I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dysfunctional Presidential Quote of the Day
"We can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job...Where they won't act, I will," President-in-Name-Only Barack ObamaWhat's the matter, Obama: having trouble exercising leadership? It takes a lot of chutzpah for a President whom is a DEMOCRAT, pretending he is not part of the problem in Congress considering the fact that the Senate is controlled by DEMOCRATS. Perhaps if your post-partisan politics rhetoric wasn't "words, just words" and you had not gambled on the expectation of strong majorities in both chambers of Congress, things would be different.
Of course, this is stupid rhetoric on Obama's part. He seems to be suggesting, from the phrasing of his rhetoric, that he sets the rules. In fact, that's at its face unconstitutional. A President cannot constitutionally create policy on his own; only the Congress has that right. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE HEARD THE SAME SORT OF CONTRIVED SENSE OF URGENCY FROM THIS PARTY HACK, WHOM HAS ABSOLUTELY NO FAITH IN THE FREE MARKET SYSTEM? The government must do something, anything; we can't afford to do nothing. Who is really stupid enough to believe this garbage? What exactly is this guy's faith in Big Government based on? Entitlements that are underfunded by some $50T? A war on poverty which is notoriously unsuccessful? Gaps in intelligence gathering leading to the 9/11 disaster? An unsustainable public education system, which despite massive "investments" has not significantly improved test scores over the past 4 decades? Democrat "successes" in growing taxpayer exposure to the nature and extent of deteriorating mortgage assets? The effectiveness with which Stimulus v. 1 worked to keep the unemployment rate under 8% as advertised? The guy whom said he would halve the deficit but instead has led the US to its first credit bureau downgrade of US debt and has already added over 40% to the national debt in less than 3 years in office?
What Obama is talking about here is a retooled version of his old failed home mortgage plan, which, as you may recall, got fewer applicants than expected the first time around. When you have undersubscribed government programs, don't these on their face reflect poorly drafted progressive laws? What I really resent here is the fact that Obama is knowingly setting false expectations here about the nature, extent, and impact of his policies: we have been seeing this disingenuous pattern of behavior time and again, and yet there are still suckers gullible enough to buy into Obama's hype? This pathetic, delusional faith Obama has in industrial policy versus the free market system is not "born in the USA" but brought to you by the same social democrat elitists what brought you, over the past year, financial crises in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and other EU members...
Sunday Talk Soup and National Infrastructure Hype
I am growing increasingly impatient with the clueless mainstream media progressive apologists like ABC This Week's Christiane Amanpour. I was looking to cite Amanpour's ludicrously distorted point of view on national infrastructure this week, when I discovered that MRC's Brent Bozell independently made the same points--let me cite the specific points that make any claim to be independent reporting untenable:
It makes all of the sense in the world, build the crumbling infrastructure, put people back to work, and yet it’s such a hard sell. Make the case for why the Senate, why Congress should do this business on infrastructure.
Republicans don’t agree with the tax part, how to pay for this, how is this going to become a reality, this eminently sensible idea of getting people to work in infrastructure?
And I’ve been told – read, of course – that investment in the infrastructure creates growth, and by the contrary, crumbling infrastructure really hurts the GDP in this country.Bozell and most conservatives I've seen pick up on the same nonsense really don't address the substance of this progressive economic nonsense and I'm not going to write an extensive commentary in today's post, but let me simply point out a few points that Ms. Amanpour simply can't get her head around:
For one thing, this concept of infrastructure as economic miracle grow is little more than ideological propaganda. it's putting the cart before the horse. Where infrastructure makes sense is in fulfilling some economic need. Take, for instance, the concept of a canal: when you have two separated bodies of water separated for a short distance, the question is: what is the most feasible way of, say, connecting these waterways? Say, highway/truck, pipeline or canal? Or maybe it's easier to sail the long way around? Consider, for instance, if there was no Panama Canal but you had to sail around South America to get to a southern US port. A canal, of and by itself, doesn't do anything for you. It makes sense in the long run if you look at having to constantly sail around South America, which is very expensive. In essence, even with modest user fees, the canal more than makes up the costs in terms of volume of shipments.
When President Obama is pushing boondoggles like high speed rail, keep in mind that there are substitute services, e.g., "regular rail", highways, airline flights, etc. You need to be able to quantify and scale up savings. Unless you are going to see logistics costs dramatically improve, this kind of infrastructure is basically pushing on a string. The same point is made, for example, in talking about the famous Bridge to Nowhere: do you need to erect a $400M bridge to connect maybe 150 people to the Alaskan mainland? Ferry fees may be a bargain compared the costs of a $400M bridge.
Second, you have to look at the type of infrastructure project. In some cases, you are not really changing the existing infrastructure but maintaining it, e.g., "Senator Pot Hole". It's not "creating growth": it's more like maintaining the status quo.
Third, there is a question of how infrastructure is paid for and whom develops it. For example, if traffic is horrendous near DC, show we privatize the project (e.g., privately-owned toll roads)? Or--is this a local/state project (e.g., so-called school modernization)? I oppose state/local bailouts, period. Unless these schools Obama is talking about are federal schools, it doesn't make sense--this constitutes moral hazard of the highest order.
These are just a few of relevant issues just off the top of my head. Poor Christiane Amanpour; it must be nice living in a world where your "facts" are unchallenged, repeated political talking points off some progressive webpage; it must be nice to live in a black-and-white world where you cannot think through infrastructure but accept Keynesian economic "facts" and assume that the opposition must be acting solely for political reasons. What you did, