South Dakota Politics

Afghanistan’s Plains & Obama's Policy

Perhaps, before we send more young American soldiers to one of the worst pieces of geography on the planet, we ought to read a little Kipling.  From ‘The Young British Soldier.’

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
             And go to your Gawd like a soldier
Go, Go, go like a soldier
A Soldier of the Queen. 

Not very cheery, that.  And perhaps altogether misleading, as it leaves out armored infantry and close air support.  But recommended reading all the same. 

President Obama has announced an apparently muscular policy on Afghanistan.  In a pretty good speech, he lays down the markers.  This juicy bit from the speech, recorded by the New York Times:

I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.

I think that first line carries a bit of campaign baggage that Obama should have chucked by now.  See my last post.  It serves no purpose to tell people you have a clear and focused goal.  All that counts is to announce one, lay out the path to it, and then follow that path. 

The United States had no reasonable choice but to make war on the Taliban/al Qaeda government in Afghanistan.  They attacked us.  Bush took them out of power.  His invasion of Iraq may have been a mistake, but he largely succeeded in his goals and that laid the groundwork for the present policy.  President Obama would have looked more serious and more presidential if he acknowledged what his predecessor did right.  But the policy he states is clear and, I think, correct. 

It’s a big bit of jerky he is biting off.  Afghanistan is about as isolated, geographically, as a country can be.  Pakistan is a basket case, only the basket holds nuclear weapons.  What happens in the region is vitally important to the civilized world, as the President points out:

[T]his is not simply an American problem – far from it. It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London and Bali were tied to al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, in Islamabad and Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it – too – is likely to have ties to al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake.

Very good.  But he might have pointed out how ridiculously bad the world response to the region has been.  While the U.S. was patrolling the skies over Iraq for twelve years, the French, Russians, and probably the Germans were selling arms under the table to Saddam.  Support for American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq has not been absent, but it has been woefully inadequate. 

The safety of people around the world is indeed at stake, as the President puts it, so maybe it’s time for the rest of the world to step up.  And it isn’t just in this place that world trouble is brewing.  Somalia looks like a combination of The Road Warrior and Pirates of the Caribbean. 

President Bush was blamed for alienating the world.  Candidate Obama was greeted by the rest of the world as a deliverer.  Okay.  Deliver.  Show that you can bring the nation’s behind you in a serious effort to clean out the world’s infected wounds.  If they continue to stand around with their hands in their pockets, well, maybe the problem wasn’t Bush at all. 

Cap and Trade

My latest in the American News:

One key aspect to Barack Obama's inaugural budget proposal is a system meant to reduce America's dependency on carbon-based energy.

According to Scientific American, by 2020 Obama wants to cut the nation's greenhouse emissions to 14 percent below 2005 levels. By mid-century he aims to have greenhouse emissions at 83 percent of 2005 levels. The Obama administration aims to achieve these goals partly through a "cap and trade" scheme. Under this plan the government "caps" the amount of carbon emissions that may be produced while creating a market to "trade" carbon credits. If I make my business more energy efficient, I can sell my carbon credits to you if you want to increase your carbon emissions. Cap and trade works by making carbon a scarce resource and then making people pay for the right to pollute.

There are hidden costs to such proposals. The Obama team has set a goal of making renewable energy more affordable, which it will do not through reducing the price of renewable energy but by increasing the price of carbon-based energy. The administration plans to raise $646 billion through cap and trade, which it admits will be paid by all Americans in the form of higher electricity bills.

Anyone who uses carbon-based fuel to run an automobile or to provide heat or electricity to a home, in other words everyone, will face far higher energy prices. This is why the American Farm Bureau, for instance, came out against a cap on greenhouse gases, as it would raise the cost of fuel and fertilizer used in food production.

Further, the trade of carbon credits is liable to manipulation and insider dealing. Stanford economist Michael Boskin argues cap and trade "would ensnare a vast network of covered sources, opening up countless opportunities for political manipulation, bureaucracy or worse."

The Obama administration is almost wholly depending on wind and solar power to make up for lost energy from carbon sources. Science journalist William Tucker notes, though, that the intermittent production of wind and solar power makes them highly inefficient. Sometimes the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. Our ability to store electricity is severely limited, so electricity must be used as it is produced. Dependence on wind and solar power likely means rolling brownouts or blackouts.

Because of the enormous land requirements for wind and solar power generation, they must be located in remote places (like South Dakota) and then transmitted long distances to get to where people actually live. This is highly inefficient. Transmitting over long distances loses power to heat and friction. One solution would be to upgrade all of our transmission lines. But, Tucker says, the cost would easily surpass $1 trillion in addition to the political problem of deciding where new transmission lines will run.

The Electric Power Research Institute calculates that even under the best scenario, including energy infrastructure upgrades costing trillions of dollars, electricity savings from "going green" would amount to only 7 to 11 percent.

Tucker suggests that the best way to lower carbon emissions is by greatly expanding our use of nuclear power for electricity and using wind and solar as supplements. But the Obama administration has neglected nuclear power.

Becoming more energy efficient is a good idea for a host of reasons. Perhaps the Obama administration, with its vaunted respect for science, will promote the cost-effective alternative of nuclear power and rethink proposals that will bust the budgets of average Americans.

Obama Plays the Great Game

I wish I have more confidence than I have in the President’s attention span on Afghanistan.  So far, he hasn’t seemed much interested in foreign policy.  But he certainly seems heading in the right direction.  From the New York Times:

With a bloody suicide bombing near the Khyber Pass adding urgency to his words, President Obama announced on Friday that he plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan, increase aid to Pakistan, and set strict standards for measuring progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in both chaotic countries.

The United States was attacked by this land-locked, backward nation.  The blow was more severe than any since Pearl Harbor.  We are in, and can’t get out any time soon.  It’s a tough nut to crack, but I think we can crack it.  If, and this is a big if, we are willing to devote enough resources and attention to the problem. 

But sooner or later the President is going to have to stop leaning on his predecessor. 

President Obama promised neither to write a “blank check” nor to “blindly stay the course” if his risky new strategy, which includes the addition of 4,000 troops in a training role and several benchmarks for judging progress, does not achieve its ambitious goals.

This constant “well at least I’m better than Bush” business is unbecoming of a President.  History will judge the two presidencies.  Meanwhile Obama has to stand on his own. 

An Exchange On Darwinism

Hi Dr. Blanchard,

I enjoyed your piece on Darwinism and conservatism. It was a noble attempt at bringing two opposing sides together and I agree with much of what you said. I don't quite agree with your assessment of the religious right.

We are not opposed to Darwin, merely because we think that by explaining life, you explain it away.  That is, of course, part of the reason. I, for one, hate to have things explained. It was hard for me to eat after learning how the digestive system worked and I balk at the idea of stars "just" being balls of gas.

Yet, if Darwin's only crime was explaining something we'd prefer not to have explained, I don't think we'd have a reasonable objection.

Perhaps a more legitimate objection, then, is that he looks at human beings in an ugly way.  My generation has been brought up to believe that it is a good idea to treat other human beings with respect. Those of us who are Christians believe that God gives men souls and that men have inalienable rights, given to them by this God.  Darwin does not believe such a thing. He believes that some men are superior to others.

Consider this passage from The Descent of Man:

Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

 

Now, I have not yet read through the whole volume, so it may be that I have taken this quote out of context. Perhaps Darwin really is a champion of human rights. But if he is not, I think we have a legitimate objection to following his line of thinking. I'll have to read the entire book to figure it out.

 

Dearest Miranda:

I have read a lot of criticisms of Darwin from the religious right.  Almost all of them, I think, are partially motivated by the view that Darwinism is inconsistent with Biblical Creation.  I think this is not true, or to be more precise, that Darwinian theory is no more inconsistent with Genesis than geology, or physics and chemistry.  But many thoughtful and pious folks believe that Darwinism has to be defeated if Creation is to be saved.  It does seem to me that the bottom line here is that Creation needs to be miraculous, and that explanation undermines miracles.  It is the first half of that statement that I disagree with.  I am not in any way opposed to the story in Genesis. 

The second most common criticism is that Darwinism undermines human dignity.  You make such an argument yourself:

Perhaps a more legitimate objection, then, is that he looks at human beings in an ugly way.

My generation has been brought up to believe that it is a good idea to treatother human beings with respect. Those of us who are Christians believe that God gives men souls and that men have inalienable rights, given to them by this God.

Darwin does not believe such a thing. He believes that some men are superior to others.

To back up your argument, you offer a quote from the man himself.  It would be tempting to point out that almost any great thinker or philosopher or prophet with any considerable body of writing occasionally says something embarrassing.  Aristotle and Plato certain did, as did most Christian theologians.  But that would be too easy.

Charles Darwin was, for better and for worse, a Victorian Englishman.  He shared many of the prejudices of his fellows, about primitive peoples and my Irish ancestors (but I repeat myself).  On the other hand, he was a lifelong and vociferous opponent of slavery.  That counts for a lot. 

Unfortunately Darwin has a point.  In modern societies people are protected and allowed to mate who would not have survived in less civilized periods.  That does pose problems which medical technology has to deal with.  The proper response to Darwin’s quote is to point out that we aren’t breeding people like we breed animals, and protecting the weak makes for a better society.  Darwin should have seen that, but at this point in his writing he didn’t. 

