South Dakota Politics

Reality Sinks In 2

I have never been a pessimist but I always recognized the advantages of pessimism. If things turn out as bad as you expected, you at least get the satisfaction of being proved right. If not, you enjoy being pleasantly surprised. Conservatives tend to be pessimists. Unfortunately for us all, they are now enjoying the first and not the second brand of satisfaction.

This was confirmed this weekend by two newspapers that have been staunchly liberal in the past. The Badger 14 receive a recall from the Chicago Tribune.

With their showy boycott, though, the Democrats are merely doing what countless lawmakers of all political persuasions, at all levels of government, have done less explicitly for decades: They have run away from the mathematical certainty that this much revenue can pay for only that much spending.

The consequences of their boycott will ratchet up early next week. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a refinancing of state debt must be accomplished by then to free up $165 million. If the Legislature fails to approve that, it will have to come up with more budget cuts.

The Wisconsinites should go home. So should the Indiana lawmakers who abandoned their Legislature in copycat fashion. They need to show they can be responsible stewards of the public purse.

Well, that's the unfortunate truth. This much spending can't be covered by that much revenue. Sorry. "It stinks," as Governor Christie said, but that's reality.

The Los Angeles Times also sees notices that the ship is listing.

The housing bubble and subsequent Wall Street collapse wreaked havoc on the nation's retirement savings, as many pension funds and 401(k) plans suffered losses of 30% or more. State and local governments are now facing huge unfunded pension liabilities, prompting policymakers to scramble for ways to close the gap without slashing payrolls and services. But a new report from the Little Hoover Commission in Sacramento makes a more troubling point: Many state and local government employees have been promised pensions that the public couldn't have afforded even had there been no crash.

More unfortunate truth. Across the nation state governments have made promises to public employees that they couldn't keep and that they had every reason to know that they couldn't keep. One might add that the same is true of our flagship social programs like Social Security and Medicare. In the U.S. at every level, as in Europe, big government bought constituencies by ignoring the "mathematical certainty that this much revenue can pay for only that much spending."

My cherished interlocutors, A.I., Donald, and Dave can ignore this when I say. They can ignore it when Chris Christie says it. Can they keep ignoring it when the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times says it? Maybe.

Reality doesn't care. Worrying about collective bargaining for the teacher's union in Wisconsin is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Wisconsin Democrats who fled the state are trying to flee the facts. We may be looking at ten or twenty years of bad news. It may be the kind of bad news that no economic recovery can remedy. Maybe, instead of calling Governor Walker a fascist, we might out to open our eyes.

No Defense of DOMA

The Justice Department just departed from its previous position on The Defense of Marriage Act. Here are some key passages from Attorney General Eric Holder's statement:

After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President's determination…

Consequently, the Department will not defend the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA as applied to same-sex married couples in the two cases filed in the Second Circuit.

That is a rather bold statement. First the President has decided that "classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny." Standards of scrutiny are in theory "tests" that the Court uses to evaluate laws that are challenged under the Constitution. Almost every law passes the rational basis test. Almost all laws (except affirmative action) fail if the standard is "strict scrutiny". Whether there is an intermediate level of "heightened scrutiny" is a bit murky, but in most cases you can win by persuading the Court to adopt the standard of scrutiny that you prefer. Above, the Administration announces its own decision regarding the level of scrutiny appropriate to "classifications based on sexual orientation".

Second, the Administration announces its decision that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional.

Third, the Administration is taking official action on the basis of its opinions, which is a good deal bolder than trying to persuade a Court to adopt its opinions. The Administration has decided not to defend a duly enacted federal statute in Court because it has concluded that the statute is unconstitutional. Can they do that?

Yes. But…

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Supreme Court even has the power of judicial review. The power to overturn acts of Congress or of the States if they violate the Constitution is inferred from the nature of courts and constitutions generally, but it is strictly limited to exercises of judicial power in specific cases. The other branches of government must interpret the Constitution for themselves whenever they are exercising their appropriate powers.

What should the President do if he concludes that an act passed by a previous Congress and signed by a previous President is unconstitutional? Since the President is duty-bound to uphold the Constitution, perhaps he is obligated to nullify the law, in effect overturning it as a court might do.

There is a big problem with that. It means that a President might ignore any law he finds inconvenient merely by instructing his ministers to construct an argument against its constitutionality. I am reminded of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V listening to his scholars as they dutifully whisper that he has a legal right to all of France. Others have been reminded of George II whose scholars secretly whispered that water boarding was okay.

The Administration's position is not entirely clear, but it seems to be this: the President can instruct his Justice Department not to defend DOMA in court because he has concluded that it is unconstitutional. That creates problems for the judicial process. For a court to render a decision, two parties must approach the bench. If the Justice Department is AWOL, who argues for the federal act? That problem is serious, but I think it can be solved easily enough. The courts will have to recognize some party with standing to argue for the statute.

The Administration has not said that it can refuse to enforce a federal statute that it judges to be unconstitutional. That would be a much bolder proposition and could easily trigger a constitutional crisis. It is not clear, however, why the President could do the one thing and not the other.

I think the Justice Department's action was constitutionally sound, but I confess that we are making this up as we go along. I think their reasoning on the constitutionality of DOMA is nonsense. DOMA doesn't make any "classifications based on sexual orientation." It doesn't apply differently to homosexuals than to heterosexuals or anyone else. A heterosexual man who marries another man where that is legal has exactly the same rights under DOMA as a homosexual man similarly situated.

I also think that the President is lying. It isn't that he and his administration just now concluded that DOMA is unconstitutional. The President has long thought that. He has also said, at least since he was running for his office, that he is opposed to same sex marriage. That's a lie. He isn't and if he ever was, it was long before he sought federal office. The Administration's position on DOMA now would be more worthy of respect if he had been more honest from the beginning.

