South Dakota Politics

Ricci v. DeStefano

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ricci (pronounced Ree Chee, or sometimes Rich ee) and against the City of New Haven, Connecticut. The case has important implications for affirmative action, and less important though interesting implications for the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor.

The Case.

The city of New Haven instituted an exam for firefighters seeking promotion to lieutenants and captains. The exam was specifically designed to be race neutral and involved a lengthy process of fitting the test to the relevant manuals and the experiences of firefighters. The exam included an oral portion. The assessors were drawn from firefighters outside Connecticut, holding higher ranks than the positions open. Sixty percent of the assessors were minorities.

Frank Ricci suffers from dyslexia. He spent $1,000 on books, studied 13 hours a day, and hired a tutor to read him the material. He placed sixth on the lieutenant's exam, qualifying him for immediate promotion. Here is the Court's description of the results.

Candidates took the examinations in November and December 2003. Seventy-seven candidates completed the lieutenant examination—43 whites, 19 blacks, and 15 Hispanics. Of those, 34 candidates passed—25 whites, 6 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. Eight lieutenant positions were vacant at the time of the examination. [The] top 10 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to lieutenant. All 10 were white. Subsequent vacancies would have allowed at least 3 black candidates to be considered for promotion to lieutenant.

Forty-one candidates completed the captain examination—25 whites, 8 blacks, and 8 Hispanics. Of those, 22 candidates passed—16 whites, 3 blacks, and 3 Hispanics. Seven captain positions were vacant at the time of the examination. Under the rule of three, 9 candidates were eligible for an immediate promotion to captain—7 whites and 2 Hispanics.

So, although several black candidates qualified for eventual promotion, none qualified for immediate promotion to open positions.

The City of New Haven threw out the test results on the grounds that no immediate promotion for any Black applicants would open them to lawsuits under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Ricci and 19 others sued.

The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4

that race-based action like the City's in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute. The respondents, we further determine, cannot meet that threshold standard.

The Court reached that decision on fairly narrow grounds, and did not ask whether the City's actions violated The Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Comment

Ricci was denied a promotion he had worked very hard to obtain and which he was entitled to under the rules the city had set up. He was denied his promotion solely on the grounds that the results of the exam had a disparate impact on Blacks, i.e., that the racial mix of those who qualified for immediate promotion was not to the City's liking.

This looks to me like a de facto quota system. A quota system, as defined in previous cases such as Bakke, is one which sets aside a number of seats or positions for which only persons of a certain racial identity are allowed to compete. Here we have to assume a de facto requirement that at least one immediate-hire position was reserved for a Black applicant (or one each for lieutenant and captain). That would mean that at least two such positions were not open to persons who were White or Hispanic, or anything other than Black. The fact that the failure to fill the quota resulted in throwing out the whole test, rather than in the preferential promotion of a targeted minority, clouds the issue but doesn't make it any cleaner. Unfortunately, the Court did not address this question.

All the results mean is that the City cannot discriminate against White and Hispanic applicants solely on the basis of their racial identification merely because it imagines it might be sued under Title VII. It has to prove that the results were a violation of Title VII. But the Court also indicated that it thinks that the city cannot make such a case. That's not chopped liver. It provides significant protection for city governments trying to find legitimately race neutral modes of promotion. But it leaves four votes in favor of discriminating against Mr. Ricci just because he's the wrong color.

The case has only small consequences for Judge Sotomayor. Four votes side with her on the substantive issue, which supports the claim that she was in the mainstream on this one. On the procedural issue (she heard this case on the lower court, and voted to dismiss it without examination) the result was more embarrassing. None of the Justices agreed that the case did not deserve to be heard. None of this is likely to affect her confirmation.

Frank Ricci and Sonia Sotomayor both rose from humble positions through very hard work. But under the racialist law of affirmative action, they are not equally disadvantaged.

Neverland & Graceland

In the race to the bottom of American culture, I don't want SDP to be left too far behind. So here is a post on the King of Pop and the King of Rock and Roll.

It's not always good to be king. All of us know this and none of us knows this. We understand that power, wealth, and fame can destroy us, but few of us would object to getting a little more of any or all of that. So the examples of Michael Jackson and Elvis Pressley are morally edifying.

A few years ago I visited Graceland for the first time, though Pressley's fabled home was only an hour away from my home town. I found it fascinating and appalling, in equal measure. It was a monument to wretchedness secured by success.

I was never a big Elvis fan, though I liked a lot of his music and, I confess, I liked a lot of his dreadful movies when I was about eleven. He had a great voice, a very serviceable face, and came along at the right time. But he got everything he ever wanted early in life, and had no idea what to do with it. Graceland is full of exhibits devoted to Pressley's attempts to distract himself. One day he got a great idea. He bought dozens of golf carts and he and his entourage played golf cart polo on the grounds. I bet that got old fast. He was bored most of the time, and his typical response was to redecorate another room in more garish colors. But none of that worked. The only things that did work were fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and, of course, drugs.

Michael Jackson was Elvis with even more money and tilted seven degrees to the weird side of the dial. When he and I were young, I liked "Ben." But that was because, despite its soupy presentation, it was about a hyper-intelligent rat that commanded a man-eating army of rats. That's entertainment! I also thought 'Billy Jean' and 'Thriller' to be first rate pop songs.

Jackson's descended into wretchedness in a much more pubic fashion than Elvis. Perhaps because his fame came in childhood, his stunted emotional development made the King of Rock and Roll look like a well-rounded individual. Coming along later, he had more refined nonsense to work with. I remember a photo of Jackson sleeping in an enriched oxygen capsule. And there was the famous transformation from Black guy to white ghost. About his relations with children, I have no interest in knowing enough to comment. But it does seem to me possible that it was entirely innocent, if altogether creepy. He was a child trapped in a bigger than life man, and craved the innocent attention of other children.

There are two lessons here, and both are fundamental. One is that it is bad to be surrounded by people who have to tell you what you want to hear and can never tell you what you need to hear. The other is that there is such a thing as higher culture. Precisely when you have security and leisure, that is the time to put aside conspicuous displays and garish colors, and develop a taste for more subtle and refined pleasures. This, if you want to know the whole story, is the point of the liberal arts. What is beautiful and profound is both stimulating and challenging. In many societies the rich have patronized the arts and sciences because they wanted something worthwhile to spend their money on. Wealth and power without cultivated tastes will end up like Elvis Pressley and Michael Jackson: feeble and bloated or feeble, washed out, and thin, but in either case wretched and then dead.

Cap & Trade Incoherence

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) passed the House today 219 to 212. The winning coalition included 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The opposition included 168 Republicans and 44 Democrats. Apparently, elections matter. South Dakota's own Herseth-Sandlin voted no.