But a recent book argues that Darwin’s theory was motivated in part by his anti-slavery sentiment.  “Scientific racists” in his time were arguing for separate acts of creation for the different races.  Thus one race was as distinct from another as men are from Apes.  Darwin wanted to show that this was no so.  We all share common ancestors, no matter what our race, creed, or color. 

I don’t think there is any good in opposing Darwinian Evolution as the model for biology, until some alternative comes along.  The trick is to show that Darwinism supports human dignity, that it does not look at human beings "in an ugly way." 

I think it does.  This is largely because I think that Darwinism is best understood in light of Aristotle, and the Philosopher certainly believed that human beings have souls.  But Aristotle thought that all living beings have souls.  Plants have nutritive souls (nourishment and flourishing); animals have that, and something else: the ability to perceive at a distance and move from place to place.  Human beings have logos as well: the ability to speak and distinguish between what something is and what it appears to be, what looks good and what is good.  I think that is a pretty good start for a defense of human dignity, and I think it is supported by Darwinian biology.  If I am right, we win!

I will have to take some time to check out your last question.  Meanwhile I am attaching the conference paper I am working on.  It speaks to these issues. 

Yours,

KB.

 

Erosion of Confidence in Obama's Management

Professor Schaff directs your attention to the magnificent dressing down that MP/MEP Daniel Hannan gives PM Gordon Brown.  One notes that everything said by Hannan about the British government could be said about the current American government, only the numbers and percentages would be much larger. 

Above is a chart of actual deficits (under Bush) and projected deficits for the U.S.  It is fair to point out that the former would have been much larger without the Social Security surplus, which is about to disappear.  But by any reckoning, 2009’s downward bar should be very alarming. 

The red and pink bars represent Congressional Budget Office and White House estimates, respectively.  Both are optimistic.  If economic growth is disappointing, other things being equal, the deficits will be much larger. 

The question is this: under what kind of scenario can we expect to pay for all this?  Obama was repeatedly asked about the deficit during his press conference, and he repeatedly dodged the question.  Yes, it’s a good idea to invest in the healthcare and education.  But saying that doesn’t tell you whether these investments will show a return, or whether that return will be sufficient to offset other spending.  If President Obama has any clue about this, he isn’t letting it loose. 

Sooner or later these trillions have to be paid for.  What kind of future growth will we need to cover them, and can we possibly expect it?  Obama may not be inclined to answer such nagging questions, but they are eroding his base of confidence. 

See USAToday:

Assume for a minute that you earn $22,000 this year and spend $40,000. Next year, you earn $23,000 and spend $37,000. You'd be on the fast track to bankruptcy.

Now add eight more zeros to those numbers, and you get a sense for the federal government's dire financial situation.

See the San Diego Union:

Even without the hugely costly stimulus and bailout measures believed necessary to deal with the economic crisis, even without the highly costly Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the United States faces staggering annual deficits in coming years as 78 million baby boomers retire and the tab for Social Security and Medicare explodes. In 20 years, the average age of the nation will be what it now is in retirement haven Florida. A decade after that, the ratio of workers paying taxes to retirees receiving federal checks will drop to 2-to-1.

Something needs to be done to prepare for this coming entitlement tidal wave – a point Obama made repeatedly on the campaign trail, to his credit.

Now, to his discredit, Obama is simply ignoring these grim fiscal realities [my emphasis].

Obama can complain that he inherited a “structural deficit,” and he’s right.  But to keep talking about fiscal responsibility while proposing budgets like this is self-imposed blindness. 

"You Have Run Out Of Our Money"

See British MP Daniel Hannan dress down PM Gordon Brown at an EU meeting.  It is delicious. 

A Specter of Hope on Card Check

It looks like Senator Arlen Specter will vote no on the “Employee Free Choice Act.”  This is very good news, as it probably means that the card check bill is dead for now. 

Under current law, employers can demand a secret ballot election before their shop is unionized.  If the EFCA passes, a business can be unionized if a majority of employees sign cards in favor of the move.  

I have blogged on this bill before.  The EFCA is an abominable piece of work.  It is designed to allow pro-union people at any site to know who is and who is not voting for a union, and to bring every pressure they can on the hold outs.  It is the very opposite of a “free choice” bill. 

Sam Hananel at RealClearPolitics has this:

In a setback for organized labor, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said Tuesday he will oppose a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions.

Specter was the only Republican to support the Employee Free Choice Act two years ago, and unions were hoping he might be the crucial 60th vote needed to overcome an expected GOP filibuster of the measure when it's taken up this summer.

Specter is under enormous pressure from both sides.  For whatever reason, he has decided to do the right thing. 

Herseth-Sandlin Dissembling?

In an Argus articlethat suggests Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin is "irked" at our ballooning debt, she rails against the AIG bonuses:

Then came the news about the appearance of taxpayer-funded bonuses for floundering insurance giant AIG, which has received billions in federal handouts.

"I've been very disheartened," she said about the bonuses recently during a break on Capitol Hill. She cited "many of the concerns that led me to vote against that particular package - the abuses, such as the bonuses at AIG and some decisions at other companies."

Help me out here, but didn't she vote for "that particular package"?  Here is a paragraph from the New York Observer today:

In fact, that's exactly what had happened, back in February, when the $787 billion stimulus bill was working its way toward passage. At that time, Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, tacked on an amendmentto the stimulus that applied strict limits to all existing and future executive compensation packages at firms receiving federal bailout money. Wall Street, predictably, was apoplectic—and Geithner rushed to its defense, pressuring Dodd to water down his amendment so that it only applied to future packages. Dodd ultimately relented, the stimulus was passed and signed by Obama, and the groundwork was in place for AIG to cut those fat bonus checks.

The bonuses were provided for in the stimulus bill Herseth-Sandlin voted for.  Any clue what she might be talking about, then?  I find it hard to believe she could so boldly misrepresent a very public and very recent vote. 

Perhaps what she means is that she voted for taxing those bonuses at confiscatory rate.  I don't know why one would brag about voting for a bill that, as I argued the other day, is almost certainly unconstitutional (and apparently Laurence Tribe agrees), but perhaps this is what the congresswoman means. 

Still, it seems to me that Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin told a whopper today in the Argus.  Am I wrong?  Let me know if I am. 

And by the way, the best way to stop that irksome debt is to quit voting for it.  Does anyone buy the notion that taking a few projects out of the stimulus bill seriously altered the fact that it represents almost $800 billion in pure debt, most of it not actual economic stimulus (see my argument here)?  And regarding the bloated omnibus spending bill, Herseth-Sandlin argues:

She also joined the Blue Dogs and most of Congress in approving a $410 billion spending bill earlier this month that pushed discretionary spending up 8 percent over last year. It boosts domestic programs that the Bush administration had "starved" over the past eight years, she said.

That spending bill was a non-defense discretionary spending bill.  Look at the chart below (which I found here) and tell me that these programs were "starved" under Bush:

   

 

Obama Gaffes, Plus AIG

This is a fun collection of video spotlighting goofy gaffes by Barack Obama and members of his administration.  No doubt if George W. Bush were still president this would confirm the prejudice that this man and his administration were stupid and incompetent.  Of course this proves nothing of the sort for Obama, and we shouldn't think it does.  The fact is we live in a world where there are cameras everywhere recording everything public officials say.  Like you and me, if you listen to them long enough they will say something stupid.  It doesn't prove they are morons, just that they are human, and that's healthy to remember from time to time. 

On a more serious note, please read Steve Chapman writing about those pesky AIG bonuses.  He is almost certainly right that it is Congress and the administration that are to blame for this embarrassment, not AIG.  Yet Congress fiddles while Rome burns. 

Congress is outraged. Really, really outraged. Unbelievably, incredibly outraged. And there are certainly grounds for anger.

Not at the insurance company AIG, which paid bonuses that are seen as intolerable, but at Congress, which blithely declined to prohibit them but is now shocked to find AIG doing what it was allowed to do. The Democrats who control Capitol Hill want revenge, as do many Republicans. So the House voted by a 328-93 margin to impose a 90 percent tax on the payments.

In doing so, members resolutely avoided a couple of inconvenient realities. The first is that the fault, if any, lies with the same people who are now angry. The second is that the tax conflicts with the clear intent of the Constitution.

The pending fees were not exactly classified information. "AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored," reports the Associated Press. "A November SEC filing by the company details $469 million in 'retention payments' to keep prized employees."

In January, two House members urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to block such bonuses. Last month, the Senate passed an amendment outlawing such payments by companies getting federal bailout funds -- and then dropped it.

The White House was also in the loop. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) says that the administration asked him to attach a provision to the stimulus bill that authorized such bonuses. Dodd protests that he only agreed because he didn't understand what the measure would do.

Maybe other people who voted for it in the Senate and House didn't either. Maybe Dodd and the rest ought to read legislation before they approve it.

As they say, read the whole thing.  Chapman goes on to argue, again most certainly correctly, that the bill pushed through the House this week to tax the bonuses at 90% is a bill of attainder and thus unconstitutional. 

This is a sad turn of events.  Congress and the president screwed up and now, in phony outrage, they want to punish the politically unpopular AIG employees who benefited from this very reasonable retention bonus program.  As John Hinderaker argues, this is more like the activity of a banana republic than the United States.   Find a politically unpopular minority and punish them, particularly by confiscating their wealth, all in the name of covering up your own misdeeds.  It is particularly mendacious of most members of Congress, including our own Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, to vote for the bonuses as provided for in the stimulus bill, and then realize that because they didn't read their own legislation, because of their own incompetence, these bonuses get paid.  So they resort to demagoguery and unconstitutional acts to cover their own guilt.  Meanwhile, we sink deeper and deeper into debt. 

Republican Recovery? Democratic Disarray.

It’s a bit early for the GOP to begin uncorking the bubbly and announcing mission accomplished, but they are getting the first good news since, well, I can’t remember the last time.  From Charlie Cook: 

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial lead on this question.

Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in terms of party identification in this poll by 6 points, 45 percent to 39 percent. Democrats also favored their own party's congressional candidates 83 percent to 7 percent. But voters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent. And self-identified Republicans supported their own party's candidates 85 percent to 3 percent.

This is the first time Republicans have led among independents since 2004, and that 14 point lead is whopping.  What gives?

Not, I think, anything the Republicans have been doing.  Their minority party responses have been anemic, at best, and the Party is pretty disorganized. 

It’s the Democrats who are in charge, and being in charge is itself a liability when things are going poorly, or when a lot of Americans are going poor.  My honorable interlocutors on these blogs are wont to play out the “He just became President!” angle as long as possible, but that stops working mighty fast.  The economy now belongs to Barack, and as long as it’s coming a cropper, he’s got a lot of weight on his shoulders.  Of course that will swing back to their favor when we get a recovery, and I am guessing that we will get one well before 2012. 

But it’s not just the economy; it is also the disarray of the White House.  Obama’s spending plans are big and scary, and that might be the road to greatness and perhaps national salvation.  But if you are going to do that sort of thing, you need to keep a firm grasp on the little stuff.  People are a lot less likely to believe in your plan to keep the levy from breaking if they can see that the toilets in your house are all backed up. 

That’s the meaning of the AIG Bonus scandal, which in substance, I think, is a non-story.  From the non-hostile Eleanor Clift:

Who would have thought 55 days into this administration we would be asking the question, what did he know and when did he know it? Word that a provision in the stimulus bill gave the green light for AIG to hand out bonuses using taxpayer money sent the media bloodhounds hot on the trail of whoever is the culprit…

Obama hates what he calls "process stories," but they are a staple of Washington reporting, and the backstory of this first major Obama blunder has consequences. First, it undermines the president's credibility with his own party on Capitol Hill. Democrats voted almost unanimously for the stimulus package and now Republicans have a weapon to use against them with this Treasury-inspired provision that benefits AIG. Second, the controversy undermines the trust that the American people have in government at a time when it is spending billions upon billions.

That’s what a backed-up beltway toilet looks and smells like. 

And it doesn’t help that Obama’s storied eloquence seems to evaporate whenever he isn’t in front of a teleprompter.  On the Jay Leno show (a venue for refining and enlarging the public view that Madison forgot to mention), the President managed to compare American bankers with suicide bombers.  Does this mean that Al Qaeda’s senior leadership can go to Chris Dodd for generous bonuses?  Better still, he made what amounted to a retard joke (see Special Olympics).  Can you imagine what the left wing blogosphere would be doing with that one if it had been Dubya? 

To be sure, it’s easy to go off the rails when there aren’t any rails, but these sorts of things are very dangerous for Presidents.  From Tobin Harshaw at the New York Times:

Gerald Ford, the finest athlete in Oval Office history, stumbles getting off a plane and America gets stuck with Chevy Chase’s career for the next three decades; Ronald Reagan, who brought about the perhaps the most significant reduction of nuclear weapons of the cold war, makes a bad joke about bombing Russia during a microphone sound check and is forever painted as a paranoid warmonger…

Of course the Press won’t repeat Obama’s gaffs the way they do Republican ones, and that will make a difference.  But they are arrows in the quiver of every right of center pundit, not to mention future campaigns. 

I expect that the Administration will firm up some time soon.  The Treasury Department, if we ever get one, will get its act together.  The President will learn to speak in polite company, and the economy will do what economies do.  But Obama’s grand ambitions and the looming astronomical deficits mean he had better get in gear fast and stay in gear. 

Right now the White House is a mess.  Half the Democratic Party fell in love with the idea of Barack Obama before they knew anything about him.  Let’s hope that this is just a rocky start, and not the moment when we really began to find out what sort of fellow we put in charge. 

Bonuses and Bills of Attainder

File under “fools go.”  The House of Representatives, responding to the AIG bonus issue with all the deliberation and finesse of a dancer in a mosh pit, has slapped a 90% tax on the greedy AIG financiers.  So, having shoveled hundreds of millions to AIG, we are now about the business of taxing some of it back. 

Okay.  But there may be a little problem, which is the Constitution of the United States.  Specifically Article 1, Section 9,

Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

A bill of attainder is a law that singles out a specific person or group of persons for punishment without a trial.  This is the kind of thing wicked English Kings and Parliaments did, along with drawing and quartering.  One of the problems with due process is that the guys you want to see drawn and quartered don’t always get drawn and quartered, so why not just pass a law that declares them guilty and proscribes the punishment?  Well, according to the clause above, Congress can’t do that. 

The House bill looks a lot like a bill of attainder to me.  It singles out a very specific group of people, and draws and quarters with the tax power.  I don’t know how the courts will come down, but it seems certain that the courts will get involved.  That will mean a lot of people fiddling while money burns.

This is unserious government.  If we are going to use public power and wealth to try to correct economic dysfunction, maybe we need the private sector to cooperate.  Does it encourage such cooperation to go into a tizzy and slap the pee wee of everyone who participates in the process?  Maybe not. 

But the current Congress seems to regard the Constitution as a set of suggestions.  I suggest that we should take that seriously. 

Obama Economic Incompetence 2

New interlocutor Mac, commenting at SDP, has this in response to my recent post:

You can't really be serious by blaming this all on the President. After all, he inherited this huge mess from the past 8 years of economic incompetance. You gotta give some time. All Presidents have a rocky first two years and that just goes with the territory. Things will turn around eventually.

I certainly agree that Obama inherited a mess, though it’s not so easy to see that George Dubya was the root of all the trouble.  I don’t think, for example, that one can blame the financial collapse of Iceland on the Bush Administration, and Iceland is a microcosmic example of the now world-wide problem.  I also agree that things are likely to turn around.  When they do, Obama will get credit because he is in the White House.  That is how the system is supposed to work.

But President Obama has to take complete responsibility everything that Obama does or fails to do.  Sorry.  Friend and frequent interlocutor, A.I., has this:

"Treasury staff" was informed on 2/28 but TG says he didn't know until 3/10. Assuming honesty from TG and the Fed, we're getting into tin foil hat territory. Are there some treasury staffers pursuing their own agenda that aren't being totally open and honest with the administration? I pose this possibility because of the conflicting stories yesterday re. who changed Dodd's rule included in the stimulus package to limit the kind of bonuses AIG gave out and/or who killed the Wyden/Snowe measure. Reportedly treasury staffers involved in the stimulus conference committee had a hand in this but it seems the administration didn't direct their actions. One explanation for all these conflicting accounts is rogue treasury personnel. Of course the next question would involve less-than-forthcoming conference committee members.

A.I. and I have been conversing about the honesty of one Barack Obama.  A.I. has been parsing the issues like a Talmudic scholar, laboring to preserve the authority behind the text.  I am not a believer.  But neither am I all that offended by double talk.  I expect it from politicians, and I am entertained by it.  I just think it should be recognized.  Here, I think A.I. is right on. 

Over two days Dodd produced two stories about how a provision got into the AIG bailout bill that allowed the now infamous bonuses.  First he said that the language was added by someone else.  Then he admitted that he added it.  But he says that he did so at the urging of treasury officials.  Well, Dodd is a liar, no? 

Dodd’s story has now been confirmed by Treasury Secretary Geithner, from CNN:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses.

In an interview with CNN's Ali Velshi, Geithner said the Treasury Department was particularly concerned the government would face lawsuits if bonus contracts were breached.

Okay.  But Geithner has been saying that he didn’t know about the loopholes.  Obama himself said in California that he takes responsibility for the mess, but I gather he still says that he didn’t know about the loopholes.  From MSNBC:

President Barack Obama said Thursday evening [at the august public forum, the Jay Leno show] that he was “stunned” to hear about the $165 million in bonuses that were paid to employees of troubled insurer AIG over the weekend, promising to do everything he could to “get these bonuses back.”

I am guessing it went down like this: Treasury people decided that the bonus loophole was a good idea, either for practical reasons or because they were lobbied by some interest with leverage.  Or both.  They might have been right that it was a good idea.  If AIG is going to sort itself out, it needs to keep competent people, and these bonuses might be the way to do that.  Talent is expensive.  I think the scandal is largely hysteria. 

But I am guessing Geithner knew about this and that Obama knew about it.  If I am right, they are liars.  Either way they are evading responsibility.  Obama can say “I take responsibility,” but if he continues to say “I’m stunned about this loophole,” that ain’t taking responsibility. 

If I am wrong, and Obama and Geithner really didn’t know what was going on, then the Administration is clueless on a rather important matter.  That was my original point. 

Obama’s Financial Incompetence 1

Regarding the Obama Administration’s economic policy, there are two possibilities.  One is that they have some kind of secret strategy for turning the United States into France.  One almost has to hope that that is true.  At least then we get coherent policy in the short run, even if the coherence is concealed from nearly everybody, and a policy to contend with in the not so short run. 

The other possibility is that they have no flippin’ idea what they are doing.  So far, that’s where the evidence points.  The current hysteria over AIG paying large bonuses to its employees is exhibit A.  Instead of closing down this money pit, first Bush and then Obama chose to try to fill the pit with money.  Now we are shocked, shocked, that they are spending the money the way financial corporations do.  Lawrence Kudlow does a great job of describing the situation. 

AIG should have been placed in bankruptcy last fall under some sort of government sponsorship. While in bankruptcy, all the salary contracts (and every other AIG contract) would have been nullified and voided. At the same time, there would have been an orderly liquidation and sale of AIG's assets and separate divisions.

But as things stand now, there still is no clear roadmap for the dissolution of AIG. There are ideas, but nothing is set in concrete.

And as for the $165 million or so in AIG bonus payments, the Obama administration -- including the president, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and economic adviser Larry Summers -- knew all about them many months ago. They were undoubtedly informed of this during the White House transition.

That’s the real AIG outrage.  Not that a lot of high priced accountants are getting big bucks, but that having spent so much money in several bailouts of AIG, we are no nearer resolving the problem.  Ditto with the U.S. Auto industry. 

Maybe there is some secret agenda behind all of this.  I understand the argument that Obama wants to use the current economic peril to justify an enormous expansion in government.  Okay.  But how does keeping a zombie corporation lurching and moaning advance that agenda?  All the clues of cluelessness are here. 

Stem Cells, Science, & Politics

I have accused President Obama of dishonesty on earmarks.  Steve Chapman, at Reason, accuses him of confusion on the stem cell issue. 

Not many of us would want the federal government to leave military procurement to defense contractors, Medicare reimbursement to doctors, or banking regulation to Citigroup. But President Obama says when it comes to allocating federal funds for scientific studies, we should defer to scientists.

This is right on target.  Scientists call tell us what might be done with research on dismembered embryos.  They cannot, in their professional capacity, tell us whether such research is ethical or not.  I think that the President was either dishonest or confused when he declared that he would put science over politics on this issue.  His decision to remove the ban on federal funds for new stem cell lines from "discarded" embryos may be the right call, or not, but it is precisely a political decision.  Again from Chapman:

"This order," said the president, "is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America" and "protecting free and open inquiry." Harold Varmus, co-chairman of the president's scientific advisory council, said it showed the president would rely on "sound scientific practice ... instead of dogma in developing federal policy."

But one person's dogma is another one's ethical imperative or moral principle. Science can tell us how to build a nuclear weapon. But science can't tell us whether we should use it.

Just because research may be useful in combating disease doesn't mean it's ethically acceptable. The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment—in which the federal Public Health Service secretly withheld treatment from infected black men to learn more about the disease—might have yielded valuable data. But no scientific discovery could possibly have justified it.

I recently listened to a BBC report, which said that President Bush's ban on stem cell research had been overturned by Obama.  I heard the same report three times in one day, and it was a lie all three times.  Bush didn't ban stem cell research, he funded it for the first time.  But he limited it to existing stem cell lines, in order to discourage the creation of embryos for the purpose of harvesting their cells.  Maybe his compromise was too strict (I think it was, a bit).  But Obama's new policy is dangerously broad. 

In 2001, supporters of embryonic stem cell research called on Bush to allow experiments using "surplus" frozen embryos in fertility clinics, arguing that they would be disposed of anyway. But Obama didn't limit his new policy to these fertilized eggs.

On the contrary, he left open the possibility of funding studies using embryos created specifically so their cells can be harvested—which Congress has barred, but which some advocates would like to allow. The president took no position on whether scientists should be permitted to create embryos for the sole purpose of dismembering them for their stem cells.

He did, however, reject another option. "We will ensure," he said, "that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society, or any society."

Is that a scientific judgment? No, it's a philosophical one, reflecting Obama's moral values.

Yes, and that is the point.  If we can harvest embryos, what about fetuses?  What about a fully formed child moments away from natural birth?  You can chew on the moral fiber here, but these are political questions not scientific ones.  On this topic, as perhaps on others, the President is deeply confused. 

Beneath The Office

A couple weeks ago at the height of the Limbaugh madness, Limbaugh challenged President Obama to come on his show and debate Limbaugh.  This was a gimmick, of course, because no president could, or should, demean himself to respond to challenges of radio talk show hosts.  Limbaugh knew Obama would never come on his show, which is why this was an empty gesture. 

It's too bad then that President Obama has chosen the Jay Leno show to make his case for his $3.6 trillion budget.  No president should go on a celebrity talk show to discuss matters of such national importance.  These are serious times requiring serious leadership, not the president being interviewed by a comedian.  Obama has likely chosen this show because he knows Leno will not ask any tough questions.  I don't know if this is beneath Barack Obama, but it is certainly beneath the office which he holds.  He should reconsider. 

BTW, remember when candidate Obama chastised John McCain for saying the fundamentals of the economy were sound?  That truth is no longer operative.

Osama bin Laden: Deader than Elvis

Angelo Codevilla has come out and said, writing in the American Spectator, what I have believed for a long time: that Osama bin Laden is deader than Elvis. 

Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals [My list, Codevilla’s words]:

1.       Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera's Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries.

2.      The guy [on the videos] just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one.

3.      Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones.

4.      Professor Bruce Lawrence, who heads Duke University's religious studies program, argued in a book on Osama's messages that their increasingly secular language is inconsistent with Osama's Wahhabism.

Codevilla concludes none of the post 9/11 messages from Osama were genuine, and that the original Osama is long gone. 

This is important for at least a couple of reasons: the CIA continues to believe that all of the spurious messages are genuine, which serves to remind one that the CIA couldn’t find its own ass if both hands were duct taped to it.

The second a great reason is our focus on Osama has been counterproductive and bad for our thinking. 

Focusing on Osama bin Elvis is dangerous to America's security precisely because it continues to substitute in our collective mind the soft myth that terrorism is the work of romantic rogues for the hard reality that it can happen only because certain states want it to happen or let it happen. KSM and company may not have started their careers as agents of Iraqi intelligence, or they may have quit the Iraqis and worked for others, or maybe they just worked for themselves. But surely they were a body unto themselves. As such they fit Osama's description of those responsible for 9/11 as "individuals with their own motivation" far better than they fit the CIA's description of them as Osama's tools.

This, as the Volokh Conspiracy points out, demolishes conventional wisdom across the political spectrum.

Signing Statements & Signs of the Times

Signing statements are notes attached by a President to a bill he is signing, indicating his understanding of what he is committing himself to.  There are two obvious reasons for including such a statement with his signature: first, he wants to control the way the law will work and give him some leverage if his interpretation differs from that of Congress; and second, he wants to control his responsibility for the way the law turns out to work. 

I am not sure when this practice began, but President Clinton included such statements on a regular basis, Bush followed suit, and now President Obama has issued his first.  See the Volokh Conspiracy.  Bush came under a lot of criticism for his use of this device, especially by Charlie Savage at the Boston Globe, who won a Pulitzer for it.  The complaint was that Bush was trying to get the power to interpret the law as he pleased. 

Well, let’s take a look at Obama’s signing statement, attached to the Omnibus Spending Bill.  I note this provision:

Foreign Affairs. Certain provisions of the bill, in titles I and IV of Division B, title IV of Division E, and title VII of Division H, would unduly interfere with my constitutional authority in the area of foreign affairs by effectively directing the Executive on how to proceed or not proceed in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to negotiate and enter into agreements with foreign nations.

So Obama is telling us in advance how he will read the bill as it applies to himself.  Okay.  And then there is this one:

Executive Authority to Control Communications with the Congress. Sections 714(1) and 714(2) in Division D prohibit the use of appropriations to pay the salary of any Federal officer or employee who interferes with or prohibits certain communications between Federal employees and Members of Congress. I do not interpret this provision to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control, and correct employees' communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.

So Obama is telling us in advance that he will control communications between his executive branch officials and employees and Congress, regardless of what the law seems to say. 

Now I have no problem with either of Obama’s qualifications.  They both seem to me to protect the President’s power to do his job: negotiate with other powers, and control the executive branch.  But this is the very thing that seemed so ghastly to the MSM when Bush did it.  If you were looking for different kind of chief executive in this regard, well, look again. 

Signing statements don’t matter much.  Short of a court case, the President can do what he wants in such matters, and Congress can control him only by refusing to give him what he wants by way of legislation, authorization, and confirmation.  That is the way the system is supposed to work. 

