South Dakota Politics

Dead Like Me is Good TV

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Showtime's Dead Like Me is not one of those shows that broke my heart when it got canceled.  But that's only because I started watching it long after it was canceled, on the SciFi Channel.  I fell in love with it right off the bat.  The show is based on a goofy premise.  George Lass (Ellen Muth) is an eighteen year old girl who is killed by a toilet seat falling to earth with the remains of a Russian space station.  But she doesn't pass on to the afterlife.  She is enlisted in the ranks of the "grim reapers."  These undead social workers show up when anyone is about to die.  It's their job to touch the person just before she or he dies, in order to release the soul so it can go on to, well, "the lights."

There are all kinds of holes in this premise, but they are easily ignored.  George wants her life back, and she doesn't want to participate in the death of others.  Mandy Patinkin plays her boss, Rube.  He gives George and her fellow reapers their assignments written on posted notes.  Each note has a name, address, and estimated time of death.  They meet each morning for breakfast at a Waffle House.  George finds that she has her old body back (though it is now virtually indestructible), but she needs to find a place to live and get a regular job to pay rent and buy waffles.  If all this sounds crazy, it is, but the assignments and the need to make a living serve to create the action, and George's refusal to let go of the family she left behind adds a poigniant dimension to the drama. 

Dead Like Me is, probably unintentionally, a Buddhist morality tale.  George is unengaged in life while she is still really alive, and fails to appreciate any of the gifts she has been given.  That includes her little sister.  She begins to live only after she has confronted the reality of death (in this case, by actually dying). 

Ellen Muth is brilliant in the part.  Patinkin is marvelous as you would expect.  The two seasons have been released in a box seat, with new movie that includes most of the original cast.  Buy the darned thing.  You won't be sorry. 

Democrats Repeal the Constitution

It appears that the District of Columbia is about to get a real seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  From Real Clear Politics:

After decades of trying, the District of Columbia is one step closer to receiving full-voting representation in the House of Representatives. With 61 yea votes, the Senate gave final approval yesterday to the D.C. Voting Rights Act of 2009, and House Democratic leadership has indicated it plans to take up the bill by the middle of next week.

Now I acknowledge the problem here.  D.C. has about 588,000 residents.  That’s more than North Dakota.  Yet they have no seats in the House of Representatives (with voting power), nor do they have seats in the Senate.  That’s because D.C. is a federal territory, not a state. 

The bill moving through Congress would give the District one seat in the House, which is what it would get if it were a state.  Given the demographics of the District, that seat would almost certainly be filled by a Democrat.  In return for Republican support, an additional seat would be granted to Utah.  That would bring the total seats in the House to 437. 

There is nothing wrong with this except the fact that it is flatly in violation of the Constitution of the United States.  I give you Article One, Section Two, Clause One of said yellowed parchment:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

A lot of the Constitution requires interpretation.  Does free speech include the internet?  Article 1, Sec. 2 is not one of them.  Members of the House of Representatives are to be chosen by the people of the states.  A territory is not a state.  What part of that do the Democrats misunderstand? 

The solution to the problem of D.C. representation is easy: make D.C. into the State of Columbia.  That would give the Democrats two new Senate seats as well.  Maybe that’s the rub.  The Republicans would oppose it on partisan grounds.  Well, put on a full court press and call their bluff.  Let Obama bring his awesome clout to bear.  Actually, I think the Republicans should push for D.C. statehood.  It would hurt them in the short run, but it would be a principled stance and that might be worth something.  If they really want to appeal to African Americans, this might be a start. 

But giving D.C. a seat in the House without making it a state means that the Constitution counts for nothing.  We might as well establish a Church of the United States.  It is said that this will result in a challenge in Federal Courts.  Maybe so, but I can’t think just now of anyone who would have standing to sue.  You need an injury to secure standing, and who is injured by a D.C. seat?  John Boehner? 

If you value any part of the Constitution (the Equal Protection Clause?), you have to value all of it.  We seem to be about to chuck the whole damn thing. 

Unbelievable Budget Numbers

In all fairness to the President, no Federal Budget is ever honest.  At least that has been true for as long as I have been following them.  A President has to try to reconcile too many contrary interests, with many interest groups holding self-contradictory views of the world, to achieve a consensus based on mutual understanding.  Likewise, almost all budgets over the last 30 years have involved “rosy scenarios.”  That is, the budget is made to look more responsible by assuming irrationally optimistic assumptions about revenue.  Finally, you always get some slogan meant to imply a new sobriety (remember Al Gore’s Social Security Lock Box?), which turns out to mean nothing at all.

Well, if you were expecting change from the Obama Administration, you are likely to get it.  But not in any of the above.  What is new is the astounding size of the numbers involved, and the corresponding gap between rhetoric and reality.  Let’s look at some of the numbers, courtesy of the Obama Administration:

Budget totals (billions)	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Receipts	2,524	2,186	2,381	2,713	3,081
Outlays	2,983	3,938	3,552	3,625	3,662
Deficit	459	1,752	1,771	912	581
Receipts as % GDP	17.7%	15.4%	16.2%	17.5%	18.7%
Outlays as % GDP	21.0%	27.7%	24.1%	23.4%	22.2%
Deficit	3.2%	12.3%	8%	5.9%	3.5%

 

Okay.  That means that President Obama is planning on running a deficit of nearly two trillion dollars this year and next year.  After that, of course, he will bring our fiscal house into order.  But look at that deficit as a percentage of GDP for this year.  Twelve point three percent of all domestically produced wealth is staggering.  Only during WWII did we ever run deficits higher than that.  It’s twice as high as the largest peacetime deficit on record (1983). 

Of course it makes sense to run such a deficit if we are facing a real economic crisis and if the spending is a remedy.  The Obama Administration isn’t wondering about that.  It is assuming that.  Or maybe the White House believes there really isn’t any crisis, and that the economy will recover for the same reason that it always did in the past.  Either way, it needs to see economic growth return very fast very soon.  The numbers above assume that the GDP will grow 3% in 2010.  That’s about twice as much growth as anyone else projects.  It assumes growth rates of more than 5 and 6% in 2011 and 2012.  That would be impressive.  

Of course what’s really going on has nothing to do with the “return to responsibility rhetoric of the President’s speech.  Obama and his Congress are gambling that this is a typical recession, and that the economy will come roaring back in proportion to its depth.  He has been fear mongering to justify an explosion in spending.  That might work for the long run if he can build large constituencies that dependent on future spending. 

But what if the recession doesn’t gently end, but goes on for another year or two?  Then the numbers above will look rosy indeed.  Sooner or later big deficits will have to be paid for, either by raising taxes through the roof or by inflation.  Either way, that means redirecting resources away from productive sectors of the economy toward favored constituencies of government.  That will retard economic growth, and thus make the deficits worse.  The Chinese curse has come true for us: may you live in interesting times. 

Keeping Track of The Votes

In addition to voting for the "porkulus" bill known as the stimulus package, today Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin voted for the $410 billion omnibus spending package favored by House Democratic leadership.  Twenty Democrats voted against the bill, including (it appears) many of the Blue Dog Coalition.  It seems Rep. Herseth-Sandlin is out of touch with her own Coalition.  This bill represents an 8% increase in discretionary spending and contains 9,000 congressional earmarks.  Here is Blue Dog Democrat Gene Taylor taking President Obama to task for his proposed budget.  We are still waiting for the deficit spending Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin actually opposes.  FYI, here's a nice run-down of the enormous tax hikes and spending increases contained in Obama's budget, released today. 

Meanwhile, Tim Johnson is perhaps showing that he is in his last term in Congress by becoming a typical liberal in his voting. Johnson was one of only eleven senators opposing Sen. Jim DeMint's bill to prevent the FCC from imposing the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine," a regulation widely seen as an attack on conservative talk radio.  Johnson also voted for a bill giving Washington D.C. a voting representative in the House.  Currently the District has a non-voting delegate.  This provision is clearly unconstitutional and is simply a power grab by the Democratic party.  This is one step towards giving the District statehood, which guarentees another Democrat House member and two Democrat Senators.  Naturally, John Thune was on the opposite side of Johnson on these votes. 

Update: Ann Althouse: "I don't know how even to articulate an argument that it's constitutional to give a vote to a D.C. representative in Congress."

Machaivelli On The State Budget

My latest in the American News:

In "The Prince," 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli has advice for a prince who desires the reputation for generosity. To obtain a reputation for generosity, warns Machiavelli, one must be ostentatious. This ultimately leads to the prince squandering his money. Having impoverished his principality, he must either heavily tax his people or forgo his previous openhandedness. Either way, he now earns the opprobrium of the people.

Machiavelli suggests rather acting like the miser, a miserly prince leaves his people alone, including their pocketbooks. When great things need to be accomplished, he has monetary reserves to accomplish large projects. Because the people learn not to expect much from the prince, they are overly grateful at the few benefits he does bestow. Ironically, the generous prince ultimately gains the reputation of miserliness, while the miserly prince is deemed generous.

One can see these lessons played out as South Dakota's government and the national government respond to economic downturn.

Our state has followed Machiavelli's advice in not invading the people's pocketbooks. Our state's practice of caution and prudence with the public wealth is now serving us well.

South Dakota is 49th in the nation in per-capita tax burden while ranking 48th in per-capita state and local spending. Combining these two statistics, one can fairly say that almost no state taxes or spends less than South Dakota. Thus, in a budget crunch, a modest tax increase should cause little harm, as the state wasn't taking much in the first place. The state has been frugal in spending and has kept reserves, so while having to make tough decisions, South Dakota is not in the dire position of many other states.

This is not to say that we don't face tough calls. The state faces a budget shortfall of more than $100 million over the next 18 months. We cannot balance the state budget without most everyone sacrificing some program that they care about, either through its elimination or a serious cut. The state supporters of the arts rightly disagree with the governor's proposal to eliminate the state arts council. But one could take them much more seriously if they at least acknowledged the seriousness of the budget situation rather than acting like just another lobby demanding the public's money. Everyone who gets government money thinks his program is crucial, whether it is state spending on the arts, early childhood education or political scientists.

This is a problem of government spending. When the government spends, it creates constituencies to perpetuate that funding. Most interest groups do not exist to promote new spending; they exist to defend current programs. Thus it is easy for the government to create new programs while very difficult to eliminate any.

The federal government, already bloated by over-generosity, now struggles in the face of economic downturn. Called on to take on an enormous project of economic stimulus, it finds itself without the money to do so. It is left borrowing from future generations. Would that the feds had followed our state's example of prudent management of public funds, allowing for a more nimble reaction to hard times. Let's hope that our own state continues its practice of being watchful of the people's money, leaving some for what might be a very long rainy day.

Chimpanzees, Cartoons, & Race in America

Last July I defended the New Yorker cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim extremists dancing in the White House. That post generated some blogosphere conversation. Allow me to quote myself:

The English actor and playwright Samuel Foote (1720-1777) was engaged in argument with Lord Sandwich in, where else, a pub.  "Foote," said Lord Sandwich, "I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end, but I think you must die either by the pox, or on the gallows."  Foote replied without missing a beat: "That would depend on whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles."  Not that was a good English foote to the arse.    There wasn't enough left of Sandwich to bury in a condom. 