Here is a summary of what the legislation would do, from Ronald Bailey at Reason:

The ACES Act would establish an artificial carbon market by setting a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted each year. Beginning in 2012, a national cap—or total maximum CO2 emissions—would be set and then ratcheted downward annually. Under ACES, the U.S. would emit 17 percent less carbon dioxide in 2020 than it did in 2005, eventually falling to 83 percent less than emitted in 2005 by 2050.

I do not know what the odds of passage in the Senate are, where the party balance is narrower and a filibuster is possible. So I will address two questions: can the bill work, in some sense, and what will its effects on the American economy be?

The answer to the first question is easy. Even if the bill's targets are met, there is no scientific basis for believing that it will have a measurable effect on global greenhouse emissions, and even less for believing that any effect it has will have a detectable influence on climate. Even if other developed nations follow our lead, and most of them won't, developing economies like China and India aren't going to hobble their own economies.

Cap and Trade has been tried in Europe, and it had virtually no effect on carbon emissions. The reason is simple. Governments can issue allowances whenever the effects of such legislation become sufficiently burdensome to their economies, and they sometimes issue permits for more "pollution" than is being produced. No pain means no gain. Waxman-Markey is playing this game in advance. From the Wall Street Journal:

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in.

When you put off the hard part for twenty years or more, it does not inspire confidence. Some Democrats voted against the bill precisely because they think it will do little or nothing.

Judging the effect on the economy depends on whether the legislation has any real effect. If it goes the same way as Europe, it will have no great effect except to create another expensive program and give Congress the means to tweak it so as to punish or please various constituencies and economic sectors.

What will be the economic consequences if the bill is to have a real impact on energy production? Again from Ron Bailey:

The central fact of the cap-and-trade proposal is that it will increase the price of energy. If energy prices don't go up, the goal of getting energy producers, manufacturers, and consumers to shift away from carbon generating fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) toward low-carbon sources of energy (nuclear, solar, wind, conservation) will not be achieved.

The bill can only work by making energy more expensive. That in turn will increase the price of everything that requires energy to produce or provide, which is everything. Of course the theory is that the bill will encourage the development of a new, cleaner economy, with sustainable, green energy production and enlightened small carbon footprint consumers. Al Gore will be encouraged to get rid of Bio-Solar One, his gas guzzling house boat. That is wishful thinking on Bio-Solar stilts.

This amounts to a massive tax on the entire economy, to be levied as the same time that the economy will be trying to pay back the tens of trillions in debt we are currently racking up.

All this looks to me like incoherent policy, a vast project based on subvast and mutually irreconcilable ideas. Conservative thinkers warn it will be a big drag on the economy, but I doubt that. The legislation, if it passes, will be amended into insignificance long before that happens. It will only be a small drag on the economy, with no good achieved. Well done Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin.

Asian Horror Online Free: Revengeful Ghost & Real Estate

That will catch on your spam filter! This blog is devoted almost entirely to politics, but anyone who has been reading it for a long time (there are such people) will know that I have posted a lot of music reviews and that one of my interests is the horror genre. Especially A-Horror and J-Horror: spooky movies from Asia in general and Japan in particular. I have loved the spooky story since I was a boy. Yes, I was dropped on my head. Anyway, I can blog about what I want to.

I can make a case for serious attention to this genre. I have been engaged in a discussion of culture connected with a recent post. I think all cultures have more in common with one another than differences, but the differences are delightful and instructive. That is especially so when they are disturbing to one another.

In the late 90's a series of Asian Horror movies were made that had a tremendous impact on the horror film genre. The Ring, The Eye, The Grudge, Pulse, and Spiral, were the most important. The Ring was the best of them, based on the superb horror novel by Koji Suzuki. All but the last have seen American made versions. On the American Ring can compare, and I think it might be even better than the American version. Spiral was brilliant, but perhaps too ethereal for mass market.

I recently discovered a website, Asian-Horror-Movies.com, that has a very large collection of Asian movies that you can watch online. All of the above mentioned movies are available. The quality is not great, but the price is right and they are there on demand.

Ju-on, or The Grudge (2003) was one of the most frightening ghost stories I have ever enjoyed. At the small risk of spoiling the surprise, it is a series of small stories, each with the same horrific ending. But American fans may not know that the Japanese movie was itself a remake of a version made for Japanese TV in 2000. I just finished watching that.

The TV version is altogether cheap in production. Poor special effects, modest cinematography (though I can't really judge from the online presentation), good but not great acting, and a very slow pace, all distinguish the TV effort from its polished 2003 incarnation. It was nonetheless marvelously effective. It also fills out the story a bit more.

SPOILER ALERT.

The center of the action in both movies is a modest Japanese house. In the TV version, the real estate angle is prominent. How do you unload a house that is inhabited by a ghost that gobbles up people whole? Answer: you lie. In the later version, there's a social service angle. Social workers show up to take care of people living in the house, and they get gobbled up along with everyone else.

The first version makes more explicit what the movie version mostly hinted at: a jealous husband murders his wife and son, and that sets off the chain of events. The boy ghost, Toshio, appears frequently. He is a tragic figure, but all the more terrifying in so far as he isn't malevolent but always signals the approach of mommy ghost. It is her rage that is immortal and insatiable. Anyone who enters the house is acquired by her, like the target of a smart missile, and once acquired there is no defense. Anyone who comes into close contact with someone who is already cursed risks infection. "The grudge," or curse, is like a virus: it propagates itself.

Ju-on is in one respect more like Western horror than typical A-Horror. In the latter, the spirit world leaks into the living world more or less like an ecological disaster. It doesn't have to be anyone's fault. In W-Horror, the root of all evil is sin. In Ju-on, adultery that is the root cause of the terror. The violation of marriage vows opens a rift in the fabric between worlds, with all manner of unfortunate consequences. Tell that to a few Republican governors and Senators. Another interesting thing about the TV version is that it reveals a deep angst in Japanese society about children. There is a current of tremendous guilt about having and protecting children that flows just under the surface of the film. In a nation that has virtually stopped having children, it's no wonder.

The alternate versions of Ju-on are book marked with two of the most frightening scenes in modern movie-making. At the beginning of the TV version, a woman walks over a railway overpass and then down backstreet. She stops dead before an unexceptional house (the house) and looks in. If you've seen the other version first, that brief response to the malevolent presence is very effective.

In the second version, after nearly everyone has been consumed by the ghost, the camera focuses on a utility pole with a missing persons notice tacked to it. You see the faces of missing girls and boys. Where did they go? Then the camera pans out to the street. It's empty. Paper is blowing in the wind. No cars. No people. Can we conceive that the anger of one young woman, stored in an empty house like a super battery, could eat the whole world? That is a real estate crisis.

If you like a good spooky story, check out Asian-Horror-Movies.com. Tell 'em I sent ya.