In the event of adjudication, courts don’t pay much attention to signing statements.  That is also how it should be.  The President is given the power to veto a bill or sign it, not the power to amend it.  Signing statements are useful as means of dialogue between the White House and Congress.  They are nothing more. 

Where Are The Moderates?

My latest in the American News:

Those who defend President Obama's stimulus spending spree have two arguments. Naturally they argue that the spending will stimulate the economy. Second, they assure us that the administration promises to tackle our enormous budget deficits once the economic crisis is over.

First, will it stimulate? Columnist Robert Samuelson, a proponent of aggressive stimulus by the government, believes with this bill “partisan politics ran roughshod over pragmatic economic policy.” The law's spending is back-loaded so as to have little immediate effect. Almost a third of all spending occurs after 2010. Also, many of the bill's provisions, such as the tax provisions, have been shown to have little to no economic impact.

The package's grants to the states come with various strings. Samuelson argues Congress would have been much wiser giving the states money in block grants to spend as needed.

In 2004, Robert Rubin, treasury secretary during Bill Clinton's presidency, co-authored a paper that argued large deficits would “reduce future national income,” seriously damaging the long-term health of the economy. Yet, as former Comptroller General David Walker notes, the stimulus bill was the first spending bill in the history of the United States government to have zero equity. All $800 billion was borrowed.

Contrary to the goals of “transparency” and “accountability” urged by some, this bill was negotiated behind closed doors with no minority input. Citizens should wonder why interest groups saw the finalized bill before the House Minority Leader. While it is not uncommon for members of Congress to vote on a bill they haven't read (members are very busy), it is unheard of to hold a vote on a bill that no one has read. This is transparent and accountable government?

Consider: The Democrat leadership in Congress is touting a $400 billion omnibus spending bill for discretionary spending. This represents an 8 percent increase over last fiscal year and is in addition to the stimulus package. The bill has more than 8,500 earmarks in it. The Obama administration has voiced support for this bill. James Madison warned against “parchment barriers,” limits on government written on paper. Paper promises are easily broken. So pardon me if I don't take the administration's promises of future budget restraint seriously.

In its recent budget, the administration is predicting trillion dollar annual deficits for two more years and then, if an extremely rosy economic scenario comes to pass, it projects a $500 billion deficit for 2012. These are unprecedented peacetime deficits in raw numbers and as a percentage of the economy. This is also before the massive spending on health care that Obama has promised, which his budget pays for with funds “to be determined.” So Obama doesn't even account for this spending. To paraphrase Herbert Hoover, I am sure that fiscal discipline is just around the corner.

How will this spending be paid for? Taxes on the rich? The Wall Street Journal notes that in the year 2006 (the last year we have IRS data), it would have taken the confiscation of the wealth of everyone who makes more than $75,000 to pay for Obama's fiscal year 2010 spending. If Obama gets all he wants, back-breaking taxes will inevitably come to the middle class to pay for the debt he is running up.

With strong Democratic majorities in Congress, Obama is likely to get precisely what he wants. That is, unless some moderate Democrats stand up to oppose him. So far, precious few, certainly no Democrat member of Congress from South Dakota, have had the courage to stand for fiscal discipline.

Robert Samuelson's point about the strings that came with state aid is echoed by this news from David Freddoso.  Apparently many localities are now chafing under the requirements of the "stimulus" money.  They are forced to spend on low priorities can can't spend on what they really need. 

The Jewish Question

So who done in Chas Freeman, who almost got into a position to control the intelligence information flowing to President Obama?  Well, it was the sinister Israeli lobby, according to Amitabh Pal, writing in the oddly named Progressive. 

Now, Freeman wasn’t above reproach. He made some weird statements about the Tiananmen Square crackdown that could be taken as an apology for the Chinese regime. (He insists they were taken out of context.) And even Progressive Media Project contributor Professor Asad AbuKhalil says that Freeman was too chummy with the Saudi royal family.

But make no mistake. Freeman was taken down for his past criticism of Israel.

In fact, Freeman’s statements about Tiananmen Square weren’t “weird,” as I have shown.  They were disgusting.  And they weren’t taken out of context at all.  The full text was readily available at this blog and elsewhere. 

Pal is half right to say that Freeman’s criticism of Israel was what done him in.  But it wasn’t just criticism that was at issue.  It was the fact that Freeman was a shill for the Saudis and accordingly friendly to any enemy of Israel including Hamas.  Is this really the guy Obama wants to decide what kind of intelligence is important enough for the President to be informed about?  I hope not. 

Israel has its defenders, like Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, and they defended her.  Of all the countless interest groups lobbying Congress, it is only the Israeli lobby that the Progressives regard as illegitimate.  Funny how that happens. 

Meanwhile we have this story from progressive Malmö, in Sweden, by Paul Neuding at the Weekly Standard:

"This is how it was last time too," said a Holocaust survivor, when she was escorted from Malmö's main square by the police. "We had to leave the square, while they got to stay."

On January 27th, it had been almost a month since the Israeli military operation Cast Lead was launched in Gaza. A couple of hundred people, mostly Jews, had gathered in Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, to show their support for Israel. Their slogans--"Israel's right to self defense" and "Compassion with all civilian victims"--were met with shouts of "Sieg Heil" and "Damn Jews" by a group of mainly Arab and left-wing counter protesters. Stones, eggs, and bottles were thrown, and when a home-made bomb was fired at the Jewish group police finally decided to evacuate. The pro-Israeli protesters fled, while children ran after them with cell phones to report back into the crowd where the Jews were heading.

One protester I spoke with was among those who refused to run. "I already left Poland forty years ago," she said. "They will not chase me away this time."

Last Saturday, roughly a month after the mob met Jews off Malmö's main square, the city was again shaken by riots. Seven thousand activists gathered to stop a Davis Cup match between Sweden and Israel, and the demonstration march was also a manifestation of the ideological confusion that has become the trademark of the Swedish pro-Palestinian movement. Hamas flags and headbands could be spotted next to banners supporting communist groups and feminist causes.

Okay.  So at a public forum at Malmö, only the Jews were removed from the scene by the police.  Then later, an Israeli tennis team arrives at Malmö to play a demonstration match.  What does the progressive government of the city do? 

After war broke out in Gaza, a majority in the local Malmö council decided that no audience would be allowed at the Davis Cup games between Sweden and Israel. The representative of the Left Party (as the Communist Party was rechristened in 1990) made it clear that the decision was due to Israel's "genocide" against the people of Gaza.

The popular mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, who is often referred to by the nickname "Malmö's strong man," is one of the most influential figures of the Social Democratic Party. He told the assembled media before the match that, were it up to him, Israel wouldn't be allowed to participate at all. "This is not a match against just anyone," he explained. "It is a match against the state of Israel."

Sweden hasn't subjected a country to a sports boycott since South Africa was barred from playing in the country during Apartheid. But Malmö's "strong man" has changing demography to consider. Of Malmö's 287,000 inhabitants, 50,000 are Muslim and 30,000 are of Arab origin. In 2004, the most common name for baby boys in the city was Mohammed. These population changes, of course, have far-reaching political implications. Or as Reepalu put it, when explaining the motivation for the Davis Cup boycott, "A large part of Malmö's population comes from the Middle East. Many have relatives in Gaza who have gotten in trouble. They are frustrated and angry with Israel's occupation."

Well, there you have it.  A tennis team is tainted because it is an Israeli tennis team.  Gee, if only the American government were a progressive as the city of Malmö, Chas Freeman would be in like flint.  So the world moves toward a final resolution of the pesky Jewish Question. 

Sameness We Can Believe in

Regarding the "unseriousness" of the Obama administration noted by Prof. Blanchard, I commend to you this David Ignatius piece from a couple days ago.  I think Ignatius does injustice to the truth in order to seem even handed (e.g., if Ignatius thinks congressional Republicans have been content merely to oppose the Obama plans, he hasn't been paying attention that closely). Still, amid all the hosanas to "change" uttered last Fall, it appears what we voted for was not "change we can believe it" but "change when it becomes more convenient." 

The article of the day must be Charles Krauthammer's on the disengenousness of Obama's stem cell proclaimation of the other day.  Entitled "Morally Unserious in the Extreme," Krauthammer exposes the fatuousness of Obama's position on stem cells and the heart of the Obama problem, namely that talk of post-partisanship and post-ideology appears to be mere rhetoric to window dress a deeply partisan and ideological agenda.  Here is Krauthammer. 

Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.

I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.

(snip)

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.

The Blogosphere Blows the Whistle on Chas Freeman

My esteemed Keloland Colleague and NSU Colleague Emeritus, David Newquist, frequently compares bloggers with “real journalists.”  He does so without any risk of flattery to the former.  I generally agree with him on that point.  But I think that bloggers play a very important role in contemporary political journalism.  There was a time when the major newspapers and network news organizations could kill a story by ignoring it.  That time is over. 

Mickey Kaus thinks that we have passed a major threshold with the Chas Freeman affair (see my last post). 