Dark Times Indeed

"These are dark times indeed," said Rufus Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic, shortly before his ministry and his health went south. Scrimgeour was an auror and head of the Auror Office, so he had practical experience hunting down dark wizards and at least a little experience as an executive. Things might have gone better for him if he had had a job in the real world (or even the surreal world of wizards and witches), or if he had done a bit as Governor of an American state—say, Wisconsin or maybe Texas—before he became Chief Executive of the magical world. Or at least the British part of the magical world.

I thought of Scrimgeour, I now must confess, when I read Benny Morris's piece in the National Interest.

Prediction is always risky or plain silly, but my guess is that when the dust settles, which it will, in a month or two or three's time, one will see that Western—and Israeli—interests in the Middle East will have been substantially undermined and anti-Western—and anti-Israeli—interests substantially bolstered. Similarly, one will see that the regimes which are, by nature and tradition very brutal, such as Iran's, Syria's and possibly Libya's, will weather the storm whereas those which are softer, more inclined to measures of liberalisation, partly because of attentiveness to messages from Washington, will either have fallen or will have given ground, and a large measure of power, to anti-Western, often Islamist, elements within each country.

I am not at all without hope. I think that there is at least a chance that the turbulence in the world's unstable middle will lead to better governments, regimes that are more stable because they are more attentive to the needs of their peoples. Such regimes would not necessarily be pro-American, to be sure. They might be a lot less so. But they would be equally suspicious of Iran and very concerned to avoid becoming another Iran.

Only a fool would trust that that is where the Middle East is going. Morris gives us a view that is much less pleasant but annoyingly plausible. The more brutal regimes will survive precisely because they are more brutal. The regimes that tried to manage their populations—stretching from the most modern to the most Medieval—with an eye to approval from the West will curl up like plastic wrap on hot charcoal.

Only a fool would suppose that the United States can determine the outcome of events in the Middle East. Perhaps we could make a difference here or there, but would require attention, coordination, and shrewd judgment. We can assume the absence of all three.

What we might do is prepare for the worst. The developed world is dependent on oil from the Middle East. If the regimes in that regime become more hostile, the rest of the world may have to become harder than we want to be. We might want to put our economic house in order, for example.

Unfortunately, we have as our Chief Executive a man who has never even been an auror. At present his attention is focused on a labor dispute in Wisconsin. He has no plan whatsoever to restore the American Government to financial solvency. He isn't interested in that. His foreign policy consists of speaking harshly to our allies while being polite, if not scrupulously silent, about our enemies.

These may be dark times indeed. Where is Voldemort now that we need him?

Multiculturalism & the Ancient Enemy

When you see it three times, it's a trend! Clarence Page notes a trend in his recent column on multiculturalism in the Chicago Tribune.

State multiculturalism has had "disastrous results," says British Prime Minister David Cameron. It has "totally failed," says German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Clearly, yes, it is a failure," agrees French President Nicolas Sarkozy .

Has "multikulti," as the Germans call it derisively, indeed failed Europe's great leaders? Or are they simply not doing it right?

When the leaders of Europe's three most important nations all say the same thing about the same thing, it might be a world class trend. What Great Britain, Germany, and France have all discovered is that easy immigration policies may have kept their factories well-supplied with labor and their schools with students, but have also resulted in large pockets of immigrants whose culture is very distinct from, if not hostile to, that of their host countries.

In part, this is a crisis for liberalism. Europe resolved the murderous tensions that tore it apart only a few centuries ago by means of a simple social contract. Dissenters would be allowed to worship as they saw fit so long as they agreed to abide by the laws (including respecting the rights of other sects and faiths) and acknowledged the sovereignty of the states in which they dwelled. With a few notable exceptions (Ulster, for example), the resolution was universally accepted.

When European nations accepted large numbers of immigrants from Muslim countries, they supposed that what worked with Catholics and Calvinists would work equally well with Sunnis and Shiites. Cameron, Merkel, and Sarkozy seem to have concluded that it does not.

Page thinks the problem is that multiculturalism has to be done right. He thinks that the United States provides a better model than Europe.

Doing multiculturalism right calls for striking a balance between a respect for diverse cultures and respect for the common culture we all share. Regardless of their origin, immigrants to this country tend to be driven by a desire to find opportunity and stir themselves into our melting pot. Even if the first generation resists, their children tend to embrace the America of "Sesame Street" and Big Macs with great enthusiasm.

By contrast, Europe has allowed large communities of immigrants to grow in ethnic enclaves that endure from one generation to the next with remarkably little assimilation.

I think that's right, but we need to go a bit deeper. Liberal regimes can tolerate as well as accept and respect diverse cultures and ethnicities. That does not allow liberals (in the classical sense) to avoid making existential choices. Liberalism only works if there is core support for the idea that a liberal society is simply superior to an illiberal one. Without that, the center cannot hold.

However, since liberal regimes arose first in Western nations (indeed, it is almost synonymous with Modern Western Civilization) this comes uncomfortably close to saying that the West is better than the rest. In fact, it probably does say that. If the United States has done better at assimilating non-Western immigrants, it may be, as Page thinks, because we have more confidence in the liberal idea.

To go deeper still, there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the idea of multiculturalism. That doctrine holds that there are a very large number of cultures in addition to the dominant culture. The latter has suppressed the former and must now stop doing so. That will allow a cultural cross-pollinization that will reeducate the dominant culture and liberate all the manifold suppressed cultures.

The premise is a mistake. There are in fact only two cultures, even if one of them includes a large population of individuals. Most human beings who have ever were unipolar in culture. The center of the kosmos is our people, our ancestors, our temple, and our ways. Everyone else is out there. The other is multipolar or travel culture. There are lots of places, centers, and perspectives. No matter where you go, there you are.

