereby completely shred an already porous border? Is Mexico simply ensuring that the surge of poorer Central Americans doesn’t dare stop in Mexico on its way north?
The media talks of a moral crisis on the border. It is certainly that, but not entirely in the way we are told. What sort of callous parents simply send their children as pawns northward without escort, in selfish hopes of soon winning for themselves either remittances or eventual passage to the U.S? What sort of government allows its vulnerable youth to pack up and leave, without taking any responsibility for such mass flight?
Here in the U.S., how can our government simply choose not to enforce existing laws? In reaction, could U.S. citizens emulate Washington’s ethics and decide not to pay their taxes, or to disregard traffic laws, or to build homes without permits? Who in the pen-and-phone era of Obama gets to decide which law to follow and which to ignore?
Who are the bigots — the rude and unruly protestors who scream and swarm drop-off points and angrily block immigration authority buses to prevent the release of children into their communities, or the shrill counter-protestors who chant back “Viva La Raza” (“Long Live the Race”)? For that matter, how does the racialist term “La Raza” survive as an acceptable title of a national lobby group in this politically correct age of anger at the Washington Redskins football brand?
How can American immigration authorities simply send immigrant kids all over the United States and drop them into communities without firm guarantees of waiting sponsors or family? If private charities did that, would the operators be jailed? Would American parents be arrested for putting their unescorted kids on buses headed out of state?
Liberal elites talk down to the cash-strapped middle class about their illiberal anger over the current immigration crisis. But most sermonizers are hypocritical. Take Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House. She lectures about the need for near-instant amnesty for thousands streaming across the border. But Pelosi is a multimillionaire, and thus rich enough not to worry about the increased costs and higher taxes needed to offer instant social services to the new arrivals.
Progressives and ethnic activists see in open borders extralegal ways to gain future constituents dependent on an ever-growing government, with instilled grudges against any who might not welcome their flouting of U.S. laws. How moral is that?
Likewise, the CEOs of Silicon Valley and Wall Street who want cheap labor from south of the border assume that their own offspring’s private academies will not be affected by thousands of undocumented immigrants, that their own neighborhoods will remain non-integrated, and that their own medical services and specialists’ waiting rooms will not be made available to the poor arrivals.
Have immigration-reform advocates such as Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Bloomberg offered one of their mansions as a temporary shelter for needy Central American immigrants? Couldn’t Yale or Stanford welcome homeless immigrants into their now under-occupied summertime dorms? Why aren’t elite academies such as Sidwell Friends or the Menlo School offering their gymnasia as places of refuge for tens of thousands of school-age Central Americans?
What a strange, selfish, and callous alliance of rich corporate grandees, cynical left-wing politicians, and ethnic chauvinists who have conspired to erode U.S. law for their own narrow interests, all the while smearing those who object as xenophobes, racists, and nativists.
How did such immoral special interests hijack U.S. immigration law and arbitrarily decide for 300 million Americans who earns entry into America, under what conditions, and from where?
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
July 10, 2014 8:33 am
A perfect storm of special interests have hijacked U.S. immigration law.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Detainees sleep in a holding cell at a U.S. Customs facility in Brownsville, Texas. Photo via Getty Images
No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals — most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens — are streaming across America’s southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the U.S.
For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spin-offs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru.
Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America, which they have often been taught back home is the source of their misery. They either believe that America’s supposedly inadequate social safety net is far better than the one back home, or that its purportedly cruel free market gives them more opportunities than anywhere in Latin America — or both.
Mexico strictly enforces some of the harshest immigration laws in the world that either summarily deport or jail most who dare to cross Mexican borders illegally, much less attempt to work inside Mexico or become politically active. If America were to emulate Mexico’s immigration policies, millions of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. immediately would be sent home.
How, then, are tens of thousands of Central American children crossing with impunity hundreds of miles of Mexican territory, often sitting atop Mexican trains? Does Mexico believe that the massive influxes will serve to render U.S. immigration law meaningless, and thereby completely shred an already porous border? Is Mexico simply ensuring that the surge of poorer Central Americans doesn’t dare stop in Mexico on its way north?
The media talks of a moral crisis on the border. It is certainly that, but not entirely in the way we are told. What sort of callous parents simply send their children as pawns northward without escort, in selfish hopes of soon winning for themselves either remittances or eventual passage to the U.S? What sort of government allows its vulnerable youth to pack up and leave, without taking any responsibility for such mass flight?
Here in the U.S., how can our government simply choose not to enforce existing laws? In reaction, could U.S. citizens emulate Washington’s ethics and decide not to pay their taxes, or to disregard traffic laws, or to build homes without permits? Who in the pen-and-phone era of Obama gets to decide which law to follow and which to ignore?
Who are the bigots — the rude and unruly protestors who scream and swarm drop-off points and angrily block immigration authority buses to prevent the release of children into their communities, or the shrill counter-protestors who chant back “Viva La Raza” (“Long Live the Race”)? For that matter, how does the racialist term “La Raza” survive as an acceptable title of a national lobby group in this politically correct age of anger at the Washington Redskins football brand?
How can American immigration authorities simply send immigrant kids all over the United States and drop them into communities without firm guarantees of waiting sponsors or family? If private charities did that, would the operators be jailed? Would American parents be arrested for putting their unescorted kids on buses headed out of state?
Liberal elites talk down to the cash-strapped middle class about their illiberal anger over the current immigration crisis. But most sermonizers are hypocritical. Take Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House. She lectures about the need for near-instant amnesty for thousands streaming across the border. But Pelosi is a multimillionaire, and thus rich enough not to worry about the increased costs and higher taxes needed to offer instant social services to the new arrivals.
Progressives and ethnic activists see in open borders extralegal ways to gain future constituents dependent on an ever-growing government, with instilled grudges against any who might not welcome their flouting of U.S. laws. How moral is that?
Likewise, the CEOs of Silicon Valley and Wall Street who want cheap labor from south of the border assume that their own offspring’s private academies will not be affected by thousands of undocumented immigrants, that their own neighborhoods will remain non-integrated, and that their own medical services and specialists’ waiting rooms will not be made available to the poor arrivals.
Have immigration-reform advocates such as Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Bloomberg offered one of their mansions as a temporary shelter for needy Central American immigrants? Couldn’t Yale or Stanford welcome homeless immigrants into their now under-occupied summertime dorms? Why aren’t elite academies such as Sidwell Friends or the Menlo School offering their gymnasia as places of refuge for tens of thousands of school-age Central Americans?
What a strange, selfish, and callous alliance of rich corporate grandees, cynical left-wing politicians, and ethnic chauvinists who have conspired to erode U.S. law for their own narrow interests, all the while smearing those who object as xenophobes, racists, and nativists.
How did such immoral special interests hijack U.S. immigration law and arbitrarily decide for 300 million Americans who earns entry into America, under what conditions, and from where?
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
All Clintoned Out
All Clintoned Out
July 14, 2014 7:10 am
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia
Photo via PJMedia Artwork created using multiple Shutterstock.com [17] images.
Barack Obama did not blow apart Hillary Clinton’s huge lead during the 2008 Democratic primaries just because he was a landmark African-American candidate, new to the scene, and a skilled campaigner. Even Democrats were all Clintoned out [1].
By such weariness, I don’t suggest that either of the Clintons is unpopular. Indeed, Americans apparently look fondly back on the high-growth 1990s as the continuation of the Reagan-Bush boom years, and a time when Democrats and Republicans finally fixed budget deficits. (Note well that when Obama went back to the Clinton-era tax rates for the more affluent, the deficit dipped, but certainly did not approach the balanced budget that was once achieved by spending discipline under the Clinton-Gingrich compromise.)
The problem instead is Hillary Clinton herself [2]. She is not a very good speaker, and is prone to shrill outbursts and occasional chortling. She has a bad habit of committing serial gaffes (e.g., speaking too candidly), and what she says on Monday is often contradicted by her rantings on Tuesday. She seems cheap and obsessed with raking in free stuff. When Bill steps in to correct her mistakes, either sloppily or out of some strange psychological spite, he usually makes things even worse. We saw that often in 2008 [3] and are seeing it again now. But aside from the cosmetics of her political style, the Clintons are faced with two fundamental obstacles in 2016.
One, Hillary Clinton seems to be interested in running on the elite progressive themes of equality and fairness. The problem here is obvious. Few Americans have more enriched themselves by trading on their public service than have she and her husband. A George Marshall [4] in retirement Hillary is not.
With the Clintons there is always a catch to the apologies for their progressive graspingness. At a time of record student debt, sky-rocketing tuition, and scandalous university perks, Hillary Clinton is now charging over $200,000 [5] for a brief run-of-the-mill “I am Hillary” speech — no landmark political announcements, no insights into foreign policy, nothing much other than standard liberal therapeutic boilerplate trading on her increased market value due to her recent tenure as chief foreign affairs officer of the United States.
When these exorbitant fees were questioned by the liberal media, she seemed stunned that any would doubt her progressive fides, and cited her past caring for the poorer off. Then she backed off and assured us that the money went to “charity.” Of course, with the Clintons, we know there is always a nuance and tweak to follow. So next, the “charity” turned out to be the Clinton Foundation [6], which tends to fund the extravagant private jet travel of mostly Bill and Hillary and their appendages.
One Percenters as Populist Poseurs
How then do the Clintons pass as populists, given their exorbitant speaking fees — Bill has probably raked in more post-presidential money than all prior U.S. presidents of the last half-century combined — their mansions, and their elaborate one-percent lifestyles? Was $30 million in book advances over the years for the two of them not enough for progressive populists?