During the Trent Lott scandal, if I remember right, there was speculation that the blogosphere would really have arrived when a high public official suddenly resigned over an Web-borne scandal without the scandal being mentioned in the respectable mainstream press--so if you had only read the New York Times or Washington Post you'd have no idea why this person quit or what the scandal was until he or she was gone. Poof! Killed by ninja blogs.** Well (without regard to the merits of the dispute), the Charles Freeman withdrawal is close to that case, no? WaPo apparently printed its first news story on the controversy the day it ended--i.e. when Freeman withdrew. Ditto the New York Times. ... What does this event signify? Not to be too portentous, but it signifies you can no longer be a well-informed citizen if you just read the Times and Post print editions. You have to go online. Sorry, Mom! ...

Kaus certainly has a point.  If you get all your news from real journalists, or from people who get their news from real journalists, you would have had no idea that Obama’s nominee for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was controversial, let alone that he thought that the only thing wrong with the Chinese Government’s crushing of dissent at Tiananmen Square was that the Government waited so long. 

But I don’t believe that the magical threshold has been passed.  The Freeman appointment was, praise be to God, brought down by the Israel lobby, not by bloggers.  Still, Kaus is right about one thing.  The Washington Post and the New York Times did no stories on the Freeman nomination until the last moment.  Both of these stories include a paragraph on Freeman’s appalling comments about the Tiananmen Square atrocity, and both bury it deep in the article. 

If you want to know what is going on, the mainstream press is a good place to start.  But you need to know that our major organs of news aren’t honest.  To know the rest of the story, you have to go to bloggers such as, well, me. 

Obama’s Pro-Totalitarian Nominee Withdraws

Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper writing at the New York Times point out that Chas Freeman was a controversial choice for National Intelligence Council Chairman.

When Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, announced that he would install Charles W. Freeman Jr. in a top intelligence post, the decision surprised some in the White House who worried that the selection could be controversial and an unnecessary distraction, according to administration officials.

Mazzetti and Cooper put all the blame on Freeman’s critical stance toward Israel.  That was almost certainly the real deal breaker.  It generated a brief but intense lobbying campaign by supporters of Israel, and it brought pro-Israel members on Congress to push their weight on the issue.  It didn’t help that Freeman was not only anti-Israel, but vehemently pro-Saudi in his positions. 

But that’s hardly the only thing.  The real smoking gun is what Freeman said about the atrocity in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the Chinese Government smashed a peaceful protest movement by sending tanks against teenagers.  Here is the now infamous e-mail that Freeman sent on the topic, from the Weekly Standard:

I will leave it to others to address the main thrust of your reflection on Eric's remarks. But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' "Bonus Army" or a "student uprising" on behalf of "the goddess of democracy" should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government's normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang's dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.

I await the brickbats of those who insist on a politically correct -- i.e. non Burkean conservative -- view.

Chas

I don’t know about you guys, but I find this thing appalling.  A pro-democracy campaign waged by courageous students is murdered by the Chinese government.  China being what it is, we will never know how many died.  But we do know what Chas Freeman thought about the Chinese Government’s actions.  He is disgusted that they waited so long to send in the storm troopers. 

We know already, from Secretary of State Clinton, that the Obama Administration isn’t going to let a silly little thing like human rights get in the way of good relations with China.  Maybe that’s a regrettable necessity.  But at least we should regret it.  Chas Freeman is innocent of such regrets.  He obviously admires the firm hand of Beijing, except that he finds it a little wimpy.  He would respond in the same way, quicker, against protestors on the Capitol Mall, if he had his way. 

Chas Freeman is a cretin.  He was Obama’s pick for a major intelligence post.  It is some small comfort that his date with power has been postponed.  But as Paul Mirengoff points out at Powerline, the comfort is small indeed. 

It's natural to feel relief over the demise of Chas Freeman's appointment as National Intelligence Chairman. But this sentiment must be tempered by the knowledge that the man who selected Freeman, Dennis Blair, is our Director of National Intelligence. Indeed, that knowledge, coupled with Blair's defense of Freeman, fully offsets the relief I otherwise would feel.

What sort of people have we installed at the White House? 

Empty Chairs @ Treasury

With unemployment so high at large, you’d think the Obama Administration wouldn’t have so much trouble filling its open positions.  But it is.  H. Rodgin Cohen, Obama’s pick for the number 2 post at Treasury, withdrew because an “issue” arose during vetting.  We don’t know what the issue was, yet, and may never know.  But it’s pretty clear that Obama has allowed the process to slip out of his control, due to the mini-scandals that have occurred.  He should have stuck to his guns on the “this is a crisis and we need the best men on the job” stance that worked with Geithner.  But he didn’t, and now, during this crisis, the Treasury department has a lot of vacant chairs.  This looks like a Bill Clinton-like loss of courage on Obama's part. 

Bad Banks & Unserious Government

First in the list of unserious responses to the current economic mess is yours truly.  I’ve been devoting a lot of online time to President Obama’s honesty regarding earmarks.  It might be important to know that our current President is just another president, and not Elrond Half-Elven; and it might be worthwhile to know what an earmark is and whether we have or should get rid of them.  But none of this matters much compared to the world-wide banking collapse.  That, like an impending trip to the gallows, ought to concentrate the mind.

Second, I put Republicans in Congress who also worry about earmarks and who worry about socialism at a moment when government probably should be taking over banks.  What matters now is returning the major banks to solvency.  That’s how you save the capitalist system, if you’re serious about that.  

Third, I put Democrats in Congress who see the current peril as an excuse to legislate their every desire.  Oh, and I suppose you have to list Republicans in Congress here as well.  Except, maybe, for John McCain.  A Congress that insists that banks lend more when lending too much is what brought them to the brink of collapse, isn’t serious. 

Last, but ascending order, I put President Obama.  He too wants to cram a made for TV package of heroic legislative like national health care, when he should be thinking about one thing: how to keep the world economy from seizing up like an engine with no oil.  Looking to a grand vision of the future when all the warning lights are on doesn’t suggest seriousness.

When it comes to the banking system, I know I am a babe in the woods.  That makes me a typical American, and over-qualified for a Congressional seat.  It might just qualify me to run a major financial corporation.  Fortunately, one of my favorite Public Radio shows, This American Life, has taken out time to educate me.  They have done several shows recently that put the Housing Crisis, the Banking Crisis, etc., into language that a reasonably aware fellow can understand.  Here’s a link to their show on Bad Banks, which you can download.  Here is a transcript.  Listen or read, and you will know about as much as I know. 

Here is the gist of it.  Banks keep a balance sheet.  Imagine a piece of paper with a vertical line down the middle.  On the right side are two figures.  One is the bank’s capital, money that belongs to the bank.  The other is the banks liability, money that other parties have deposited in the bank, and that the bank promises to give back on demand.  On the left side of the ledger are the bank’s assets.  That’s money the bank has loaned to some party, who promises to pay it back.  Of course the bank pays interest on the deposit, and charges a higher interest on loans, which is how it makes money.  But the important thing is that the two sides have to balance.  The bank has to be able to pay back depositors with assets plus capital. 

The current problem is that America’s largest banks can’t balance their books.  Their assets evaporated with the housing crisis, and their capital was woefully insufficient to cover the losses.  There is nothing unusual about this situation for an individual bank.  The solution then is for other institutions to step in and take the bank over, recapitalize it, reevaluate the assets.  When it happens to a whole countries banking system, say Mexico or Russia, other countries step in with capital.  When it happens to a region, say, Southeast Asia, the rest of the world has to step in.  No problem.  The rescuers get chunks of banks for their trouble.  But what happens when it’s the whole world?  Where do we go for rescue capital?  The Martians? 

That’s where we are now.  Every capitol, from D.C., to Brussels, to Tokyo, is in the same fix.  Assets have vanished like good souls after the rapture, and the balance sheets can’t be balanced.  This global problem requires a global solution.  It also requires a concentration of mind.  We have to restore the national and international banking system to solvency.  Just right now, our government doesn’t seem to be serious about this.  Nor do the governments of Europe.  This is what a crisis looks like. 

Who Lived in Grant's House?

I have been traveling over the last week, and so have had little time to blog or reply to comments.  My apologies.  I visited Galena Illinois, among other places.  Here's proof:

They have a great Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa, where I unfortunately forgot to take my camera.  Galena, Illinois, just across the big river, was one of U.S. Grant's homes.  They have a history museum there as well, in a little house that sits on an old lead mine.  You can look down the shaft.  No jokes, please.  They also have a magnificent painting of Grant and Lee meeting at Appomattox, by Thomas Nast.  The photo  below gives no good indication of its size.  The figures are about life size.  Nast was a cartoonist, rather than an artist.  He was primarily interested in story telling (with no risk of flattery involved).  But the painting suggests talent. 

But this is my favorite exhibit:  the glass tube contains a cigar butt dropped by Grant as he walked about the streets of Galena.  There is the smokin' end of history. 

Johnson Continues Left-Wing Lurch

The votes keep coming in.  Tim Johnson voted to kill the Washington DC scholarship program that allows low income District children to escape that city's dreadful public school system and attend private schools.  William McGurn demonstrates just some of the human cost of eliminating this program.  Consider Sarah and James Parker, for now class mates of the Obama daughters at Sidwell Friends private school:

The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program -- and with it perhaps the Parker children's hopes for a Sidwell diploma. (snip)

Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. "I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards," she says. "I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell." It's not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt's students are proficient in reading or math.

