Headlines You Won't Ever See

WHITE HOUSE LOCKS GATES ON CHILDREN
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Kindergartners arrive 10 minutes late
for scheduled White House tour and
are turned away because of Steelers
meeting with President Obama
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White House seemingly says: What's the
matter with the Lincoln Memorial? Why
do they have to bother us? We're busy
preparing for the Super Bowl Champs.

Actual headline and story here.

Global Warming: A Primer

In the news today it is reported that the space shuttle Atlantis, after successfully completing its mission to repair the Hubble Telescope, is prevented from landing by thunderstorms over its landing site in southern California at Kennedy Space Center. The problem is especially acute because the shuttle has been in space for 11 days, and has only enough resources to last until Monday.

A nice metaphor for the apocalyptic end-time of humanity envisioned by global warming advocates. The shuttle, rapidly using up its finite resources, is face to face with out of control weather that literally cuts it off from the life-blood of air and atmosphere that it so desperately needs to survive. Atlantis, and the tiny astronauts within its belly, are like fish out of water, who after blindly jumping into a hostile environment, now can only flop around in a vain attempt to return home. Giving vent to its technological exuberance, humanity leaps to the heavens, heedless of the gathering anger of the earth below.

Through all the metaphors within metaphors, similes wrapped in allegory and anthropomorphism, the simple question is: Well, okay, but what should we do? In climate science there are two options, broadly defined as mitigation and adaptation.

In the case of the shuttle, mitigation would involve devoting massive amounts of money, billions and billions of dollars, to stopping the thunderstorms. Theories abound as to how this might be done, but in the runup to the recent Olympic games in Beijeng, China used the "shoot first and ask questions later" method: to keep the skies clear over the opening ceremonies, China fired more than 1100 rockets at the clouds to disperse them from the Olympic site. This may have worked, but in the case of our shuttle, the storm clouds stretch over almost the entire state of Florida. I shudder to contemplate the rocket attack it would take to intimidate those clouds. But in any case, after billions spent, and bomb fall-out terrorizing citizens across the Sunshine State (nice irony, Florida), it would still be quite unclear that the astronauts could land by Monday.

So, it looks like we are going to have to go with Option B, adaptation, which means we adapt to the changes weather forces on us.

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In the case of the shuttle, that means that the landing is delayed until tomorrow in the hopes that the weather clears up. If it doesn't, then the shuttle will land on Sunday where the weather is clear, which is southern California, the location of an alternate landing site. The Saturday landing means that the atronauts will have to endure another day in space, which will entail increased consumption of Tang and microwaveable soup. A southern California landing is worrisome, however, because it will cost the government $1.8 million to ferry the shuttle from California back to the east coast on top of its custom designed jumbo jet.

So let's see, should we mitigate the weather by spending billions of dollars on mortar attacks on clouds over the entire state of Florida or adapt to the weather and waste 24-48 hours of valuable astronaut time, decrease our global supplies of Tang and instant soup, and possibly add $1.8 million in shuttle travel expenses to NASA's $18 billion budget?

You decide. A hint: Overcoats and sweaters in winter? Igloos in the North? Canteens in the desert? Migration to warmer climates? Drought resistant crops? All of these and more are historical examples of adaptation. Animal and human sacrifices to the gods? Sackcloth and ashes and angst ridden prayers? Paying dubious strangers to make it rain? All of these and more are past examples of mitigation. Another hint: historically, the human species has always opted for adaptation over mitigation, a pragmatic bent that seems to have stood it in good stead up to now.

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.

Headlines You Won't Ever See

OBAMA REPLACES DEFENSE SECRETARY
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In a surprise move President Obama names
William Gates, former CEO and founder of
Microsoft Corp, as his Secretary of Defense
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The former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates,
appeared surprised by the announcement.
Washington wonders: Was he out of the loop?

Read the actual Major Media headline and story here.

Then imagine what the MM headline and story would have been if President Bush had made such an inexplicable mistake.

In Praise of Recessions

See Whitman's previous post here.

An interesting post, Whit. You know, all politicians for the last few decades have deemed it to be the most important thing in the world to prevent recessions - whatever the cost. Mostly because politicians tend to lose their jobs during recessions.

