I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.
Leo C. Rosten
An Interesting Twist on the President's State of the Union Address:
A Retrospective Commentary
Doug Hornig of CaseyResearch.com (archives of the Daily Dispatch are here) basically suggests that President Obama co-opted the GOP reform agenda by preempting GOP talking points, putting himself of getting credit for whatever reforms are enacted:
Consider the back story: here’s a guy whose policies have just been repudiated big time. The opposition is flying high, sharpening its knives...Obama went on the attack, and he did it so stealthily and with such a velvet glove that the GOP may not yet know what hit them…What wasn’t expected is that in one short hour this paragon of liberalism suddenly, unexpectedly, got reborn as a conservative. Just have a look at this laundry list of the things he's belatedly discovered he’s all for: repealing the bad parts of the health care bill; removing unnecessary regulation from business; cutting corporate taxes; simplifying the general tax code while closing loopholes; eliminating superfluous government agencies; tort reform; and even, yes, tinkering with Social Security, the formerly untouchable third rail of Democratic politics...Does this sound familiar? It should: Obama just stole nearly the entire Republican playbook...he's gonna preempt them and take credit for it all himself. In fact, now if the GOP doesn't get what it wants, he can blame that on them, too.I don't think so, but nice try, Doug. This is Obama as usual; we've been there, done that: he pays lip service, willing to give a token concession--of his own choosing, not negotiated. Remember the Obama whom first rejected offshore oil production off the coasts, but then (after oil surged past $140/barrel) was more receptive to the idea? Of course, it took him more than a year to open up some acreage: but not north of New Jersey, not at all off the West Coast, several areas in Alaska were off-limits, and in the Gulf you have to drill several dozens of miles off the coast. And then when the BP spill occurred, despite of thousands of prior offshore wells without a similar incident, Obama used the incident to rationalize a sweeping moratorium that didn't even have the concurrence of his own advisors.
The 111th Congress, heavily Democratic, could have done any or all of these things; where was Obama then? Tax simplification or regulatory reform from the guy whom signed two-thousand page bills on health care and financial regulations? If he was so keen on the impact of regulation on small business, where were the impact analyses in the first place over the 1099 paperwork? Why were the Democrats unaware of the fact that hundreds of businesses and unions would apply for exemptions, that the law would endanger current private-sector retirement benefit financing? And Obama specifically addressed tort reform BEFORE the House voted for the corrupt Senate bill, but tort reform was not part of the final package.
When you listen to Obama give a speech, you better have a lawyer around whom will read the small print: is it just a coincidence that the case he made of loopholes involved incentives for domestic oil and gas companies? Has he sworn off
What did the American people get for the two years of Democratic control of the federal government? Well, last year, one of every 7 persons was on food stamps, bankruptcies and foreclosures were setting records, and home prices continued to trend down. What was Obama doing to provide domestic companies more of an incentive to invest domestically? Did he make corporate tax rates more globally competitive? Did he relieve them of costly, ineffectual regulatory burden?
I think all the moderates and independents know Obama by now, and they realize, even with GOP-controlled House, the GOP doesn't control the Senate, and there are more than enough Democrats in the House or Senate to sustain a Presidential veto or filibuster any bill in the Senate.
I haven't said much about the GOP response(s) to the State of the Union Address. As for Michele Bachmann: the transcript seemed to be little more than a rehash of the rhetoric leading up to the mid-term elections. Yes, we know about the "tax-, spend-and-regulate" Democrats whom seemed to be oblivious to how the impact of their agenda on the job creator class. But cap-and-trade had no chance in the Senate, even with a super-majority, a balanced budget bill would require Republicans to tax or cut some $1.5T with 9% unemployment. I would have taken a different approach--I would have pointed out that one of the biggest line items in the budget is servicing the debt, and this will get worse if and when the Fed has to raise rates to control inflation. I will point out the social security and Medicare are two of the most rapidly growing expenditures with an aging population, and if we don't make the hard choices now, we will leave nothing to our children but unsustainable bills in a tough global economy. I would have pointed out that not only did the Democrats fail to proactively address entitlement reform in the last Congress, but they put existing programs in danger by taking unlikely cost savings in Medicare and using it to fund another unsustainable entitlement.
Michele Bachmann just comes across as overly strident and shrill. This plays very poorly against Obama's smoother style and intentional ambiguity; she would have been better served to have sounded less as the direct bad cop and more empathetic to the plight of the poor and unemployed, pointing out that the Democrats' scope creep into the middle class is not only unsustainable but puts the programs themselves at risk. What Obama is doing is not leadership: it's punting the tough decisions to an administration after his.
Paul Ryan came across as a policy wonk; this, too, lost most of the audience. I think a more effective response would have been a mirror response of Obama: I would have explained how Republican initiatives are providing great economic and retirement security and a more efficient safety net. I would have directly seized on the President's metaphor of a Sputnik moment, suggesting that progressive policies are endangering American innovation with undue burdens on entrepreneurs and businesses (including the uncompetitive, expensive, regulation-happy, lawsuit-prone culture), even more than in China, a Communist nation; I might have congratulated the President (better late than never) for coming around to GOP policies promoting simpler, fairer tax reform, streamlining government agencies, and reforming local school monopolies. I would have pointed out that Medicare and social security comprise a large plurality of federal outflows, and the President's address lacked any specificity on how to shore up those entitlements.
I myself have been quite critical of President Obama at times, but he does a very good job of anticipating and playing off an admittedly all-too-predictable opposition and has learned to use a calm, positive personality and a pseudo-centrist perspective to marginalize his opponents. What Bachmann and Palin haven't yet realized is that one must be able to target independents and moderates, not just the base. A successful GOP Presidential candidate next year must be able to present a positive agenda, project a Reaganesque optimism and use Obama's own tactics against him.
Salmon: Going Beyond Omega-3's
This is the second topic over the past week which should really be a topic in my nutrition blog. As you may recall, Obama used the specific example of salmon being handled by agencies based on the type of water they are in. This is used to illustrate what whistleblower.org refers to as regulatory chaos. They note that different agencies handle items on a typical dinner plate: meat vs. fish vs. produce; inspection frequency and applicable fees vary by type. The organization wants to consolidate food oversight in a centralized, accountable agency, with consistent inspection policies and independence of inspection and its funding.
I have for some time advocated streamlined government processes; this, of course, is not the first time that the complexity of redundant, superfluous agencies has come under question: for example, 9/11 revealed certain discontinuities, e.g., between the FBI and CIA, and even the incident of the underwear bomber reflected lack of integration between the State Department and DHS.
Political Humor. Just a periodic reminder you can find copies of recent late night jokes on websites like Giglish, about.com, and newsmax.com.
"The Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2010 just came out. The government says if people want to lose weight they need to eat less. And to think people say the government is useless." - Alex Kaseberg
[Unfortunately, the only ones who read the guidelines were the anorexics.]
"President Mubarak came out of the presidential palace today and saw his shadow; six more weeks of rock throwing." – Jay Leno
[However, Mubarak's shadow refused to take advantage of the large crowds in Tahrir Square in order to request their votes in this September's Presidential election.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups. I am starting a new series based on some of my favorite artists. The first group I'm selecting is the Bee Gees. I try not to duplicate songs, and I've previously featured favorites like "Fanny", "How Deep is Your Love", "Run to Me", "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", "Lonely Days" and "Tragedy". My first selection is a song I referenced, but did not embed, in a prior post.
Bee Gees, "First of May"