The Uninsured

We frequently hear that the number of Americans without health insurance is 46 million. When you hear a number like that being repeated frequently and by the President of the United States, that doesn't mean you can trust it. But seems to come from the Census bureau, which is generally a reliable source. Moreover, if the number were bogus, it would be challenged by the conservative think tanks, and they aren't doing that.

By contrast, you don't hear much more about that 45 million. Who are they and why are they uninsured? And for how long? Are these mostly people who never had or who lost and are never going to get back their health insurance?

According to the Census Bureau, about 10 million of the uninsured are not citizens, a category that includes legal and illegal immigrants. My guess is that it's largely the latter, since legal immigrants usually have sufficient resources and family backing to get into the job market. The point here is not that the illegal immigrants are undeserving, but that it's hard to provide benefits for persons who choose to remain below the radar. Unless, of course, you simply hand out benefits to all who ask, something that might be the Christian thing to do, but would amount to a form of de facto legalization.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, see Julia Seymour at Business and Media Institute, 45% of the uninsured will get health insurance back within four months. I believe I heard John Goodman, of the National Center for Policy Analysis (a free market think tank) say, on Fox, that within two years 90% of the [temporarily?] uninsured get health insurance back.

A lot of the uninsured could afford health insurance. According to Seymour,

More than 17 million of the uninsured make at least $50,000 per year (the median household income of $50,233) – 8.4 million make $50,000 to $74,999 per year and 9.1 million make $75,000 or higher.

See National Bureau of Economic Research.

Finally, at lot of those who can't afford health insurance are eligible for programs like Medicaid and SChip. About 25% of the uninsured simply fail to sign up for these programs.

How many Americans are without health insurance because they can't afford it? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, between 8.2 and 13.9 million people. I assume that means citizens.

None of this is to say that we don't have a problem. But the problem is largely a gap problem. Most people get their health insurance from their employers, and they sometimes lose it between jobs. People who could afford health insurance but don't buy it are also a problem, because they frequently can't afford being sick and the rest of us end up footing the bill. People who don't go to the least bit of trouble to get access to programs they're entitled to, that's another problem.

But breaking up the uninsured population this way makes the problem look more manageable, and suggests solutions that are within reach. I am not prepared to take side on solutions, but some form of tax credit, amounting to a voucher for the disadvantaged, might be very doable. You could take that with you while you are looking for your next job.

Of course you don't want the problem to look manageable if your goal is not to rescue the uninsured but to use them as an excuse to transform the system in the direction of Canada and Europe. Maybe that would be a good thing. I doubt it, but I was wrong once before, in 1993. I won't say what about. I will say that I don't think European style heath care is likely to happen. Insisting upon it, to the exclusion of more practical policies, will likely result in nothing getting done.

Healthy Skepticism on Health Care 3

Lots of liberal pundits are urging the President to seize the opportunity to reform the American health care system. What, exactly, is he doing? It looks to me like a full court press. But increasingly the Administration spokesmen are saying things like: "this process is in its early stages", or "this thing will take time." Let me translate: it ain't going well.

One problem is that almost all Americans (75-80%) like the heath care we are getting. We like our doctors, and we get to see them pretty quick, and we get treated promptly. We understand that, in the abstract, the system is inefficient and too expensive, and we think it's a good idea if that were fixed. But we want that to be done without the bill going way up or our current arrangements to be modified in ways not to our liking.

Barack Obama has been promising us, since he began running for the Oval Office, that the satisfied 75% of us would get to keep our current health care arrangements. From Jake Trapper, at ABCNews.com:

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people," President Obama told the American Medical Association on June 15. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

That sounds like a pretty firm promise. But all those periods turn out to be periodic.

ABC News asked how the president could make such a guarantee if the public run plan were cheaper, thus possibly enticing employers to enroll employees in that plan.

"When I say if you have your plan and you like it,…or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform," the President said.

Well, that is helpful! So: "you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period," means "you won't get to keep it, but someone besides the government will take it away." That's promise keeping Obama style.

Here's the problem: the President wants a "public option" to be part of any reform. That means that the government will offer health care plans as an alternative to any currently available plans. The public plans will be heavily subsidized, and employers will jump at the chance to dump their healthcare expenses on the government. Since most Americans get their heath care from their employers, that means we don't get to keep our doctors or health care plans, as the President promised. Meanwhile the Government will get a virtual monopoly on health insurance, at a very large public cost (if the Congressional Budget Office is to be trusted).

Of course, that is what the President is counting on. He wants what a lot of Congressional Democrats have long wanted: single payer, government run health care. Socialized medicine, to use the traditional terms. He just figures he has to con us into buying it.

Maybe the President can pull this off. I'm doubtful. The Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress have to wonder what will happen when tens of millions of Americans get cute little letters from their employers informing them that their health care plans are being discontinued. No bother: you'll get a cheaper plan from Uncle Obama. They also have to wonder what will happen when the tens of trillions of debt that our President is sign off on comes due for the American economy. I wouldn't bet on courage.

Chicago on the Potomac

Politics is about coalitions. Put together enough warlords, priests, ward healers and/or visionary activists, with enough men and horses, or crowds with pitchforks, or union muscle, or money walking around in sandals, or all of the above and you get to sit in the big chair and wear the big hat. Of course, the thread with which you knit together your tapestry can be woven out of a lot of different types of fabric. Sometimes it's common opinions; other times, common animosities. But the oldest and maybe the most durable fabric is the simple buddy bond. From the big man on down to the local party potluck, a vast network of status and favor acquires the strength of Medieval chain mail.

Which brings me to the case of one Gerald Walpin, inspector general for the federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps. Salena Zito has the best summary I have seen, at Real Clear Politics:

Walpin became the center of some media attention last week for suspending Barack Obama supporter Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and now mayor of Sacramento, for irregularities in his use of federal money when he ran a charity.

Walpin was asked by the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service to investigate the charity, St. HOPE, which received an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant to tutor Sacramento students, to redevelop buildings and to develop local art and theater programs.

Walpin's investigation found that the money instead was used to sugar the salaries of the charity's staff, to get involved in a local school board election, and to make AmeriCorps volunteers attend to Johnson's personal needs, including washing his car.

Last May, Walpin's office recommended the suspension of Johnson and an assistant at St. HOPE from receiving federal money.

It's not clear that Mr. Johnson did anything illegal when he ran St. HOPE. It's pretty clear that he did a lot of stuff that was sleazy (or that had the appearance of impropriety, which is what you say when you don't want to say sleazy). John Kass has this at the Chicago Trib:

In an April deal with prosecutors in the Obama Justice Department, Johnson was not charged with a crime. But his St. HOPE Academy charity agreed to pay back half of the $850,000, including $72,000 from Johnson himself.