Most political humor does not rise to that level of cleverness.  The New Yorker cover certainly did not.  But if you want to strangle cleverness in its crib, you need only insist that all comedy be in good taste, and that it respect the sensitivity of the issues.  The reaction to the New Yorker cover in the general press demonstrates that our political culture has become altogether too stuffy.  It's high time some good wits let a little air out of our shirts.

The same issue is raised by the New York Post cartoon above, by Sean Delonas. It is an obvious reference to the chimpanzee mauling story I covered recently. But it ignited a storm of protest.

I stand my ground on basic principles. Political cartoons are almost offensive by definition, and if you want to encourage cleverness in political conversation, not to mention the freedom of journalists to give politicians a hard time, then you have to defend the Cartoonist's right to draw this one, and the Post's right to print it. The Post has to be protected against any coercive form of intimidation, including threats of violence or legal action. So far as I know, none of these has come into play.

On the other hand, protesters and political hacks like Al Sharpton are equally free to raise bloody Hell, and they have a case here.

The New Yorker Obama-as-Muslim extremist cover certainly poked at a sensitive topic. Because of his middle name and family ties, a lot of yahoos tried to use fears of radical Islam to discredit Barack Hussein Obama. But that was precisely the point of the cover, and it was an issue that needed to be aired. Moreover, it was an issue specific to Obama's person.

The New York Post cartoon was something else. Tonight I listened to Bob Zellner tell a story of the 1964 Civil Rights movement at The Moth Podcast. The Moth is a story telling outfit that has interesting people come on stage and tell interesting stories, without notes. Zellner was one of the last White members of the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (before membership was closed to Whites). He describes a SNCC protest at a polling place, where they were insisting on the right of Black citizens to vote. A bunch of good ole boys showed up with a monkey. The monkey wore a sign reading: "I want to vote too!"

That, as we say, is the context. Comparing Black Africans to monkeys has a long history. The cartoonist who drew the Chimpanzee cartoon, and the Post editors that accepted it, might have taken this into account. Delonas' cartoon was not clever and it did not advance the conversation. It was merely in bad taste. I don't argue that there were any racist motives involved, just a lapse of good judgment. Like politicians, journalists are exposed to public censure. This was a bad piece of work, and I would not have printed it.

Prisons & Populations 3: Dakotas Edition

In his post on incarceration rates, Professor Newquist makes a very interesting observation:

South Dakota has 3,302 prison inmates. [This] seems paltry until one examines how much it costs and compares it with North Dakota's prison population of 1,440. Why South Dakota whose overall population and culture is so similar to North Dakota's incarcerates more than twice the number of people is an issue that has troubled some legislators for decades.

As friend and frequent interlocutor A.I., notes (see comments to my first post), this is a very good question.

I thought the SD vs. ND incarceration rates in Doctor Newquist's post were thought provoking. As he asked, why the great difference between the two states? And, if you do the math, the rate in SD is about 1 in 230 as opposed to ND at about 1 in 475. Seems to me we should try to determine why. Does ND suffer more crime because less people are in prison? If not, does SD have more (seamy) people, are our sentencing practices or laws too stringent, etc.?/Maybe it has to do with northern climbs, meaning the entire prison population of Manitoba and Saskatchewan might fit in one of our county jails while Texans would...

That's the kind of comment that comment sections are for. I don't know how to answer the question, like that's going to stop me. It does seem to me that the obvious first question is whether crime rates differ between the two states. If not, then I suppose it has to do with sentencing. If so, then the question is whether the differential explains it, and how to interpret the causation.

The U.S. Census Bureau has some helpful numbers.

Violent Crimes/100,000 people	2005	2006
North Dakota	111	128
South Dakota	179	171
Property Crimes/100,00 people
North Dakota	2,025	2,000
South Dakota	1,767	1,620

Now those are interesting stats. Since the numbers control for population differences, it would appear that North Dakotans are both less violent on average and less respectful of their neighbor's property. Them's no small potatoes.

Now I am pretty sure that violent crimes (e.g., murder and rape) are more likely to draw a prison sentence than property crimes. I would also note that prison sentences average about 2 years and may be well longer than two years. This year's convictions will add to the incarceration rate for several years to come. So a significant differential in the violent crime rate between two states will result in a more significant difference in incarceration rates over time. A violent crime rate differential of 111 vs. 179 is quite robust.

Have I answered Professor Newquist's provocative question? Maybe. A lot more analysis would have to be done on the numbers to be sure. But A.I. suggests another problem: if South Dakota is locking up more people, but has a higher violent crime rate, doesn't that mean that incarceration doesn't work? Here we have a problem of correlation vs. causation. Consider: we spend a lot more money on medical care for octogenarians than for teenagers, but the former suffer from more diseases. Does this mean that the medical care isn't working? In a sense, yes; but the underlying causation is due to aging.

If South Dakota reduced its incarceration rate, what would happen? That depends on how effective that rate is in suppressing crime. None of these numbers help us with that. All we know is that, in specific places, increasing incarceration rates correlate with decreases in the crime rate.

So maybe the real question is why less violent crime but more property crime in North Dakota. Here, Professor Newquist has me stumped.

 

Prisons and Populations 2

Attitudes toward prisons are one of those things that constitute the cultural divide in America. The left sees prisons as a social failure. A better society would address the root causes of crime, and so few if any prisons would be needed. When people do commit crimes, gentler means of correction can be found. The right thinks that the root cause of crime is criminals, and criminals are a persistent product of human nature. Gentleness towards brutal people does not produce encouraging results. The right is closer to the truth (what else would you expect me to say), but as they say, the issue is complicated.

Slate has a fine piece by John Pfaff: "Five Myths about Prison Growth." Pfaff begins by saying that the growth of prison populations has to be cut back. He is probably right about that. But I am guessing that most of the myths he demolishes are myths dear to the left.

Here is the gist.

It is a myth that long sentences drive prison growth. The average prison sentence served is about two years.

Low-level drug offenders do not make up a significant portion of the prison population. Only about 20% of prisoners are there for drug-related offenses, and most of those are dealers, not users.

Technical parole violations do not drive prison growth.

Recent trends in prison growth do not represent a divergence from other nations. The U.S. has always been harsher towards criminals than most other nations.

Contrary to liberal dogma, the increase in incarceration rates has resulted in a decrease in crime rates. Other factors have to be considered. But Pfaff says that the increase in prison populations is responsible for 30% of the decrease in crime.

This is food for thought. Half of the people in prison are there for violent crimes. Another 20% are there for property offenses. The object of penal policy is to protect law abiding citizens from criminals. It may be that we can do this more cheaply if we spend more on drug addiction treatment, etc. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that this will make more than a marginal difference.

Prisoners, Populations, & the Pew Center

Professor David Newquist has a post on his Northern Valley Beacon Blog concerning statistics about prison populations and state spending on the same here in the Dakotas and nationally. It is worth reading.

Since Professor Newquist has frequently taken me to the woodshed when I misread a source, I feel obliged to return the favor. I note that he badly distorts an important statistic in such a way as to bias the stats in favor of his argument. He says this:

A report by the Pew Center on the States shows that one out every hundred people in the U.S. is in prison, with the total number of people behind bars exceeding 2 million.

Professor Newquist isn't a mathematician, and neither am I, but that is obviously wrong. There are about 303 million people in the United States, so the prison population would have to exceed three million for one out of every hundred people in the U.S. to be in prison.

I managed to track down the Pew Center report that Professor Newquist's numbers seem to come from. Here, I think, is the passage my esteemed colleague gets wrong:

Three decades of growth in America's prison population has quietly nudged the nation across a sobering threshold: for the first time, more than one in every 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.

There's a big difference between one in every 100 people, and one in every 100 adults. Now I suppose that one could accuse my colleague of being a bit careless here. The distortion does make the prison population look even bigger than it really is, and it's very big. But it also invites someone like me to expose it, so I am certain that it was not an intentional distortion. Professor Newquist likes to point out that bloggers aren't real journalists. We don't have fact checkers who work on our pieces independently. Our readers should be at least a little forgiving. I note that, like my colleague, I am more prone to make mistakes when the outcome is convenient.

But real journalists and professional research sources like the Pew Center on the States are also subject to bias, and I think we have a case of that here. Why use adults as the standard, instead of the more usual comparison for the whole population? Granted, we don't send children to prison in the U.S. But prison populations for most countries are measured against total population, if only because the latter statistic is more likely to be available.

Thus, when the Pew Center report compares U.S. statistic with other nations, it has to return to the more standard measurement. Consider this passage:

In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the U.S, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000 [my italics].

That gives you a comparison that tells you something important: that the proportion of the U.S. population in prison is almost ten times that in Germany. But 750 per 100,000 doesn't give you that "sobering threshold" of 1 in 100. The Pew people are fishing for headlines, and they are intentionally manipulating the stats for bate.

That doesn't mean their results are untrustworthy. They give you the real stat in a chart near the end. About 1 in 133 people is incarcerated in prison or jail in the U.S. (2007 stats, I believe). More interesting are the stats for subpopulations. Here are some real shockers, but they are not the ones that the report highlights.

Let me see if I can get this right: one June 30^th, 2006, 1 in every 53 White males, ages 30-34, were behind bars. That compares with 1 in 148 White guys between 45 and 54, and 1 in 588 for ages 55 and older. Why the difference? Well, guess who commits almost all of the serious crimes? It's males, between the ages of 20 and 35.

The really dramatic figures are for Black males between the ages of 20 and 34. One in nine is locked up. One in nine. That is astounding. What explains it? The age and sex statistics tell the story. The vast majority of violent crimes are committed by males in the 20-35 age range. Not females. Not older or younger persons. The incarceration rates in the U.S. may be due to an excessive fondness for prison time, but they accurately reflect the rate at which different subpopulations are committing crimes.

Far more Black males commit serious crimes than Hispanic males. The latter rate is higher than that of White males. Maybe prejudice and social injustice explains all of this. But this is the fact that we ought to be paying attention to. The Pew Center report buried it in the appendix.

Hurry Up And Wait

How about a final post on the pork bill and back to blogging semi-retirement?  Apropos my post the other day on why Congress needed to rush the vote only to have Obama go on vacation, here is John Hinderaker (quoting Byron York).

The Democrats' pork bill posed a different sort of test: alleged to be an emergency, it was rushed through Congress and voted on before printed copies were available--the final version was corrected in longhand--and before any member of Congress, let alone the public, had been able to read it. (Copies were, however, made available to lobbyists.) The hurry was such that voting was held open on a Friday night so that Senator Sherrod Brown could be flown back from his mother's wake to provide the last needed vote. All of this was justified by the claim that the bill was an emergency measure. What happened next?