That's the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people's children -- mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos -- trapped in schools where they'd never let their own kids set foot.

This double standard is largely unchallenged by either the teachers' unions or the press corps. For the teachers' unions, it's a fairly cold-blooded calculation. They're willing to look the other way at lawmakers who chose private or parochial schools for their own kids -- so long as these lawmakers vote in ways that keep the union grip on the public schools intact and an escape hatch like vouchers bolted.

Well, at least we've finally found some spending Tim Johnson opposes.  This provision is part of the omnibus spending bill, a bill that represents an 8% increase in discretionary spending and contains over 8,500 earmarks.  Tim Johnson voted for cloture on this deficit producing beast.  As the Mamma's and Pappa's once sang, "and no one's getting fat except the federal government."

John Thune introduced and amendment to deny any public funds for enforcing the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," whereby the federal government would force radio and television to air opposing viewpoints.  This is widely perceived as an attack on conservative talk radio.  If you can't beat them, send the regulators after them.  Tim Johnson voted against Thune's amendment.  Recall that Johnson was one of only eleven Senators voting against Jim DeMint's bill to kill the Fairness Doctrine.  

Did South Dakota know that it was electing someone who would toe the liberal line?  Of course we didn't really have a campaign last year, so no one seriously questioned Johnson on how he would vote in the future. 

Obama & Earmark Dishonesty Dialogue 3

Friend and frequent commenter A.I. makes some interesting points in response to last night’s post.  The main question is whether there were earmarks in President Obama’s “Economic Recovery Act.”  A.I. says this:

Sorry, you still haven't cited "earmarks" in the stimulus. The MSNBC piece was written before reconciliation was complete and before final passage. Were even the no-cost provisions included in the final bill--the version Obama was referring to as not having earmarks?

Good point.  I haven’t been able to determine which of the House earmarks were included in the bill and which weren’t.  Have you?  Are you sure that “three hospital” thing isn’t still in there? 

It is true that “earmarks” is not a precisely defined concept, but it isn’t meaningless.  An earmark has to originate with (or perhaps be “inserted by”) some Congressman.  It has to be targeted to his or her district, or to some special interest the Congressman wants to benefit.  In an omnibus spending bill, that’s about all you can say.  In something like the stimulus package, I think you can say something more: it raise the cost of the bill without contributing to the primary purpose of the bill.  So, for example, an allocation of money for pineapple parasite research (I just made that up), inserted in a defense appropriations bill, by a Congressman to be spent in his district, that would be an unambiguous earmark.  It wouldn’t matter if the language was carefully tailored to disguise the bill’s specific target. 

Well, this morning Kimberley Kindy came to my rescue.  From the Washington Post:

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington.

The funding, for "fossil energy research and development," is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama…

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D), who led the Illinois delegation's efforts, worked the system, blocking some Bush administration appointments and holding hearings to publicly vilify the officials who stood in his way.

"This has been my longest, most difficult battle in Congress," Durbin said.

The fight got a lot easier after Obama was elected. Within weeks, his transition team met with FutureGen's industry partners. In January, when Obama announced his plans for an economic stimulus bill, Durbin and other members of the Illinois delegation quickly crafted a $2 billion line item to fund a "near zero-emissions power plant(s)," and Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) placed it in the Senate version of the legislation.

Republicans in both chambers pointed out that only one shovel-ready project in the country met the criteria spelled out in the bill: the FutureGen plant in Mattoon.

Okay, here we have a line item carefully crafted to look general but only apply to a project in Durbin’s state of Illinois.  It wasn’t inserted by Durbin but by Senator Dorgan on his behalf.  I guess that’s why the Democrats claim it isn’t an earmark, but that’s chicanery, isn’t it?  Do you really think that this is the only one that made it into the stimulus package? 

This is a genuine, full-tilt, twenty-four carat earmark in the stimulus bill.  It is exceedingly implausible that Barack Obama didn’t know about it, since he and his chief of staff were deeply involved in the issue.  I submit I have established that there was at least one earmark in the bill that Obama knew about, and so that his brag about an earmark free stimulus package was dishonest. 

I am not sure that there is anything wrong with earmarks, as a general rule.  But President Obama is on record to the contrary.  Nor do I think that complete honesty in budgeting is to be expected.  But it does mean that Obama is exactly what I thought he was, but a lot of his admirers don’t seem to know he was: a politician.  It also speaks to the seriousness of the Democrats in general and President Obama in particular: at a moment of apparent national peril, they see opportunities to bring home the bacon.  Nothing unusual here.  But it’s worth noting. 

Obama’s Dishonesty On Earmarks 2

I received some interesting comments, one of them distinctly unfriendly, in response to my post on President Obama’s dishonesty with respect to earmarks.  The most interesting criticism comes from my friend and frequent interlocutor, AI.  It’s worth taking apart.  First a mea culpa:

You say Obama promised to end earmarks. Maybe he said something to that effect, but you cite no example (unless it is in the Andrew Taylor piece which I can't establish a link to). Please provide a quote where Obama campaigned on eliminating earmarks.

You are quite right, AI.  Obama promised on the campaign trail only to reduce earmarks to 1994 levels.  My bad. 

I have seen posts in which you were critical of others for uncivil or ad hominem attacks on yourself. Might I suggest a good inoculation against such attacks is to avoid calling someone else a liar--which you have essentially called Obama in this piece.

I agree with the Supreme Court that public figures are held to a different standard than private citizens, and I think that Presidents must be held to very high standards.  I don’t think I was being unreasonable in my judgment of Obama.  But was I wrong?  You say:

As to the basis for claims of Obama's dishonesty, I would like to see at least two examples of "earmarks" in the stimulus. Spare me the "sin train" and mouse in CA. talking points as those have long been debunked as partisan hackery. Show me real earmarks where a member of congress inserted language that funded a specific project primarily benefiting only their state or district.

Okey dokey.  Here’s Michael Grabell and Christopher Weaver, from MSNBC:

The [stimulus] package includes an insurance exemption — but only for companies that work on recreational boats longer than 65 feet. Another provision would lift a Medicare regulation affecting only three long-term care hospitals in the country.  There’s also language requiring the Transportation Security Administration to buy 100,000 uniforms from U.S. apparel makers.

Let me go out on a limb here.  I say that the “longer than 65 feet” rule applies to some production line in some Congressman’s district.  I am betting that the Medicare regulation affecting only three hospitals owes its inclusion to some Congressperson or Congresspersons who have such hospitals in their districts, or who owe favors to someone with an interest in such hospitals.  Those look like earmarks to me, even if the language is tailored to make them look like general rules. 

We both acknowledge that the term “earmarks” is not so precise.  Here is how Grabell and Weaver parse the question: 

What is an ‘earmark’?
In part, the answer hinges on the definition of an “earmark.” Democrats insist they are nowhere in the plan; Republicans see “pork” everywhere. So we cribbed from criteria Congress laid out in a 2007 reform bill: language that aims spending at specific programs, states or localities, often at a member’s request.

Specific location? The Senate stimulus contains $50 million for habitat restoration and other water needs in the San Francisco Bay Area. There is another $62 million for military projects in Guam.

Specific industry? The House bill includes an amendment authored by Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley setting aside $500 million for biofuel makers, which he says, would bring jobs home to Iowa.

Specific program? There’s $198 million to compensate Filipino World War II veterans for their service. Most don’t live in the United States.

There’s earmarks in that there bill!  So when Obama said in his speech to Congress:

I'm proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks -- (applause) -- and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities. 

He wasn’t telling the truth about his “recovery plan,” was he?  Either he was clueless about the bill he signed, or he wasn’t being square with us.  I am hoping it’s the latter.  But he tactfully forgot to mention the pending spending he is backing in Congress. 

Maureen Dowd spent the last eight years writing scathing columns about George W.  She writes a column for the New York Times.  So when she tears a hole in Obama’s backside, it’s a hole that counts.  That hole is shaped just like John McCain:

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.

• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)

• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”

• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.

• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

When President Obama bragged about an earmark-free recovery plan that wasn’t free of earmarks, and promised a future budget that will be free of earmarks, but was silent about a current bill that is crawling with 9,000 earmarks, that is deliberate mendacity.  I was being gentle and as civil as can be expected when I called it dishonesty.  But you are probably right to say that I was accusing him of being a liar.  Well, I may have been a bit rude, but I wasn’t wrong, was I? 

What is Education For

My latest in the American News, some of which has appeared here previously:

We are often lectured about the importance of education. Yet how often do we pause to consider what education is for?

We often speak of a “liberal education.” Liberal, of course, is related to liberty. Thus a liberal education is one that is fit for a free person.

Political philosopher Leo Strauss defined liberal education as "experience in things beautiful." Strauss worried that democracy has a tendency toward the mediocre. A liberal education should thus remind the citizens of the democracy that there are higher, more beautiful things than satisfying immediate interest or pleasure. Liberated from ignorance and with one's character molded by the highest and most beautiful, one is able to use one's freedom well.