Hillary protested that despite a past multimillion-dollar book advance for her, and multimillion-dollar speaking fees lined up for Bill, they left the presidency “broke” [7] in 2001. When that trope did not work, Hillary turned to the now well-known theory of medieval exemption: they could not possibly be greedy (in the sense of ignoring the Obama rule that a multimillionaire must know when not to profit and at what point she has already made enough money), because they were lifelong liberals who had worked their tails off for social justice.
Like John Kerry (the advocate of higher taxes who avoided them on his yacht, like Al Gore (the proponent of green energy who likes private jets and big SUVs, and like Tom Steyer (whose green cash donations are predicated on cashing in on sooty coal development in third-world countries), the Clintons see no contradiction in charging outrageous rates for speaking and living quite well — while being for “fairness.”
Indeed, under the protocols of contemporary progressivism, in the abstract being loudly for equality means in the concrete having a lot more things than most anyone else. Modern liberalism has descended into the art of rich people blaming the lower middle class for not being generous enough with money they don’t have.
In such a strange world, Chelsea, Hillary assures us, is not so interested in profit-mongering and all such distasteful money-grubbing, but does tolerate a ten-million-dollar New York tony apartment (replete with Italian marble baths [8]), and sort of puts up with a multi-thousand-dollar an hour [9] nepotistic TV contract.
She is even willing to stomach her multimillionaire parents crafting all sorts of family trusts to avoid inheritance taxes so that she will have enough millions not to worry about having to make millions to support a lifestyle she doesn’t much like. Keep all that in mind as Hillary drops her g’s and adopts a black patois [10] when addressing African-Americans, and, to paraphrase Barack Obama, then again becomes Annie Oakley when shooting rifles with the clingers [11].
What a strange couple the Clintons became: the feminist president who was a serial groper and ace harasser; the feminist secretary of State who chortled in recall [12] about an old sexual battery case in which she got a rapist off easy, and whose advisors reduced Bill’s liaisons to trailer trash or nuts; the two populists who cashed in; the middle-class defenders who fawned over Wall Street; and on and on.
The second problem with Hillary’s candidacy is Obama. In 2009, the betting was close [13] on whether her secretary of State (she had no particular foreign affairs experience prior to her appointment) billet was a deft Obama move (keep your enemies closer than your friends) or a Clintonian wise political gambit (keep in the limelight for 2016).
The problem is that her four years as secretary of State coincided with a collapse of U.S. foreign policy unseen since 1979-80. In a fair world, Hillary would be judged as the worst secretary of State since Cyrus Vance. Most of the disasters — Benghazi, the chaos in Libya, the failed reset with Russia, the bogus Syrian red lines, the phony Iranian deadlines to stop enrichment, the yanking of all peacekeepers out of Iraq that led to the ISIS ascendance, the surge and simultaneous withdrawal dates in Afghanistan, the disastrous Middle East pressures that have led to the eve of war, the flip-flop-flip in Egypt, the clumsy spying on allies, the lying about and jailing of a video maker [14], and on and on — came on her watch.
Distancing Her Own Disaster from a Disaster
Even if Obama were at 60% approval ratings, if the economy were booming, if there were no alphabet soup of scandals — AP, IRS, VA, NSA, etc. — Hillary would have some trouble contextualizing her disastrous record as secretary of State during a popular administration.
But now she must distance her own disaster from a disaster. I suppose that it is conventionally wise for her to junk Obama (e.g., “he did it, not me”), but there are pitfalls nonetheless. She must over the next two years cut herself off from everything Obama. She must do so on the premise that she was secretary despite, not because of, Obama and that all the disastrous decisions that she made were really her boss’s — the exact nature of which each month she may reluctantly disclose.
If Obama’s popularity dips below 40% — the point at which a presidency is reduced to irrelevance — with more than two years left on his tenure, Hillary will only speed up the process. She will de facto run against Obama (on the premise that she is promising a continuum of Bill Clinton’s Democratic mainstream successes) in the manner that Adlai Stevenson sort of ran against lame duck Harry Truman in 1952, and in the way in which John McCain often seemed as critical of George W. Bush as was Barack Obama.
Yet trashing your kindred predecessor is a hard thing to pull off (ask Al Gore [15]). Presidents in their last year of office don’t appreciate it, and occasionally have ways to push back. Sometimes the base doesn’t like such ingratitude either. The electorate asks, why elect another Democrat or Republican to follow an unpopular Democrat or Republican? For Hillary to escape Obama’s unpopularity, she must in circular fashion over the next two years only make him more unpopular by her very efforts at distancing herself from him — while avoiding the charge of,”well, then, what were you doing from 2009 to 20013?” Adlai Stevenson and John McCain, of course, were not cabinet officers in the respective Truman and Bush administrations.
None of these hurdles — or questions about both Hillary’s and Bill’s age and health [16] — is insurmountable for a contortionist like Ms. Clinton. Hillary believes that Obama’s great achievement is that he left a permanently divided America, by his various “wars” of race, gender and class. Accordingly, she can reforge that adversarial coalition of young women, gays, greens, minorities, unions, elite liberals and wealthy progressives against “them” by virtue of her gender and politics — and do so is a less grating way. The feminist who hunted down Bill’s interns and who makes $200,000 from cash-strapped universities for brief pep talks will soon lecture us on the evils of a misogynist one-percent nation (e.g., don’t we all hate those who make more in 30 minutes than we do in four years?).
Current polls suggest that she will pull it off. (In the way the early polls had assured that she would in 2008?) What then is likely?
Who knows, although we can be certain of one fact: If the Republican candidate campaigns according to the Marquess of Queensberry rules in the fashion of John McCain or Mitt Romney and politely deflects each hour the insinuation that as a rich, old white guy de facto he is culpable for some –ism or -ology, Hillary will be elected.
But if such charges are either inapplicable to the Republican candidate or are answered in slash-and-burn Lee Atwater style — who was so despised by establishment Republican political operatives — then nothing is certain.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/all-clintoned-out/
URLs in this post:
[1] were all Clintoned out: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/06/01/insert-obligatory-godfather-reference-here/
[2] Hillary Clinton herself: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/558oparc.asp
[3] in 2008: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clintons-image-damaged/
[4] George Marshall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Marshall
[5] over $200,000: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281777/Hillary-Clinton-charge-200-000-speech–YEARS-salary-Secretary-State-Bill-charges.html
[6] the Clinton Foundation: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/05/Hillary-Says-She-Donated-High-Speaking-Fees-to-Charity-Her-Own-Clinton-Charity
[7] left the presidency “broke”: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-stumbles-from-dead-broke-to-not-truly-well-off/
[8] with Italian marble baths: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381122/heres-how-little-chelsea-clinton-cares-about-money-dollars-celina-durgin
[9] multi-thousand-dollar an hour: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2014/06/14/chelsea-clintons-600000-year-salary-nbc-story-month-obvious-political-fa
[10] adopts a black patois: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk7hFnB4JnA
[11] with the clingers: http://bearingarms.com/awesome-hillary-clinton-compares-gun-owners-terrorists/
[12] who chortled in recall: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/08/hillary-clinton-refuses-to-apologize-for-laughing-about-12-year-old-rape-victim-she-maligned-in-court/
[13] the betting was close: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/26/hillary-chelsea-ruling-class/
[14] the lying about and jailing of a video maker: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/05/07/hillary-pushed-internet-video-meme-at-victims-funeral/
[15] ask Al Gore: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/27/hillary-change-or-continuity/
[16] age and health: http://www.drudgereport.com/flashek.htm
[17] Shutterstock.com: http://www.shutterstock.com
Copyright © 2008 Works and Days. All rights reserved.
July 14, 2014 7:10 am
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia
Photo via PJMedia Artwork created using multiple Shutterstock.com [17] images.
Barack Obama did not blow apart Hillary Clinton’s huge lead during the 2008 Democratic primaries just because he was a landmark African-American candidate, new to the scene, and a skilled campaigner. Even Democrats were all Clintoned out [1].
By such weariness, I don’t suggest that either of the Clintons is unpopular. Indeed, Americans apparently look fondly back on the high-growth 1990s as the continuation of the Reagan-Bush boom years, and a time when Democrats and Republicans finally fixed budget deficits. (Note well that when Obama went back to the Clinton-era tax rates for the more affluent, the deficit dipped, but certainly did not approach the balanced budget that was once achieved by spending discipline under the Clinton-Gingrich compromise.)
The problem instead is Hillary Clinton herself [2]. She is not a very good speaker, and is prone to shrill outbursts and occasional chortling. She has a bad habit of committing serial gaffes (e.g., speaking too candidly), and what she says on Monday is often contradicted by her rantings on Tuesday. She seems cheap and obsessed with raking in free stuff. When Bill steps in to correct her mistakes, either sloppily or out of some strange psychological spite, he usually makes things even worse. We saw that often in 2008 [3] and are seeing it again now. But aside from the cosmetics of her political style, the Clintons are faced with two fundamental obstacles in 2016.
One, Hillary Clinton seems to be interested in running on the elite progressive themes of equality and fairness. The problem here is obvious. Few Americans have more enriched themselves by trading on their public service than have she and her husband. A George Marshall [4] in retirement Hillary is not.
With the Clintons there is always a catch to the apologies for their progressive graspingness. At a time of record student debt, sky-rocketing tuition, and scandalous university perks, Hillary Clinton is now charging over $200,000 [5] for a brief run-of-the-mill “I am Hillary” speech — no landmark political announcements, no insights into foreign policy, nothing much other than standard liberal therapeutic boilerplate trading on her increased market value due to her recent tenure as chief foreign affairs officer of the United States.