Every unipolar culture is rich in resources and has a lot to teach outsiders. Multipolar culture is superior for precisely that reason. It can learn from, appreciate, and even protect unipolar cultures without succumbing to the charms of unipolar culture. Those charms are very powerful. The tribe provides a home in an existential sense that will forever be denied someone who recognizes the existence of other tribes and other centers.

The greatest threats to modern civilization have come from those who have been exposed to (or contaminated by) multipolar culture and hate it. They deeply desire to return to the old way of thinking. They are prepared to use all the devices of modern civilization to put an end to it. Their desires are in vain. There is no going back. But they are the ancient enemy. Sooner or later, one has to chose sides.

The Twilight of the Public Unions

The spectacle in Madison is worth a few more words. It is pretty clear that the teachers who showed up at the event were in fact engaged in an illegal strike. Apparently some Doctors are writing them fake excuses. Andrew Breitbart got one! This looks to me like monkey warfare (that wonderful term is Abbie Hoffman's sole contribution to the culture). Best to let it pass.

Conservatives have been complaining loudly about the "Badger 14", the Wisconsin state senators who fled the state to get beyond the range of a quorum call. Without at least one of the 14 present, the state senate cannot act on Governor Walker's proposal to reduce burden of public employee pension and health care plans and end collective bargaining, for teachers, on those programs. The National Review calls the action of the Badger 14 "a subversion of democracy," which it certainly is, and implies that it is illegitimate, which it certainly is not.

Hiding from a quorum call is in fact one way to conduct a filibuster. Republicans have done it in Congress on many occasions. Any filibuster is by definition anti-democratic. It occurs when a minority blocks legislative action favored by the majority. The Republic has lots of anti-democratic brakes on majority action. Republicans should be slow to criticize this.

A more troubling aspect of the Madison drama is the President's involvement. The public union protests of the last several days were orchestrated from the White House. From the Washington Post:

President Obama did everything this week that a loyal member of the labor movement could hope for: He quickly leapt to the defense of Wisconsin public-employee unions in their battle for bargaining rights, while his political operation worked to instigate additional demonstrations against Republican governors in other states.

Fox News has more:

Obama's political arm at the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, helped mobilize demonstrators in coordination with unions.

The President of the United States is always a leader of his national party, but he is also President of the United States. He must be able to speak as the voice of the nation. To actively intervene in state politics in this way is wildly inappropriate. It diminishes his office and confuses his authority. Of course, you couldn't expect Barack Obama to know anything about that.

The larger context of the Madison drama is the path of public unions toward doom. We are accustomed to think of unions, public and private, as locked in competition with management. That is certainly how the unions see it, but it is altogether wrong. The real competition for unions is always the non-union workers who would take their jobs in a minute if they came open. That is the threat that labor laws protect the unions against.

Unions are as powerful politically and economically as the numbers of workers whose wages and benefits they protect. When they undermine the institutions that their members work for, and they frequently do, they diminish their base. In the private sector, unionized industries like the car makers have seen their jobs flee to non-union shops elsewhere in the nation or overseas.

States have to balance their budgets. They can't print money or borrow infinite amounts of it. If state governments or municipalities are driven toward bankruptcy by exorbitant personnel costs they will either reduce those costs or reduce the personnel. Like the sinking of the Titanic, it's a mathematical certainty. When public union workers find their numbers reduced and their benefits coveted by the rest of their fellow citizens…

That is what is playing out in Madison and across these United States. Denying that there is a budget problem in Wisconsin and simultaneously blaming the Governor for the budget problem will not do any good. The President's intervention in Wisconsin make keep his union label intact but it looks to me like he's playing a losing hand.

The Evolution of Piety

Thomas Hobbes observed, around the middle of the 17^th century, that religion was unique to human beings. He might have added that it was ubiquitous among this one species. He did offer an explanation. We have an understanding of cause and effect and a grasp of our place in time, but we do not know the causes of many events and we are anxious about the future. The one causes us to imagine invisible powers behind visible events while the latter encourages us to believe that we can negotiate with those powers.

Hobbes was onto something. I think that the best general definition of religion is the recognition that human life is problematic combined with the view that there is some hidden truth that can solve the problem. One reason that human beings are religious is that religion is comforting.

What we have that Hobbes didn't is a theory of the origin of our perceptions, passions and appetites. We see color because of a symbiotic relationship between the evolution of fruit and of fruit-loving primates. We love sugar, salt, and fat because the love of those things promoted the reproductive success of our distant progenitors.

Can this kind of analysis account for the persistence of religion among human beings? Damon Linker, writing in The New Republic, gives us a jaundiced review of a book that attempts such an analysis. I haven't read Jesse Bering's The Belief Instinct, so I will have to make do with Linker's summary.

Why did human beings begin to feel in the first place that they and their actions matter to a divine mind? Here is how Bering explains its evolutionary origins: millions of years ago, proto-humans were unselfconsciously "impulsive, hedonistic, and uninhibited." But then their theory of mind kicked in, enabling them to start judging one another's actions. We began to realize that we were being watched and judged by other people. And as our species developed language, we came to understand that we were being watched and judged not only by those who directly observed our behavior, but also by those who heard about it through the medium of gossip.

Before long, the "reproductive success" of those who failed to restrain their behavior began to suffer, which in turn reproductively privileged individuals with a reputation for self-control. And the most self-controlled—those who lived as if they were being watched and judged at all times by a supernatural entity—were privileged above all others. In this way, our theory of mind and our linguistically based capacity for gossip, when combined with the genetically based imperative to reproduce, conspired to make the human species uniquely predisposed toward moralistic religious beliefs.

Linker is very impatient with this account, calling it "evolutionary psychology at its worst". Some of the reviewer's points are valid, others not so much.

To be sure, this kind of account involves a lot of speculation. That is true of all science that aims to uncover the past. Nonetheless, it has to be something like this. Can anyone really doubt that the instinct of mothers (and, to a lesser degree, fathers) to nurture their children was a factor in reproductive success? Once that is recognized, can one really doubt that reproductive success was a factor in preserving the same instincts?