[D]id President Obama sign it rather quickly? Not at all.

He also chose not to sign it on Saturday. And not to sign it on Sunday. And he chose not to sign it on Monday. Only on Tuesday, with a big campaign-style event in Denver, would the president finally be ready to put his signature on the bill.

He signs nonemergency legislation in the blink of an eye. And he lets emergency legislation sit for days before lifting his pen. ...

[W]hy was there such a rush, if Obama had no plans to sign [the stimulus bill] for days?

Go back to “Sunlight Before Signing.” In the case of the stimulus, there was never any doubt Obama would sign the legislation. The period in which the public needed sunlight was before the bill was passed, not before it was signed. And that was precisely the kind of sunlight the White House and Democrats wanted to stop. Once they accomplished that with Friday’s voting gambit, Obama could take a few days off in Chicago while the “emergency” legislation sat on his desk. Then, it was on to Denver for the photo-op.

This delay had nothing to do with sunlight — and everything to do with showmanship.

In the Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn finds Obama neglecting his stated principles in the name of political expediency:

In a passage from his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," he sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. "Genuine bipartisanship," he wrote, "assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

"If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

"For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'"

From a policy angle, I heard David Walker on TV the other day damning this piece of legislation as having none of the qualities we should desire in a sound stimulus package.  It was neither targeted (most of the spending has nothing to do with stimulus) nor temporary.  Perhaps most ominously, he noted, this is the first major bill in American history without a dime of equity, meaning the entire sum is borrowed.  Totally irresponsible. 

Walker heads the Peter G. Peterson Foundation that provides this chart regarding historic government spending. I think it speaks for itself. This is real per capita spending.  See the link for more details.

CPAC Honoring McGovern

The Hill:  Conservatives to Honor Liberal Icon George McGovern

The Revolving Door?

The Politico:  "In three months since Election Day, at least a half-dozen prominent journalists have taken jobs working for the federal government. Journalists, including some of those who’ve jumped ship, say it’s better to have a solid job in government than a shaky job – or none at all – in an industry that’s fading fast. But conservative critics answer with a question: Would journalists be making the same career choices if John McCain had beaten Barack Obama in November?"

Blagojevich: the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Major U.S. papers are lining up to call for the resignation of Rod Blagojevich's Senate appointment, Roland Burris.  So far I see the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post,

Here's from the Washington Post:

WHEN THEN-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested in December for, among other things, allegedly trying to auction off the U.S. Senate seat left open by Barack Obama's election to the presidency, we feared that whomever Mr. Blagojevich eventually chose would be tainted by the association. Enter Roland W. Burris, a former Illinois state attorney general who swore up and down that there had been no quid pro quo involved in his selection. "There was certainly no pay-to-play involved," Mr. Burris assured last month, "because I don't have no money." And then this Associated Press bulletin hit yesterday afternoon: "Burris acknowledges trying to raise campaign funds for Blagojevich as he vied for Senate seat."

Here's the Chicago Trib:

The benefit of the doubt had already been stretched thin and taut by the time Roland Burris offered his third version of the events leading to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. It finally snapped like a rubber band, popping him on that long Pinocchio nose of his, when he came out with version four.

Let's see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama—unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor's brother and fundraising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn't raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

Illinois Democrats could have avoided this by calling a special election before former Governor Blagojevich had a chance make the appointment.  But that would have involved the risk that a Republican might win Obama's old seat.  I am guessing that they will soon have another chance. 

Making America More like Japan

Back in the 1980's, America's shrewd economic minds were very impressed with Japan. Typically, they seized on Japan as a model of what the U.S. should be like just when it became a model of what it should avoid. As usual, Robert Samuelson lays it out for us:

From 1956 to 1973, Japan had grown 9 percent a year; in the 1980s, it was still growing at 4 percent. Japan was widely expected to overtake the United States as the richest, most advanced economy. It didn't. Worse, its semi-stagnation defied the notion that modern economics enabled government to ensure adequate growth.

Papers were written, conferences organized, and the verdict rendered: The Japanese had botched it. After the "bubble economy" of the late 1980s burst, the Bank of Japan had eased credit too slowly. Burdened with bad loans, banks stopped lending; government didn't cleanse the banks quickly enough. Government stimulus packages were too little, too late. Naturally, the economy languished. All plausible -- and wrong.

In the 1980's Japan's get up and go got up and went. It never came back. What happened? It wasn't a failure of economic policy. It was a failure of being Japanese.

Japan has what Richard Katz, editor of the Oriental Economist, terms a "dual economy." On the one hand, export industries (autos, steel, electronics) are highly efficient. They face intense global competition. On the other, many domestic industries (food processing, construction, retailing) are inefficient and sheltered from local competition by regulations or custom.

This has suited most Japanese. Exports earned the foreign currency needed to buy food and fuel imports. Meanwhile, protected domestic industries provided the job security and social stability that most Japanese preferred to hyper-competition. While exports thrived, they -- and the supporting business investment -- were Japan's engine of economic growth.

The trouble is that this system broke down in the mid-1980s. The rising yen made Japanese exports costlier on world markets. New competitors -- South Korea, Taiwan -- emerged. Japan lost its engine of growth and hasn't found a new one. That's Japan's central economic problem.

The engine of Japanese growth finally petered out. What is the solution? The Japanese tried using Government spending as a tool to stimulate economic growth.

In the 1980s, the Bank of Japan sought to offset the effect of the higher yen with cheap credit. This backfired, resulting in the bubble economy. From 1985 to 1990, Tokyo land prices rose 134 percent; the stock market boomed. Since the bubble's collapse, there have been 13 stimulus plans, reckons economist Randall Jones of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even now, the economy is trade dependent; in December, exports dropped 35 percent from a year earlier, pushing Japan into a deep recession.

Consider that carefully. Thirteen stimulus plans. The U.S. is already into its third, counting the auto industry bailout, the financial sector bailout, and the stimulus package as one each. But Treasury Secretary Geithner is already talking a two and a half trillion dollar second financial bailout. Oh, and GM is going to need a few hundred billion more real soon.

We know that this kind of thing doesn't work. The Japanese have an obvious option to restart economic growth: remove the restrictions on competition within the Japanese economy itself. But they can't use it because, well, they're Japanese. Can't let Wal Mart come in and threaten that Mom and Pop grocery store with its 45$ melons.

The U.S. has done much better than Japan because we did encourage rigorous competition in our domestic economy along with equally rigorous competition in our export industries. But every instinct of the Democratic majority in Congress will be to protect existing economic and social interests against competition, to make the domestic economy more like Japan. For the first time in my life, I am pessimistic about the future of our country and our world.

The Trouble with Troglodytes

Submitted for your observation: two primates. One of them of them, Genus Homo, Species Sapien, is named Sandra. The other, Genus Pan, species Troglodyte, was named Travis. Travis was apparently well-known around his home town of Stamford, Connecticut, where

He rode around in trucks belonging to the towing company operated by his owner.

In 2003, he escaped from his owner's vehicle in downtown Stamford for two hours. Police then used cookies, macadamia treats and ice cream in an attempt to lure him back into the vehicle.

At the time of the 2003 escape, police said the owners told them the chimpanzee was toilet trained, dressed and bathed himself, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass.

You get some idea of the relative size of Travis and his "owner" from the photo above. He weighs a good two hundred pounds, more than she does, I am guessing. But that's deceiving. Much more of Travis' muscle weight is shifted upward into his chest and shoulders. He is more than twice as strong, with a body built to resists shocks that would drop a heavy weight boxer.

I am skeptical about the toilet training, though I don't doubt that a chimpanzee is smart enough for that. But I can't help noticing that he seems to be wearing diapers in the photo. Toilet training seems to require a certain set of instinctual behaviors that dogs and humans have, but chimpanzees apparently don't. I don't doubt at all the bit about table manners and wine glasses. But all that tells us more about Sandra and her species than Travis and his. We are primed by evolution to recognize and connect with others of our own kind. These same spiritual gifts make it possible for us to bond with animals, but often as not that bonding involves a mistake. Dogs may indeed love us but fish and ferns do not, whatever cute names we give the latter. Chimpanzees may come to love us, but they aren't us. Confusions about that can be deadly.

The New York Times reports that Travis went amok again on Monday. This time he mauled and critically injured a woman visiting the Herold home.

Sandra Herold, the owner of the 15-year-old chimpanzee, wrestled with the animal as it mauled her friend, then ran inside to call 911. "She retrieved a large butcher knife and stabbed her longtime pet numerous times in an effort to save her friend, who was really being brutally attacked," [Police] Captain Conklin said.

The woman suffered "a tremendous loss of blood" from serious facial injuries, he said.

I'm sure it's possible to kill a chimpanzee with a butcher knife, but you'd have to be pretty strong and you'd have to know what you were doing. Ms. Herold didn't manage to slow Travis down. But it gets better.

Travis ran away and started roaming on the property as the police arrived. But the chimpanzee returned and went after several of the officers, who retreated into their cars, Captain Conklin said. Travis knocked a mirror off a cruiser before he opened its door and started to get in, trapping the officer. That officer shot the chimpanzee several times, Captain Conklin said.

The Chimpanzee opened the door of the police car. Then, despite being shot several times, Travis still had enough steam to run off before dying of his wounds.

It was only four years ago that a California man was viciously mauled by two chimpanzees at an animal compound, where he was visiting Moe, a chimp that he had raised as a member of his own family. The attackers (not Moe, but two younger Chimps) chewed off most of his face, his fingers, and his genitals.

There is a long history of confusion about Chimpanzees. For a long time, researchers were convinced that they were peaceful primates. That's because all they were observed doing was eating and copulating. Then in the seventies the first chimpanzee war was recorded in the Gombe preserve in Tanzania. A group of chimps systematically annihilated a rival group by isolating and beating to death all of its males. It took four years.

It is criminally stupid to keep a chimpanzee as a pet, or allow one to roam about uncontrolled. Training them to eat at the table only sets the table for tragedy. They are our nearest mammalian relative. Like human males, chimpanzee males are programmed for aggression. Like us, they are capable of opening the door of a police car. We are more dangerous in the long run only because we know how to fire the policeman's gun. That is another lesson to be learned.

Latest On The Pork Bill

We were told last week that there could be no delay on voting for the government debt bill that some call the "stimulus package."  The American people need this, it was said, so therefore the time for debate was over and Congress had to vote for a bill none of them had read.  Time is of the essence.  The debt bill is important, but apparently not so important that the Obama's couldn't take a vacation and dine at ritzy restaurants and leave the signing of the bill until tomorrow.  Can anyone think of a good reason why we couldn't give Congress and the people the long weekend to read this bill and then have a vote tomorrow, letting the President sign it tomorrow night or Wednesday?  I can think of one reason: our leaders knew that the more we all knew about the bill the less popular it would become.  So best to vote for it the Friday before a long weekend so no one would notice.  I am open to alternative theories.

