Headlines You Won't Ever See

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION UPS UNEMPLOYMENT BY 100,000
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With GM and Chrysler firmly under government
control, Obama administration prioritizes Union
contracts and Green agenda over American jobs
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Insider says, "Closing 2,000 dealerships
in the midst of the worst recession since
1981? This will be tough to pin on Bush"

(Actual Major Media headline and story may be found here.)

All posts in this series may be found here.

Talking Points and the Major Media

Secret dinners with White House high level people? Media elites? Who would have guessed? Well, we would and did. See all posts in this long running series here.

Let's see, in "regular attendance" at these dinners are the New York Times (David Brooks and Maureen Dowd), The Washington Post (Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus), NBC News (David Gregory), ABC news (George Stephanopoulos), PBS (Gwen Ifill), the New Yorker (Jane Mayer), Vanity Fair (Todd Purdum), Time (Walter Isaacson), the Atlantic and National Journal (Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch).

The Washington Times? Fox News? The Wall Street Journal? Those invitations must have gotten lost in the mail. But not even George Will, an ABC insider, has been invited? Hrmmmm.

It's worth comparing these dinners with the breakfasts described in the article that were conducted by Godfrey Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor for some 35 years. Mr. Sperling opened the breakfasts to all journalists and the proceedings were public and on-the-record. We are told that David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic who runs these elite dinners, was "intrigued" by the Sperling breakfasts. I think that is "intrigued" in the sense that a felon is intrigued with the inner workings of the corner liquor store. It is not because he wants to run a store just like it.

Methinks our political tributaries runneth over.

Gay Marriage and Post Modern Debate in America

This Post continued from here.

I acknowledge that in all of this I have not addressed the substantive issue as to whether Gay Marriage should be legally recognized. That is because with the Ignorati Class at the helm of our Republic today it is important to clear away the flotsam and jetsam of public discourse.

Where as now the Ignorati Class dominates society, the popular conception is that a resolution of problems occurs after debate when the contending parties come to a unanimous agreement. Armed with this silly idea, the result of public debate can only be what Dreher describes: a bitterly divisive people constantly haranguing each other, producing a "shrillness of contemporary public debate."

So, to recap, what is the real role of debate and voting in our system? We must all understand first that we are a constitutional Republic, not a debating society. In a properly ordered society reasoned and respectful debate forms an important ground for the expression of fundamental American values and the resolution of problems between people. But unanimous agreement between all parties is not the goal of public debate, nor is it desirable. We seek consensus to public questions, not monolithic agreement.

But we also seek finality to public controversies. How does a constitutional Republic reconcile its desire for consensus agreement with finality on any given issue? By voting. When debate has run its course we the people put the issue to a vote. Thereafter, everyone is supposed to move on to other issues or to their own private affairs.

For the Ignorati Class, debate continues forever until the mythical point of unanimous agreement occurs. It's all politics all the time, and only divisiveness and shrillness can ensue. To the simple educated citizen of a constitutional Republic, it's politics sometimes and then the pursuit of our own personal happiness most of the time.

As an aside, I think this points to what the electorate was saying this past election season when all the polls indicated a desire for an end to the divisiveness in politics. Whether they knew it or not, the people actually wanted an end to all politics all the time, for a finality to the acrimonious public debate on so many public controversies so that they could return to the real stuff of life. Back in the lead-up to the elections of 1920 Warren Harding called a similar public desire a need for a return to “normalcy” after the dominating war footing the country had lived under Woodrow Wilson’s progressive administration.

But in any case, now that I have clarified to everyone’s satisfaction the place of debate and voting in our society, in my next Post I will address the rather straight forward substantive issues on the legalization of Gay Marriage.

To be continued ...

The PEOPLE Speak! Blonde: The New Brunette

All Posts on this topic may be found here.

PEOPLE (People for Equal Opportunity and Protection of the Laws for Everyone), an umbrella activist group composed of all people excepting only those who belong to the organization known as PIMPLES (People Inhabiting a More Privileged Life to the Exclusion of So many), opened a new front in the cultural wars in America.

A spokesman for PEOPLE said today, "As Iowa has most recently shown us, unelected Judges are now assuming their proper roles in our Democracy as final arbiter of all public issues. As a result, it appears that the sorry chapter in America's history of gender bigotry against Gays is drawing to a close, and the PEOPLE can begin putting its resources into other societal problems as defined solely by the PEOPLE.