Human beings are social animals. The evolution of language and the moral instincts was driven by the advantage that our ancestor's enjoyed when they were members of cooperative communities. Such communities have, quite literally, inherited the earth. Belief in invisible powers that sanction moral behavior has been a big factor in cooperative partnerships. It is easier to trust someone to keep a promise if that someone fears Zeus, or someone like Zeus.

Damon seems to think that this kind of analysis undermines the effectiveness of belief.

What makes Bering's book so insufferable is his utter indifference to the likely psychological and social consequences of the truths that he understands himself to be revealing. One possible consequence is that we will take his arguments to heart and seek to live truthfully, without illusions—which in this case is to say, without shame.

Perhaps Bering's argument is open to this objection. The general theory is not. Theologians have generally believed that the universal presence of religion in all societies is evidence of the existence of God. God is reaching out and human beings, more or less correctly, everywhere respond.

Science can have nothing to say about that, but it can analyze the human side of the equation. It should not be too surprising to the person who is both pious and thoughtful and well informed that the evolution of human beings naturally orients them towards the divine.

Reality Sinks In

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie patiently explained to a policeman that the party is over. Yes, the cop had every right to be frustrated and angry that a lot of the promises that his employer made to him aren't going to be honored. That doesn't change the fact that the state simply cannot honor them. It doesn't matter how inconvenient it is or how unfair it is. It's reality.

This may be the point that reality is finally sinking in. The heretofore reliably liberal Washington Post recognizes it. Once again taking its lead from SDP, the Post pointed out the absurdity of the President's High Speed Rail proposal. The WaPo also pointed out something much more ominous.

Starting in 2014, net interest payments will surpass the amount spent on education, transportation, energy and all other discretionary programs outside defense. In 2018, they will outstrip Medicare spending. Only the amounts spent on defense and Social Security would remain bigger under the president's plan.

The soaring bill for interest payments is one of the biggest obstacles to balancing the federal budget, pushing the White House and Congress to come up with cuts deeper than previously imagined. Unlike with discretionary spending or even entitlement programs, the line item for interest payments cannot be altered except through other budget cuts.

This, of course, is the reason that we cannot permanently fund government expenditures by borrowing. Interest on the debt alone is about to crowd out all other government spending. Bear in mind that the scenario above is based on current interest rates. As doubts grow about the solvency of the Government, interest rates will increase and that share of public expenditures will grow in response.

Reality is sinking in at all levels of government. In Wisconsin, public union members have marched against Governor Scott Walker's plan to restore the state to fiscal sanity. At any earlier time, I'd have bet on the unions. Right now, I think Governor Walker has the winning hand. In Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times acknowledges the bitter truth: big cuts in public spending are inevitable.

The American Republic is about to face what economists call a "correction". It's not a matter of whether we do it. It is a matter of whether we do it or it is done to us. There aren't going to be any big, new government programs in the foreseeable future. Instead, all existing government programs are going to be crushed like trash in a compactor. Everywhere at every level.

This has been coming for a half a century. Those who raised the warning were ignored and vilified. It is the fault of Democrats for being Democrats and the fault of Republicans for not being Republicans. President Obama spent almost all of his time and political capital over the last two years passing a new and expensive government program. He has never seriously addressed the fiscal problems facing the nation, least of all in his recent budget. He is altogether out of his depth.

What is the Administration concentrating on now? The Huffington Post can tell us.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is expected to meet with Florida's congressional delegation Thursday afternoon in an effort to circumvent Gov. Rick's Scott's rejection of $2 billion in federal funds for a state high-speed rail project.

We may be nearing the point when everyone in the United States has recognized reality, except for the President.

The United States of Detroit

If you are looking for reasons to be concerned about the state of the union, consider this piece on the Detroit school system. From the Wall Street Journal:

Two years after his appointment as emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb has outsourced many services, unearthed corruption and closed a number of schools…

Mr. Bobb claimed a mandate to overhaul both finances and academics. He launched campaigns to stabilize enrollment—which determines state funding—in hopes of slowing the exodus to suburbs and charter schools. He also conducted hundreds of audits, laid off teachers, privatized services such as busing and custodial work and closed 59 schools.

By his own standards, Bobb has been a success. Here are his standards.

In his interview with the Journal, he said that without his budget cuts, the district's annual deficit—now at $327 million, up from $218 million in 2009—would have grown to more than $500 million. The schools have a $1.025 billion annual budget.

An annual deficit of $327,000,000 (an increase of more than $100 million in two years) is what Mr. Bobb is proud of achieving. I do not wish to belittle that achievement. It probably does reflect heroic efforts and justify his pride. That, however, ought to send shivers down your spine. If true, it means that the Detroit system is not only insolvent but irremediably insolvent. Expenditures over which the city has no control are out of control. No effort however genuine or courageous can save the day.

It does put in perspective the President's statement that government must live within it's means. His idea of living within one's means is a reduction of the deficit by a trillion dollars over ten years. Of course, that's a reduction from last year's projections, which were unprecedentedly high. So we are saving money because we aren't going broke quite as fast as the President had in mind a year ago. Of course a trillion dollars over ten years is less than this year's deficit or last year's deficit, or the deficit for each year for the foreseeable future. That's assuming that the savings are genuine (they aren't) and that we have a future.

Here is how Budget Director Jacob Lew describes the President's proposal:

Today, President Barack Obama sent to Congress his budget for the 2012 fiscal year. This document is built around the simple idea that we have to live within our means so we can invest in the future. Only by making tough choices to both cut spending and deficits and invest in what we need to win the future can we out-educate, out-build and out-innovate the rest of the world.

You just gotta admire that peanut butter cluster of buzz words, rich in sugar and fat but 100% free of logic. We are going to cut spending and invest!