When these exorbitant fees were questioned by the liberal media, she seemed stunned that any would doubt her progressive fides, and cited her past caring for the poorer off. Then she backed off and assured us that the money went to “charity.” Of course, with the Clintons, we know there is always a nuance and tweak to follow. So next, the “charity” turned out to be the Clinton Foundation [6], which tends to fund the extravagant private jet travel of mostly Bill and Hillary and their appendages.
One Percenters as Populist Poseurs
How then do the Clintons pass as populists, given their exorbitant speaking fees — Bill has probably raked in more post-presidential money than all prior U.S. presidents of the last half-century combined — their mansions, and their elaborate one-percent lifestyles? Was $30 million in book advances over the years for the two of them not enough for progressive populists?
Hillary protested that despite a past multimillion-dollar book advance for her, and multimillion-dollar speaking fees lined up for Bill, they left the presidency “broke” [7] in 2001. When that trope did not work, Hillary turned to the now well-known theory of medieval exemption: they could not possibly be greedy (in the sense of ignoring the Obama rule that a multimillionaire must know when not to profit and at what point she has already made enough money), because they were lifelong liberals who had worked their tails off for social justice.
Like John Kerry (the advocate of higher taxes who avoided them on his yacht, like Al Gore (the proponent of green energy who likes private jets and big SUVs, and like Tom Steyer (whose green cash donations are predicated on cashing in on sooty coal development in third-world countries), the Clintons see no contradiction in charging outrageous rates for speaking and living quite well — while being for “fairness.”
Indeed, under the protocols of contemporary progressivism, in the abstract being loudly for equality means in the concrete having a lot more things than most anyone else. Modern liberalism has descended into the art of rich people blaming the lower middle class for not being generous enough with money they don’t have.
In such a strange world, Chelsea, Hillary assures us, is not so interested in profit-mongering and all such distasteful money-grubbing, but does tolerate a ten-million-dollar New York tony apartment (replete with Italian marble baths [8]), and sort of puts up with a multi-thousand-dollar an hour [9] nepotistic TV contract.
She is even willing to stomach her multimillionaire parents crafting all sorts of family trusts to avoid inheritance taxes so that she will have enough millions not to worry about having to make millions to support a lifestyle she doesn’t much like. Keep all that in mind as Hillary drops her g’s and adopts a black patois [10] when addressing African-Americans, and, to paraphrase Barack Obama, then again becomes Annie Oakley when shooting rifles with the clingers [11].
What a strange couple the Clintons became: the feminist president who was a serial groper and ace harasser; the feminist secretary of State who chortled in recall [12] about an old sexual battery case in which she got a rapist off easy, and whose advisors reduced Bill’s liaisons to trailer trash or nuts; the two populists who cashed in; the middle-class defenders who fawned over Wall Street; and on and on.
The second problem with Hillary’s candidacy is Obama. In 2009, the betting was close [13] on whether her secretary of State (she had no particular foreign affairs experience prior to her appointment) billet was a deft Obama move (keep your enemies closer than your friends) or a Clintonian wise political gambit (keep in the limelight for 2016).
The problem is that her four years as secretary of State coincided with a collapse of U.S. foreign policy unseen since 1979-80. In a fair world, Hillary would be judged as the worst secretary of State since Cyrus Vance. Most of the disasters — Benghazi, the chaos in Libya, the failed reset with Russia, the bogus Syrian red lines, the phony Iranian deadlines to stop enrichment, the yanking of all peacekeepers out of Iraq that led to the ISIS ascendance, the surge and simultaneous withdrawal dates in Afghanistan, the disastrous Middle East pressures that have led to the eve of war, the flip-flop-flip in Egypt, the clumsy spying on allies, the lying about and jailing of a video maker [14], and on and on — came on her watch.
Distancing Her Own Disaster from a Disaster
Even if Obama were at 60% approval ratings, if the economy were booming, if there were no alphabet soup of scandals — AP, IRS, VA, NSA, etc. — Hillary would have some trouble contextualizing her disastrous record as secretary of State during a popular administration.
But now she must distance her own disaster from a disaster. I suppose that it is conventionally wise for her to junk Obama (e.g., “he did it, not me”), but there are pitfalls nonetheless. She must over the next two years cut herself off from everything Obama. She must do so on the premise that she was secretary despite, not because of, Obama and that all the disastrous decisions that she made were really her boss’s — the exact nature of which each month she may reluctantly disclose.
If Obama’s popularity dips below 40% — the point at which a presidency is reduced to irrelevance — with more than two years left on his tenure, Hillary will only speed up the process. She will de facto run against Obama (on the premise that she is promising a continuum of Bill Clinton’s Democratic mainstream successes) in the manner that Adlai Stevenson sort of ran against lame duck Harry Truman in 1952, and in the way in which John McCain often seemed as critical of George W. Bush as was Barack Obama.
Yet trashing your kindred predecessor is a hard thing to pull off (ask Al Gore [15]). Presidents in their last year of office don’t appreciate it, and occasionally have ways to push back. Sometimes the base doesn’t like such ingratitude either. The electorate asks, why elect another Democrat or Republican to follow an unpopular Democrat or Republican? For Hillary to escape Obama’s unpopularity, she must in circular fashion over the next two years only make him more unpopular by her very efforts at distancing herself from him — while avoiding the charge of,”well, then, what were you doing from 2009 to 20013?” Adlai Stevenson and John McCain, of course, were not cabinet officers in the respective Truman and Bush administrations.
None of these hurdles — or questions about both Hillary’s and Bill’s age and health [16] — is insurmountable for a contortionist like Ms. Clinton. Hillary believes that Obama’s great achievement is that he left a permanently divided America, by his various “wars” of race, gender and class. Accordingly, she can reforge that adversarial coalition of young women, gays, greens, minorities, unions, elite liberals and wealthy progressives against “them” by virtue of her gender and politics — and do so is a less grating way. The feminist who hunted down Bill’s interns and who makes $200,000 from cash-strapped universities for brief pep talks will soon lecture us on the evils of a misogynist one-percent nation (e.g., don’t we all hate those who make more in 30 minutes than we do in four years?).
Current polls suggest that she will pull it off. (In the way the early polls had assured that she would in 2008?) What then is likely?
Who knows, although we can be certain of one fact: If the Republican candidate campaigns according to the Marquess of Queensberry rules in the fashion of John McCain or Mitt Romney and politely deflects each hour the insinuation that as a rich, old white guy de facto he is culpable for some –ism or -ology, Hillary will be elected.
But if such charges are either inapplicable to the Republican candidate or are answered in slash-and-burn Lee Atwater style — who was so despised by establishment Republican political operatives — then nothing is certain.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/all-clintoned-out/
URLs in this post:
[1] were all Clintoned out: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/06/01/insert-obligatory-godfather-reference-here/
[2] Hillary Clinton herself: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/558oparc.asp
[3] in 2008: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clintons-image-damaged/
[4] George Marshall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Marshall
[5] over $200,000: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281777/Hillary-Clinton-charge-200-000-speech–YEARS-salary-Secretary-State-Bill-charges.html
[6] the Clinton Foundation: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/05/Hillary-Says-She-Donated-High-Speaking-Fees-to-Charity-Her-Own-Clinton-Charity
[7] left the presidency “broke”: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-stumbles-from-dead-broke-to-not-truly-well-off/
[8] with Italian marble baths: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381122/heres-how-little-chelsea-clinton-cares-about-money-dollars-celina-durgin
[9] multi-thousand-dollar an hour: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2014/06/14/chelsea-clintons-600000-year-salary-nbc-story-month-obvious-political-fa
[10] adopts a black patois: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk7hFnB4JnA
[11] with the clingers: http://bearingarms.com/awesome-hillary-clinton-compares-gun-owners-terrorists/
[12] who chortled in recall: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/08/hillary-clinton-refuses-to-apologize-for-laughing-about-12-year-old-rape-victim-she-maligned-in-court/
[13] the betting was close: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/26/hillary-chelsea-ruling-class/
[14] the lying about and jailing of a video maker: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/05/07/hillary-pushed-internet-video-meme-at-victims-funeral/
[15] ask Al Gore: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/27/hillary-change-or-continuity/
[16] age and health: http://www.drudgereport.com/flashek.htm
[17] Shutterstock.com: http://www.shutterstock.com
Copyright © 2008 Works and Days. All rights reserved.
Illiberal Immigration ‘Reform’
Illiberal Immigration ‘Reform’
July 15, 2014 7:55 am
People who call for “comprehensive immigration reform” seldom mean it.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
President Obama delivers a statement on immigration reform, June 30, 2014 Photo by Mark Wilson via Getty Images
The last thing a liberal proponent of immigration reform wants is liberal immigration reform. Remember that paradox, and the insanity at the border makes some sense.
Each day a worried politician or pundit, with creased brow and pained expression, lectures us about the need for “comprehensive immigration reform” to avoid the sort of chaos we are witnessing on the border.
Then a funny thing happens. The speaker never defines the term. If on rare occasions advocates are asked, they fumble around, annoyed that anyone would press them to explain what they mean.
In truth, no one in the open-borders coalition wants anything approaching comprehensive immigration reform. Advocates are embarrassed about the present mess at the border not because thousands of foreign nationals, many of them unescorted children and teens, from Latin America, without skills or education, are flocking illegally across the border after largely taking the amnesty cue from Barack Obama, but because they are doing so in such dramatic fashion that the influx has aroused the ire and worry of the American people and exposed illegal immigration to be a callous and illiberal enterprise, promoted by a coalition of self-interested political operatives, commercial concerns, and ethnic chauvinists.
So why will we not see true comprehensive immigration reform?