"Therefore, I am announcing today that PEOPLE has applied to George Soros for initial funding in the amount of $30 million to promote the full inclusion into society of another victim class, that most criticized of minorities, blondes."

The spokesman continued, "Conservatives, Catholics, Protestants, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers and others of their ilk have long argued that blondes cannot be considered victims in our society because one of America's most popular songs declares that 'Gentlemen prefer blondes.' The absurdity of this argument is rivaled only by the disgust we the PEOPLE have for such fatuous fatheads.

"A partial list of synonyms these groups use in place of 'blonde' speaks for itself: ditzy, stupid, playthings, dumb, whores, tramps, vapid, shallow, dumb, dumb, and dumber.

“It's time for this to end. PEOPLE today demands that all such disparaging references to blondes, whether in jokes, songs, TV shows or any other public or private discourse, be outlawed, and appropriate criminal penalties be levied and enforced against all perpetrators throughout this great land of ours.

"It may be that to affect total societal change it will be necessary to ban the use of the term blonde altogether, and simply refer to all women as brunettes. We do not advocate that step (yet) but will be interested in the evolving opinions of the solons of Democracy, the unelected Judges serving we the PEOPLE up, down, across and beyond the fruited plain of this country.”

The spokesman for PIMPLES, a non-activist group whose membership is generally content to rest on their laurels, was playing golf and not available for comment when this story went to press.

Gay Marriage and Post Modern Debate in America

Recently, Rod Dreher of the Dallas News wrote about the problems with public discussions of issues in our society. In his case, the issue was Gay Marriage. He wrote, "To [liberal secularist writer Damon Linker], my argument looks like faith-based special pleading. Likewise, his rationale struck me as little more than emotivism — the idea that something is true because it feels right. We talked past each other, not only because neither of us can agree on what constitutes the Good, both public and private, but also because — indeed, especially because — we cannot agree on how to determine the Good. Because moral reasoning in our postmodern culture is largely incoherent, the Linkers and the Drehers are doomed to remain mutually incomprehensible — which, said philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, helps explain the shrillness of contemporary public debate."

The problem he identifies is real. But he clearly misunderstands the reason for the problem. What he seems to be suggesting is that there has been a paradigm shift in the cultural assumptions in the last few decades, and as a result, there is a split between those who understand the old paradigm (he calls them “Traditionalists”) and those who embrace the new (secular liberals).

But there has been no paradigm shift, there has only been a number of generations of Americans born who have not been educated in the basics of American history, our political system and values.

Secular liberalism is not some new philosophy based on assumptions alien to traditional values. It is simply an aged out version of 60's radicalism, which itself was merely the acting out of male teenage sex hormones set loose by the coming of age of a lot of teenagers, the so-called "Baby Boomers," during a period of unprecedented affluence. Male teenagers have always thought they were smarter than their elders, and the elders usually either ignored or throttled their silly exuberance. However, in the 60's the fathers, the aptly titled "Greatest Generation," refused to discipline their children, the Baby Boomers.

The generations since then have not been educated any better, and with the Baby Boomers comprise what I call the Ignorati Class.

Continue .....

And, nota bene, this Class extends well beyond secular liberals to include many of the orthodox religious, evangelicals, west coast liberals, east coast liberals, conservatives or what have you. Whatever the personal persuasion may be, none of the Ignorati Class is capable of even the most basic reasoning about any important issue today.

For example, Gay Marriage is not a hard issue if a few basic points about the function of debate and voting in a free society are understood.

First, we are a Republic. That means we vote on any given issue, and let the chips fall where they may. As such, voting is not about self-esteem, self-importance, having your voice heard, etc, and it is definitely not about winning. It is about a procedure whereby people who differ can peacefully conclude a controversy and move on to other things. In many ways, this voting thing is a very poor system. However, as has been well remarked, it is poor except for all the other systems.

So in a Republic such as ours, the Gay Marriage controversy can be resolved quite peacefully by simply putting the matter to a vote. No acrimony or divisiveness need apply. The losing side will be permitted to whine and grumble about the injustice of it all, but sober, sensible citizens of a Republic will do so in the privacy of their homes, workplaces, churches and bars, and leave the continuing public discourse free to deal with such new matters as may arise.