But conservatives, it seems, would be well advised to NOT avoid recessions. Periodic economic downturns are, as you say, unavoidable, and trying to prevent them only makes matters worse. But as you also point out, long economic expansions tend to make people too confident, and consequently they are less amenable to conservative arguments against dreamy liberal programs. Toss another few billion into SCHIP to insure children who are already insured? Why not? It's for the children. Wall off more property from energy exploration and production? Why not? It will stop the greedy capitalists. Tie up nuclear power and refineries in regulatory nightmare? Why not? It's to save the environment. And so on.

The Why not? is answered quite simply in all cases, but when everything seems to be working out okay for people, they are just not interested. After 25 years of a Reagan economic expansion (fueled to excess by Federal Reserve expansionist policies) people have just forgotten the hard lessons learned in the 1970's as to what is prudent and possible in this world. And here we are today with the kind of administration in Washington that would have gotten less votes than Ron Paul in any other election year. I mean, for goodness sake, this administration actually ran on (and is now implementing) policies to solve the nation's energy problems via raising car fuel efficiency standards that were first tried and failed under Gerald Ford in 1975!

Periodic recessions, naturally occurring, would be the very things to remind the electorate that there are limitations in this world that cannot be overcome by government fiat. The goal for conservatives, as the economy is slowing down, would be to restrain government (principally the Fed) from doing things that would artificially prevent the recession, and to counsel patience. I think that argument would be a lot easier to make than advocating for more coal mines or less health care mandates during economic good times, which is where conservatives seem to have found themselves the last number of years.

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.

Turkey Trot

Every now and then the turkeys come out and graze in my front pasture.  This morning, however, there is only one.  Where are the others?

The real question is "who are the others," because that answers the question as to where they are.  They are hiding.  Why are they hiding? Because they are the females of the species and it is spring and that means that the male of the species, after months of quiet humility, now wake up each and every morning with the confirmed belief that it's all about them.

Eggs, grazing, nesting, new borns, grazing, sleep, grazing, safety, grazing, all of these essential and wonderful components of the turkey lifestyle suddenly are reduced to mere distraction in the eyes of all the Toms. This pasture, those trees, my house, and other components of a larger turkey territory (more than five miles in circumference, I am told) now reduce to thimble size in the Toms' consciousness, as their own largeness verily dominates the world.  All because of the onset of a seasonal jolt of hormones, endocrines and probably, for all I know, some of that carbon stuff everyone is talking about.

This has to be a bit tiresome for female turkeys.    Especially given the way the males communicate their newfound self-confidence.  I see it in the field, even though there are no females around, the male POPs! out a garish fan of tail feathers.  He turns this way POP!  He sees a squirrel POP!  A limb gesticulates in the wind POP! A mosquito bite and a bit of indigestion POP! POP!  To one and all, the Toms say, "Hey Doll!  Check THIS out!"  Charming, charming.

Now I am not going to draw any parallels between this behavior and human males.  It would really be a bit facile to compare turkey mating techniques with all those construction workers who think it's a special turn-on for women to be yelled and hooted at in broad daylight; with the teen-age boys who equate loud, boisterous slovenliness with macho attractiveness; with the middle-aged males who flash their American Express GOLD! Cards, expensive suits purchased with GOLD! Cards, cigars imported from embargo-ed countries through the auspices of special relationships with offshore companies who will take GOLD! Cards, and by the way, have you seen my GOLD! Card?  Hey, look, here's another GOLD! Card.

No, such comparisons are really not fair, so I won't even bring them up.  But I will say that Frederick, my male black dog, mostly Labrador, has learned through stern tutelage to behave better.  Although sometimes, when he thinks I am not looking, I detect a certain troubling strut. But it's hard to tell.  He just doesn't have the proper tail feathers to make a really strong statement about the matter.

In Praise of Recessions

Here is the funny thing about recessions, including the one we find ourselves in. We know what they are, where they come from, and how to get out of them.

In simple terms, they are a reduction in total economic activity, the negative growth of the economy.

Recessions are caused by the fact that an economy is a dynamic, not static, system. That means it will oscillate around the mean, the mean being somewhere north of zero growth. In my home state of Georgia, there are sometimes days in spring that are so cold as to be indistinguishable from those in winter, but no one supposes for a moment that the vernal equinox has somehow reversed itself. Temperature is dynamic, and as cold as it might get, everyone knows that it is only an aberration from the mean spring temperature, not a substitution therefore. So too with recessions: they are a natural aberration from mean economic growth, not some new level of economic activity unrelated to the historic pattern of growth.