Here is how Jonathan Chait at the New Republic describes the President's budget proposal:

The Budget is a political document. Obama doesn't have the power to enact his priorities unilaterally, so his strategy is to seize the center and portray Republicans as unreasonable. His strategy for doing so revolves around moving the debate from the principle of whether to cut the budget to the specific of how to do so.

That is at least a bit of honesty. The President's budget has nothing to do with any actual decisions about how much we should spend and how we are going to pay for it, let alone how we are going to achieve fiscal solvency. It's all about tricking Republicans into playing the role of bad guys who want to put Grandma out on the curb and take the crutch away from poor Tim. The whole point of that is to make sure that no real spending cuts can succeed.

In Detroit, one Robert Bobb is trying to put the Detroit school system's fiscal house in order. He's failing, but at least he knows what he's trying to do. Meanwhile the President of the United States and his party in Congress and his allies in the press are bending all their will to keep the Federal spigot open. They are congenitally incapable of recognizing ballooning deficits and public debt as anything other than a "political" problem.

Right now, only the Republicans are capable of recognizing the problem. Whether they know what to do about it, or have the courage to act on what they know, or will be rewarded or punished for acting, I don't know.

Off the Rails on a Crazy Train

Let's ignore, for the moment, the President's 2012 budget proposal as a whole, just as the President ignored the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission he created. The Commission was a failure. It couldn't get the 14 votes out of 18 votes it needed for final passage. The President's budget will be a failure as well. Democrats think it is too draconian. Republicans think, correctly, that it does nothing serious to return to the U.S. to fiscal solvency.

Instead, let's focus on one specific proposal in the budget. From Robert Samuelson:

Vice President Joe Biden, an avowed friend of good government, is giving it a bad name. With great fanfare, he went to Philadelphia the other day to announce that the Obama administration proposes spending $53 billion over six years to construct a "national high-speed rail system." Translation: the administration would pay states $53 billion to build rail networks that would then lose money -- not a little, but lots -- and, thereby, aggravate the budget squeezes of the states or federal government, depending on which covered the deficits.

High speed railroad is one of those things that glitter, but are not gold. Everyone wants them. The English, the French, and the Germans have built them. The Japanese have too, and theirs are generally regarded as the fastest. Some of their trains move at 180 mph. Modern governments like the idea of replacing automobiles with public transit. They also like the idea that massive government spending can solve problems that private investment cannot: investing a lot up front to show greater economic returns later.

Unfortunately, almost everywhere it has been tried it has come a cropper. High speed rail is not only very expensive to build, it is very expensive to maintain. Even if they were popular with commuters, most HPR lines would continue to require large government subsidies to remain in business. They aren't popular. After subsidizing the building and maintenance of HPR lines, governments have to subsidize ticket prices in order to attract riders. Even with all that, most surface passengers chose buses, planes, and, above all, cars.

The U.S. has already been through this with Amtrak.

Passenger rail service inspires wishful thinking. In 1970, when Congress created Amtrak to preserve intercity passenger trains, the idea was that the system would become profitable and self-sustaining after an initial infusion of federal money. This never happened. Amtrak has already swallowed $35 billion in subsidies, and they're increasing by more than $1 billion annually.

Despite the subsidies, Amtrak does not provide low-cost transportation. Longtime critic Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute recently planned a trip from Washington to New York. Noting that fares on Amtrak's high-speed Acela start at $139 one-way, he decided to take a private bus service. The roundtrip fare: $21.50. Nor does Amtrak do much to relieve congestion, cut oil use, reduce pollution or eliminate greenhouse gases. Its traffic volumes are simply too small to matter.

Government subsidized passenger rail is a bad idea. High speed rail is a bad idea on stilts. It won't solve any problem that needs solving. It won't significant reduce congestion, gasoline consumption, or air traffic. It will be a significant drain on the national budget. It will also further burden state governments already on the point of insolvency.

There's something wildly irresponsible about the national government's undermining states' already poor long-term budget prospects by plying them with grants that provide short-term jobs. Worse, the high-speed rail proposal casts doubt on the administration's commitment to reducing huge budget deficits (its 2012 budget is due Monday). How can it subdue deficits if it keeps proposing big new spending programs?

The inclusion of a high speed rail proposal in the President's budget is an ominous sign. The continued existence of Amtrak and ethanol subsidies shows how very difficult it is to eliminate even the most modest revenue sinks. The President wants to create more of the same in both directions. This suggests a pathological inability to come to grips with reality. Unfortunately that pathology has constituencies behind it. We are in real trouble.

The King’s Speech

Expectations of Oscars have built up around The King's Speech like an aura. It will be a surprise if it doesn't bag best picture, best actor, and best supporting actor. In this case, it probably deserves all three.

I say "probably" only because I haven't seen most of the contenders. I will hazard a guess that this is one of those (non-holiday) movies you would be willing to watch again and again over the years. That is hardly typical with Oscar winners. Breathes there a man with a soul so dead who err to himself hath said: gee, I'd like to watch Titanic again?

TKS tells the story of George the VI, who is crowned when his brother abdicates. British monarchs long ago surrendered the power of lopping off heads in return for the cleaner if less gratifying duty of giving speeches. G6 has a speech impediment. Lionel Logue, a back street therapist with no letters after his name, liberates the king's vocal cords just in time. Speaking into a microphone the size of a CD player, G6 rouses the Hobbits to stand up to Hitler. Let that stand for a synopsis.

TKS is a brilliant production. The casting is rock solid. Colin Firth was born with a face and manner that needs only a crown, a crisis, and a stutter to complete it. Geoffrey Rush is our greatest living actor. It is only in the most nominal sense that his role in the film is "supporting" rather than "leading". Helen Bonham Carter, looking as always as if she fell out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, doesn't really deserve nomination for best supporting actress. It's not that she wasn't damn near perfect in the role. She was. It's just that her role was too small for that. Even the young actors who played the children of the two families were excellent.