Already the Obama administration is lowering expectations on the actual stimulus the bill will provide, causing Glenn Reynolds to quip, "As was obvious to anyone who was paying attention, it was always about paying off special interests, not helping the economy."

How about that debt?  I normally wouldn't consider World Net Daily a credible source, but this report jibes with what I have read elsewhere (see here): America's future debt, as taken as the difference between known future liabilities and future expected revenue, exceeds the total global GDP (as my second link suggests, you would need to sell everything in America to account for our current and expected debt).  This WSJ piece suggests we are ripe for a global Weimar.  Our massive indebtedness puts the entire foundation of our economy on dangerously shaky ground.  A snippet:

Although the world's public debt should be cut, now it is only being increased. Everywhere, out of fear of a recession, the survival of the system is being financed by all those who still have resources: the banks, when they choose; the governments, when no one else can. Since there is no talk anywhere of increasing taxes, the governments themselves are getting into debt, borrowing from national or foreign investors and, as a last recourse, from the central banks.

The numbers show it. When the American debt ought to have been reduced, it increased in 2008. The Geithner bailout, just like the Paulson plan, will increase America's public debt even further. The European debt is also increasing sharply. Many more borrowers will default on their loans: Many more borrowers will default on their loans: derivatives, credit cards, mortgages. And no one is there anymore to buy them back. (snip)

This growth of public debt, on top of private debt, can only lead to catastrophe: the bankruptcy of households, banks, even countries. What has happened to Iceland can happen to larger countries as well, if panic seizes creditors. Anything is now possible, including the collapse of the global banking system, whose losses would have grown beyond reach of rescue.

This panic could be set off by the realization of the insolvency of the system. It could also be set off by political or terrorist movements: A number of determined groups, with even limited means, could organize speculative attacks on banks, leading to their collapse.

I suggested the other day that Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin would dress up her vote for another 1.2 trillion dollars in debt by telling us how much money she took from our children to give to us.  It is already happening, in an ironic way.  Here's a story about how the stimulus package will save the state's "Birth to Three" program.  Let me go on record as supporting this program, but if it is so important shouldn't we pay for it ourselves?  When she runs in 2010, Mrs. Herseth-Sandlin will tell us about how important it was to vote for all this debt because she helped save this important program.  In short, she will bribe us with our own money.  The irony that she left the children deeper in debt in order to give them early childhood education will be lost on everyone.  We will vote for Stephanie because she is "for the children." 

Taken, Not Stirred

I saw Liam Neeson's Taken this afternoon.  I could have done with a little less car chase and a little more clever spy stuff, but there's plenty of the latter and I had a very good time.  There's nothing like giving a retired spy a good personal motive to come of out retirement and wreck mayhem on the bad guys, and kidnapping his daughter does the trick.  Neeson's about as good at this as an actor can be. 

There is a lot of interesting subtext to think about.  On the one hand, there is the clear idea that wealth is inseparable from corruption.  Neeson plays Bryan Mills, who has given up the life of adventure to be near his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).  His wife's second husband is big rich, and when Kim is kidnapped, Mills knows about three or four dirty deals that might have something to do with it.  Oh, and there is the bad guy near the end who looks like Jabba the Hutt.  On the other hand, there is the idea that if someone threatens your kids they better know that there is nothing you won't do to them.

What is clever about the plot is that it ties these two ideas together pretty convincingly.  The most insidious source of corruption is the idea that you can deal under the table at work and then go home to your wife and kids without the one affecting the other.  Not with a guy like Bryan Mills running around you can't. 

This was a very satisfying movie.  I wouldn't call it relaxing. 

Obama's "Open Government"

Los Angeles Times:  Missing from Congress' stimulus negotiations: transparency

During the campaign, Obama released a position paper stating his commitment to open government. As president, he said, he would not only insist on transparency in his own administration, he would press Congress to revamp its practices as well.

Obama has no constitutional authority to set rules for Congress, but he suggested he would use his influence to see to it that Congress doesn't conduct its work "in the dead of night and behind closed doors."

In the first major piece of legislation pushed by Obama, transparency was missing.

Census & Sensibility

I thought it was a brilliant move when Obama tapped Senator Judd Greg of New Hampshire to be Commerce Secretary. Greg is one of the most sensible and intelligent GOP Senators, and the appointment would have removed him from the upper chamber and put him in one of the most insignificant cabinet departments. I was rather disappointed when Greg agreed, but when the President of the United States calls upon you, an honorable public servant finds it hard to say no.

Greg's decision to withdraw from consideration is an embarrassment to both himself and the Administration. Greg should have realized that there would be irreconcilable differences between the President's policy and his own Republican principles. He should have foreseen that the activist core of the President's party would try to marginalize him, which it did. President Obama should have anticipated the same. Perhaps he did, except that he counted on it happening after Judd had resigned his Senate seat. That would be rather Machiavellian, but a touch of old Nick is something one wants in a President. Still, the withdrawal is an embarrassment to Obama. It's his fourth failed nomination, and the second for Commerce. The "screw-ups" of Presidents matter more, most of the time, than those of Senators from New Hampshire.

The more disturbing aspect of the story concerns the Census issue. The Administration apparently intends to move the supervision of the next Census from the Commerce Department to the White House. It's possible that this move was a consequence of the Greg nomination. The Democratic Left didn't want Greg in charge of it, or close enough to monitor it. Why would they be afraid of Greg's supervision?

The U.S. Census is required by the Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

The Census determines the apportionment of the House of Representatives, and all seats in the state legislatures.

The Census has always been conducted by trying to actually count all the people in the United States. If you are an adult and reading this post, you have probably filled out a census form. Most people get them in the mail, and return them; but large armies of census takers descend on every neighborhood in the U.S. in an attempt to count everyone.

They never actually manage to count everyone. Some people are hard to catch up with. The Census Bureau estimates that in 1990 they missed about four million people. Some folks are harder to count than others.

The estimate [of non-counted persons] for Whites is about 1.8 million, for a rate of 0.9%. However, although fewer Blacks (1.4 million) than Whites were missed, they were missed at a higher rate, approximately 4.4%. Children were also disproportionately missed in the last census. The net undercount for children - about 3.2% - is twice the overall rate.

Because of the estimated undercount, there has been pressure from political activists to replace the traditional counting with a system that gathers as much information as possible and then produces estimates of the actual population based on statistical analysis. The resulting estimates would be the basis of future apportionment.

This would be a very bad idea. Actually counting is not perfect, but it's pretty good. It gets within 98% of the real figure. It also produces hard records that cannot be easily manipulated. By contrast, statistical analysis can be manipulated merely by changing the many variables in the formula. Given the uncertainty that has crept into American elections of late, do we really want to further undermine public confidence in the electoral system?

I recently defended the Obama Administration against a false charge that they wanted to change the oath that military officers take from loyalty to the Constitution to loyalty to Obama. That was a lie. The news that Obama wants to put the Census more directly under White House control is fact, and it is deeply troubling. Judd Greg was right to jump ship rather than have any part in it.

Drowning In Debt

Via Rod Dreher, here is Niall Ferguson on our indebtedness, which today, thanks to Democrats in the House of Representatives, just got that much closer to bringing financial catastrophe:

The reason [traditional anti-recessionary policies] won't work this time, and this is the key point, is that the whole U.S. economy became excessively leveraged in the last ten years. The debt burden, as a proportion of G.D.P., is in the region of 355 percent. So, debt is three and a half times the output of the economy. That's some kind of historic maximum, and those debts aren't going away.

So we've all been bingeing on money that we didn't have.

That we borrowed. And we borrowed it from abroad, ultimately. This has been financed by borrowing from petrol exporters, and borrowing from Asian central banks, and sovereign wealth funds. But yeah, whether it was the people who refinanced their mortgages and spent the money that they pocketed, or banks that juiced their returns by piling on the leverage, the whole system became excessively indebted. And notice: what is the policy response? You guessed it, more debt. And, now it's federal debt.

So you end up in a situation where you're curing a debt problem with more debt. Is that going to bring about a sustained recovery? I find that hard to believe.

So I guess the unanswerable question is, what could you do to solve this problem?

Well I'll tell you what you have to do--you actually have to cancel the debt. There are historical precedents for this.

Excessive debt burdens in the past tended to be public sector debts. What we've got now is an exceptional level of private debt. There's never been an economy in history that's had so much private debt. Britain and America today lead the world in the indebtedness of the household sector and the banking sector and the corporate sector. But debt is debt; it doesn't even matter if it's household debt or government. Once it gets to a certain level, there is a problem.

In the past, when excessive debt burdens were accumulated by government, they tended to do one of two things: either they defaulted--this is the Argentine solution--where you say, "Ah, I'm sorry, I'm afraid we're not going to be able to meet the interest payments this month, and never again will we make the interest payments."

The other scenario is inflation, where the real debt burden is eroded because the money that it's denominated in loses value.

I don't think we're really going to be out of the woods here until something of that sort happens to the huge debt burdens of the U.S. economy. Either these debts will have to be fundamentally written off in some way, or inflation will have to reduce the real burden.

Don't either of those scenarios spell the end of America as the world's unrivalled superpower?

Well, it certainly will be extremely painful. And that is why we have to look very closely at the attitude of the foreign creditors, because the U.S. owes the rest of the world a lot of money. Half the federal debt is held by foreigners. And if the U.S. either defaults on debt or allows the dollar to depreciate, the rest of the world is going to say, "Wait a second, you just screwed us." And that's, I think, the moment at which the United States experiences the British experience--when, in the dark days of the 60s and 70s, Britain fundamentally lost its credibility and ceased to be a financial great power. The I.M.F. had to come in, and the pound plunged to unheard-of depths.

House Passes Bill; Herseth-Sandlin Votes Yes

The House has voted for the debt bill commonly known as the "stimulus package."  Roll call here.  Nine Seven Democrats voted "no." Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin was not one of them.  She voted yes on the 1000+ page monstrosity that no one has read.  In 2010, no matter what office she is running for, she will point out all the money that she got for the people of South Dakota.  We will then re-elect her.  Hey, who doesn't like taking money from other people and giving to ourselves, even if those other people are our children?  Here is House Minority Leader John Boehner tilting at windmills:

Natural Rights and Natural Selection

The local blogosphere is celebrating Lincoln's bicentennial. I highly recommend my colleague, Professor Schaff's post, and that of Professor Newquist.

Esteemed reader Vic sends us this note:

Professor Schaff:

In your commentary entitled "Vindicating Lincoln"… you say in part:

It seems the central lesson learned from Lincoln is this: man has by nature certain natural rights, therefore there are limits to the modern project of democracy and science.  This project is only just in so far as it has a proper understanding of man's nature and acts appropriately.  Basing one's politics on nature provides a firm grounding, limits the sometimes Utopian projects of men, and has the additional virtue of actually being true.  If we start from the notion that man is a creature with language and reason, that he has the ability to know himself and make himself known to others through speech, then he must be treated as one to be reasoned with, not one to simply rule over as master as one does a dog. 