In the second place, we are not only a Republic, but also a federation of Republics, aka States. This means that if anyone loses at the ballot box and just cannot abide the result, they might very well be able to vote with their feet by moving to another jurisdiction where their side has won.

Now, having to move out of state might not seem to the Ignorati Class like a very good solution. But that is only because they lack an appreciation of the general circumstances of human beings trapped in civil society for, oh, the last 10,000 years or so. For the most part, as even a cursory education would show, human beings have never, ever, ever had much to say about the society they were born into, and never, ever, ever had much ability to move to another society. So, a federation of Republics that freely allows citizens to come and go based on their own preferences is actually an extraordinarily wonderful thing in historical terms.

But, you say, what if no other state has decided in my favor on the issue of Gay Marriage? Well, suck it up. Here again, a little historical perspective helps tremendously in affecting the proper attitude.

I acknowledge that in all of this I have not addressed the substantive issue as to whether Gay Marriage should be legally recognized. That is because with the Ignorati Class at the helm of our Republic today it is important to clear away the flotsam and jetsam of public discourse.

To be continued …

The PEOPLE Speak! Gay Marriage in Iowa

The Iowa Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, legalized gay marriage in Iowa yesterday. A spokesman for PEOPLE (People for Equal Opportunity and Protection of the Laws for Everyone), a common cause umbrella activist group supporting equal protection of the laws as set forth in the Constitution to the absolute exclusion of any other consideration or priority in life, said today that the Iowa Supreme Court showed ”true courage in its ruling today. ‘Invidious discrimination’ is universally defined under United States and Iowa law as ‘relating to, or being discrimination that arises from the creation of a classification that is arbitrary, irrational, or capricious and not related to a legitimate purpose.’ And yet, even though the definition of marriage was not ‘created’ by any governmental entity in Iowa or anywhere else in the world (unless you want to count Moses and other Prophets as ‘governmental entities’), the Court still went audaciously ahead and ruled that the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman was an invidious classification that violated the Constitution of Iowa.”

The spokesman for PEOPLE went on to say, ”And note too that the traditional definition of marriage invites no comparison, pejorative or otherwise, with any other defined group whatsoever. It is simply descriptive of a particular grouping of people in society.” But, the spokesman said, “The Court was not to be side-tracked into such simplistic thinking. Lacking any evidence of actual discriminatory intent, the Court in a marvelous display of creativity discerned the homophobia behind Iowa’s marriage laws by taking judicial notice of the plots of numerous TV shows, both sit-coms and dramas. In this context, I have to say that the Court wrote inspired and inspiring post modern prose about the greed of insurance executives being surmounted only by their fear of the Difference represented by your average unprepossessing homosexual.”

The spokesman then concluded, “In the face of the overwhelmingly contrary state of the law, facts and common sense, it was simply breathtaking to watch the Iowa Supreme Court make such a bold dash for Freedom.”

Then with tears welling in her/his/its eyes, the spokesman said, “After this, no one can ever say that the Iowa Supreme Court is ambiguous about itself, sexually or otherwise. Obviously, it takes its role as the preeminent engine of democracy seriously, forthrightly and without need for apology. Would that all unelected Judges had such a clear-eyed understanding of their roles in our society.”

“And I might add,” shim continued, “this bodes well for our sister (no invidious pejorative intended) organization, PEOPLE Jr., the Polygamists for Equal Opportunity and Protection under the Law for Everyone. We can all now look forward to the day when unelected Judges everywhere will finally open our great circle of democracy to all peoples.”

OUTRAGEOUS!

This Post continued from here and here.

Here is how our system is supposed to work.

Congress bails out AIG. The guvmint takes an ownership interest in AIG and appoints representatives from the Treasury or the Federal Reserve to advise and consent to AIG's ongoing operations. AIG proposes a schedule of retention bonuses, arguing that it needs these people to effectively wind down the derivative operations that caused the bailout in the first place. Guvmint reps approve the retention bonuses, and consistent with that, make sure that these bonuses are excluded from restrictions in the Stimulus Bill of 2009. Bonuses are then paid, and all political hell breaks loose.

Guvmint realizes that it screwed up, and begins a campaign of vilification to distract the voters from its own perfidy. This campaign fails. Guvmint then apologizes to the American people, pleads the incredible stress involved in working diligently on behalf of the people to solve all the important problems on heaven and earth, and with great fanfare passes laws to make sure that this will never, ever, ever happen again. Flash bulbs popping, people cheering, politicians shaking hands all around. End of news cycle, on to the next.