That looks like about $425,000 in impropriety, including at least $72,000 in personal sleaze. This is the sort of thing we inspector generals are for. But of course little sleaze has big sleaze to mind it, and that is what corrupt party bosses are for.

Ms. Zito tells us what happened next:

None of this was an issue until November, when Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento. City-hired attorneys concluded this past spring that Sacramento could be forbidden from receiving federal stimulus funds because of Johnson's suspension.

Six weeks later, Walpin got a call from a White House lawyer. The order was clear: Resign within the hour, or you will be fired. Walpin went for the firing.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, Congress had passed the Inspectors General Reform Act - which then-Senator Obama co-sponsored - requiring a president to give Congress 30 days notice, plus an actual reason, before firing an inspector general.

Obama Incorporated says it decided to remove Walpin because, in one meeting, he was confused and disoriented. Well, Walpin is 77 and old people are like that, aren't they? Of course "confused and disoriented," if adopted as a general standard, would send most of Washington packing. But despite what some of Obama's critics have said, that looks to me like a legitimate reasons for removing an officer. If it's true, that is.

The trouble is that Kevin Johnson was a friend and a political asset (I repeat myself) of President Obama. Having an independent and legitimate reason to remove a threat to an asset would be a happy accident for the President. I am suspicious of happy accidents.

Inspector Generals, unlike independent prosecutors, don't have unrestrained leave and unlimited resources to pursue their purpose. But Congress acted to give them special protection precisely to make sure they do their job conscientiously and effectively. There is no indication Walpin did anything else.

This is Chicago politics come to Washington D.C. It's easier in a local venue, where attention spans are limited and the press underfunded. But it clearly has the potential to make the United States of America more like the windy city. It sends a message that IG's should put the network above the law. This is not an entirely good thing.

When George Bush fired a few Federal Prosecutors because they weren't prosecuting to his liking, the press went nuts. So far, the Walpin case has been slowly percolating through the online press and blogosphere. It is worth paying attention. If you think that Obama brought a new spirit to Washington, you might or might not be correct. It might be better if you are wrong.

In Defense of President Obama

Our President is so accustomed to a servile press and context control that it must be a lot of fun finding himself in charge during the current Iranian discombobulation. No matter what he does, he will look like he has no idea what he is doing. Fred Barnes thinks the President is showing weakness by hiding behind a false choice.

Obama has sought neutrality between a discredited regime and democratic protesters. This actually helps the regime, since President Ahmadinejad and the mullahs don't need Obama's support. The protesters do. In effect, Obama has tilted in favor of the regime. The result is personal shame (for Obama) and policy shame (for the United States).

That, unfortunately, is correct. The Iranian protesters are carrying signs in English for a reason. They nourish hopes that the United States can bring some kind of clout to bear on their behalf. Not doing so surely means supporting the status quo.

Peter Spiegel and Neil King think that pressure is increasing on Obama to "act forcefully."

The uncompromising stance taken by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday ordered an end to protests, ratcheted up pressure on the Obama administration to take a forceful line against the Iranian regime.

But how forceful, exactly, is a "forceful line"? The Administration is indeed bending under such pressure. Ali Akbar Dareini and Brian Murphy note this:

In Washington, President Barack Obama urged Iranian authorities to halt "all violent and unjust actions against its own people." He said the United States "stands by all who seek to exercise" the universal rights to assembly and free speech.

Is that a "forceful line"? Jeffrey T. Kuhner has forceful words for the President:

President Obama has betrayed the pro-democracy protesters in Tehran. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are risking their lives to contest Iran's rigged elections. They understand that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election was a fraud and that his main challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, is the victim of a stolen election.

The best the president can muster is that he is "concerned" by the election results and "troubled" by the "suppression" of peaceful dissent. His top priority is that America not be seen as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs. Mr. Obama is convinced that nothing - including a possible democratic revolution - must derail his "grand bargain" to negotiate an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. This is realpolitik at its worst.

The trouble with all of that is that it is a mix of truth, conjecture, and wishful thinking. Yes, the election is a fraud. All elections under the current Iranian regime are fraudulent. That doesn't mean that Mousavi is the "victim of a stolen election," because the thing about fraudulent elections is that they don't tell you what would have happened in an honest one. It seems as like as not that Ahmadinejad would have won a fair election. By contrast, if Mousavi had won he would surely have been as much a regime stooge as Ahmadinejad. Only his official loss has turned him into a champion of democracy.

Obama should come out forcefully in favor of the protesters, not because Mousavi is the rightful President but because the Iranian regime is not a rightful regime. That he does not do so, as Barnes and others point out, is because he doesn't want to overly irritate the Ayatollahs, with whom he hopes to negotiate. But those negotiations are going to come to nothing anyway. Without a credible threat, Obama cannot win concessions. He has no credible threat. So he might as well issue a more forceful line.

But if he did that, he would just as vehemently criticized for playing into the hands of the Iranian regime. He has no good options. So no matter what he does, he will look like he doesn't know what he is doing.  That doesn't mean, of course, that he does know what he is doing.  No signs of that have appeared in English or any other language. 

Meanwhile, North Korea is apparently about to launch a missile toward Hawaii. Welcome to the Oval Office, Mr. President. Don't you miss Chicago?

Miranda's Question & the Two Cultures

My dear friend Miranda raised this question in an earlier comment:

I was watching the protest on CNN earlier today and I noticed that for some reason, the police in the footage had signs that read, "police". In English. Do you have any idea why? It reminded me of the "baby milk factory" incident.

I didn't know why. But this column in Slate has an answer:

Post-election protests continued in Tehran for the fifth day on Wednesday. In many photos, riot police wear uniforms with the English word police on them. Ambulances, too, bear the word ambulance in English. Why not use Persian words instead of their English equivalents?

Because everyone knows English. Like many capital cities, Tehran has its emergency personnel wear markings that are internationally recognizable. Street signs, too, are translated into English, and police cars are generally inscribed in both English and Persian. That makes the city more tourist-friendly without sacrificing clarity for locals. After all, the Persian word for police is the same: polise. (Persian, or Farsi, is an Indo-European language that uses an Arabic script, but people will often use Latin lettering, also known as Penglish or Fingilish, especially when typing or texting.) It's also the same word in French (police), German (polizei), Italian (polizia), Czech (policie), and many other languages. Iranian students are required to take English classes in high school. So using the English word for police actually maximizes the number of people who will understand it.

This is actually an important philosophical point. It occurred to me once while watching a film of Saddam Hussein reviewing his troops that he and they were dressed in Euro-American military garb. Just then I was reading one of Bernard Lewis's magnificent books on the Middle East. Lewis began by setting a scene: two Arab men sitting at a café, smoking, drinking coffee, and playing chess. He pointed out how much of Islamic culture has been imported (well, not so much the coffee or the chess) from the West.