Such legislation would first have to make border security the top priority. And that would entail three unpalatable requisites.
The first step would be the completion of the fence. Fences do work. That is why, for example, former mayor of Los Angeles and open-borders advocate Antonio Villaraigosa (“We don’t need to build walls, we need to build bridges”) became the first mayor in Los Angeles history to insist on a six-foot-high security fence around his official mayoral residence in Windsor Square, or why the White House, the homes of Silicon Valley billionaires, and the vacation homes of the elite on Martha’s Vineyard all have security fences. How odd that we are lectured about the Neanderthal nature of secure borders by elites who are about the only ones in America who demand them around their own estates.
Second, the Border Patrol would have to turn back all who crossed illegally and then let that be known. Border “Patrol” is now a misnomer. A more accurate term for the present agency would be “Border Access.”
Third, until deterrence is established, more guards would have to patrol the border and its environs. And the more the border was made sacrosanct, the more underworked operatives in the interior could be redeployed to the border.
The second element of concrete comprehensive immigration reform — meritocratic legal immigration — is equally an anathema to those who call for it in the abstract. If legal immigration were to be ethnically blind, and predicated on merit rather than proximity to the southern border, the ethnic industry would rise in revolt.
La Raza affiliates do not believe in true diversity, racial or otherwise. They do not want legal immigration to be predicated on skills or college degrees, which might result in a million Kenyan doctors, Czech engineers, Chilean nurses, Mexican architects, Punjabi programmers, or Korean dentists entering the United States.
Think of all the classical-liberal ramifications of ethnically blind criteria that would drive liberals crazy. The ethnic chauvinists might see the end of huge influxes of poor and uneducated Central Americans and Mexicans. Without such a large and perennially replenished pool, assimilation, integration, and intermarriage — the now-hated melting pot — would make “Latinos” in a generation or two the equivalent of Italian Americans. In other words, ethnic heritage would be incidental, not essential to one’s American identity, a fact that would mean to the Latino elite an eventual end to affirmative action, Chicano Studies, and the bilingual industry.
There are no Italian-language mega media conglomerates, no La Razza pressure groups, and no affirmative action for those surnamed Giuliani or Cuomo. Seeing people as individuals is exactly what the Chicano grievance industry does not wish. Yet the end of grievance politics is what would occur if we did not have a million Latinos crossing illegally each year into the U.S. but rather a manageable number, legally and in accordance with the ethnically blind criteria applied to any other immigrants.
Nor would the liberal elite in general like such merit-based immigration. They are happy to have cheap unskilled labor for janitorial work, landscaping, nannying, field labor, and construction, with such a pool driving down the wages of distant others. But skilled professionals in law, medicine, business, and other professions would compete with the native elite. Paying a high wage for an American citizen to do housework while competing for a job with a foreign-born stockbroker, professor, reporter, or lawyer may not be what proponents of comprehensive immigration reform had in mind.
Finally, comprehensive immigration reform would have to deal with the un-Dreamers (for every Dream Act, there by logic is an unspoken un-Dream Act for those who do not qualify). A minority of the estimated 11 to 15 million illegal aliens have no work history in the U.S., but more or less came north to receive public assistance and never got off it. Thousands more have committed crimes beyond illegally entering and residing in the United States. A third group opportunistically came very recently, sensing an impending Obama amnesty. In other words, the un-Dreamers are a small percentage of a vast pool — and thus quite a large number.
If just 10 percent of the existing resident-alien pool had criminal records, or no record of gainful employment, or less than three years of residence, that would mean perhaps 1 to 2 million would have to be deported. That fact is never mentioned by supporters of comprehensive immigration reform, who assume that amnesty comes first, the border is left insecure, few new arrivals are turned away, and the un-Dreamers simply stay and fade out of the collective consciousness.
Many Americans would support giving aliens who came here years ago, who have always been working and paying taxes, and who have been crime-free a chance at a green card. With mastery of English, the payment of a penalty for their illegal residence, and certification of self-support, many would be eligible for a pathway to citizenship. However, the open-borders alliance wishes no deportation of anyone. Business leaders who might support deportation do not wish to be called racists. Ethnic activists do not wish to lose any constituents, especially those currently deeply dependent on government social services. And liberal politicians want constituents regardless of their particular circumstances.
The next time a politician drones on about “comprehensive immigration reform,” a few questions have to be asked: How is the border made secure first? Is it desirable that legal immigration be meritocratic and ethnically diverse? And does anyone get deported, and if so who exactly?
Silence will follow — or, if not silence, a long string of invectives.
July 15, 2014 7:55 am
People who call for “comprehensive immigration reform” seldom mean it.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
President Obama delivers a statement on immigration reform, June 30, 2014 Photo by Mark Wilson via Getty Images
The last thing a liberal proponent of immigration reform wants is liberal immigration reform. Remember that paradox, and the insanity at the border makes some sense.
Each day a worried politician or pundit, with creased brow and pained expression, lectures us about the need for “comprehensive immigration reform” to avoid the sort of chaos we are witnessing on the border.
Then a funny thing happens. The speaker never defines the term. If on rare occasions advocates are asked, they fumble around, annoyed that anyone would press them to explain what they mean.
In truth, no one in the open-borders coalition wants anything approaching comprehensive immigration reform. Advocates are embarrassed about the present mess at the border not because thousands of foreign nationals, many of them unescorted children and teens, from Latin America, without skills or education, are flocking illegally across the border after largely taking the amnesty cue from Barack Obama, but because they are doing so in such dramatic fashion that the influx has aroused the ire and worry of the American people and exposed illegal immigration to be a callous and illiberal enterprise, promoted by a coalition of self-interested political operatives, commercial concerns, and ethnic chauvinists.
So why will we not see true comprehensive immigration reform?
Such legislation would first have to make border security the top priority. And that would entail three unpalatable requisites.
The first step would be the completion of the fence. Fences do work. That is why, for example, former mayor of Los Angeles and open-borders advocate Antonio Villaraigosa (“We don’t need to build walls, we need to build bridges”) became the first mayor in Los Angeles history to insist on a six-foot-high security fence around his official mayoral residence in Windsor Square, or why the White House, the homes of Silicon Valley billionaires, and the vacation homes of the elite on Martha’s Vineyard all have security fences. How odd that we are lectured about the Neanderthal nature of secure borders by elites who are about the only ones in America who demand them around their own estates.
Second, the Border Patrol would have to turn back all who crossed illegally and then let that be known. Border “Patrol” is now a misnomer. A more accurate term for the present agency would be “Border Access.”
Third, until deterrence is established, more guards would have to patrol the border and its environs. And the more the border was made sacrosanct, the more underworked operatives in the interior could be redeployed to the border.
The second element of concrete comprehensive immigration reform — meritocratic legal immigration — is equally an anathema to those who call for it in the abstract. If legal immigration were to be ethnically blind, and predicated on merit rather than proximity to the southern border, the ethnic industry would rise in revolt.
La Raza affiliates do not believe in true diversity, racial or otherwise. They do not want legal immigration to be predicated on skills or college degrees, which might result in a million Kenyan doctors, Czech engineers, Chilean nurses, Mexican architects, Punjabi programmers, or Korean dentists entering the United States.
Think of all the classical-liberal ramifications of ethnically blind criteria that would drive liberals crazy. The ethnic chauvinists might see the end of huge influxes of poor and uneducated Central Americans and Mexicans. Without such a large and perennially replenished pool, assimilation, integration, and intermarriage — the now-hated melting pot — would make “Latinos” in a generation or two the equivalent of Italian Americans. In other words, ethnic heritage would be incidental, not essential to one’s American identity, a fact that would mean to the Latino elite an eventual end to affirmative action, Chicano Studies, and the bilingual industry.
There are no Italian-language mega media conglomerates, no La Razza pressure groups, and no affirmative action for those surnamed Giuliani or Cuomo. Seeing people as individuals is exactly what the Chicano grievance industry does not wish. Yet the end of grievance politics is what would occur if we did not have a million Latinos crossing illegally each year into the U.S. but rather a manageable number, legally and in accordance with the ethnically blind criteria applied to any other immigrants.
Nor would the liberal elite in general like such merit-based immigration. They are happy to have cheap unskilled labor for janitorial work, landscaping, nannying, field labor, and construction, with such a pool driving down the wages of distant others. But skilled professionals in law, medicine, business, and other professions would compete with the native elite. Paying a high wage for an American citizen to do housework while competing for a job with a foreign-born stockbroker, professor, reporter, or lawyer may not be what proponents of comprehensive immigration reform had in mind.
Finally, comprehensive immigration reform would have to deal with the un-Dreamers (for every Dream Act, there by logic is an unspoken un-Dream Act for those who do not qualify). A minority of the estimated 11 to 15 million illegal aliens have no work history in the U.S., but more or less came north to receive public assistance and never got off it. Thousands more have committed crimes beyond illegally entering and residing in the United States. A third group opportunistically came very recently, sensing an impending Obama amnesty. In other words, the un-Dreamers are a small percentage of a vast pool — and thus quite a large number.
If just 10 percent of the existing resident-alien pool had criminal records, or no record of gainful employment, or less than three years of residence, that would mean perhaps 1 to 2 million would have to be deported. That fact is never mentioned by supporters of comprehensive immigration reform, who assume that amnesty comes first, the border is left insecure, few new arrivals are turned away, and the un-Dreamers simply stay and fade out of the collective consciousness.
Many Americans would support giving aliens who came here years ago, who have always been working and paying taxes, and who have been crime-free a chance at a green card. With mastery of English, the payment of a penalty for their illegal residence, and certification of self-support, many would be eligible for a pathway to citizenship. However, the open-borders alliance wishes no deportation of anyone. Business leaders who might support deportation do not wish to be called racists. Ethnic activists do not wish to lose any constituents, especially those currently deeply dependent on government social services. And liberal politicians want constituents regardless of their particular circumstances.
The next time a politician drones on about “comprehensive immigration reform,” a few questions have to be asked: How is the border made secure first? Is it desirable that legal immigration be meritocratic and ethnically diverse? And does anyone get deported, and if so who exactly?
Silence will follow — or, if not silence, a long string of invectives.
The Summer America Came Apart
2014: Obama’s America
July 17, 2014 3:19 am / 3 Comments / Victor Davis Hanson
Scandals now come so fast that each new mess makes us forget the previous one.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via scaredmonkeys.com
The summer of 2014 will go down in history as the season when America fell apart. Let’s take a tour of the disasters.
Germany in 2008 enthusiastically hosted candidate Barack Obama for his so-called Victory Column speech. Now, Germans suddenly sound as if they are near-enemies of the U.S. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly was furious that her cell phone was tapped by American intelligence agents. She just kicked the top CIA official out of Germany, further enraged that the U.S. had recruited at least one German official to provide intelligence on the German government. Polls show that Germans find Vladimir Putin’s Russian tyranny to be almost as popular as Barack Obama’s America.
Japan is becoming similarly frustrated with the U.S. It is rearming like crazy to confront an aggressive China. Both Asian powers apparently assume that Obama won’t guarantee the security of the Japanese as America has in the past.
The Middle East is dissolving. Taking U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq proved a disaster. The radical jihadists of ISIS are overrunning Syria and Iraq, as they extend their destruction even to the mute stones of religious sanctuaries.
War looms between Israel and the Palestinians as they exchange rockets and bombs. Older Americans had an idea of what Afghanistan will look like by 2016 after Obama announced a pullout of all U.S. troops. They remember Saigon of 1975 all too well.
Crimea has become a Russian satellite. The fate of the Ukraine hangs in the balance. In between his conquests, Russia’s Putin openly ridicules the impotence of the U.S. He is often called to the Middle East on the perception that he can address problems that America runs away from.
From his sanctuary perch in Russia, National Security Agency turncoat Edward Snowden is once again releasing top-secret data that shreds the credibility of the Obama administration.
Foreign leaders don’t trust the U.S. They are baffled as to whether America is guilty of incompetence in hiring such a roguish dropout snoop in the first place, or guilty of cynically spying on America’s best friends — or both.
The economy shrank last quarter. Record numbers of adult Americans are still not working. Zero-interest rates have destroyed the tradition of passbook savings and the very idea of thrift.
No-interest financial policies ignited a stampede to the stock market that has further enriched the one-percenters — an artificial boom that everyone believes will soon bust.
The borrowing of $7 trillion has proved no stimulus. A natural American recovery was stymied by vast federal borrowing, by the addition of more incomprehensible regulations, and by an Obamacare package that proved to be the opposite of almost everything that was promised. Inflation is said to be manageable, but only by not counting soaring food, gas, and electricity costs that do the most to erode family budgets.
U.S. immigration law simply no longer exists. Incoming foreign nationals more likely welcome arrest than fear it. Tens of thousands of newly arrived immigrants expect that the cynical coalition of commercial interests, ethnic activists, and political operatives have subverted existing federal law. America is now wide open. Almost anyone can cross the border and receive subsidized sanctuary. If you object, you are a nativist, racist, or xenophobe — take your pick.
No one denies that top IRS officials lost or destroyed key documents concerning the agency’s election-time efforts to subvert conservative organizations. The unbiased IRS that we once knew has vanished. It has become an appendage of the ruling government that punishes enemies and rewards friends — and dodges a high-level audit by lying in the same fashion as the tax cheats it goes after.
Americans accept the fact that a video never had anything to do with the killing of four American officials in Benghazi and know that the Obama administration knew precisely that when it assured them otherwise
No one has heard anything lately from Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was traded for five of the most dangerous jihadists the U.S. had in its custody. The less we know about why Bergdahl went AWOL, the administration thinks, the better.
The scandals now come so fast and furiously that we no sooner hear of one than yet another new mess makes us forget it.
What keeps the country afloat this terrible summer?
Some American companies produce more gas and oil than ever despite, not because of, the Obama administration. Most Americans still get up every day, work hard, and pay more taxes than they receive in subsidies. American soldiers remain the most formidable in the world despite the confusion of their superiors. The law, regardless of the administration, is still followed by most. And most do not duck out on their daily responsibilities to golf, play pool, or go on junkets.
It is still a hard thing to derail America in a summer — but then again, we have a long way to go until fall.
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
July 17, 2014 3:19 am / 3 Comments / Victor Davis Hanson
Scandals now come so fast that each new mess makes us forget the previous one.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via scaredmonkeys.com
The summer of 2014 will go down in history as the season when America fell apart. Let’s take a tour of the disasters.
Germany in 2008 enthusiastically hosted candidate Barack Obama for his so-called Victory Column speech. Now, Germans suddenly sound as if they are near-enemies of the U.S. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly was furious that her cell phone was tapped by American intelligence agents. She just kicked the top CIA official out of Germany, further enraged that the U.S. had recruited at least one German official to provide intelligence on the German government. Polls show that Germans find Vladimir Putin’s Russian tyranny to be almost as popular as Barack Obama’s America.
Japan is becoming similarly frustrated with the U.S. It is rearming like crazy to confront an aggressive China. Both Asian powers apparently assume that Obama won’t guarantee the security of the Japanese as America has in the past.
The Middle East is dissolving. Taking U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq proved a disaster. The radical jihadists of ISIS are overrunning Syria and Iraq, as they extend their destruction even to the mute stones of religious sanctuaries.
War looms between Israel and the Palestinians as they exchange rockets and bombs. Older Americans had an idea of what Afghanistan will look like by 2016 after Obama announced a pullout of all U.S. troops. They remember Saigon of 1975 all too well.
Crimea has become a Russian satellite. The fate of the Ukraine hangs in the balance. In between his conquests, Russia’s Putin openly ridicules the impotence of the U.S. He is often called to the Middle East on the perception that he can address problems that America runs away from.
From his sanctuary perch in Russia, National Security Agency turncoat Edward Snowden is once again releasing top-secret data that shreds the credibility of the Obama administration.
Foreign leaders don’t trust the U.S. They are baffled as to whether America is guilty of incompetence in hiring such a roguish dropout snoop in the first place, or guilty of cynically spying on America’s best friends — or both.
The economy shrank last quarter. Record numbers of adult Americans are still not working. Zero-interest rates have destroyed the tradition of passbook savings and the very idea of thrift.
No-interest financial policies ignited a stampede to the stock market that has further enriched the one-percenters — an artificial boom that everyone believes will soon bust.
The borrowing of $7 trillion has proved no stimulus. A natural American recovery was stymied by vast federal borrowing, by the addition of more incomprehensible regulations, and by an Obamacare package that proved to be the opposite of almost everything that was promised. Inflation is said to be manageable, but only by not counting soaring food, gas, and electricity costs that do the most to erode family budgets.
U.S. immigration law simply no longer exists. Incoming foreign nationals more likely welcome arrest than fear it. Tens of thousands of newly arrived immigrants expect that the cynical coalition of commercial interests, ethnic activists, and political operatives have subverted existing federal law. America is now wide open. Almost anyone can cross the border and receive subsidized sanctuary. If you object, you are a nativist, racist, or xenophobe — take your pick.
No one denies that top IRS officials lost or destroyed key documents concerning the agency’s election-time efforts to subvert conservative organizations. The unbiased IRS that we once knew has vanished. It has become an appendage of the ruling government that punishes enemies and rewards friends — and dodges a high-level audit by lying in the same fashion as the tax cheats it goes after.
Americans accept the fact that a video never had anything to do with the killing of four American officials in Benghazi and know that the Obama administration knew precisely that when it assured them otherwise
No one has heard anything lately from Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was traded for five of the most dangerous jihadists the U.S. had in its custody. The less we know about why Bergdahl went AWOL, the administration thinks, the better.
The scandals now come so fast and furiously that we no sooner hear of one than yet another new mess makes us forget it.
What keeps the country afloat this terrible summer?
Some American companies produce more gas and oil than ever despite, not because of, the Obama administration. Most Americans still get up every day, work hard, and pay more taxes than they receive in subsidies. American soldiers remain the most formidable in the world despite the confusion of their superiors. The law, regardless of the administration, is still followed by most. And most do not duck out on their daily responsibilities to golf, play pool, or go on junkets.
It is still a hard thing to derail America in a summer — but then again, we have a long way to go until fall.
© 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
White House Refuses to Send Witness to Congress,
White House Refuses to Send Witness to Congress, So Another Court Battle Looms
By John Fund
The White House is refusing to allow political adviser David Simas to respond to a subpoena from House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa.
White House counsel W. Neil Eggleston says Issa has no power to compel Simas to testify at a hearing Wednesday morning about whether the office he runs has been engaged in improper political activity in violation of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from such activities as campaign fundraising and explicit political support. Eggleston cited a new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that cited precedents going back to Presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon of executive privilege being asserted against testimony by White House aides.
Issa responds that in a case brought by congressional Democrats in 2008 against the Bush White House, a federal judge found that the idea of absolute immunity of a White House official from a congressional subpoena was “unprecedented” and held that presidential aides are “not absolutely immune from congressional process.”