And we know how to cure recessions. One thing we can do is nothing. If you want to catch a pendulum, you can either chase it as it goes by or you can simply wait for it to come back to you. So too with the economy: if we just wait a while, the economy will eventually swing back into the positive.

But if we can't be patient about it, we also know how to hasten the rebound. Simply follow one rule that always works: stop doing what we were doing before the recession started. In this particular case, that means stop pumping up the money supply in vain attempts to avoid recessions; stop spending more money than we have; and avoid situations that are just too good to be true.

All three of these were particular excesses that lead to the housing crisis. People kept buying ever more expensive homes because prices were just going to go up forever. Well, they didn't and a good part of the reason was that rising house prices was not real market activity but a result of an artificial balloon of credit the Federal Reserve and Congress were providing in order to keep the good times rolling.

This same credit balloon also brought down the banks, which were sucked into buying too-good-to-be true mortgage backed securities. You see, banks are required to keep a certain amount of capital in reserve, held in the safest of investments. This usually means government bonds, but anything as safe as government bonds will pay a very low interest rate (currently about zero). But at the dawn of the 21st Century, salesmen of the Federal government's largesse made banks aware that they could buy mortgage backed securities
from a couple of quasi-government entitities, FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac), that would give them returns of anywhere from 5 to 8%. Although technically not guaranteed by the Federal government, government salesman (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and most financial industry insiders were sure that the Federal government would de facto guarantee the obligations of the dynamic duo. So, seemingly without taking on any more risk than with government bonds, banks could load their capital reserves up with securities that more than tripled their normal return.

Too good to be true, and it was. When the real estate market turned, as it had to, the de facto guarantee of the government the banks depended on in their calculations evaporated like a mist at sunrise, and some of the largest components of our financial sector collapsed.

So, if we know how we get into recessions and how to get out, why is everyone in such a stew over this one?

Because what a recession really does is demand that we change.

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But not the change promised in this current political season which invokes such a happy, joyous feeling in so many, but real change, change that hurts because it involves giving up many things that seem so important, including some of our deepest held values and priorities. With real change, we have to gain a new heart, and getting a new heart is a complicated, dangerous and ultimately painful operation.

In real life, courage, self-reliance, a drive for success and with them a little bit of pride are actually noble virtues and necessary to the health of any society. But like all things human, after too much success for too long a period of time, these things degrade into mere hubris, and the only antidote for hubris is humility. That is what recessions provide.

When things are going well, when the economy is humming and your net worth is climbing like an Apollo rocket, hubris becomes epidemic in society. People start thinking that they are invulnerable to bad times, that they have the system figured out, that their wildest imaginings are solidly grounded in their well-earned self-confidence. And what's worse than all, people start believing that they are somehow entitled to all this success.

In successful times, buying a $45,000.00 BMW on credit rather than a $15,000.00 Kia for cash makes perfect sense. What is $45,000.00 anyway? It's only a couple of brilliant ideas superbly executed by these Masters of the Universe (h/t Tom Wolfe).

When I grew up, a $500,000.00 house was something, at least 10,000 square feet with a landscaped yard that most municipal parks would envy. But, just prior to the recession paying less than $500,000.00 for a house in certain parts of the country was embarrassing, regardless of its size or utility.

Hubris like this will not change of its own accord. It needs the proverbial whack in the head that the mule got, because first "you must get its attention."

This is what a good recession does, and why I take this moment to sing the praises of recession. It is the whack in the head that makes it possible for us to learn to become better people. It is a moment in which courage, self-reliance, a drive for success and pride will take a back seat to perhaps the noblest virtue of all, humility. It s a time when self-reflection is more important than self-assertion and we might begin the process of re-prioritizing our lives around a better set of values.

It is a time when, perhaps, we might actually attain some of that which all to often has alluded mankind, wisdom.

On Human Dignity

What constitutes human dignity? Is it enough food to eat? Is it a good home? A good job? A healthy growing 401(k)? Or is it an abundance of good friends and family? Perhaps it is a decent respect in the community. Or perhaps, it is nothing outside of us at all, but something within us, something that cannot be supplied by anyone or anything outside of us. That is the traditional view of this issue, and in this day and time I think it bears reminding ourselves of what the traditional understanding is of human dignity, and how it relates to America and American culture.