The idea of multiculturalism has been big of late, but it has been surprisingly weak. The reason is that it is based on a mistake. It supposes that there are a vast number of cultures in the world, when in fact there are only two.

One is the centered culture, centered in our people, our city, here. From the point of view of this culture, everything else is "out there." Everyone else is a foreigner, a stranger, an enemy. The ancient Greek word for stranger was the same as that for enemy.

The other culture is the culture of travel. No matter where you go, there you are. In the plains, the mountains look tall; from the mountains, the plains look low. See Herodotus.

Centered culture was once the dominate culture on planet earth. With the growth of trade, it gradually eroded. Herodotus noticed that in different places, people did things different ways, and that each looked strange and even disgusting to the other. With that kind of insight, travel culture was born.

The word "police" on the Iranian police car is a sign that travel culture is now supreme. For historical reasons, travel culture is almost the same thing as Western Culture. This may be a mere historical accident. But it is an accident that happened.

Skepticism on Health Care Reform 2

In the great movie Patton there is a scene where the General arrives to take command of American forces in North Africa. He wakes up a GI and asks him what he is doing. "I am trying to take a nap Sir," the soldier replies. "You get back down there," Patton says, "you're the only one in this Goddamn army who knows what he's trying to do."

So far, in the current rush to reform the American health care system, I haven't noticed anyone as clear headed as that solider. Consider this, from Jeffrey Young at The Hill:

Congressional Democrats and the White House are scrambling to regain their footing after a series of setbacks has stalled political momentum to reform the nation's healthcare system.

A cost estimate hanging a $1 trillion price tag on an incomplete bill, salvos from powerful interest groups and great uncertainty among key Democrats on what will actually be in the legislation that moves through Congress have emboldened Republican critics.

Okay. So this bill is going to cost another trillion. Is that figured into the one or two trillion a year deficits that the Administration is planning on running? I am guessing not. And how does this square with the Administrations current argument that the purpose of health care reform is to rein in costs? Can we really cut costs by spending another trillion dollars that we don't have?

But the more disturbing thing is that "great uncertainty among key Democrats on what will actually be in the legislation." If the Democrats don't know what is going to be in this bill, how can they work on the legislation? Does Obama know what he is trying to do? But it gets better.

The cost of reform and how to pay for it dominated the discussion Tuesday as Democrats were forced to respond to an unfavorable Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of one incomplete part of an incomplete bill.

The CBO looked at one portion of a draft bill written by the Senate HELP Committee and found, among other things, that it would cost more than $1 trillion while providing a net decrease in the number of uninsured people of 16 million.

The CBO also threw cold water on a promise by a coalition of healthcare industry groups to reduce healthcare spending by $2 trillion over 10 years. Obama announced their promise to much fanfare, but the CBO found that while a few of the cost-cutting measures would save money, others would cost money. In sum, they would not have a big impact on federal spending, the CBO concluded.

Now let me get this straight. One "incomplete part of an incomplete bill" is going to cost us a trillion dollars. That's $1,000,000,000,000. For that much dough we are going to insure another 16 million people. That's not even half of the 40 million uninsured folks. Meanwhile, the "savings" of two trillion dollars (that would cover this year's deficit) aren't really savings at all. Some of the proposed measures would cost more money. I suppose I should be comforted that the savings part is "revenue neutral" rather than revenue depleting.

Are we trying to extend more benefits to more people, or are we trying to control health care costs? The President would surely say we need to do both. But is there any indication that anyone knows how to do that? If there is anyone in this Goddamn army who knows what he is trying to do, no one has woke him up yet.

The Lucretia of Badong County

File under Republic: Ancient Rome & Modern China. Here is how the story went the first time around, from Titus Livy:

58. When a few days had gone by, Sextus Tarquinius, without letting Collatinus know, took a single attendant and went to Collatia. Being kindly welcomed, for no one suspected his purpose, he was brought after dinner to a guest-chamber. Burning with passion, he waited until it seemed to him that all about him was secure and everybody fast asleep; then, drawing his sword, he came to the sleeping Lucretia. Holding the woman down with his left hand on her breast, he said, "Be still, Lucretia! I am Sextus Tarquinius. My sword is in my hand. Utter a sound, and you die!"

   In fear the woman started out of her sleep. No help was in sight, but only imminent death. Then Tarquinius began to declare his love, to plead, to mingle threats witll prayers, to bring every resource to bear upon her woman's heart. When he found her obdurate and not to be moved even by fear of death, he went farther and threatened her with disgrace, saying that when she was dead he would kill his slave and lay him naked by her side, that she might be said to have been put to death in adultery with a man of base condition. At this dreadful prospect her resolute modesty was overcome, as if with force, by his victorious lust; and Tarquinius departed, exulting in his conquest of a woman's honour.

In case you don't know the rest of the story, Sextus Tarquinius was the son of the last Roman king, back when Rome had kings. After her rape, Lucretia called her husband and his noble allies to her house. She informed them of the crime and, to make certain that no one could doubt her virtue, plunged a knife into her breast. She was simultaneously killing herself and giving birth to the Roman Republic.

59. Brutus, while the others were absorbed in grief; drew out the knife from Lucretia's wound, and holding it up, dripping with gore, exclaimed, "By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!"

That, gentle readers, is what I call a story. Here is another, from the New York Times:

BEIJING — On the night of May 10, [Deng Yujiao] said, she was in the room washing clothes, when a local official, Huang Weide, came in and demanded that she take a bath with him. She refused, and after a struggle fled to a bathroom.

But Mr. Huang and two companions — including a second official, Deng Guida, who was not related to Ms. Deng — tracked her to the bathroom, then pushed her onto a couch. As they attacked, Ms. Deng said, she took a fruit knife from her purse and stabbed wildly. Mr. Deng fell, mortally wounded.

Ms. Deng was arrested, investigated for involuntary manslaughter and, after the police reportedly found pills in her purse, variously described as sleeping pills and antidepressants, sent her to a mental ward.

But when a blogger, Wu Gan, publicized her case, a cascade of posts crowned her a national hero for resisting official abuse of power and demanded a fair trial.

Those who blog with contempt for bloggers, put that in your cue and download it.

There was a time when the story of the 21-year-old waitress who fatally stabbed a Communist Party official as he tried to force himself on her would have never left the rural byways of Hubei Province where it took place.

Instead, her arrest last month on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter erupted into an online furor that turned her into a national hero and reverberated all the way to China's capital, where censors ordered incendiary comments banned. Local Hubei officials even restricted television coverage and tried to block travel to the small town where the assault occurred.

On Tuesday, a Hubei court granted the woman, Deng Yujiao, an unexpectedly swift victory, ruling that she had acted in self-defense and freeing her without criminal penalties.