I consider reference to "natural rights", to be utterly puzzling.  If Charles Darwin was right -- that humans are the result of millions of years of evolution, a process by which they came out of the jungle -- where and when during that long process did "natural rights" for humans ensue?  I suggest that Hamlet was right when he said that there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

This wonderful note deserves as wonderful an answer as we can give it. I defer to Professor Schaff on Lincoln, though we have no disagreements regarding the rail splitter. On the question of the relationship between natural right and natural selection, I claim some small expertise.

To begin with, Hamlet was wrong. Someone might conceivably think it's a good idea to switch on a lamp, remove the bulb, and stick his tongue in the socket, but thinking it's good doesn't make it so. The health of the body provides one standard for distinguishing what is good from what is bad. Exercise and a sensible diet are good; drinking a gallon of whiskey before breakfast every day is bad. It doesn't matter what one thinks about such things. People often get it tragically wrong. What matters is what does and does not promote health.

Just as the human body comes to be by nature, so also human beings form societies and governments by nature. We do so not only because it is very difficult to live a good life outside such societies, but because it is almost impossible even to live a human life in isolation. We can form political societies because we are, again by nature, morally responsible creatures.

Vic asks when during the long process of evolution did natural rights emerge? I answer: pretty early, when we acquired a natural recognition of reciprocity. The earliest human societies were small, and evidence suggests that they were remarkably egalitarian. Each member of the tribe understood that he owed obligations to the group and to individual partners, and they owed him obligations in return. It is possible that the evolution of moral capacity drove the evolution of the human mind, for one needs a pretty sophisticated brain to keep track of the web of contracts that make up even the simplest community. Likewise the range of moral passions seem to fit this story. Righteous indignation is bred into us by natural selection.

With the rise of cities came the political apparatus that made possible the massive and pervasive exploitation of the many by the few. But because the roots of political evolution lay in the natural human capacity for moral responsibility, which all human beings share, the exploiters needed an argument to justify their exploitation. We have a right to dominion because our ancestors were Gods and theirs were not; or because our people are the master race; or because we possess the true Marxist science, etc., etc. The trouble is, all these claims are unfounded.

The American regime was based on a simple recognition of that fact: that all the claims of one human being to rule another without the other's consent were based on lies. Once that is seen to be true, and I believe that it is true, there is no legitimate alternative but a regime based on consent.

Darwinism helps us understand how morality, like language and families, emerged in the long history of our species. Lincoln was right about natural rights. Darwinism would confirm that.

Haste and Waste

Famously Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #1:

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

One sees this notion echoed frequently amongst the Founders.  The problem of democracy, history and experience taught them, was not that democracies acted too slowly, but that they acted too quickly, without reflection and choice.

Tomorrow, apparently, the House of Representatives will begin debate on a bill that nobody has read.  An agreement made behind closed doors without Republican input (there goes that vaunted bi-partisanship) will be debated only hours after having been made public.  It's almost like they don't want anyone to know the content of the bill they are voting on. 

We must get the bill passed quickly, we are told, because the situation is so dire.  But as James Glassman argues, the history and current economic consensus regarding the stimulus effect of fiscal policy suggests the impact of this bill will be minimal.  Glassman's piece is a tour de force.  Read the whole thing.  Here is the summation.

Stimulus—that is, fiscal intervention with the express purpose of speeding up the normal regenerative process that Grant describes—is unnecessary and almost certainly harmful, a policy based on hubris and anxiety, rather than on history and good sense. Under such circumstances, the proper way to analyze discrete proposals today for spending or taxing is on their own merits, not on their supposed ability to stimulate something else. There may, in fact, be a good reason for government to spend billions of dollars today on building highways, and it has nothing to do with stimulus. It is that long-term interest rates are at historic lows and that the right highways can boost the economy in the long term. There also may be a good reason, again far apart from stimulus, for revising the tax code and reforming Social Security and Medicare. It is that Americans now understand that the economic future is not so assured as they believed a couple of years ago, and it is time for decisions to be made—in a manner careful, sensible, and unstimulated.

Update: From Sundries Shack:

It is now 7 PM and the Democrats in Congress have yet to give their Republican counterparts a copy of the final Stimulus Bill for them to read. Steny Hoyer says that the House is going to move toward a vote starting at 9 AM tomorrow.

Today’s version of the bill clocks in at 1,434 pages and that’s not the final version. What Congress will likely vote on tomorrow (because President Obama has practically demanded that he sign it on Monday) is likely going to be larger.

There is no chance in the world that any member of Congress is going to be able to read the bill by morning unless they are a trained speed reader. Even then, they’re not going to know the full ramifications of what the bill contains.

Judd Greg withdraws from Commerce Nomination

New York Times: Senior New Hampshire Senator Judd Greg is the second Obama pick for Commerce Secretary to withdraw his name.  Unlike Bill Richardson, who withdrew due to ethical questions, Judd was a Republican who apparently concluded that he had irreconcilable differences with the President over economic policy. 

It was shrewd of Obama to pick Judd, thus taking a very competent Republican out of the Senate and putting him in a relatively unimportant post.  I think Judd was right to conclude that he would not be a good fit for the Obama administration in that capacity. 

Lincoln & Darwin

My latest piece in the American News:

On February 12th, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky.  On that same day, in Shropshire County, England, Charles Darwin was first exposed to the light of day.  Think of it one of God’s little jokes.  The two were not much alike.  Darwin was born to comfortable wealth and good prospects, among which was a first class education.  Lincoln was famously born in the most modest circumstances to parents of undistinguished families.  He was altogether self-educated.  The two of them managed to make deeper impressions in the hard wax of human history than any of their contemporaries. 

Lincoln saved the United States from the two greatest perils it ever faced.  In 1858 he ran for the position of United States Senator in opposition to Stephen Douglas.  Douglas was prochoice on the question of slavery.  He thought that the way to resolve the controversy over the extension of slavery was to adopt an attitude of moral indifference toward the issue.  Let the people of each state decide for themselves whether they would allow the enslavement of Black Africans, or not.  Democracy and liberty, for White people, is what the United States is all about. 

Lincoln insisted that slavery was in direct contradiction to the principles of the American founding.  Why do the people of Illinois or Missouri, or the people of the United States have a right to govern themselves?  Because all human beings have a right to govern themselves.  That is what the phrase “all men are created equal” means.  Douglas insisted that the people of Kentucky were good enough to govern a few Negroes.  Lincoln replied that no man was good enough to govern another without that other’s consent. 

Lincoln lost the Senate race, but two years later he was elected President.  That meant that the United States would not surrender its commitment to the idea of human liberty.  Thus the first great peril was resolved.  The second, secession, was resolved by war.  Lincoln argued that the United States was created by the whole people and could only be dissolved by the whole people, not by a part of the people living in the South.  By means of intelligence, will, and Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln managed to save the Union.  Lest one think that his greatness was a merely American matter, ask yourself who would have opposed the great totalitarian menaces of the Twentieth Century if America had been divided, or if it was no longer committed to its democratic and liberal principles. 

Charles Darwin was a scientist, not a statesman.  He achieved the most important advance in human thought in the last two centuries by explaining how the various species came to be and how they are preserved in the forms we know them.  The principle was very simple: an organism that is better adapted to its environment than its siblings and cousins leaves behind more offspring.  As organisms colonize new environments, they slowly diverge into distinct species.  This is what the Biblical phrase “be fruitful and multiply” means, once Darwin points out that all organisms are not equally fruitful, and some multiply faster than others. 

It is true that Darwin’s idea can be abused.  It has been used to justify horrible things like eugenics, the practice of sterilizing less favored people, on the grounds that we are “improving the species.”  But any true idea can be abused, as Stephen Douglas abused the idea of democracy to justify an acceptance of slavery.  In fact, Darwin’s idea supports Lincoln’s principles.  The human species has diverged very far from our nearest simian relatives.  We have achieved a moral and intellectual capacity that dwarfs anything else in nature.  This is the basis of a specific set of human rights.  For that same reason, all human beings, regardless of color or race, share a common descent.  If not brothers and sisters, we are truly cousins at the very least. 

Darwin, like Lincoln, was fiercely opposed to slavery.  If you believe that all human beings are kin, what else can you think?  When the Creator arranged for Lincoln and Darwin to be born on the same day, he was probably chuckling.  But He was also making a serious point. 

Vindicating Lincoln

Today is the bicentennial of the birth of our greatest president, and perhaps greatest American, Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln's biography makes him the prototypical American.  Born to humble circumstances, by his own efforts he educates himself and liberates himself from poverty and becomes a highly successful lawyer and statesman.  His interest in science and technology is indicative of the American ingenuity that sets us apart as a people.  Lincoln is still the only president with a patent (for an invention to help riverboats over shallows and obstructions).  And obviously as president during the Civil War, Lincoln is the central figure in that effort to maintain the Union, the principles on which she stands, and prove again to the world that decent free government is possible.

I can recommend Thomas Krannawitter's recent Vindicating Lincoln as a solid defense of Lincoln and his principles against his detractors on the libertarian right and radical left.  While Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Dividedremains the preeminent work on Lincoln's political thought, Krannawitter's book may be more accessible to a lay audience. 

It seems the central lesson learned from Lincoln is this: man has by nature certain natural rights, therefore there are limits to the modern project of democracy and science.  This project is only just in so far as it has a proper understanding of man's nature and acts appropriately.  Basing one's politics on nature provides a firm grounding, limits the sometimes Utopian projects of men, and has the additional virtue of actually being true.  If we start from the notion that man is a creature with language and reason, that he has the ability to know himself and make himself known to others through speech, then he must be treated as one to be reasoned with, not one to simply rule over as master as one does a dog. 

Of course, since man is the animal with speech, it also means that unlike other animals man can lie to others and to himself.  But that is a topic for another day. For now, Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln!

Mad Hatter Economics

I am not surprised by the Obama Administration's rocky start. Running the only superpower is a very difficult job in the best of circumstances. Obama is not enjoying the best of circumstances. The entire world is suffering from the current economic crisis. Maybe this is all George W.'s fault, as Todd Epp seems to think (if "think" is the right word).

But in fact, the current situation in the U.S., at least, is about what it was when Ronald Reagan came into office. Unemployment has not yet reached the peak it reached in the early eighties, and won't, according to Obama's economic advisers. And yet we are now on the point of spending about a trillion and a half dollars on a single piece of legislation. That's on top of almost a trillion we spent on the bank bailout. Of course, all that spending will be worth it if it gets us out of recession sooner. The only way to pay back debt is to make money. But all this money has to be paid back, one way or another. That means we start in a deeper hole when Obama turns to fixing the American health care system, or fixing the major entitlement programs.

Obama might have used some of his transition time to ensure that the stimulus bill contained nothing but stimulus, and not billions of addition spending. If he had done that, he wouldn't be in the tenuous position he is in now. The stimulus bill is about as popular as Dubya was in his worst days.