“Flouting a federal judge’s opinion about our system of checks and balances is yet another attack on our nation’s Constitution by this president,” Issa said in a statement late Tuesday night. “This hearing seeks to examine a political office embedded within the White House which, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has had a controversial role of coordinating political campaign activity for the president at taxpayer expense.”
Issa has a troubling stack of examples of Hatch Act violations by federal officials during the Obama administration. Most notably, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found in 2012 that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had violated the Hatch Act during a political swing through North Carolina earlier that year.
Another example was revealed this week when it came to light that attorney April Sands, who worked for Lois Lerner at the Federal Election Commission before she moved to run the now-infamous nonprofit division of the IRS, has been forced to leave the government over Hatch Act violations.
Sands admitted to violating the Hatch Act by soliciting political contributions via Twitter and conducting political activity through her Twitter account while on duty. The FEC’s Office of Inspector General wanted to pursue criminal charges against her but was stymied when it was found the FEC had “recycled” Ms. Sands’s hard drive before the OIG was able to seize it. Justice Department officials then declined to prosecute due to a lack of evidence.
Recall that Lerner herself saw her own hard drive damaged while she was at the IRS, with the subsequent loss of two years of e-mails. As a result, it will be much more difficult to establish if Lerner was coordinating her targeting of conservative nonprofit groups with the FEC, Justice Department, or the White House.
Chairman Issa hasn’t revealed what sparked his interest in the activities of the White House’s political office, but his hearing today may provide some clues even if his star witness refuses to show up.
By John Fund
The White House is refusing to allow political adviser David Simas to respond to a subpoena from House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa.
White House counsel W. Neil Eggleston says Issa has no power to compel Simas to testify at a hearing Wednesday morning about whether the office he runs has been engaged in improper political activity in violation of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from such activities as campaign fundraising and explicit political support. Eggleston cited a new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that cited precedents going back to Presidents Harry Truman and Richard Nixon of executive privilege being asserted against testimony by White House aides.
Issa responds that in a case brought by congressional Democrats in 2008 against the Bush White House, a federal judge found that the idea of absolute immunity of a White House official from a congressional subpoena was “unprecedented” and held that presidential aides are “not absolutely immune from congressional process.”
“Flouting a federal judge’s opinion about our system of checks and balances is yet another attack on our nation’s Constitution by this president,” Issa said in a statement late Tuesday night. “This hearing seeks to examine a political office embedded within the White House which, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has had a controversial role of coordinating political campaign activity for the president at taxpayer expense.”
Issa has a troubling stack of examples of Hatch Act violations by federal officials during the Obama administration. Most notably, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found in 2012 that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had violated the Hatch Act during a political swing through North Carolina earlier that year.
Another example was revealed this week when it came to light that attorney April Sands, who worked for Lois Lerner at the Federal Election Commission before she moved to run the now-infamous nonprofit division of the IRS, has been forced to leave the government over Hatch Act violations.
Sands admitted to violating the Hatch Act by soliciting political contributions via Twitter and conducting political activity through her Twitter account while on duty. The FEC’s Office of Inspector General wanted to pursue criminal charges against her but was stymied when it was found the FEC had “recycled” Ms. Sands’s hard drive before the OIG was able to seize it. Justice Department officials then declined to prosecute due to a lack of evidence.
Recall that Lerner herself saw her own hard drive damaged while she was at the IRS, with the subsequent loss of two years of e-mails. As a result, it will be much more difficult to establish if Lerner was coordinating her targeting of conservative nonprofit groups with the FEC, Justice Department, or the White House.
Chairman Issa hasn’t revealed what sparked his interest in the activities of the White House’s political office, but his hearing today may provide some clues even if his star witness refuses to show up.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Recovery is Dependent on Middle Class
Recovery is Dependent on Middle Class
There Will Be No Real Recovery Without The Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin 07/11/2014
What if they gave a recovery, and the middle class were never invited? Well, that’s an experiment we are running now, and, even with the recent strengthening of the jobs market, it’s not looking very good.
Over the last five years, Wall Street and the investor class have been on a bull run, but the economy has been, at best, torpid for the vast majority of the population. Despite blather about our “democratic capitalism,” stock ownership is increasingly concentrated with the wealthy as the middle class retrenches. The big returns that hedge funds, real estate trusts or venture capitalist receive are simply outside the reach of the vast majority.
A recent study by the Russell Sage Foundation suggests these patterns of inequality, which have been developing over the last several decades, have become more pronounced in the post-Recession years. In 2013 the wealth of those at the 90th and 95thpercentiles was actually higher than 10 years ago. Everyone else is lower.
The labor market may be strengthening, with the unemployment rate falling to 6.1% last month, but too many of the new jobs are low wage or part time. They aren’t providing the kick the economy got in the last, more broad-based expansion from robust consumer spending.
Wage growth has been weak, rising 2.5% annually since 2009, according to Bloomberg, compared with a 4.3% annual rise from 2001 to 2007. Consumer spending, which makes up roughly 70% of the economy, has expanded an average 2.2% since the recession ended, behind the 3% advance in the prior expansion.
And many working-age people are still sitting discouraged on the sidelines – the labor force participation rate remains the lowest since 1979.
People in marginal or part-time jobs are not likely to drive consumer spending. Instead we have seen the emergence of a new, top-heavy consumer market. Since 1992 the top 5% of households have increased their share of total spending to almost 40%, up from 27% in 1992.
Former Citigroup economist Anjay Kapur has described this situation as a “plutonomy,” in which the economy is increasingly based on the global wealthy and their tastes and predilections.
Meanwhile broader consumer confidence remains weak. Last year some two-thirds of Americans polled by the Washington Post and the Miller Center said they felt life had become tougher over the last five years compared to just 7% who thought theirs had improved. Pollsters also have found almost two-thirds of parents felt their children would do worse in life, a stunning shift from far more optimistic readings back in 1999.
The Housing Market
Historically housing has been the primary asset held by the middle and working class. Despite government efforts to keep mortgages affordable, post-crash, growth has been slow, and much of the buying restricted to investors, including major financial interests. Particularly damaging, there has been a marked decline in the “trade up market” and even more so, sales to first-time buyers, whose share of the market has declined to under 30%, well below the historic average of 40%. This reflects the weak economy, tighter lending standards, and, for younger customers, the heavy burden of student loans.
Some on Wall Street hope to profit from a perceived shift in America to a “rentership society.” Housing more of the population in rental apartments would do little to improve social mobility, as people end up working not for their own equity but to pay the mortgage of their landlords. Nor can the economic payoff from apartment construction come close to that of single-family homes. According to the National Association of Home Builders, building 100 new single-family homes adds 324 jobs to the average metropolitan economy in the year of their construction and 53 jobs annually in the following years. This compares to 122 jobs per 100 new apartments in the year of construction and 32 in the following years. With home starts at less than a third their 2005 level, lack of construction employment also deals a body blow to one of the primary sources of higher-paying blue collar jobs.
The Emasculation Of Small Business
In previous recoveries, small businesses have provided much of the spark and job creation. Not so this time. Small business start-ups have declined as a portion of all business growth from 50% in the early 1980s to 35% in 2010, while its share of employment dropped down from 20% to 12%. Indeed, a 2014 Brookings report revealed that small business “dynamism,” measured by the growth of new firms compared with the closing of older ones, has declined significantly over the past decade, with more firms closing than starting for the first time in a quarter century.
Nor is the future prognosis too good. The rise of the regulatory state, including the Affordable Care Act and higher taxes, amplified in deep blue states such as California, has hit smaller businesses hard. The gradual culling of smaller banks, traditional lenders to entrepreneurs, and the growing concentration of assets in the “too big to fail” banks, historically unfocused on the needs of small companies or individual proprietors, suggests credit may remain tough for grassroots entrepreneurs.
Needed: A New Paradigm
The recession and the weak recovery have taught us you cannot have strong economic growth without the participation of the vast majority of Americans. We’ve run an experiment under Bernanke, Bush and Obama to pump up the economy from above, and what we’ve done is squash the aspirations of those middle orders, particularly small business and the self-employed.
This issue should be at the center of the political debate. I would welcome suggestions from the right and left about how best to restart a broad-based economic recovery. The best ideas may come from across the spectrum, such as flatter taxes, supported by many conservatives, as well as new spending on major infrastructure projects as improved roads, rivers and ports that generally come from more liberal groups.
The good news is the fundamentals for a broader-based prosperity, including the creation of high-paying blue-collar jobs, remain in place. Progress is already evident in the energy and some manufacturing-oriented regions. Restarting the housing sector — particularly the single-family home component — would do wonders for middle and working class people in many regional economies, as can be seen, for example, in Houston, where more homes will be built this year than in the entire state of California. Nationwide, the gap between between demand and potential housing, according to the NAB, is roughly 1 million homes, which translates into close to 3 million jobs.
How to drive growth to these and other productive sectors may require not only changes in government policy but also reacquainting the investor class with the virtues of long-term growth, productivity and the revival of the mass economy. Perhaps once they do investors might earn something other than intense dislike from the rest of the population.
This story originally appeared at Forbes.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
There Will Be No Real Recovery Without The Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin 07/11/2014
What if they gave a recovery, and the middle class were never invited? Well, that’s an experiment we are running now, and, even with the recent strengthening of the jobs market, it’s not looking very good.
Over the last five years, Wall Street and the investor class have been on a bull run, but the economy has been, at best, torpid for the vast majority of the population. Despite blather about our “democratic capitalism,” stock ownership is increasingly concentrated with the wealthy as the middle class retrenches. The big returns that hedge funds, real estate trusts or venture capitalist receive are simply outside the reach of the vast majority.