The only mistake was casting Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill. Spall was Wormtail in the Potter movies! Watching Helen Bonham Carter, I was never once reminded of Bellatrix Lestrange. Watching Spall in TKS, I kept expecting him to transfigure into a rat.

The dialogue was brilliant, as was the script as a whole. The drama of a royal family in crisis takes place against the backdrop of Hitler's rise and the coming of war. George the VI can't get his words out. Hitler can. The neat symmetry between a very ordinary man struggling against a vulgar disability and the extraordinary role that man is compelled to play in history is exquisite. It there is such a thing as the heroic, this movie gets it right.

The climax of the film, when the King finally speaks, is about as good as modern cinema gets. All drama aspires to the perfection of perfect music. The score is the second movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony. I have long loved that piece of music. I love it more now.

I won't spoil the fun here by explaining that the movie gets the royal family and Churchill all wrong. If you are curious, see Christopher Hitchens' review at Slate. But first, see The King's Speech.

Reagan Defeated Inflation

Here is a bit from economist and pundit Robert Samuelson to reinforce my post about Ronald Reagan.

One reason Reagan receives so little credit for [inflation's] collapse is that Paul Volcker's Federal Reserve did the hard labor. Through sky-high interest rates, Volcker engineered a savage recession. Housing and auto sales collapsed. Unemployment rose to 10.8 percent. Reagan's role was to provide the political support that allowed Volcker to maintain the squeeze long enough to purge inflationary psychology. Companies and workers had to learn that outsized price and wage increases would result in bankruptcy and unemployment. If the Fed had relaxed prematurely, inflation would almost certainly have revived and exceeded its previous peaks.

No other possible president at the time, Democrat or Republican, would have so steadfastly supported Volcker. Reagan faced enormous pressure from both Republicans and Democrats to push the Fed to relent. He was vilified in the press; his approval rating fell to 35 percent. Reagan and Volcker, though lacking a close personal relationship, did share a common conviction: America could not thrive with high inflation. "Unlike some of his predecessors," Volcker later remarked, "he had a strong visceral aversion to inflation."

Without Reagan, Volcker would have failed

Samuelson goes on to frustrate both liberals and conservatives. I am guessing he is right across the board. He confirms nonetheless my opinion about Reagan's greatness.

Hosni We Knew Ye All Too Well

Hosni Mubarak, steadfast American ally, force for peace in the Middle East, and typical third world cutthroat, has finally, really, stepped down. It is a moment for happy tears and more than a couple of base of the spine shudders.

Mubarak was a reliable ally to the U.S. He led the only Arab neighbor of Israel that is officially at peace with her. The first fact speaks to U.S. interests in the region and that is important to anyone who cares about U.S. interests. The second fact speaks to anyone who thinks he or she cares about peace in the Middle East.

Mubarak was a tyrant, and that fact is equally relevant both to U.S. policy and to everyone who opposes tyranny. It has been our policy to promote democracy and liberty everywhere on the globe, except where it weren't. This was one of those moments when we had to decide which were which.

The Administration's response to the revolution in Egypt has been disappointing, but as Twain said of Wagner's music: it's not as bad as it sounds.

On the one hand, President Obama does seem to have a perverse distrust of any nation that is friendly to America and an equally perverse openness to anyone who wishes us ill. He has betrayed London and double crossed Central Europe, for example, all to make a deal with the Gangster in Chief Putin. He has come out much more forcefully behind the protesters in Egypt than he did earlier when similar protests occurred in Iran. That only reinforces my thesis that he is a repository of leftist instincts.

The Administration's foot has been stuck firmly in its mouth. It's understandable that Obama wanted to be pro-democracy (anti-Mubarak) and at the same time pro-stability (pro-Mubarak). But V.P. in charge of nonsense Joe Biden saying that Mubarak wasn't a dictator and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saying that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "largely secular" leaves one to wonder whether the Administration is smarter than a fifth grader.

On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that the United States had any control over events in Cairo. Obama couldn't know at the outset whether the Mubarak and his regime would hold on or not. We still don't know, except for the part about Mubarak himself. Trying to have it both ways--pro-regime and pro-protestors—may well have been the most coherent policy possible.

If Egypt can make a transition to a genuine republic, that will be a great achievement. Even if the Egyptian Republic is as troublesome as Turkey, that will be the kind of trouble we should wish to have. If Egypt becomes another Iran, well, there are some things that are much worse than a secular dictator. One of them is a militant Islamic regime pursuing nuclear weapons. There come the shudders.

I wish I had some confidence in the President's ability to make prudent judgments. I have none. I wish I had some confidence in our leverage in Egypt. I do not. I wish I could believe in the pious rhetoric about progress and democracy that flows from the mouths of President's like beer from a keg. I can't.

I do believe that democracy is the only viable form of government for those who think a government should serve the governed. I think this plain fact may not be lost on the powers in Egypt. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am hopeful and shuddering.

SB101 Open Records

Our readers at both ends of the political spectrum may be interested in SB 101, passed by the State Senate. Here is the Argus Leader description:

Government agencies should have to pay civil penalties if a judge finds they have acted unreasonably in denying people access to public records, a South Dakota Senate panel recommended today.

The Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to endorse a bill that would impose a civil penalty of $50 a day on state agencies, counties, cities, school districts and other government organizations that refuse to release records they know are open to the public. The bill next goes to the full Senate.

The measure originally would have imposed the penalty on individual government officials, but the committee agreed to change it so a judge could impose the penalty only on the public agency after finding that the agency had acted unreasonably and in bad faith to deny access to public records.

I do not usually endorse bills or candidates, but this seems like a very good idea.

Jeff Bloomberg, of the state Bureau of Personnel, said the bill would encourage public officials to comply with the open records law passed two years ago. Current law would allow an agency to ignore a state hearing officer's ruling to provide records, he said.