One of Strauss's students and later a colleague, Herbert Storing, argued that for most people Strauss's version liberal education is either beyond their capacity or of little use. For them, the truly liberal education might be one that teaches them useful skills so they can provide for themselves. Able to provide for themselves, they are now capable of being free men.

Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, saw value in both these views of education. The "primary" education for citizens, Jefferson suggests, should include both the skills needed to provide for one's self (arithmetic and literacy, for example), but also, through reading, education should "improve...his morals" and help him "understand his duties to his neighbors and country." A good student should be morally decent, have good manners, be patriotic and be able to provide for himself. One is not free if one cannot control one's passions and appetites, nor is one free if one is dependent on others for one's well-being.

Jefferson's goals for higher education are similar. For example, one goal of higher education is “To harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, manufactures and commerce and by well informed views of political economy to give a free scope to the public industry.” Also, the university should “develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.”

Once again, we see a combination of practicality and refinement. University-educated citizens are the leaders of society. Thus they need to know the grand theories of the political, mathematical and physical sciences (including agriculture), but also but also they should "cultivate their morals" along with cultivating the soil. Their education should help them be "examples of virtue to others."

Do our schools educate toward creating free citizens? We cannot exist without the aid of others, yet the truly dependent person is not really a free person, thus not a true citizen. Ignorant of history and the examples of literature, unable to intelligently assess the competing claims of rivals for power, the non-liberally educated are easy prey for demagogues. Also, without basic life skills, like those taught in the old industrial education, folks must depend on others to provide the essentials of life.

A citizen is able to govern himself, thus earning the right to take active part in a self-governing society. A subject, on the other hand, is literally subjected to the rule of others. The purpose of education is not, as we often have it, to make good producers and consumers of our young, to make them “marketable.” Instead, as Jefferson would have it, the purpose of education is to educate a citizen fit for self-government.

We should ask whether we are educating citizens or just a generation of subjects.

Global Warming On Hold

Here is an interesting piece on the current crisis, from Discovery News:

According to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."

Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a "super El Nino event." It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.

How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.

The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science -- identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snowstorm) from human-induced change.

But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space.

"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970s was due to a free variation in climate," Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. "Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."

Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.

"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming," Swanson said. "Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

Let’s review, shall we? 

1.       There has been no global warming for at least eight years, according to these climate scientists.  I gather that this is the consensus. 

2.      During that time, man-made greenhouse gases have been increasing.

3.      The climate models on which global warming predict an increase in temperature, contrary to what actually happened. 

4.      No one seems to have any idea why this cooling period is taking place. 

5.      It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970s was due to a free variation in climate.”

6.      You can count on global warming kicking back in in about, oh, thirty years or so. 

Now that’s a lot to chew on.  Consider items 1-3: that’s what we used to call “falsification.”  It’s something every legitimate scientific theory or hypothesis must be subject to.  Of course one piece of contrary evidence doesn’t mean that the former is false, but it certainly does weaken it.  Number five is very significant because that period of pretty steep warming has always constituted the main empirical evidence for AGW.  But in spite of having no idea why the climate is behaving like it is, Dr. Swanson reassures us that “warming will return and be very aggressive.”  How he could possible know that is anyone’s guess. 

Surely thirty years of grace when it comes to global warming should be good news?  I predict that this study will completely uninteresting to the mainstream press.

Obama’s Dishonesty

Well, there’s this earmark thing.  Earmarks are spending for special projects inserted into a bill.  Here is what President Obama said about earmarks in his address to Congress:

Now, I'm proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks -- (applause) -- and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities. 

Now it’s patently false that the “recovery plan” was free of earmarks, if you mean by that special projects loaded onto the bill.  But the ‘what we have done’ and ‘what we are going to do’ language leaves out what Obama was in fact doing right then: passing a bill that was crawling with earmarks.  Here’s Andrew Taylor at AP:

Obama, who swore off his own earmarks during last year's campaign after seeking them earlier in his Senate career, promised last year to force earmarks down to 1994 levels — when Democrats were ousted from their longtime congressional majorities.

Instead, according to an analysis by the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee, Obama is poised to sign a measure containing 7,991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion. That's on top of $6.2 billion worth of pet projects passed last year when Congress adopted a bill bundling together the budgets for the Defense, Homeland Security and Veteran Affairs departments.

I predict that next year’s budget will reflect the fact that “our most important national promises” include a lot of spending on pork odor research and water taxis.  Now it can be argued that earmarks are an essential part of the legislative process.  But if that’s true, an honest President or candidate for the Presidency ought not to promise an end to them.  Obama’s talk of getting rid of earmarks is pure mendacity. 

And then there is this gem, from Yahoo News, Feb. 21st:

On Monday, Obama will try to snap Washington's collective mind-set back to fiscal restraint, just days after signing a record-breaking spending plan to stimulate the moribund economy. His afternoon-long "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House is bound to set off sparks.

Wow.  Back to fiscal responsibility.  This, from a President who is planning on deficits of a trillion a year during his current term.  What in heaven’s name would a lack of fiscal irresponsibility look like?  Yahoo goes on:

Obama campaigned on promises to reduce health care costs, rein in prescription drug prices, modernize medical record-keeping and improve medical treatment and efficiency.

Yes-he-did.  Does he really care about reducing costs?  Well, one “member of his inner circle” clearly doesn’t think that this is part of the real agenda.  From Mike Allen at Politico:

“Even if we’re busting the budget, we’ve got to solve some of these problems,” said a member of his inner circle. “I’d rather live with a debt than have people go without health care.” 

Well, maybe this “inner circle member” has it all wrong.  But I am guessing this is a little truth seeping out from a crack in the wall. 

In his address to Congress, Obama said this:

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets.  Not because I believe in bigger government -- I don't. 

This guy, who doesn’t believe in big government, is going to expand government control of the GDP from the historical stable 20% to more than 30%.  Gods Damn, as they say on Battlestar Galactica, what would he do if he did believe in big government? 

Maybe this President is a visionary genius who will lead us to the Promised Land.  But if you are looking for honesty, you have at least four years to wait.  There isn’t an honest bone in his body. 

Bloggers as Journalists

My Keloland colleagues, David Newquist and Tim Gebhart have some comments on the status of bloggers as journalists.  Tim raises the question in the context of a recent federal bill.

The question of whether bloggers are journalists is raised indirectly by differences in legislation introduced this month in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate to provide certain legal protections to journalists.

Both bills call themselves the Free Flow of Information Act and seek to create a federal "shield law." Broadly speaking, shield laws protect reporters from having to disclose confidential or unpublished information in response to subpoenas or court orders unless certain conditions are met. It has been an ongoing debate for several decades and the advent of blogs adds another layer to the debate.

David Newquist replies:

I am not sure such protections should always be extended to reporters.

I share Professor Newquist’s skepticism, though perhaps for different reasons.  He is concerned that bad people saying bad things will get protections that they do not deserve.  He has this:

For real journalists, shield laws will be a benefit. For those who practice journalistic shysterism, they will shield the mendacious and incompetent and merely self-promoting. Real journalists may have egos, but they are educated and disciplined enough to know the difference between serving their profession and serving their egos.

And this:

While journalism has its sub-par practitioners and needs to be called into account on occasion, for some blogs scurrility and maligning are standard fare. Many are devoted to ad hominem attacks, not the discussion of information.

While it is no doubt true that there are bad journalists and bad bloggers, it is also true that it’s a lot easier to see the faults of the one or the other when they are on the other side.  It is also easier to persuade yourself that an ad hominem attack has taken place when you yourself are the hominem in question. 

This, I think, is the problem with shield laws in general.  They extend legal protections to journalists that are not available to non-journalists.  If a journalist receives information that is relevant to a criminal investigation, he or she might not have to reveal it.  A non-journalist could be compelled to cough up.  But that means that the government has to distinguish between “real journalists” and non-journalists.  It might be tempting to extend such protections to the New York Times, but not, say, to Rush Limbaugh. 

I don’t believe in Professor Newquist’s distinction between real journalists and pseudo-journalists.  During the recent election campaign, the New York Times ran a piece full of innuendo about John McCain.  An affair with a lobbyist was clearly hinted at (nod and wink), but not a bit of real information was supplied.  That was a journalistic scandal, for which the Times was rightly and deeply embarrassed.  But this doesn’t mean that the Times isn’t a “real” newspaper.  It just means that the Times’ editors succumbed to corruption and practiced shoddy journalism.  That’s an important thing to know.  But though I agree with Professor Newquist that “false information is the enemy of a free people,” I don’t think that Government, as an interested party, should decide which information or information brokers, deserve legal protection. 

Bloggers are not “non-real journalists.”  We are amateur journalists.  We don’t have the kind of resources behind us (fact checkers!) that traditional newspapers and newsrooms do, but we have the freedom to say what we damn well think.  It’s true that we depend on the mainstream media for information, and that raises deep concerns in a period when major newspapers are folding almost as fast as banks.  But it’s also true that, in many celebrated cases, us bloggers have kept the mainstream press more honest than it is inclined to be. 

I don’t think that bloggers should have more legal protections than any other citizens have, but I am not sure that “professional journalists” should be treated any differently.