The major problem I had with the Obama campaign was that it was long on slogans and short on substance. When Reagan ran in 1980, everyone had a pretty good idea what he would do and he did it. It was very had to guess from Obama's shifting campaign rhetoric what he would do when he got to the White House. His opponents worried that he was going to do X, and his followers assumed that he was going to do X, but what if X had no content?

Today Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled the Obama plan for resuscitating the American financial system.

Administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion — $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.

Well, okay, that's two trillion more. Great. And note that "print money" thing. That's inflation. That' sounds pretty bad to me, but the problem is in the details.

There weren't any details. In this moment of "we've got to do something now," the financial sector was waiting to find out what, exactly, we will be doing. It didn't find out. The results were predictable.

The strength stocks showed last week vanished on Tuesday after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did little to slake traders' thirst for details on the U.S.'s plans to aid ailing financial institutions.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 381.99 points, or 4.6%, to 7888.88. Bank of America was its weakest stock, dropping 19%, and Citigroup fell 15%. But all 30 of the blue-chip average's components ended in the red. The Dow is down 10% for the year to date and within 4.5% of its five-and-a-half year closing low of 7552 on Nov. 20.

It's one thing to wonder about the details during a campaign. It's another thing to be waiting for them now. Maybe the Obama Administration is congenitally incapable of actually making policy. Let's hope not. Meanwhile we are still waiting.

"the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s"

On a procedural vote, Tim Johnson votes to continue the march towards a spending package meant to stimulate the economy.  John Thune votes no.  Read the news story here.  Here is how Harvard economist Robert Barro describes the bill:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much.

Meanwhile, here is a story about Blue Dog Democrat Heath Schuler's opposition to the bill.  Here is how a real Blue Dog acts:

Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler said Monday that his party's leadership on Capitol Hill has failed to pursue a bipartisan compromise to a costly economic stimulus package, arguing that a lack of Republican support is eroding the program's credibility.

The conservative Democrat, who represents a western North Carolina district, was one of a handful in his party to oppose the stimulus package when the House voted on it two weeks ago. He said Democratic leaders in Congress haven't made any effort to hear his concerns or assuage his fears about the spending bill since the vote. (snip)

He said the package should focus more on infrastructure spending that can create jobs and also have lasting benefits. On the other hand, he also questioned the size of the package, saying that it would leave the nation with a debt burden.

Daschle and the Legacy of Embarrassment

Stephen Amidon in the New York Times writes:

I got to thinking about that brush when I read that a colleague of Tom Daschle had said that his tax woes — not to mention the lucrative private-sector temptations he gave into — may have stemmed from his desire to make enough money to lay a fat nest egg for his children.

It is hard to see how riding in a free limo benefits future generations, but even if I give Mr. Daschle the benefit of the doubt, I cannot help but note the paradox here. A man’s desire to provide his progeny with a big score has resulted in him saddling them with a very different sort of inheritance — a legacy of embarrassment.

Instead of being remembered as the savior of the nation’s health care system or even as just a middling health secretary, their father will now forever be known as the guy who hitched a ride with some private-equity hot rodders and then neglected to chip in for the gas. Most sons and daughters I know would gladly forgo a portion of their birthright in order to be invited to pool parties at the Obama White House and not to have a dad serving as fodder for late-night television wisecracks.

Also see Frank Rich's piece in the Times, who notes the "populist rage coursing through America" may well "maim the president's best-laid plans."

Iraq Election & Iraqi War Deaths

My good friend and nemesis-in-chief, BB, posts one of his long comments in reply to my last piece on the Iraqi election. He focuses on evidence of Iraqi deaths due to violence in order to refute my contention that the recent election was a sign of victory in Iraq. That seems to me to confuse two questions: whether the war was good policy in the first place (on which I have taken no position), and whether we have won it (which I say we have). I don't know how to say whether this war was "worth it," but I do know how to say that it was better to win it than to lose it.

But let's look at BB's case. The long quote he posts is typical of MSM reporting on the human costs of the war: list every possible death and lay them all at the feet of Dubya. This is not an unreasonable stance. If Bush hadn't invaded, Muqtada Al-Sadr would never have had the chance to kill so many of his countrymen. So I guess you can say Bush was responsible for all the carnage committed by Al-Sadr, Al Qaeda, etc., in Iraq. But that carries a judgment that is never stated: that Saddam's tyranny was a good thing because it kept the Iraqis from killing each other. That's a harsh judgment, but it might be a sound one. Strange that BB and others who have to believe it, to believe the other things they believe, never seem to want to actually say or even think it.

But it is also telling that BB's quote relied heavily on the Lancet study of Iraqi war fatalities. It is from this source alone that BB gets his favorite stat (Killing over 2% of a countries population is not the path to freedom!). BB often accuses me of being ignorant of a lot of really important things. Strange that he doesn't know that the Lancet study has been totally discredited. The National Journal (no right wing rag, that one), deeply embarrassed Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals, by taking apart the study. You can read a summary of this story in a post of mine last January. Let me summarize it:

The study published in Lancet was based on surveys of a mere 47 "clusters" of households. It worked like an opinion poll, which is not an accepted method in this kind of research. Exactly which households were surveyed, where they were, and how they were selected is unknown. That's because the authors of the study refused to turn over their basic data when the study was questioned. A refusal to reveal the data on which a study is based is one of the surest signs of academic incompetence, if not outright fraud. If all that weren't enough, it turns out that all the data was gathered by a former member of the Saddam regime, Riyadh Lafta. It was his job, back when his boss wasn't hiding in a spider hole, or dead, to make a case that the sanctions on Iraq needed to be lifted because they were killing children. In other words, he was a propaganda minister for Saddam. The study had a number of American coauthors, but apparently they exercised no supervision over Lafta while the data was gathered.

This is the kind of research that critics of the war are willing to accept without question. After all, if your one criteria of truth is "Bush = Bad," what more do you need? I don't know whether the Iraq war was the right thing to do at the time. I have my doubts. I don't know whether it was worth the costs in lives and treasure, or even how to try to answer that question. But I do think that what is going on right now before our eyes, millions of Iraqis freely voting, is more reliable than a study rigged by one of Saddam's creatures. I am also sure that the humiliation of George W. Bush, however much that might satisfy the emotional needs of a lot of Americans, is less important than the promise of democracy in Iraq.

Join The Party

On Monday the Senate Local Government committee will hold a hearing on SB 157, a bill to allow registered independents a vote in primary elections. 

There are a lot of political sciencey reasons to oppose this bill, but one can sum it up by asking why those who aren't members of a political party should be allowed to vote in a primary election.  The whole purpose of a primary is for parties to select their nominees.  Why should a party decision be influenced by those who aren't even members?  If an independent is so passionate about politics, he should join a party and influence it to better mirror his views.  If he is unwilling to join a party, he should not help in making party decisions. 

"The Fierce Urgency of Pork"

Charles Krauthammer on the debt bill before Congress:

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks

Anyone who votes for the Obama/Pelosi/Reid big spending bill has no business calling himself or herself fiscally responsible. 

Thune: Give The People The Money, Not The Government

Here's the latest proposal by Sen. Thune in a last ditch effort to interject some sanity into the government debt bill currently being debated in Washington, D.C.:

February 6th, 2009- Washington, D.C. - Senator John Thune today introduced an across-the-board middle class tax rebate amendment (S. AMDT #538) to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Senator Thune's amendment would strike the entire $936 billion Senate stimulus bill and replace it with a $936 billion across-the-board-middle-class tax rebate for 182 million Americans. The amendment would result in a tax rebate of $5,143 for single filers and $10,286 for married couples who file jointly. Eligibility is capped for all tax filers at 2007 adjusted gross income of $250,000.

Read the whole press release here.  I shall post the video of Thune's floor speech below.  Truth be told, this idea is not much better than the Democrat's spending bill, although it has a few virtues.  For one, if we are going to spend an additional trillion dollars, we might as well let the people do it themselves.  While it is something of a Republican trope, it is probably true in this instance that the people will spend the money more wisely than the government.  There is the additional benefit that Thune's proposal does not create more bureaucracy to suck up public money.  Thune's plan also would not set a new baseline for spending.  One of my fears regarding the Democrat plan is that next year they will demand the exact same level of spending and denounce as cruel and heartless anyone who wants to return the previous baseline.  In other words, Democrats don't see this as a one time budget supplemental, but as a permanent increase in government spending. 

Thune's proposal also has the value of honesty, which on the merits is why we shouldn't support it.  Thune's idea is far more upfront that we are taking money from future generations to give to ourselves.  It's that simple.  I can't support any additional debt heaped on to future generations, but at least Thune's plan is transparent.  And although Thune, like everyone else, seems to labor under the false belief that it is consumer spending that drives the economy (rather than productivity), at least his bill would provide immediate action without adding to bureaucracy, as opposed to the Democrat bill, which will have no immediate effect as most of the spending will not take place for at least two years. 

This post is not intended as a knock against Sen. Thune.  This proposal is lightyears better than the worse than useless Democrat alternative.  Here's Thune defending his plan:

 

 

Bush’s Legacy: the Election in Iraq

The Iraq war became the Albatross around the neck of the Bush Administration, and the Republican Party as a whole. It proved to be a heavy burden indeed. But if Bush has to take the blame for the expense, loss of life, and other terrible things that war brings with it, he also gets the credit for what went right.

The Iraqis just conducted a peaceful, orderly election. You would hardly know it for all the attention that the press has given it. Here is Kimberley Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan in the Wall Street Journal:

When the surge in Iraq began in January 2007, no one imagined that two years later Iraq would plan and conduct provincial elections with limited Coalition assistance and presence, that those elections would proceed smoothly and peacefully, and that the United Nations special envoy would be able to certify its legitimacy immediately. Nor could anyone have dreamt that the news story would be not the smoothness and peacefulness of the polling, but its results and the prospects they offer for political progress in Iraq.

I would add that, when the Twin Towers fell, it would have been hard to imagine that, eight years later, there would be a legitimate and fully functional election in Iraq. It is perhaps an open question whether a non-democratic government can adequately do what governments are for: serve the interests of the governed. But it's not a very practical question. Democracy is the only form of government that forces the people in power to serve the people as a whole. For most if not all states, the achievement of a functioning democracy and the achievement of even a minimally successful government go hand in hand.

It has been an open question whether real democracy is compatible with Islam. Turkey manages it, but one has had to wonder whether this might be a national idiosyncrasy. Last week's election in Iraq suggests otherwise. The Iraqi government managed the election largely on its own, without any build up of American forces. People brought their children with them to vote. No bombs went off.

Even better was the outcome. One fear haunting our policy has been that democracy in Islamic countries would only mean the victory of militant Islamists. In many places, that might be true. But it wasn't true in this place, this time round.

Iraqi voters chose nationalist, secularist parties over religious parties by a wide margin. In the mostly Shiite south, candidates associated with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party appear to have gained significantly. This outcome is noteworthy because Dawa came to power in the 2005 elections with virtually no grass-roots support or organization. Few would have predicted Mr. Maliki's electoral success even a year ago.