What is not supposed to happen in our system is for the government to gin up the mob, and pass a bill of attainder against citizens to recoup lawful, legal bonus payments. A restriction against bills of attainder is one of the fundamental Constitutional rights citizens have in our Republic, and for a reason: Governments that can pass laws against specific identifiable people as opposed to laws of general application are governments under which there is no longer any objective rule of law or meaningful property rights, nor is there freedom to contract, express opinions, associate for religious or political purposes, or any number of other freedoms that Americans have treasured these many years.

And this is especially true when government targets citizens about matters that occur prior to the passage of the law. This is known as an ex post facto law and it is explicitly prohibited in Article One of the Constitution. Particularly heinous in criminal law, ex post facto laws are no less so in the civil area, as the bailout/bonus tax legislation makes clear.

Is what the House did unconstitutional? If it ain't, it oughta be. And without intending hyperbole at all, I say that any Representative who voted in favor of this reprehensible tax on our fellow citizens, be (s)he Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, Dependent, Pendent, or Pedant, be summarily thrown out of office at the next most convenient election.

Via email.

OUTRAGEOUS!

This Post continued from here.

Let's be clear right up front: at no time have our Representatives in Congress voiced anything like a claim that these AIG bonuses were illegal, nor has any Attorney General of the State or Federal governments alleged anything approaching an indictable offense under law.

Clear uncontroverted evidence presented under oath at Congressional show trials hearings showed that AIG proposed and approved these bonuses in accordance with their own corporate bylaws, SEC and public stock exchange rules and regulations, and State and Federal laws. Additionally, AIG disclosed these bonuses to their government representatives, and consulted with them every step of the way beginning more than a year ago. And most significantly, Congress explicitly approved the payment from government bailout money of these and other bonuses, in the Stimulus Bill of 2009 and again when they voted just a few days ago against a bill that would have prohibited these bonuses.

In other words, there were no slush funds, prevarications, bags of cash passed in the night, intimidation of whistle blowers, or anything else that usually provokes politicians into high dudgeon. The approval and payment of these bonuses was entirely and at all points legal, and perfectly transparent in the best tradition of the new world order being ushered in by our own President Obama.

Now, there is nothing wrong with pandering to the public. All politicians do it to one extent or another and the result is only a certain unsavory atmosphere to the political culture, sort of like the way a paper mill produces a distasteful background smell which otherwise leaves the local township functioning and intact (to put it politely, the smell is similar to that of organic methane). But as David Greising of the Chicago Tribune states so concisely, pandering is not policymaking. At the end of the day, after the klieg lights are turned off, politicians are supposed to become grown-ups once again and pass responsible legislation rather than offering sops to the political frenzy that they themselves have ginned up.

Here is how our system should have worked in this particular case.

To be continued ...

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Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here, here and here.

Ah, another "tributary of Washington politics" splashes out of the shadows into the light of day. Politico again has the story, this time about an "off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList" where only left leaning media participate. Note the referrence to some participants as "policy wonks." Where policy wonks appear, can administration or Democrat officials be far behind?

For the record, Ezra Klein (no relation) breaks the formal Code of Silence of list-participants to insist,"Government employees have never been, and are not now, allowed on the list." Immediately thereafter hushed Silence became the rule again. Perhaps Mr. Klein suddenly became aware of a government threat to impose a 90% tax rate on his earnings? We'll probably never know.

See previous posts in this long-running series here.

OUTRAGEOUS!

I'm not talking about the AIG bonuses. I'm talking about Congress.

Our humble House of Representatives, public servants all, just passed a 90% tax on bonuses paid by companies that have accepted bailout money from the government. It is not likely that this 90% tax will pass the Senate, and therefore not likely it will become law. But the mere fact that the House passed this bill at all is outrageous: an affront to our Constitution, our commitment to the rule of law, our distinctively American culture, and our fundamental way of life.

The vote was a staggeringly impossible 328 to 93 in favor of the tax. To their credit, 87 House Republicans voted against the bill, versus only 6 Democrats; but to their shame, 85 Republicans voted with the majority in favor of the bill. Who would have supposed that an American political body, the envy of the world for its supposed commitment to liberal (in the classic sense) ideals, would choose so decisively to trash those liberal ideals?