Laying aside a few dramatic details, and the hindsight of that indispensable historian, this is the same damn story. Apparatchik Deng Guida tried to have his way with Ms. Deng and she opened him up like the can of crap he was. Better outcome, says I.

Better yet (though I wouldn't get too excited yet) the sons of Brutus in China seem all to be online now. The outrageous abuses of communist party officials are frequently exposed by internet campaigns which the government tries but is increasingly unable to control.

Most such cases, says Mr. Xiao, the Berkeley professor, spawn tens or hundreds of thousands of mentions on Internet blogs and other forums.

But Ms. Deng's case eclipsed them all, racking up four million posts and counting, he said. Her story resonates with millions of Chinese who not only are fed up with low-level corruption but also prize chastity in young women, causes that transcend politics.

There are those who say that republican government is a mere western conceit, one which we would be unwise to encourage in other peoples. This is the speech of worm tongues. Livy's story of the rape of Lucretia, and the story of one Deng Yujiao, are not ambiguous. There is no mistaking their meaning. Republican government means putting the blade to tyrants. It's both or neither. Take your pick. Meanwhile, God bless Ms. Deng.

Iran

Ahmadinejad does fascism. Literally.

As the streets of Tehran begin to look like a Paris suburb on your average Saturday night (lots of screaming, youths throwing bricks at police, burning cars, etc.), the real question is not the one being asked by the world press. Here is how the WaPo phrases it:

NO ONE outside the inner precincts of Iran's power structure knows who won that country's presidential election Friday. It's possible that a majority voted to reelect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as he claims. It's also possible, as much of his opposition fervently believes, that the election was stolen. What we can say for certain is that the election was neither free nor fair.

I can't disagree with any of that. Iran is not a democracy. It has a popularly elected legislature and President, but neither of these enjoys any real power. The security forces are controlled by the clerics. Moreover, the Ayatollahs get to decide who gets to run for President. I think it entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that more Iranians voted for the clown prince Ahmadinejad than for his rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. As the WaPo points out, under the rules of this game it is impossible to tell.

But here is what I want to know: how can a controlled election result in riots? If Mousavi represented a real opposition party, organized independently of the regime, this would be easy enough to game. You need only ask how strong the popular support for the opposition really is. Then you weigh that against the resources the regime has for crushing opposition. Hint: the party that controls the army usually wins.

But since Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are both establishment figures (or else they wouldn't be on the ballot), don't the riots mean that the regime is coming unglued? Two hand-picked candidates succeed not in consolidating control but in dividing the Persian street.

Michael J. Totten has the best thing I have seen on this. His post is a model of what great internet journalism can be: passages from serious political journalism followed by lots of informative quotes and punctuated by video clips. Totten quotes Andrew Sullivan, who offers a paragraph translated from Farsi:

Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin.

If that's genuine, it's every Ayatollah for himself. I am not optimistic that this will result in real democracy. I suspect the black robes will get their act together and lay down the law. But it is very interesting that the regime that is the greatest threat to Middle East stability is itself, just now, unstable.

Wouldn't it be charming if the power of the Ayatollahs did fail and give way to genuine democracy just at the moment that another democracy is emerging next door?

Jeremiah Wright: The Gift that Keeps On Giving

A gift to Obama's critics, that is. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, mentor to one Barack Obama if I remember correctly, is famous for declaring, flamboyantly, that the U.S. Government invented the AIDS virus to kill people of color (oh, and our government also sells drugs to Black folks for the same purpose). He also thinks, if I remember correctly, that the U.S. Government is responsible for the war against Japan.

When Wright was in the crosshairs, during the recent Presidential campaign, Bill Moyers staged a hagiography of Wright, casting the colorful pastor as a new Martin Luther King.

Well, Wright thrust himself back into the public eye recently, and I think that his recent comment has some relevance to his sainthood. From the Daily Press.com:

In an exclusive interview at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference, Wright told the Daily Press that he has not spoken to his former church member since Obama became president, and he implied that the White House won't allow Obama to talk to him.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me," Wright said. "I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ...

Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not for fear of offending Jews and Israel. He specifically cited the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Take just a moment to let "them Jews" sink in.

Exactly what Jews does he mean? He immediately corrected himself:

Wright now says that he misspoke, and that he meant to say the word Zionists instead of Jews. That's a term used to describe those who strongly support the nation of Israel.

Of course "Zionists" is what anti-Semites say when they don't want to admit they are anti-Semites. Reverend Wright just did what he is known for: saying what he really thinks. He thinks there is a conspiracy of Jews infecting the Obama Administration. This is the age old slander against the Jews. They are the infection that has taken hold of our banks and our governments.

Jeremiah Wright is a twenty-four karat, full-tilt Jew-hater. He is a man with darkness in his soul. And, he tells us, he trying to pass that darkness on to his baby daughter. There is no defense, no excuse for this. It is just as bad as any other kind of racism. It is beyond the powers of any Bill Moyers to absolve.

Obama Stimulus Plan: Results Are In

It is not often that an economic policy offers a really clear standard by which it's results can be measured. The Obama economics team, perhaps on purpose, provided just such a standard. The dark blue line above represents the unemployment rate if the stimulus package passed. The Light blue line which peels off from the former in the first quarter of 2009 represents the Obama team estimates of what the unemployment rate would be without the stimulus package.

Since the stimulus package did pass and go into effect, actual results should be closely correlated with the dark blue line. The Maroon dots represent the actual numbers, which are worse than either estimate.

By his own standards, then, Obama's stimulus plan is a failure. Unemployment is higher than it would have been if the stimulus had been defeated. Of course one could always argue that it would have been even worse without the stimulus package. But that kind of argument works no matter how bad the results are.

Socialism Slammed in Europe

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go down.  With the world wide financial crisis eating away at the foundations of  free markets, Socialism was supposed to begin it's long awaited revival.  Instead, in the recent EU elections, center-right to far right parties triumphed across the old country.  See Map of Blue Europe.

From the London Times:

Centre-left parties across Europe were bereft and bewildered today after voters deserted them for extremists and fringe groups or stayed at home in the lowest-ever turnout for elections to the European Parliament.

The biggest faction in the parliament will be the Centre Right after strong performances from Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP, Angela Merkel's CDU and Donald Tusk's Civic Democrats in Poland.

Left-of-centre governments and oppositions were not judged to be offering answers to the economic downturn and suffered badly not only in Britain but in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria and Portugal.

That is obviously correct: what ever is wrong with the current world economy, it is nothing that the Left knows how to fix. 

The disturbing part of the story is the relative success of anti-immigrant parties. 

Anti-immigrant parties gained MEPs in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK. Extremist right-wing parties lost ground in Belgium, Bulgaria and France but still won seats.