Moqtada al-Sadr, by contrast, relied on grass-roots support for his movement and seemed poised to dominate elections in the south a year ago. But he lost much of his popular support when Iraqi Security Forces defeated his militias in Basra, Baghdad and Maysan in June 2008. The door was open for the well-organized Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council (ISCI), the clerically dominated party that had controlled many important provincial governorships and councils in the south. Yet Iraqis voted instead for Mr. Maliki's coalition or for the secular Shiite coalition of former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

When Iraq held its last national elections, circumstances were dire. Militants had threatened the lives of everyone who dared to vote, but the Iraqi people defied them. One of my favorite photos of the decade shows an Iraqi woman, hooded and veiled, proudly holding her purple finger aloft. That was proof that she had voted.

The American occupation of Iraq concentrated the mind of Al Qaeda and other murderous nihilists in the region. We were told that our invasion of Iraq was a great recruiting tool for the terrorists. Well, they recruited and deployed. George W. Bush, and the people of Iraq, met them and defeated them. The fruits of that victory may be many, but a big ripe one is an Iraq election unstained by fear. Bush 43 may have a lot of regrets, but he has at least one big thing to be satisfied by. Journalist used to ask, wringing their hands and grinding their teeth, what could victory in Iraq look like? This would be it.

Here is a short note from friend and reader Gene, who obviously has the art of short note writing. 

Professor, I thought I'd pass on my time tested method of calculating the taxes I owe.  The only area I have some discretion is calculating the value of goods I donate to charity.  I take a few liberties in this area and I sleep on it--if I sleep well the next night I take a larger deduction and so forth until I don't sleep well and then I back out my last change.  I'm obviously a light sleeper since I haven't been audited in 47 years.  I think Daschle could sleep through a tornado.  I even thought of taking a deduction for my old underwear like Bill Clinton does--I've taken deductions for a lot of strange items but I couldn't go there.

Here a cute bumper sticker quiz.  I'm a libertarian conservative which is probably about 80% true.

http://www.fightliberals.com/Inside-the-Book/What-Breed-of-Conservative-Are-You.htm

Take care,  Gene

Thanks, Gene.  I am guessing that Senator Daschle hasn't slept all that well lately.  May we all dream peacefully tonight.  

Blue Dog Democrats Pushing Back Against Stimulus Bill

The Hill:

Conservative Democrats in the House are pushing back against their leaders’ economic stimulus plan even as President Obama steps up his push for the spending package.

The leadership of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats concerned about the federal deficit, sent an open letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Thursday complaining about the size of the House bill and supporting a Senate effort to toss out much of the spending.

“We believe that’s a highly worthwhile goal, and that there are additional provisions that would be better left for consideration in regular order,” said the letter, signed by Blue Dog leader Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) and the rest of the Blue Dog leadership.

Eleven Democrats voted against the stimulus package in the House, most of them Blue Dogs from conservative districts bothered by the spending. The letter said that many others voted for it because they expected it to be trimmed back in the Senate or in the conference committee that will hammer out the final package.

Obama’s Very Bad No Good Week

It's been a tough week for The One. Tom Daschle's dismay was the big screw up that knocked his ministry well off-kilter. Not only was his team unaware or unconcerned about Daschle's troubles, they didn't have a backup plan. There was no second name on the list. Apparently they took for granted the CW that Daschle was bullet proof. That mistake has been made before.

But it is dawning on everyone that a lot of the apostles that have taken up their fishing gear to follow The One have previously undeclared baggage. Timothy Geithner made it to his treasury post, but not without acquiring a permanent footnote: "these guys want to raise our taxes? Of course, that's because they don't pay them!" Fair or not, the pop-up window will pop up frequently for as long as Geithner is on the job. And then there is Nancy Killefer, whom Obama tapped to be his "Performance Czar." She pulled out when she saw the wreckage ahead of her, but not before she got on the tax problem list. Oh, and Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-Calif.), Obama's pick for Labor Secretary, who doesn't have a tax problem but is married to one. She also seems to have neglected to report some of lobbying ties.

If all this weren't enough, Uber-Democrat Charlie Wrangle seems to have been cheating on his taxes for about 30 years. That's hardly Obama's fault, but it's still Obama's problem. It makes it look like the rot is deep into the foundations of the Democratic Congress.   From the New York Times:

Representative Charles B. Rangel’s financial disclosure forms had at least 28 omissions in the past 30 years and failed to account for what became of more than $239,000 in assets, according to a report issued Wednesday by a private government-ethics group.

Despite Congressional rules that require members to list the purchase or sale of any assets, Mr. Rangel accumulated from $239,026 to $831,000 in assets that were not listed in subsequent reports, according to the report by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates greater transparency by elected officials.

Lawyers for Mr. Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem whose personal finances and fund-raising are being investigated by the House ethics committee, or Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, have said that sloppy bookkeeping led him to file incomplete or inaccurate financial disclosure forms.

None of this surprises or particularly offends me. Quite the opposite: I am a conservative, which means that I expect human beings to be persistently problematic. When my party wins, I am delighted but not optimistic. When my party loses, I prepare myself to be entertained. From what I have seen so far, this is change I can believe in.

South Dakota Senators Vote On Religious Freedom

From the office of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) (via NRO):

For Immediate Release: February 5, 2009
Office of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)

Democrats Vote to Discriminate Against Students of Faith

Stimulus bans universities and colleges from using funds to renovate buildings where students engage in “religious worship”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) made the following statement after Democrats voted 43-54 against his amendment to strike language from the economic stimulus bill that discriminates against students of faith. Senator DeMint’s amendment would have eliminated a provision that bans any university or college receiving funds to renovate buildings, from allowing “sectarian instruction” or “religious worship” within the facility. This would in effect bar use of campus buildings for groups like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Catholic Student Ministries, Hillel, and other religious organizations.

See the roll call here.  John Thune voted for this amendment, Tim Johnson against.

The Great Repression

Apropos my post below, Niall Ferguson at Huffington Post:

The harsh reality that is being repressed is this: the Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Average household sector debt has reached 141 per cent of disposable income in the United States and 177 per cent in the United Kingdom. Worst of all are the banks. Some of the best-known names in American and European finance have balance sheets forty, sixty or even a hundred times the size of their capital. Average U.S. investment bank leverage was above 25 to 1 at the end of 2008. Eurozone bank leverage was more than 30 to 1. British bank balance sheets are equal to a staggering 440 per cent of gross domestic product

The delusion that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt is at the heart of the Great Repression. Yet that is precisely what most governments currently propose to do.

It really does begger belief that we have a president and a pliant Congress (or is that a Congress and a pliant president?) who eagerly wish to pass perhaps the most foolish bill in our nation's history.  Already drowning it debt, only a fool believes the solution is more debt.  But this we will do, our South Dakota Democrats in Congress will vote for it, they will come back to South Dakota and tell us of all the federal money they got placed in this massive debt bill, and then we will re-elect them.  After all, who gives a crap if we are bankrupting our children?  We want money and our elected officials want votes.  Who has time for discipline? 

The Stimulus Abomination

My latest in the American News:

Washington leaders are set to perpetuate the bad fiscal policies of recent years. Not exactly change you can believe in.

The most deadly pathogen in our economy is the virus of debt. Americans have spent years, decades even, amassing mountains of debt trying to get something for nothing. Unwilling to live within our means, we have built a modern society on the quicksand of debt and now we are sinking.

Last year our federal debt was about $9 trillion. Projections are already for an unprecedented $1 trillion deficit in the current fiscal year. President Barack Obama and Congress advocate an additional $1 trillion of deficit spending spread out over the next several years.

The belief is that this additional spending will “stimulate” the economy. Government spending, the theory holds, will put people to work and provide a “multiplier effect” as the income earned by these folks gets spent on new purchases. But a study by Harvard economist Robert Barro found the multiplier effect to be “insignificantly different from zero.”

The Congressional Budget Office reports that most of the spending proposed by Congress won't hit the economy for years. So even if the stimulus package creates jobs, we won't see these until Obama's first term is nearly over.

The point of an economy is not to create jobs. As Congressman Ron Paul notes, the point of an economy is to be productive. The government could hire people to dig holes and then fill them in, but that won't make us any wealthier as nothing is actually being produced. Our leaders propose creating make-work jobs that will produce no wealth.

Also, the government must take a dollar for every dollar it spends. Because raising taxes by a trillion dollars is both politically and economically unwise, we will fund this new spending by printing money and by debt.

The printing of money leads to inflation. We all will eventually pay for this government spending through higher prices. Further, it goes without saying that debt must be paid back someday. Our posterity will face crushing taxes to pay for our mountainous debt, taken on because we will damn future generations to avoid difficult choices.

A lesson can be learned from the early 1980s. When faced with a slumping economy, newly elected President Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volker agreed that a tight monetary policy was needed to squeeze high inflation out of the economy. This policy virtually guaranteed a recession, but they correctly calculated that this short-pain was worth the long-term benefit.

Today we are proposing flawed policies in a mad attempt to avoid serious recession. If we want economic stimulus, we'd be much better off slashing the corporate and capital gains tax rates to stimulate private investment. Instead, our leaders propose continuing the very practice of living beyond our means that got us in this mess in the first place, devaluing our currency and making us more dependent on the foreign holders of our public debt in the process.

We can guess Republican John Thune will give the Democrat proposals a cool reception, although recent history gives us cause to question Republican fiscal responsibility. Will Democrats Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Tim Johnson live up to their moderate, fiscally responsible reputations and vote against squandering our children's inheritance? Or will marching in step with their party take precedence?

The Daschle Problem

David Broder writing in the Washington Post today calls "the Daschle fiasco is the worst embarrassment Obama has suffered since winning the election."  Read the whole thing.

Also see this article from Time entitled "Daschle's Problems: When Is a Lobbyist Not a Lobbyist?"

Obama and Ethics

Washington Times:

If we read between the lines of Mr. Obama’s ethics rules, there is indeed some rhyme and reason. If one is deemed highly talented, then almost any ill deed can be glossed over: “Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged. He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake, and this decision, cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country, from his years in the military to his decades of public service,” Mr. Obama said. However, anyone with genuine standards would argue that indeed such a transgression does diminish a citizen’s standing, regardless of past accomplishments.

Needless to say, in the old evil empire of the Bush administration, a nominee who failed to tip a waitress enough would be subject to confirmation rejection. In the bright new Obama administration it is a wonder that Rep. Charles Rangel hasn’t been appointed ethics czar.

Obama Calls Daschle Pick a "screw up"

The Washington Post:

President Obama acknowledged yesterday that he had "made a mistake" in trying to exempt some candidates for positions in his administration from strict ethics standards and accepted the withdrawal of two top nominees, including former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle, in the first major setback of his young presidency.

Obama officials had sought a seamless transition, nominating most of his Cabinet at record pace and taking office ready to implement a raft of new policies. His reversal yesterday suggested that speed may have come at a cost, and that Obama, despite the overwhelming popularity he had upon taking office and the major challenges facing the nation, will not be spared from the same kind of scrutiny his predecessors have faced.