Is the bailout/bonus tax constitutional? The tax is worded as a general tax on all bonuses paid in 2009 and beyond by companies who received Federal bailout money, and as such is probably prima facie constitutional. But the demagoguery accompanying passage of the bill makes it explicitly clear that the Congressional intention was to confiscate the $165 million in bonuses paid by AIG, which is clearly unconstitutional.

I have no doubt that legal scholars, Ivy League law journals and opinion makers in general will be able to parse the question and produce a cacophony of answers in favor of both sides of the issue. Then, ten years down the road the Supreme Court will weigh in on this legal mish-mash, and by a stalwart and uncompromising 5-4 vote end the controversy by deciding either for or against the proposition. I am equally sure that the Court's final judgment will include no less than 7 separate concurring and dissenting opinions, none of which will adduce any consistent principle in common with the others.

So, whether it's constitutional is really not the question. The question is whether the citizens of these United States want to live in the kind of country that would do this sort of thing.

Let's be clear right up front: at no time have our Representatives in Congress voiced anything like a claim that these AIG bonuses were illegal, nor has any Attorney General of the State or Federal governments alleged anything approaching an indictable offense under law.

To be continued ...

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The Constant Gardener

This Post continued from here.

As I said, the economic crisis we are now in presents a golden political moment for those of us who care about our country. But first we must isolate the problem.

As the economic growth of America has surged ever upward these last twenty years, I have heard more and more conservatives question the quality of that growth (Liberals too, but they merely mouth political talking points. They are too uninterested in the science of economics to have any helpful opinions about the matter). The main point, I take it, is that as the economy has grown, personal incomes (in real terms) have remained flat. This is an excellent and worrisome point. But the analysis I have seen always seems to miss the obvious point: as economic growth has surged these last decades, so too has the regulatory state. The cost of doing business has gone upward, ever upward, to comply with regulatory rules, paperwork requirements, tax code minutia and securities laws, and businesses have had to compensate with evermore efficient ways of doing what they are supposed to be doing, making a profit for the shareholders. In this effort, the American worker has been nothing short of amazing. It has been remarked over and over, but is still little noticed, that the increase in productivity per worker over the last twenty years has been unprecedented in the annals of history.

But the American worker can only do so much, because the loss of business efficiency due to ever more nit-picking regulations is compounded by the loss of business opportunities as more and more of the economy is sequestered from economic activity. Energy is the prime example. Our richest and cheapest resource, coal, is under constant assault of environmental regulations and agencies from the Federal level down to the local zoning codes. Our fields of oil and natural gas lie fallow off our coasts, in Alaska, and in shale oil deposits in the once entreprenurial West. Nuclear energy, the cheapest, cleanest, safest technology the world has ever seen, has been tied up in litigation and regulation induced constipation since the 1970's. While France – yes, France! – becomes the world leader in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

Continue .....
Since cheap available energy is fundamental to jobs and opportunity, the effects of government regulatory growth in this area are incalculable. But the same holds true in other areas of the economy. Development of new life-saving drugs; improvements in agriculture and distribution networks; residential and commercial construction methods and techniques, all of these and more are tied up in ever-more stifling regulations, all of these and more are restricted, modified, distorted, and often prohibited by ever-more intrusive public policy initiatives imposed and enforced by the Regulatory State.

Let me make it clear that, to paraphrase a famous carpenter, we will always have the Regulatory State with us. The Regulatory State is like kudzu, ultimately ineradicable. But every good gardener knows that cutting back weeds will never suffice forever. Tomorrow, next season, next year, there will always be more weeds to pull. But the gardener who is constant in his craft does not despair but rather takes pleasure in clearing his garden, again and again, because that is what a gardener does who loves his garden.

Those who care about an America strangled by the Regulatory State should be constant gardeners as well. The task will not be easy. Republicans have too long neglected this task, and a gardener who finally turns his attention to cleaning up a neglected garden always faces hard, tough work. And worst of all, Republican inaction these many years has produced weeds that have mutated into a more feral variety: a generation of madly reproducing bureaucrats who consider their power, position and future growth to be an entitlement. The bureaucrats today are more numerous and stronger than those in the past, and they will fight, tooth and nail, to protect themselves, and they will have many allies in Congress and the Media.

But rooting out the Regulatory State from the common ground of American culture is work worth doing, and it is a fight worth winning. And there is no better time to begin this hard work than now, when the winds of economic woe blow hard against the very foundations of the Washington bureaucracy.

via email.