To be sure, uncontrolled immigration to Europe might need to be controlled a bit, and other policies modified.  But there is no doubt that the anti-immigrant parties are tinged with racism.  The old idea that Europe is more racially progressive that the U.S. was always wrong, but we may be about to see how wrong it was. 

Light Blogging

Traveling.  My Cuban handlers have advised me to cool it. 

Obama's Cairo Speech: Liberal Foreign Policy Put to the Test

Obama's Cairo speech has been sharply criticized by conservatives. Charles Krauthammer, whom I admire, had a scathing criticism of it on Fox. But I think this was unfair. It was on the whole a pretty good speech. He did fudge a lot of history and make a lot of suspect moral equivalencies. But he also said a lot of things that needed saying, and coming from him, who the rest of the world recognizes as a new hope, that is important. Consider this:

Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

I wonder if George McGovern noticed that part, as he seems to consider the invasion of Afghanistan as a mistake. Here Obama is defending Bush policy, and defending it pretty well.

And then there is this:

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

That was pretty good too. "This bond is unbreakable" is about as good a line as a political speech can encompass. There's no wobble in it.

If there is a problem with the speech, it lies in the theory behind it. The Obama Administration is clearly proceeding on the idea that previous policy (Dubya to be sure, but implicitly Clinton and his predecessors) wasn't sympathetic enough. So we have to start again:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

This was a key idea in Obama's campaign, and one that is still flying from the flag poll: that if we could only approach one another honestly, and with sympathy, we would realize that we all want the same things. Bush's arrogance and unilateralism alienated our allies and the rest of the world. Obama will mend the world by his compassion and high minded ability to step back from the quarrels.

It's a beautiful idea. But it hasn't been working out so well just yet. Obama tried it in Europe, where adoring masses gather to cheer him. But what did he get from the Europeans in terms of real concessions and cooperation? Nothing. Now he is sweet taking the Islamic Middle East. That gets lots of applause. But are Iran, and Hamas, and Hezbollah, any more willing or able, let alone both, to make genuine concessions and move toward resolution of the various conflicts? Don't hold your breath.

 It's a nice idea, and it is the heart of liberal thought on foreign policy, that the problems of the world lie with us. If we could just change, and surely we can manage that, the solutions to the Arab/Israeli conflict, Iran's belligerence, Al Qaeda, would suddenly become clear. But what if the problem isn't with us, or isn't just with us? What if the problem with the world is the world. What is Iran doesn't really share "common principles with us," but has different, irreconcilable and nonnegotiable principles? What if the Palestinians just aren't interested in any deal that allows Israel to exist?

Obama has done a thing either foolhardy or courageous: he has put the fundamental principle of liberal foreign policy to the test. Now we get to see it tested.

Sotomayor Believes What She Said

Judge Sotomayor said the following:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Critics have seized on this as evidence that Sotomayor believes in identity politics, or what political scientists call "sociological representation," the idea that only people of a certain race, ethnicity, or gender, can be competent to speak on certain issues or have certain opinions or represent certain constituencies.

Some conservatives called Sotomayor a racist for saying such a thing. That is unfair. A racist thinks that someone is either bad or inferior or both just because of his or her racial identity. I once heard a guy in Arkansas say that "every N you have ever met has cheated you or tried to cheat you. If you don't think so, that just means he got away with it." That's racism.

Sotomayor is saying that persons of certain ethnic and gender identities are more competent in certain contexts. I have no doubt that this is true. A woman born in Jamaica, raised in Florida, writing a novel while her female partner works at the DMV, is in a better position to write about the experiences of Jamaican-American Lesbians than I will ever be.

But it is a little bit disturbing that this should be true of judges, who have to weigh the facts of a vast range of different parties. If it is true, how many Supreme Court Justices do we need? If we need a wise Latina Woman, don't we also need a wise Latina woman who has been married and has children? And while we are at it, don't we need a left-handed Lithuanian Lutheran Lesbian, just to be sure?

The White House first tried to neutralize this comment by claiming that it was just a poor choice of words, i.e., she didn't mean what she said. Okay. But then the same White House told us that she had said it before. From John Dickerson at Slate:

An administration aide pointed out that in addition to the 2001 speech, in a 1994 speech Sotomayor used nearly identical language: "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion. What is better? I … hope that better will mean a more compassionate and caring conclusion."

This is no quote taken out of context or misstatement. She said much the same on two other occasions. This is what Sotomayor really thinks.

Sotomayor's opinion, and it is pretty clear that it is her opinion, that wise Latina women make better judges than White males, is inconsistent with the very idea of a judiciary. The judge is supposed to be a third party, who can stand apart from the Roe and the Wade and issue a decision based on principles of law and equity. It might be worth having this out in her confirmation hearings.

A Tale of Two Chattering Classes

The American Press is smitten with President Obama. His coverage across a range of media is glowing. Coverage of his wife reminds one of the media's infatuation with Lady Di. Robert Samuelson has some details:

A study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism… examined 1,261 stores by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the "News Hour" on PBS. Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent) , while the rest were "neutral" or "mixed." Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent).

Unlike Bush and Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. "Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44 percent) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22 percent) or Clinton (26 percent)," the report said. "Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda."

That's a bit of a problem. As Samuelson notes, Presidents need an opposition press, at least in a real democracy. This President especially needs one, because

Obama's ambitions are so grand. He wants to expand health care subsidies, tightly control energy use and overhaul immigration. He envisions the greatest growth of government since Lyndon Johnson.

In fact Obama's policy statements have been short of detail, long on promises, and shot through with contradictions. An honest and responsible press would be bringing this to the front. Instead, you have to go to Fox News, or this blog.

Contrast all this with the British Press's treatment of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. From Simon Heffer at the London Telegraph:

We all have moments where we feel we have lost the will to live, and mine came on Monday evening when, just before retiring, I looked at the Telegraph website and saw that Gordon Brown was promising to remain Prime Minister. What, I asked myself, has any of us done to deserve that?

Brown's Labor Party, God bless 'em, are about to be baked in a pie, if polls are correct. It's only local elections, so Labor will wake up the next morning just alive enough to have to explain.

Okay, so the Telegraph is a bit to the right. But it doesn't get better on the left. A London Times piece has this title:

We MPs are fungi, in the dark, covered in manure

Wow. It's hard to top that. Or get below it. And here is the left-wing British Guardian:

The blunt reality is that, even if [Gordon Brown] set out a grand programme of reform now, his association with it would doom its prospects. Proportional representation would transform parliament, but if Mr Brown put a referendum on the ballot, it would be defeated because he backed it. A draft constitutional renewal bill was published more than 12 months ago - but what has come of it? This week Mr Brown announced a national democratic council that might (to see it in a generous light) form the basis of the sort of constitutional convention that led to Scotland's modern parliament. But it is too late. The chance for him has passed.

Ouch! Of course is PM Brown is really smart, he has the tools to govern effectively. Just oppose whatever policy you want to see enacted.