In jettisoning one of his closest and earliest political allies, the president appeared eager to make a course correction after days of criticism that his administration was not abiding by its own stated ethical standards and questions about his ability to bring change to the capital.

"Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely. I'm willing to take my lumps," Obama told NBC's Brian Williams, one of five interviews he gave yesterday afternoon. Obama told the network anchors that there are "not two sets of rules" for people, and said that average taxpayers deserve to have public officials who pay their taxes on time.

Daschle's exit from consideration to lead the Department of Health and Human Services after a firestorm over his failure to pay $146,000 in taxes on time came as a shock to the president's supporters in Washington. Just a day earlier, Obama had pledged his full support for the former Democratic Senate leader who was widely expected to be confirmed. And just hours before Daschle bowed out, Nancy Killefer, Obama's nominee for the newly created position of chief performance officer, also stepped aside because of a tax problem.

The Obama administration has been off to a rough start after running a brilliant campaign.  Nothing he can't recover from yet, but they'd better get it figured out quick or it will be a long four years.

UPDATE:  I've changed the title to more accurately reflect Obama's remark; my headline before made it sound like Obama was issuing a personal insult to Daschle, which is clearly not the case.

Dasched Ambitions

For obvious reasons, this is a topic of great interest in South Dakota, and I have received a lot of notes and comments. First, contrary to what I said in my last post, my SDP colleague Jason did use the words "tax fraud" in the title of one of his several posts on the Daschle tax story. I could say that this was not quite an accusation, but I won't weasel out. I concede the point, with apologies, to Professor Newquist, Lisa, and AI. It was SDP and not David Newquist who was guilty of exaggeration on that point. Perhaps if I were being nominated for something I would now have to withdraw, in order to avoid distractions. Anyway, I appreciate the comments.

The question was never whether Daschle committed tax fraud, which I assume to be a felony (I am no attorney). I gather this is a case of negligence, which can be resolved by paying up. My new Keloland colleague, Doug Wiken (welcome aboard Doug!) adds a comment to my post.

I guess I assumed Daschle was too smart to get caught in something like this after having watched what happened to a few Clinton appointees with "nanny gate", etc. And another appointee or two of Obama's did as well. This might be (a big might be) a case of when is a gift not a gift and when is a gift taxable or not. My guess is that Obama is having the appointees records gone through with a fine comb compared to previous administrations since he won one of his first elections by carefully checking nomination petitions for phony signatures…

That is a very important point: why wasn't Daschle smart enough to avoid something like this? I can't agree about Obama's "fine comb," since Senator Daschle is one of three major appointees who have embarrassed the incoming Administration with their tax troubles, and he is the second of these nominees to withdraw. Tim Geithner survived and is now Treasury Secretary. I suspect that Daschle might have survived as well, had he been the only nominee to face this sort of problem. Geithner benefited from first exposure.

But the best comparison of the Geithner/Daschle cases I have yet seen was by Christopher Beam in Slate (no right wing organ, that, though I don't know if it meets Professor Newquist's standard for real journalism).

On the surface, Daschle's screw-up looks a lot like Geithner's. Both men underestimated how much they owed—or simply underpaid. Both situations involve gray areas or confusing aspects of the elaborate U.S. tax code. And, of course, both blamed their accountants…

One big difference is the nature of the oversights. Geithner's mistake was procedural—he reported income incorrectly—whereas Daschle's was substantive—he failed to report some income at all… Sure, there's a gray area around what constitutes a gift or a fringe benefit (on which you don't have to pay taxes) and a business transaction (on which you do). But the car service provided by InterMedia Advisors, for which Daschle sat on the board and earned more than $2 million in consulting fees, doesn't seem particularly ambiguous. "Under Section 132 of the Internal Revenue Code, the value of transportation services provided for personal use must be included in income," the finance committee reported last Friday. "Senator Daschle estimated that he used the car and driver 80 percent for personal use and 20 percent for business."

Even less gray is the $80,000 of consulting income Daschle simply failed to report. He's got a decent excuse—InterMedia screwed up its calculations and didn't include that income in its annual statement. But the disparity should have been clear in Daschle's books. (Apparently the IRS agrees: While the service didn't penalize Geithner, it did slap Daschle with fines.)

But the trickiest question for Daschle is one of judgment. If he had been using the car since 2005, why did it only occur to him to report it in 2008? If he makes it to a committee hearing, that will be the question of the day. Politicians tend to get religion as confirmation hearings approach. Did that happen with Daschle?

If Beam's analysis is correct, Daschle's negligence is objectively worse than Geithner's, and may explain why his support in Congress and the media collapsed. But surely that last point is more important. Daschle's behavior suggests that he knew his tax record was a liability as soon as he was picked for the HHS post. Surely he had ambitions before that point, so why did he jeopardize them for a paltry hundred grand plus (more than Aberdeen will pay its city manager) out of the five million or so he made after he left the Senate?

The answer is suggested by the YouTube clip of an old Daschle political add that Jason posts. Watch it if you haven't seen it, because it is breathtaking in hindsight. It shows Daschle driving the "old rusted Pontiac" past Washington's BMWs and Limos, and living cheap in D.C. "After 15 years and 238,000 miles," we hear, "Tom Daschle still drives his own car to work, every day." Tom Daschle understood very well how a South Dakota Senator want the folks back in Pennington County to think of him.

The point is, he stopped being that kind of guy as he grew in national stature. I, for one, can hardly blame him. But he also stopped tending the appearance of rustic Roman virtue, and that mattered. I can't agree with Doug Wiken on this point:

South Dakota "dumped Daschle" because Thune ran a deceptive campaign on irrelevant issues and Daschle was too confident of the impact of what he had done for South Dakota would have on the election. He did not effectively slam Thune for his apparent disrespect for Democratic family values. Daschle instead talked about his Russian grandfather. I watched people at a meeting sitting shaking their heads, but Daschle kept right on with it. It did not work. Thune is no real great shakes just because he beat Daschle.

Thune is "great shakes just because he beat Daschle." Unseating the Senate Democratic leader is a heroic deed in song and story. But Daschle didn't lose South Dakota because of his Russian grandfather. He lost it because of his big house in Virginia.

Defeat released him to make a lot of money, but Daschle is no ordinary plutocrat. He craved for distinction and honor, and hoped to do a great deed for his country (Canadian style health care?). Having been trained in classical political philosophy, I admire such a man even when I do not agree with his vision.

You might have thought he would have learned a lesson from his defeat. He didn't. Accepting the gift of a car and a driver, who, I would guess, sat around all day at full salary waiting for the boss, repudiates every bit of wisdom in that early political spot. As for paying the taxes on the gift, well, that would admit that it was a gift and not a deserved recognition of his elevated stature? Such is the stuff that brings an end to noble ambitions.

I first met Tom Daschle some years ago, just before he became leader of the Senate Democrats. I was privileged to talk to him, and I found him very clear headed and intelligent. He was also generous in his conversation. I liked him a lot, and have admired him since. I have written in the American News that we in South Dakota should be proud of him. But it is now apparent that he suffered from a tragic flaw, and around that, sooner or later, one will get a tragedy.

BREAKING: Daschle Withdraws from Nomination

The New York Times is on the story.

Another Obama nominee, Nancy Killefer, also withdrew her nomination today citing tax issues. 

NYT Calls on Daschle to Step Aside

New York Times:  "When President Obama nominated former Senator Tom Daschle to be his secretary of health and human services, it seemed to be a good choice. . . . Unfortunately, new facts have come to light — involving his failure to pay substantial taxes that were owed and his sizable income from health-related companies while he worked in the private sector — that call into question his suitability for the job. We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor."

More here.

Daschle on Drudge

More on Daschle:  “Like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, he rails about corporate greed and Wall Street perks while he too is deep at the trough. If an administration is going to make a moral case against the pernicious role of D.C. lobbyists and insiders, for the moral need for taxes on the upper incomes, and for suspicion of perks and freebies—then why pick Daschle, whose free limo and tax evasion make all that look ridiculous? (But then why pick Geithner, or Richardson, or Lynn, or . . . ?)”

WSJ Hammers Daschle

Wall Street Journal:  "If Mr. Daschle were the stand-up guy his fellow Democrats say he is, he'd withdraw his nomination and spare them the embarrassment of confirming someone who thinks the tax laws apply only to other people."  Read the whole thing.

Daschle Apologizes to Senators

Mike Allen:

BREAKING – Tom Daschle, the President’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, tries to tamp down the tax flap with a two-page letter yesterday to the chair and ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, which will handle his confirmation and meets privately with him today to discuss the errors:

“As you can well imagine, I am deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns. I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them. … Last fall, when I was being considered for this position, the Presidential Transition Team's vetters reviewed my records. During the course of those reviews, the vetting team flagged charitable contributions they felt were deducted in error. When my accountant realized I would need to file amended returns, he suggested addressing another matter I had raised with him earlier in the year: whether the use of a car service offered to me by a close friend might be a tax issue. In December, my accountant advised me that it should be reported as imputed income in the amended returns. At about the same time, the friend's company, a consulting client, informed my accountant of a clerical error it had made on the Form 1099 it provided to me and reported to the IRS for 2007. In an effort to ensure full compliance and the most complete disclosure possible of my personal finances, we remedied these issues by filing amended tax returns with full payments, including interest. … My mistakes were unintentional."

Politico's John Bresnahan and Carrie Budoff Brown point out that Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), "who quickly came to the defense of then-Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner when he had tax problems -- has said nothing in public about Daschle’s issues."

The full text of the letter is below the jump:

Daschle's Tax Woes

UPDATE:  "Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter." Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S450.

Today's New York Times runs a story about Tom Daschle's "lavish lifestyle."  Be sure to check it out.

Also for your consideration this morning:

Apparently it is fine not to pay one’s taxes. That seems to be the message from the Obama administration.

First it was disclosed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner failed to pay more than $34,000 in self-employment taxes. That held up his nomination for the post briefly, but did not derail it; he was confirmed by a vote of 60-34.

Now it is apparent that former Sen. Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, has been negligent as well. The former South Dakota senator recently filed amended tax returns to report $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest, the Associated Press reported. . . . This negligence should be taken seriously. But it is not expected to halt his nomination. After all, Mr. Geithner was approved.

Others have allowed a sense of entitlement to obscure conscience and judgment. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., occupied three rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at below-market rents, failed to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from a beach house in the Dominican Republic and has had to pay more than $10,000 owed in back taxes. Yet he still chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

Then there is Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who received preferential rates and reduced fees in a mortgage refinance of two properties with Countrywide Financial in 2003. He has failed to make public the mortgage documents related to this deal, as the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. But that has not stopped him from pontificating against Wall Street bonuses and other perceived financial misdeeds.

President Obama could draw the line on this type of behavior by withdrawing Mr. Daschle’s name from consideration. Ordinary citizens are expected to follow the rules without VIP treatment. Why not political leaders?