The Constant Gardener*

Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, said last November, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Truer words were never spoken, although the cynicism behind the words was palpable. That is because his point was that a crisis can be used to enact radical politicial reforms, even if those reforms would have little or nothing to do with either the causes of the crisis or the resolution thereof. This is crisis in the generic sense, as simply that which can be used to hype the necessity of a pre-existing agenda. "Please note," says the empresario, "there is nothing up my sleeve. Now, pick a crisis, any crisis. Don't show it to me. And ... voila! It's time for change."

But a crisis does not have to be used cynically. A crisis can be used in it's best sense: as a time when deep issues that are normally overlooked reveal themselves. Historical examples abound. The bombing of Pearl Harbor focused the American people on the dangers of isolationism, and galvanized a nation to a necessary war. Nearer to home, the horrors of 9/11 awoke the nation to its false sense of security, and to the necessity of taking affirmative action abroad. And the devastating economic effects of 9/11 enabled President Bush to highlight the long running Republican argument that taxes were a burden on the economy, and to therefore enact the most significant tax cuts since the 1980's.

But my real point is about something that has been too long overlooked. It is not remembered that Ronald Reagan came into office with three major problems to fix: world-wide Soviet aggression, third-world style inflation brought on by high-taxation and loose monetary policies, and economic stagnation and loss of liberty engendered by the growing bloat of government bureaucracy. Reagan, however, had an almost mystical ability to choose the fights he could win. And early on in his administration he recognized that reining in the entrenched regulatory bureaucracy of Washington was not a winnable war.

He feinted here and there with new rules restricting the bureaucracies, downsizing, and various reforms, but by and large he only paid lip-service to true regulatory reform. Ultimately he left the Washington bureaucracy problem for another day, another administration, another political moment. And the Department of Education, among others, still stands to this day, larger and more intrusive than ever.

But let's take a moment to praise Reagan, not bury him. Two out of three ain't bad, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. It is to the current generation's shame that Reagan left a task worth doing, and Republicans have instead taken the easy road of riding the political benefits of an end to the Cold War and seemingly unstoppable economic growth.

It's wake up time. The economic crisis we are now in presents a golden political moment for those of us who care about our country.

To be continued ...

*Kudos to John Le Carre for the inspiration of the phrase.

via email.

Citizen Nanites

If you haven't heard yet, President Obama is not like other politicians in Washington. Unlike past administrations, he wants it to be clear that he will be meticulously monitoring government spending to eliminate waste, fraud, incompetence and personal or political agendas. On February 14, the Washington Times tells us: "As he prepared to sign the massive economic recovery spending bill President Obama ... [told the American people that] ... 'ultimately, this is your money, and you deserve to know where it's going and how it's spent,' [and promised] to help with the most ambitious spending scrutiny project the government has ever undertaken." And then again, as reported by FoxBusiness News on February 20, Mr. Obama warned the Mayors of America:"We have asked for the unprecedented trust of the American people to deal boldly with the greatest economic crisis we have seen in decades -- and the privilege of investing unprecedented amounts of their hard-earned money to address this crisis. With that comes an unprecedented obligation to do so wisely, free from politics and personal agendas. On this I will not compromise or tolerate any shortcut ... " But the problem, of course, is just how spending of this magnitude - let's repeat it again as it cannot be said enough, the stimulus is close to $1 trillion - just how spending of this magnitude can possibly be monitored to achieve such pristine and pure results as are desired by Mr. Obama. Not to mention the fact that neither Mr. Obama nor the Congress have enunciated any objectives precise enough to give direction to any such oversight. They have talked of spending "stimulus" that will be "stimulating" on "shovel-ready" projects, that will "save" the economy and those who are "most harmed" by the failure of capitalism, but these obviously fall far short of the precision needed. In actuality, the most concrete objective our governing class enunciated in all of their deliberations was that the spending needed to be "large." History apparently teaches us that FDR, our sainted 32nd President, committed the grievous error of not spending enough, and so the current crop of FDR wannabees began with a number in mind, $800 billion, and then proceeded to insert spending projects until that number was met or exceeded. To Washington, any spending will "stimulate" and it is only important that it be sufficiently LARGE enough to "jolt" the economy back into gear. Unfortunately, LARGE is not any more precise for oversight purposes than "stimulus," "stimulating" or "shovel-ready." Now it is the bane of the existence of the largest corporations in the world (who deal in billions and not hundreds of billions, much less trillions) to control such gargantuan spending as they do each year. It is actually a marvel of the capitalistic system that such large entities have developed ways to track and manage their spending in any meaningful way, but no victory against corporate bloat ever ends the war. Each month, each year, each decade produces re-newed bloat, inefficiencies, fraud, and sloth in the body corporate, and the company that forgets this is the company that ultimately will fail. But don't worry, President Obama has a plan to leverage the information age we live in to effectively monitor all this federal spending as no one has been able to do before him: he is introducing what I can only call citizen nanites into the blood-stream of the economy, to oversee and report to him the effectiveness of all this stimulus spending, right down to the smallest dollar spewed out of the body politic. That same Washington Times article noted above stated: "As he prepared to sign the massive economic recovery spending bill President Obama called Saturday for citizens to become watchdogs on where the $787 billion goes ... [and] ... called on 'every American' to use recovery.gov — a Web site that will be up and running once the money begins to be spent — to track where the money is being spent and to 'weigh in with comments and questions.' " What a concept. Thousands and thousands of citizen nanites, watching government spending at every level and reporting back in real time to President Obama, his staff and Congress, for immediate action as appropriate to save the stimulus package from waste, fraud and abuse. This grand vision provokes a thought-experiment. To be continued ... via email

Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here and here.

Well, well, well, well. In some previous posts I stated that " ... the level of congruence b/t the editorial decisions of the Media and the Dems political strategies since 2000 can only be described as active coordination." I then went on to note that "I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media communicate and coordinate their actions but I submit that if evidence is found about this relationship that it will be a scandal of major proportion. The Major Media are entitled to support any candidate they want, but to use their media power surreptitiously for a candidate while pretending to be a standard news outlet is at a minimum a violation of campaign contribution laws, and at the maximum a betrayal of a fundamental public trust." Apparently, we are now getting some information on how this Democrat Media coordination is done. At the end of January Politico published a story that ABC's George Stephanopoulos has had morning strategy chats with various Democrats for more than 10 years, including the President's current Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. WorldNetDaily has a nice summary of the article and the controversy it has generated. Exhibiting the ability to compose under pressure a talking point coming to a media outlet near you, an ABC spokesman told WorldNetDaily that " ... George speaks to Rahm, but he speaks to plenty of conservatives and Republicans every single day – that's part of his job. The idea that there is some daily conference call that he hops on is just nonsense and not true." But talking points alone just won't do. As I said in my previous posts, it has been clear that active coordination has been going on between the Democrats and the Major Media for at least eight years and probably longer. The only question is how they do it, and the Politico has given us the evidence " ... of at least one major tributary of Washington politics." But only one such tributary. Georgie is only the tip of the iceberg. Where and how are the political consultants posing as reporters at CBS, NBC and MSNBC meeting and coordinating with their clients? And what about the print media; how deeply are they involved in all of this? The net of this scandal could get very large indeed. My previous thoughts were that such active coordination by the Media with a political party could possibly be serious breaches of federal campaign laws (haven't some people gone to jail for such things?). Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center thinks the issue is one of journalistic ethics. I can go either way; I just want the degenerating distortion of the American political culture by partisans masquerading as objective news reporters to stop. via email

Cheap Stimulus

President Obama tells us recently that "stimulus" = "spending," and that therefore any money spent by the government regardless of purpose will be a stimulus to the economy. For an alternative view, see "Rat Hole Stimulus Bill 2009" below. But assuming arguendo that the President is right, might it not be prudent to at least think about stimulus spending that, you know, doesn't cost so much? Let me give a few examples.

Mark to Market. This economic fiasco is, by all accounts, driven primarily by the collapse of the real estate and financial sectors of the economy. So why not a stimulus that not only would directly shore up the balance sheets of banks, but also encourage lending and ... will not cost a dime in federal money? I think it was Bill McGurn who wrote an excellent Wall Street Journal article last October or so, who said in effect that we don't know that suspending the mark to market accounting rules would help banks, but since we are contemplating spending $750 billion, why not just give it a try first? After all, suspending an accounting rule is cost-free; billion dollar bail-outs are expensive.