This would encourage public officials to comply with the open records law. A lot of us have complained for a long time that government records and information should be more readily accessible to the public and to the press. This bill will provide some remedy. The bill passed the Senate unanimously and is currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

Racism & Violent Rhetoric at a Rally!

I have commented frequently on the campaign of vilification waged by the Left against the Tea Party movement. That campaign consisted of two general arguments: that the Tea Party encourages political violence and that the Tea Party protesters are racists.

I have rebutted both charges in many posts. The charge of political violence was absurd interpretations of ordinary speech. In every case, the same speech and imagery that was supposed to be evidence of violent tendencies on the Right can be found in equal measure on the Left. That includes Sarah Palin's now infamous "crosshairs" map.

The charge of racism was built on even thinner material. The smoking gun was the story that Representatives John Lewis and Emanuel Clever were subject to racial epithets and that Clever was spit on by Tea Party activists. Despite the fact that the event was recorded and observed by many reporters, no evidence to substantiate the charges ever surfaced.

Common sense tells you that there had to be someone who was racist or militant or both at some Tea Party rally. No party or movement can expect to be pure. Nonetheless, the Tea Party rallies have provided very little material to substantiate the calumnies of their detractors.

A recent political rally provided a lot of both racist and violent rhetoric. Unfortunately for my friends on the Left, it was all directed at Justice Clarence Thomas. From the Daily Caller:

In an edited video released Thursday, progressive protesters are shown calling for violent attacks on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas while protesting outside a summit billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch held last week in Palm Springs, Calif.

Asked by the filmmaker to say what he would like to do to Thomas, one protester says: "put him back in the fields."

"He's a scumbag," the man says. "He's a dumb shit scumbag." The man also said Thomas's colleague, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, "should go back to Sicily."

A young woman at the rally said that though she was "all about peace," she would like for Thomas to undergo "torture."

Two other protesters appear to call for Thomas's death. When asked what should happen to Thomas, one person says "hang him" while another protester says "string him up."

All this is on the video, which I have watched. The clip may be heavily edited, but the editor surely had more to work with than any Tea Party detractor has ever had.

It would be unfair to judge the Left by one rally just as it is unfair to judge the Tea Party movement by a few signs here or there or by unsubstantiated innuendo. But just imagine what the New York Times would do with that video if the target were President Obama instead of Clarence Thomas! We'd be hearing about on a daily basis. Instead, the MSM is largely ignoring it.

Neither the Right nor the Left in America today is given to violent or racist rhetoric as a rule. There are of course exceptions in both cases, but they are such as to prove the rule. There is as much evidence of both on the Left as on the Right. We pay too much attention to these things because we are tempted to try to discredit one another. Maybe we should stick to arguing with one another.

Ronald Reagan Day

In my first year at Graduate School (1980), candidate for President Ronald Reagan came to Claremont. I arrived early, and stood just in front of the stage. A nearby parking lot had been cleared for the helicopters to land on, and a wooden walkway was built from the lot to the stage. Anti-Reagan protesters dutifully lined up along the walkway in hopes of shouting at or throwing something at Reagan. In due course, two helicopters landed. Reagan didn't use the walkway; he went around by the street. The whole purpose of the walkway was to draw the nut jobs away from the proceedings. It worked. I realized then that Reagan was smarter than his enemies and for the first time I believed that he might win.

February 6th was the 100^th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. The day is notable. Reagan was one of the two greatest Presidents of the twentieth century. The other was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I'll let my readers place their weights on the scales, if so they choose. Here is my estimate.

FDR gets credit for a transformation of the American economy and political system that was unprecedented. The New Deal, including Social Security, are pretty big weights on the scale. He led the nation out of the Depression (even if his policies didn't really help much), and he led the nation into World War II (even if rather belatedly).

RR didn't have to deal with a Depression, but he broke the back of inflation. From my early childhood until Reagan's election, inflation was a fact of life. The first coke and comic book I bought with my own money cost 12 cents apiece, including the deposit on the coke bottle. Since 1980 almost everything I want to buy has come down in price.

Reagan was the first President to sign an arms control agreement that really worked. The Soviets put short range nuclear missiles into Eastern Europe. Their strategy was to force Western Europe to decouple from the United States. Reagan put our own short range Nukes into Western Europe, with the support of Margret Thatcher (may her name be praised!), Francois Mitterrand, and Helmut Kohl.

The American Left went into action to stop Reagan. Anti-nuke rallies were held across Europe and the United States. These rallies weren't concerned with Soviet arms, only with American arms. They failed, and the result was the INF Treaty, which resulted in the actual destruction of nuclear weapons. Once again, Reagan was smarter than his enemies.

Finally, Reagan won the Second World War. No peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany was ever achieved. Reagan cut the Gordian knot by engineering the end of the Soviet Union. He guessed that the Soviet economy could not bear an attempt to match the U.S. arms buildup that he presided over. He said as much in letters to his Soviet counterparts. He was right. Though the final collapse came after he left office, he still gets the credit.

FDR won a very hot war. Reagan won the Cold War. Take your pick. I have tended to put FDR first and Reagan second, but now I am not so sure. At any rate, Reagan was a world historical figure with few peers.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Those who love you have a lot to be happy about.

Fort Hood Failures

The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has released its report on the Fort Hood Shooting. You can read the report here. Here is the committees pithy summary of the facts.

On November 5, 2009, a lone attacker strode into the deployment center at Fort Hood, Texas. Moments later, 13 Department of Defense (DoD) employees were dead and another 32 were wounded in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.

What we learn from the report is appalling. Here are the two key findings. First, the Army had more than enough evidence to recognize Nidal Malik Hasan's "radicalization to violent Islamist extremism". Indeed at least a couple of Hasan's superiors clearly recognized it, calling him a "ticking time bomb." Nearly everyone in the Army who encountered Hasan recognized his "radicalization". His fellow soldiers recognized it and many of his superior officers recognized it. He wrote and presented a paper advertising his radicalization.