A recent study by the Russell Sage Foundation suggests these patterns of inequality, which have been developing over the last several decades, have become more pronounced in the post-Recession years. In 2013 the wealth of those at the 90th and 95thpercentiles was actually higher than 10 years ago. Everyone else is lower.
The labor market may be strengthening, with the unemployment rate falling to 6.1% last month, but too many of the new jobs are low wage or part time. They aren’t providing the kick the economy got in the last, more broad-based expansion from robust consumer spending.
Wage growth has been weak, rising 2.5% annually since 2009, according to Bloomberg, compared with a 4.3% annual rise from 2001 to 2007. Consumer spending, which makes up roughly 70% of the economy, has expanded an average 2.2% since the recession ended, behind the 3% advance in the prior expansion.
And many working-age people are still sitting discouraged on the sidelines – the labor force participation rate remains the lowest since 1979.
People in marginal or part-time jobs are not likely to drive consumer spending. Instead we have seen the emergence of a new, top-heavy consumer market. Since 1992 the top 5% of households have increased their share of total spending to almost 40%, up from 27% in 1992.
Former Citigroup economist Anjay Kapur has described this situation as a “plutonomy,” in which the economy is increasingly based on the global wealthy and their tastes and predilections.
Meanwhile broader consumer confidence remains weak. Last year some two-thirds of Americans polled by the Washington Post and the Miller Center said they felt life had become tougher over the last five years compared to just 7% who thought theirs had improved. Pollsters also have found almost two-thirds of parents felt their children would do worse in life, a stunning shift from far more optimistic readings back in 1999.
The Housing Market
Historically housing has been the primary asset held by the middle and working class. Despite government efforts to keep mortgages affordable, post-crash, growth has been slow, and much of the buying restricted to investors, including major financial interests. Particularly damaging, there has been a marked decline in the “trade up market” and even more so, sales to first-time buyers, whose share of the market has declined to under 30%, well below the historic average of 40%. This reflects the weak economy, tighter lending standards, and, for younger customers, the heavy burden of student loans.
Some on Wall Street hope to profit from a perceived shift in America to a “rentership society.” Housing more of the population in rental apartments would do little to improve social mobility, as people end up working not for their own equity but to pay the mortgage of their landlords. Nor can the economic payoff from apartment construction come close to that of single-family homes. According to the National Association of Home Builders, building 100 new single-family homes adds 324 jobs to the average metropolitan economy in the year of their construction and 53 jobs annually in the following years. This compares to 122 jobs per 100 new apartments in the year of construction and 32 in the following years. With home starts at less than a third their 2005 level, lack of construction employment also deals a body blow to one of the primary sources of higher-paying blue collar jobs.
The Emasculation Of Small Business
In previous recoveries, small businesses have provided much of the spark and job creation. Not so this time. Small business start-ups have declined as a portion of all business growth from 50% in the early 1980s to 35% in 2010, while its share of employment dropped down from 20% to 12%. Indeed, a 2014 Brookings report revealed that small business “dynamism,” measured by the growth of new firms compared with the closing of older ones, has declined significantly over the past decade, with more firms closing than starting for the first time in a quarter century.
Nor is the future prognosis too good. The rise of the regulatory state, including the Affordable Care Act and higher taxes, amplified in deep blue states such as California, has hit smaller businesses hard. The gradual culling of smaller banks, traditional lenders to entrepreneurs, and the growing concentration of assets in the “too big to fail” banks, historically unfocused on the needs of small companies or individual proprietors, suggests credit may remain tough for grassroots entrepreneurs.
Needed: A New Paradigm
The recession and the weak recovery have taught us you cannot have strong economic growth without the participation of the vast majority of Americans. We’ve run an experiment under Bernanke, Bush and Obama to pump up the economy from above, and what we’ve done is squash the aspirations of those middle orders, particularly small business and the self-employed.
This issue should be at the center of the political debate. I would welcome suggestions from the right and left about how best to restart a broad-based economic recovery. The best ideas may come from across the spectrum, such as flatter taxes, supported by many conservatives, as well as new spending on major infrastructure projects as improved roads, rivers and ports that generally come from more liberal groups.
The good news is the fundamentals for a broader-based prosperity, including the creation of high-paying blue-collar jobs, remain in place. Progress is already evident in the energy and some manufacturing-oriented regions. Restarting the housing sector — particularly the single-family home component — would do wonders for middle and working class people in many regional economies, as can be seen, for example, in Houston, where more homes will be built this year than in the entire state of California. Nationwide, the gap between between demand and potential housing, according to the NAB, is roughly 1 million homes, which translates into close to 3 million jobs.
How to drive growth to these and other productive sectors may require not only changes in government policy but also reacquainting the investor class with the virtues of long-term growth, productivity and the revival of the mass economy. Perhaps once they do investors might earn something other than intense dislike from the rest of the population.
This story originally appeared at Forbes.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
The Strange Leak of the New Exposé ‘Clinton, Inc.’
The Strange Leak of the New Exposé ‘Clinton, Inc.’
Sure, hotly anticipated books leak all the time. But 10 days early? And by a tipster who seems to be posing as a Tea Partier—but who one source suspects is affiliated with the Clintons?
The marketing and publicity folks at Broadside Books, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins, had ambitious and detailed plans for the rollout of Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.
They included plentiful television and media appearances by the author, Daniel Halper, who is online editor of the right-leaning Weekly Standard—notably an early guest shot on The O’Reilly Factor, the highly rated prime-time show on the Fox News Channel, of which HarperCollins is a corporate sibling.
But those plans were dashed over the weekend by a prolific but mysterious rogue distributor who somehow got a copy of Halper’s book and blasted out a series of mass-media emails containing PDFs—or portable document formats—of the entire 317-page, 12-chapter volume that was officially under wraps until the designated publication date, July 22.
On Sunday the publisher was caught flat-footed and scrambling to respond to the leak. Although the email blast happened on Saturday night, HarperCollins officials didn’t learn of the breach until the following morning because the corporate email system had been taken down for maintenance.
“I’ll have to talk to my colleagues tomorrow and we’ll figure it out,” HarperCollins publicity manager Joanna Pinsker told The Daily Beast when asked how the leak will affect the book’s marketing campaign. “It certainly didn’t come from the publicity department,” she added, noting that bound manuscripts—but no finished books—were sent only to journalists who signed nondisclosure agreements promising not to break the July 22 embargo. She said the marketing department is investigating the real source of the rogue emails, and once he or she is identified and located, a stern letter will follow.
“We really have no idea” how the premature release occurred, said Adam Bellow, Broadside’s top editor. “The book was closely held prior to release, but now that it is physically in shipment there are many ways of obtaining a copy. It does seem strange, however, that this totally obscure person has somehow obtained the private email of dozens of top political and media reporters.”
On Saturday night, emails from someone who identified himself, unusually, as Robert Josef Wright—a name not immediately accessible on Google or other commonly used databases—began blasting to more than 100 prominent and less prominent print and online journalists and television anchors, occasionally using their personal addresses. Among the copied recipients were NBC News President Deborah Turness; The Washington Post’s media reporter, Paul Farhi; CNN’s Jake Tapper; New York magazine’s Joe Hagan; and Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
“Here is a book I bought today that you all must read. Its [sic] coming in several emails so it doesn’t spam you,” Wright—or, rather, “Wright”—wrote in his initial email. “Someone has exposed The Royal Clinton’s [sic]. King Smarmy Bill, Queen Smug Chilary, and Princess Spolied Chlesea [sic]. I don’t know David Halper or his other books. But he obviously knows people who have been dying to tell the truth and finally have.
“Will you take it seriously or will the liberal press coronate the Clintons by attacking the messenger.
“More chunks to come soon.”
The email was signed: RJW/ Spreading The “Wright” Message
While the contents of hotly anticipated titles occasionally leak prior to their publication dates—notably Hillary Clinton’s State Department memoir, Hard Choices, which Politico obtained and summarized three days before its official June 10 release—it’s rare that a book is stripped bare more than a week ahead of its scheduled unveiling.
“When a book is being shipped to whatever bookstores, the people working in the bookstores are expected to keep them in the back of the store in their sealed boxes, and they’re not supposed to unpack them until the day the book goes on sale,” Pinsker said. “But time and again, they do just that”—i.e., open the boxes early and stack the books on the shelves. Respecting release dates has gotten more problematic, of course, with the advent of PDFs, she added.
Bellow, for one, was skeptical of “Wright”’s claim that he purchased Clinton, Inc. “I don’t think that is possible unless he bought it off the back of a truck,” the editor emailed.
Another publishing source, who asked not to be named, said “Wright”’s online identity as a Clinton-hating wingnut with sloppy spelling and grammar issues is also cause for suspicion.
“The working theory of who it might be is somebody who wants to come across as a conservative, but in a way it seems like they’re trying too hard,” this source said. “So it might be somebody who’s not a conservative. They have an excellent, sophisticated media list, including people who are not commonly known, so this is somebody with some Washington-New York media savvy. The most likely suspect would be someone affiliated with the Clintons.”
That, of course, is pure speculation, unsupported by evidence. The Daily Beast’s emails requesting comment from spokespeople for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received no response. But various Clinton loyalists were apparently more than curious about Halper’s research and reporting process as the book project was under way; Halper writes that an assistant to longtime Clinton political guru James Carville asked for the names of interviewees and a detailed description of the scope of the book—questions the author dodged.
Unlike scandal-monger Ed Klein’s fantastical No. 1 best-selling narrative about the supposed Blood Feud between the Clintons and the Obamas, Halper’s study is juicy and gossipy, yet scrupulously researched, drawing on numerous on-the-record conversations (as well as many not-for-attribution interviews) with prominent Democrats and Clinton insiders, past and present.