But that type of reasoning is too subtle for the political class. As an accounting disabled person, I don't know much. But I do know that whereas liquid markets are an excellent indicator of the current value of an investment, they are not the be-all of valuation. Markets can be wrong, and sometimes, it is the sellers who refuse to sell at low prices who are correct. If my house price goes down $100,000.00 (which would bring my palatial home down to approximately -$50,000.00), I can decide that the market is stupid and hold onto my investment until the market corrects itself. This kind of contrarian thinking happens all the time. The oldest rule in investing is "buy low, sell high." How is that possible if the market is always right?

But banks have a particular problem with market pricing of their assets. By law, banks have to maintain a minimum amount of capital. When they (perhaps stupidly) buy huge amounts of sub-prime mortgages and the market in those suddenly turns nasty, then mark to market rules require them to immediately recognize billions of dollars in lost capital. But those assets are not lost in reality (the banks still own the paper), but only because of an accounting rule, a theoretical construct. No one really knows what these assets are worth, and so why can't a bank decide they are worth more than the market thinks, and hold onto them until the market corrects itself?

Sure, savvy investors will have their own ideas as to what these assets are worth, and if they see Bank of America has valued them well above what they deem reasonable, they will pull up their handy calculator and conclude that BOFA is insolvent. And then sell short. BOFA's stock price will plummet (as it's doing now), but BOFA will not face an immediate capital crisis, and will thereby have time to work-out the problem and find out if the short-sellers are correct. This is how markets function, and mark to market short circuits this process to the detriment of banks, lending and our economy.

But again, suspending mark to market wouldn't cost a dime of taxpayer money. Why not get rid of an abstract accounting rule and see what happens?

To Be Continued ....

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Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here.

It is common wisdom that those who are quick to recognise the sins of others do so because they are themselves subject to those same weaknesses. And this, I think, might explain the curious charge that Fox News is following Republican talking points: because the Democrats have just this kind of a relationship with the Major Media, and cannot conceive that the Republicans aren't doing it too.

And this is born out, I think, by the political battles of the last few years. The Major Media has always been sympathetic to the Democrats political agenda, but the level of congruence b/t the editorial decisions of the Media and the Dems political strategies since 2000 can only be described as active coordination. It is not my function to go into such matters, but I would submit that a thorough review of the massive help the Major Media gave John Kerry's Presidential campaign alone would convince any reasonable person w/ an open mind. I will mention one well known example: The infamous charge by Dan Rather that Bush had received special treatment in his natioal Guard service. It has been a mystery to some as to why a news man of the stature of Dan Rather would involve himself w/ such an obviously fraudulent report. Well if we assume that he (or more likely his staff) were actively coordinating an 'October Surprise' against Bush, then it all seems to make more sense. The damning 'news' report was integral to the Kerry campaign and had to be rushed onto the evening news asap. And both the timing and the substance of this 'news'report could not have been more beneficial for the Kerry campaign if it had been produced by his own campaign staff.

I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media commonicate and coordinate their actions but I submit that if evidence is found about this relationship that it will be a scandal of major proportion. The Major Media are entitled to support any candidate they want, but to use their media power surreptitiously for a candidate while pretending to be a standard news outlet is at a minimum a violation of campaign contribution laws, and at the maximum a betrayal of a fundamental public trust.

Talking Points and the Major Media

I note a charge against Fox News leveled by Democrats recently: that it routinely regurgitates Republican talking points as news.

Now this is curious on 2 levels:

(1) Republicans don't use talking points. Talking points are memos issued by the Democrats to the troops so that whenever an issue comes up the main Democratic points will be repeated almost verbatim by every Democrat who can get themselves quoted in the Major Media. The idea is that if the public keeps hearing the same thing over and over from many different media sources, then through sheer volume and repetition, it will come to be believed as true (e.g. the phrase 'Bush lied us into war,' a patently and demonstrably false accusation that is believed by large segments of the public simply because the Democrats have repeated the phrase over and over and over and over ... ).

The disarray of the Republican party the last few years by itself shows that the Republicans do not use this talking points tactic. But further, it is just a fact that there is no concerted effort among the GOP to dictate what all Republicans must say on any given issue. At most, there are conservative think tanks, magazines and commentators promulgating position papers, articles and opinions on any given issue, and some of these can be quite influential among Republicans. But there is certainly nothing like a single mandated script that every Republican must follow.

(2) If there is no script for the party faithful to follow, it is beyond silly to suppose that Fox News is taking its marching orders from Republicans.

Now if all this is true, then why would the Democrats make such a charge?

To be continued

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