Barack Obama is in charge of a fresh new day. Gordon Brown is the butt end of a once glowing cigar. But I think the former could use a bit of the British Press approach. Sooner or later all the stuff he has been stuffing into the attic is going to come crashing down on him. Sooner would be better than later.

Old Jews Telling Jokes

This is comedy:

http://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/2009/02/malcolm-busch-drobkin.html

Healthy Skepticism on Health Care Reform

President Obama is remarkably comfortable with the big lie. The lie as big as a house and with balloons attached. The Administration is now telling us that health care reform (meaning a big new government run insurance program) will save us all a lot of money. I am not making that up. From the Washington Post:

Slowing the growth in health-care spending from 6 percent a year to 4.5 percent would have enormous benefits for the nation's economy, creating as many as 500,000 jobs a year and increasing annual income for the average family of four by $2,600 over the next decade, the president's chief economic advisers said yesterday.

Wow. That's a pretty amazing policy the President is promising. We get more and better health care, only most of us don't have to pay for it. In fact, the new CEO of GM is going to pay us! And he'll hire us! If you call right now, he will also throw in this amazing sponge cloth!

Pardon me if I'm suspicious. It's my nature. The basic argument in favor of health care reform usually begins with those Americans who are uninsured. Why is that bad? Well, obviously because they aren't getting the health care they need and/or what they are getting is ruinously expensive for them. In fact neither thing is obvious. But if you are really going to extend more health care to more people, and charge a lot of them less for it, well, that's going to cost someone a lot of money, isn't it?

But the Administration has turned from the save the poor argument to the save the budget argument. Health care reform will cut the annual growth of health care spending by 1.5% per year. That figure is the foundation of the 500,000 jobs and twenty six hundred smackers promise. It is also a fib. It is based on a supposed agreement with a lot of big heath care organizations. Here is the real story, from The Politico.

[American Hospital Association] President Richard Umbdenstock told 230 member organizations that the agreement had been misrepresented. The groups, he said, had agreed to gradually ramp up to the 1.5 percentage-point target over 10 years — not to reduce spending by that much in each of the 10 years

Okay, so who is telling the truth?

The comments from Umbdenstock cap a week in which some in the Washington health care world struggled to make sense of the surprise White House announcement Monday. The group of six organizations with a major stake in health care — the Service Employees International Union, the American Medical Association, America's Health Insurance Plan, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, the American Hospital Association and Advanced Medical Technology Association — had been working in secret for several weeks on a savings plan.

The fact sheet they distributed at the time offered general categories from which the savings would come but few specifics on how they would be achieved. But when the day came to announce the offer, representatives from all six organizations were lined up next to the president as he announced

So there is a general promise to reduce costs by 1.5% a year, or over ten years (who's counting?), but no idea at all how this is to be done. Either way you cut it, the President is promising something he has no idea how to deliver.

The Washington Post piece makes the same point:

The [Council of Economic Advisors] report contains few details about how those ambitious goals would be achieved, however, and does not address any increased federal spending needed to implement health reform. And the White House economists acknowledge that shaving 1.5 percentage points off the rate of growth in health spending would be extraordinarily difficult -- "probably near the upper bound of what is feasible."

"The kind of reform that will bring about these economic rewards will not be easy. It will require truly game-changing innovations in many areas," the report says. "But, if we can bring about such changes, there will be substantial benefits to American households, businesses, and the economy as a whole."

Let's step out of this flurry of fibs and vast projects based on half-vast plans, and ask how health care costs can be reduced. More expensive medical technology is becoming available all the time. No? And an aging population needs more and more of it. No? So the major technological and demographic trends are toward more health care spending.

I see only ways of reducing health care expenditures. One is rationing. Every system does this. But that means less health care for somebody. Uncle Roy? That's exactly the opposite of the original promise. And if you are going to extend health care to a new subpopulation and at the same time reduce costs, you are really going to have to put the screws to Uncle Roy. Can President Obama really do this? Let me give you a hint: no. He is smart enough not to mention it. 

The only other way to reduce costs is to make the system more efficient. It is always easy to imagine that enormous gains in efficiency are possible. Sometimes they are, but it is never wise to count on them. I am guessing that gains in health care would be modest even if you had a way of favoring more over less efficient policies.

Private business can achieve this, because it has to make a profit. Government run health care will be beholden to countless interest groups, each of which wants a little more for a little less. Look at the history of Social Security and Medicare if you don't believe me. Government run health care will be less efficient than what we have now.

Maybe there is a way to reduce health care costs while delivering more and better care to more and more people. I have no idea what that way is. Neither does the President. The difference is, I'm not lying about it.

Domestic Terrorism & Abortion

I believe that all human beings are created equal: male and female, rich and poor, Black and White, born and not yet born.  While I think that the wrongness of abortion is a matter of simple logic, I recognize that logic can be obscured by political passions and I acknowledge the possibility (at least in the abstract!) that this might sometime happen to me.  For this reason, I can respect people who disagree with me on this matter and hope for the same courtesy from those who think I am obviously wrong. 

There are limits to respect.  Some people consider waterboarding to be a grave crime against humanity, and I can understand if such a person refused to sit with an interrogator who was known to have done such a thing.  I would not sit down with someone who admitted to practicing late term abortions.

I write these things now only for the sake of showing that my opinions about domestic terrorism are not colored by any pro-choice sympathies.  The United States is a Republic, for Heaven's sake!  As citizens we have enormous and perhaps unprecedented liberties, to think for ourselves, to express our thoughts in speech and writing and in lawful political action.  But liberty is not mere freedom, it is freedom with responsibility.  However much it may hurt, citizens in a Republic are responsible for abiding by the law and accepting the decisions of electorates, legislatures, and courts until such time as minds can be changed. 

There is no possible excuse for terrorism, none, and that is what the murder of an abortion provider amounts to.  Someone might think that the late George Tiller, one of the few medical professionals who "provided women with abortions even late into their pregnancies", in fact murdered children for a living.  I would like to say I disagree, but I cannot.  In this case, it doesn't matter.  Murderous violence against one's fellow citizens points toward a darkness much greater than any it might remedy.  If unchecked, it invites violence and fear without end, and ultimately tyranny. 

Socrates argued, in the Crito, that it is never right to do evil in return for evil, and that those who believe it is can never have common ground with those who do not.  This is hard reasoning, but as usual with Socrates, it is right reasoning.  I think that slavery was a great evil.  I also think that John Brown deserved to be hanged, if anyone ever did.  I think abortion is wrong to the same degree and for the same reasons as slavery.  I also think that George Tiller's murderer should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  If this was a political murder, as seems obvious, then the perpetrator is an enemy of liberty and decent government.  If anyone deserves a good hanging, he does.