Hasan's paper was full of empathetic and supportive recitation of other violent Islamist extremist views, including defense of Osama bin Laden, slanted historical accounts blaming the United States for problems in the Middle East, and arguments that anger at the United States is justifiable. Several col leagues who witnessed the presentation described Hasan as justifying suicide bombers.

Only a complete fool could have failed to know what Hasan was. To say that the Army did not act on this knowledge would be misleading. Hasan's evaluations were deliberately whitewashed. His interest in militant Islam was described in these evaluations as "research into terrorism". His lackluster performance and alarming behavior was routinely ignored, as were the concerns of many evaluators. Hasan was protected from scrutiny.

The second finding is that the FBI knew that Hasan was in communication with a known suspected terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki has had his hands in a handful of terrorist attacks here and abroad, including the Christmas Day bomber. Encouraging people in other countries to commit atrocities is what Awlaki does for a living. At least two Joint Terrorist Task Forces were aware of Hasan's contacts with Awlaki, but the one in charge didn't think that this was worthy of much attention. No one saw fit to inform the Army.

Let's evaluate this information. The U.S. Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation acted as enablers for a home grown terrorist. To be fair to the Obama Administration, the Army was at this well before President Obama took office. That's one more thing to blame on Dubya. It does suggest a very dangerous dysfunction in the current military culture. The U.S. military is so terrified of appearing culturally insensitive that it is prepared to promote Osama bin Laden to the rank of general.

The Administration can't get off so easily with regard to the role of the FBI in this disaster. It was almost a year into Obama's Presidency that the FBI chose to ignore communications between a terrorist mastermind and an Army Major. The Senate committee identifies a problem.

The FBI 's inquiry focused narrowly on whether Hasan was engaged in terrorist activity - as opposed to whether he was radicalizing to violent Islamist extremism and whether this radicalization might pose counterintelligence or other threats (e.g., Hasan might spy for the Taliban if he was deployed to Afghanistan).

Conservative critics of the Administration's approach to counterterrorism have complained that it subordinates national security strategy to law enforcement. The lines above confirm that view. In law enforcement, the task is to make a case for crimes already committed. In national security strategy, the task is to keep the next bad thing from happening.

The Senate Committee report leaves no doubt: the Army and the FBI didn't have their heads on straight and now they have the blood of our soldiers on their hands. The report details a lot of institutional changes, but what we need here is a change of mind. I am not optimistic, while this Administration lasts. To date, to my knowledge, not a single person in the Army has been demoted over this. Not a single person in the FBI has been fired.

ObamaCare & Limited Government

It is difficult to think of a piece of legislation, let alone a major reform act, that has suffered as grievously as ObamaCare has in its early days. I note that the Administration has been handing out wavers like they were campaign flyers. These wavers allow existing "mini-med" plans that would not be allowed under the legislation to continue in operation. To date, 733 such wavers have been issued. It is not only Republicans who are trying to stop ObamaCare from coming into effect.

I have noted below that the Administration has let slip that two key promises about the legislation—that it would lower costs and that Americans would be able to keep their own plans—are not going to be honored.

Republican victories up to and including the 2010 election were, at least in part, explicit and official rejections of ObamaCare. The same is true of the rejection of the legislation in the House of Representatives.

Then there is the fact that more than half the states (27 to date, and including South Dakota) are suing the Federal Government to stop the legislation. This is surely starting to look like a grand mess.

So far, two federal district courts have ruled the legislation constitutional and two have now ruled against it. Judge Vinson of the Northern District of Florida went so far as to overturn the legislation as a whole. He did so on the grounds that the "individual mandate" requiring all citizens to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional and not severable from the rest of the bill. I gather that the grounds for this are in the fact that a severability provision was added and then removed during the legislative process.

Judge Vinson's decision is beautifully written and forceful, if not quite compelling. He rejects the claim that the act is unconstitutional because it requires the states to drastically increase spending for Medicaid. That is surely the chief motive driving the lawsuits as the plaintiffs, many of them at the point of insolvency right now, think that this will bankrupt them. Participation in Medicaid, however, is voluntary and they can always opt out. I think this is correct, but it is a pyrrhic victory for ObamaCare. Might it not lead to the collapse of Medicaid?

His key finding is that the individual mandate regulates "inactivity" and so goes beyond any powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause. This is important because it is an attempt to determine where the line is between a very powerful Congress and an unlimited one. Here is a bit from Judge Vinson's decision, hat tip to The Volokh Conspiracy.

If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the Act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself "commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce" [see Act § 1501(a)(1)], it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be "difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power" [Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.

Perhaps Judge Vinson reads this blog, for I note that this is the same argument that I made earlier. Can Congress require me to buy and drink green tea, to join a health club and penalize me if I don't regular fill out my exercise card, to join Weight Watchers or some list of approved government programs at the risk of penalty if I don't keep within a weight target decided by a House Committee? The answer to such questions is either yes or no.

If the answer is yes, then there are no limits on the powers of government other than the explicit prohibitions. That is an open question in the history of liberty in America, but I am guessing that most Americans would accept such a proposition.

If the answer is no, then proponents of ObamaCare have to show how the insurance mandate is not the same as the above. The difficulty is that major argument for the mandate doesn't obviously offer such a distinction. If enough individuals refuse to purchase health insurance that would indeed have a financial effect on the national healthcare system. But the same is true if enough individuals refuse to stop drinking jumbo cokes and eating Cheetos (the perfect food). That is the justification for obesity taxes, which are all the rage right now in right thinking municipalities.

ObamaCare may have done us a great service by forcing us to confront a hitherto evaded question. Can the government do anything to you or me that it is not explicitly prohibited from doing? Conservatives have long said no. Proponents of ObamaCare will have a hard time admitting that they think otherwise. Soon enough, they may have to.