Among those who participated openly in Halper’s project are former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry, White House scandal spinmeister Lanny Davis, former Clinton-era United Nations ambassador and secretary of energy Bill Richardson, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former senator Joe Lieberman, and Sen. John McCain; also interviewed for the book were several unnamed former Clinton aides who provided occasionally jaded observations of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s Bill Clinton who emerges as selfish and coldly calculating in the portrait drawn by Halper’s reporting, and Hillary who comes off as warm and caring, albeit charmingly transactional for political gain, particularly with her Republican colleagues in the Senate. All the Clintons are described as obsessed with enriching themselves, using their charitable foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative not only to perform good works but also to help support an imperial lifestyle and provide Hillary’s presidential ambitions with a vast political infrastructure.
A chapter devoted to Chelsea, titled “Daddy’s Little Girl,” portrays the former first daughter as scarred by life in the political fishbowl and the public humiliation of her father’s philandering, but also the entitled beneficiary of both her parents’ feelings of guilt over the weirdness of her upbringing. “When you screw a young White House staffer,” a source “very close to the Clinton family” told Halper, referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, “you’re paying the price for the rest of your life. When your daughter wants to buy a ten-million-dollar apartment, the question isn’t ‘Are you crazy?’ It’s ‘Where do I wire the money?’”
In a chapter titled “Charm Offensives,” Halper reports on a very strange encounter the former president allegedly had with a group of rich Republicans at the 2003 running of the Preakness, where Clinton allegedly told off-color jokes at the Turf Club of Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course.
According to Halper, Clinton—“always eager to please”— told his embarrassed audience a joke that began: “These two old Jews are walking down the street.”
“As the joke begins, everyone around the table looks dubious,” Halper writes. “Where is he going with this? Surely the former president of the United States is not about to tell an anti-Semitic story in front of people he hardly knows. This, of course, is exactly what he does, according to a number of people present.”
Briefly, the joke has the two Jewish codgers walking by a Catholic church, where a sign out front offers $100 to converts. One of the Jews, named Abe, agrees to convert and give half the proceeds to his friend. Abe meets with the priests, learns the traditions of the church, is declared a Catholic, and collects his reward.
“Hey! Look at the new Catholic here,” Abe’s friend says. “You got my money?”
To which Abe retorts: “You fucking Jews. It’s all about the money, isn’t it.”
Halper writes: “As the former president laughs, the others offer weak smiles. No one wants to offend him.”
Sure, hotly anticipated books leak all the time. But 10 days early? And by a tipster who seems to be posing as a Tea Partier—but who one source suspects is affiliated with the Clintons?
The marketing and publicity folks at Broadside Books, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins, had ambitious and detailed plans for the rollout of Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.
They included plentiful television and media appearances by the author, Daniel Halper, who is online editor of the right-leaning Weekly Standard—notably an early guest shot on The O’Reilly Factor, the highly rated prime-time show on the Fox News Channel, of which HarperCollins is a corporate sibling.
But those plans were dashed over the weekend by a prolific but mysterious rogue distributor who somehow got a copy of Halper’s book and blasted out a series of mass-media emails containing PDFs—or portable document formats—of the entire 317-page, 12-chapter volume that was officially under wraps until the designated publication date, July 22.
On Sunday the publisher was caught flat-footed and scrambling to respond to the leak. Although the email blast happened on Saturday night, HarperCollins officials didn’t learn of the breach until the following morning because the corporate email system had been taken down for maintenance.
“I’ll have to talk to my colleagues tomorrow and we’ll figure it out,” HarperCollins publicity manager Joanna Pinsker told The Daily Beast when asked how the leak will affect the book’s marketing campaign. “It certainly didn’t come from the publicity department,” she added, noting that bound manuscripts—but no finished books—were sent only to journalists who signed nondisclosure agreements promising not to break the July 22 embargo. She said the marketing department is investigating the real source of the rogue emails, and once he or she is identified and located, a stern letter will follow.
“We really have no idea” how the premature release occurred, said Adam Bellow, Broadside’s top editor. “The book was closely held prior to release, but now that it is physically in shipment there are many ways of obtaining a copy. It does seem strange, however, that this totally obscure person has somehow obtained the private email of dozens of top political and media reporters.”
On Saturday night, emails from someone who identified himself, unusually, as Robert Josef Wright—a name not immediately accessible on Google or other commonly used databases—began blasting to more than 100 prominent and less prominent print and online journalists and television anchors, occasionally using their personal addresses. Among the copied recipients were NBC News President Deborah Turness; The Washington Post’s media reporter, Paul Farhi; CNN’s Jake Tapper; New York magazine’s Joe Hagan; and Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
“Here is a book I bought today that you all must read. Its [sic] coming in several emails so it doesn’t spam you,” Wright—or, rather, “Wright”—wrote in his initial email. “Someone has exposed The Royal Clinton’s [sic]. King Smarmy Bill, Queen Smug Chilary, and Princess Spolied Chlesea [sic]. I don’t know David Halper or his other books. But he obviously knows people who have been dying to tell the truth and finally have.
“Will you take it seriously or will the liberal press coronate the Clintons by attacking the messenger.
“More chunks to come soon.”
The email was signed: RJW/ Spreading The “Wright” Message
While the contents of hotly anticipated titles occasionally leak prior to their publication dates—notably Hillary Clinton’s State Department memoir, Hard Choices, which Politico obtained and summarized three days before its official June 10 release—it’s rare that a book is stripped bare more than a week ahead of its scheduled unveiling.
“When a book is being shipped to whatever bookstores, the people working in the bookstores are expected to keep them in the back of the store in their sealed boxes, and they’re not supposed to unpack them until the day the book goes on sale,” Pinsker said. “But time and again, they do just that”—i.e., open the boxes early and stack the books on the shelves. Respecting release dates has gotten more problematic, of course, with the advent of PDFs, she added.
Bellow, for one, was skeptical of “Wright”’s claim that he purchased Clinton, Inc. “I don’t think that is possible unless he bought it off the back of a truck,” the editor emailed.
Another publishing source, who asked not to be named, said “Wright”’s online identity as a Clinton-hating wingnut with sloppy spelling and grammar issues is also cause for suspicion.
“The working theory of who it might be is somebody who wants to come across as a conservative, but in a way it seems like they’re trying too hard,” this source said. “So it might be somebody who’s not a conservative. They have an excellent, sophisticated media list, including people who are not commonly known, so this is somebody with some Washington-New York media savvy. The most likely suspect would be someone affiliated with the Clintons.”
That, of course, is pure speculation, unsupported by evidence. The Daily Beast’s emails requesting comment from spokespeople for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received no response. But various Clinton loyalists were apparently more than curious about Halper’s research and reporting process as the book project was under way; Halper writes that an assistant to longtime Clinton political guru James Carville asked for the names of interviewees and a detailed description of the scope of the book—questions the author dodged.
Unlike scandal-monger Ed Klein’s fantastical No. 1 best-selling narrative about the supposed Blood Feud between the Clintons and the Obamas, Halper’s study is juicy and gossipy, yet scrupulously researched, drawing on numerous on-the-record conversations (as well as many not-for-attribution interviews) with prominent Democrats and Clinton insiders, past and present.
Among those who participated openly in Halper’s project are former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry, White House scandal spinmeister Lanny Davis, former Clinton-era United Nations ambassador and secretary of energy Bill Richardson, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former senator Joe Lieberman, and Sen. John McCain; also interviewed for the book were several unnamed former Clinton aides who provided occasionally jaded observations of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s Bill Clinton who emerges as selfish and coldly calculating in the portrait drawn by Halper’s reporting, and Hillary who comes off as warm and caring, albeit charmingly transactional for political gain, particularly with her Republican colleagues in the Senate. All the Clintons are described as obsessed with enriching themselves, using their charitable foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative not only to perform good works but also to help support an imperial lifestyle and provide Hillary’s presidential ambitions with a vast political infrastructure.
A chapter devoted to Chelsea, titled “Daddy’s Little Girl,” portrays the former first daughter as scarred by life in the political fishbowl and the public humiliation of her father’s philandering, but also the entitled beneficiary of both her parents’ feelings of guilt over the weirdness of her upbringing. “When you screw a young White House staffer,” a source “very close to the Clinton family” told Halper, referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, “you’re paying the price for the rest of your life. When your daughter wants to buy a ten-million-dollar apartment, the question isn’t ‘Are you crazy?’ It’s ‘Where do I wire the money?’”
In a chapter titled “Charm Offensives,” Halper reports on a very strange encounter the former president allegedly had with a group of rich Republicans at the 2003 running of the Preakness, where Clinton allegedly told off-color jokes at the Turf Club of Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course.
According to Halper, Clinton—“always eager to please”— told his embarrassed audience a joke that began: “These two old Jews are walking down the street.”
“As the joke begins, everyone around the table looks dubious,” Halper writes. “Where is he going with this? Surely the former president of the United States is not about to tell an anti-Semitic story in front of people he hardly knows. This, of course, is exactly what he does, according to a number of people present.”
Briefly, the joke has the two Jewish codgers walking by a Catholic church, where a sign out front offers $100 to converts. One of the Jews, named Abe, agrees to convert and give half the proceeds to his friend. Abe meets with the priests, learns the traditions of the church, is declared a Catholic, and collects his reward.
“Hey! Look at the new Catholic here,” Abe’s friend says. “You got my money?”
To which Abe retorts: “You fucking Jews. It’s all about the money, isn’t it.”
Halper writes: “As the former president laughs, the others offer weak smiles. No one wants to offend him.”
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