It has been recognized down through the ages that human beings are different from the world, different from animal, vegetable or mineral. The traditional view attributes this difference to the fact that we are capable of reason, appreciation of beauty, religious worship, and above all, virtue.

Virtue encompasses passions such as patience, moderation, selflessness, moral candor, self-responsibilty, and nobility in our relations with others. And to live a life of virtue, or what is commonly called a good life, is the sine qua non of living; it is a life of worth and value not only in others eyes, but more importantly, in our own eyes. It is that kind of life in which we may be disparaged or vilified by everyone, and yet still look in the mirror and not be ashamed.

The classic American ethic posits that there is something bigger than each of us individually, that there are causes to strive for that are larger than ourselves. In ever widening circles, those causes involve our family, friends, neighbors, community, nation and world. But one thing more: those causes necessarily involve our own participation, or own commitment, our own striving for accomplishment, and ultimately our own realization as self-responsible people in this world. In the pursuit of the Good, America has always demanded that we be real people, not cogs in a wheel or bureaucrats in a State, who are personally committed to that which is greater than ourselves. In this one thing more, the American ethic affirms and incorporates the ages old definition of human dignity and the good life.

A tyrant can incarcerate you; a greedy employer can suck you dry over years with long hours and low wages; a bully of a husband or neighbor or a local policeman can intimidate you; a father or mother can refuse to give you the support and love you need; all of these can happen to you and more: a destructive storm, a devastating turn in the economy, the onset of war with barbarians.

All of this might wear you down, hurt your friends and family, suck the very life out of you. But even so, a good person, a person with self-respect, can find a foothold to hold fast to that which is good, and perhaps, with God's help, come out the other side stronger and most importantly, wiser. And if not, then at least to have the satisfaction of having done one's best.

Whether any of this is true or not is really beside the point. It is in any case the essence of the American dream, and it is a good dream, and one that has inspired our nation for 200 years to unparalleled achievements in the age-old hope of alleviating simple human suffering.

Tax Simplification

President Obama announced recently that he was closing down a loophole for American corporations who use offshore tax havens to escape some $190 billion in taxes.

Nice political rhetoric. "Loophole?" No one favors a loophole. And the close conjunction of "corporations" and "offshore" resonates with the same negative implication as "corporations" and "outsourcing jobs overseas," even though the two situations are vastly different in intent and effect. Also "offshore tax havens" carries just the right hint of money laundering, you know, like drug lords and gangsters are want to do.

But what exactly is this "foreign tax haven loophole"? In general, many other countries, like France, do not tax income of local companies arising from operations outside of their territorial jurisdiction. This is what’s known as a “Territorial” theory of taxation, and it is to be contrasted with a “Nationality” theory which would tax a local company’s income arising anywhere in the world. America’s current system follows the Terrritorial theory, but in a typically Byzantine way: it taxes corporate income world-wide with one hand and then exempts foreign derived income with the other. Net result: American corporations pay taxes only on their U.S. operations, like their French counterparts.

“Offshore tax havens,” then, are simply foreign countries in which American corporations operate and derive income. Under a “Territorial” theory of taxation, the exemption of this off-shore income is not a loophole but the very essence of a system which does not tax foreign profits.

Let it be said that if President Obama and Congress want to change the current “Territorial” system to a “Nationality” system of taxation, they would not be doing anything incoherent or crazy. They would simply be choosing one among many different possible systems of taxation.

Of course, to do so would further hamper the international competitiveness of U.S. companies, harming not only company profitability but also the employees and shareholders whose jobs and investments depend on the stability and growth of those profits. And therein lies the problem with President Obama’s approach to this issue. He is intentionally employing demagoguery in order to obscure the real issues involved so as to preempt a proper public debate.

I think that in any such debate the public would opt for preserving the jobs of American workers and the investments of American citizens, both of which amount to much more money than the relatively paltry $190 billion the government wants to collect. However, these are complicated times and the voters might very well side with Mr. Obama in this matter.

But President Obama is not interested in a public debate that he only might win. He wants to win, pure and simple. And the worst result of winning in this way would not be the harm inflicted on American companies, jobs and investments, but the further erosion of this experiment in democracy entrusted to us by the blood and sweat of our forebears.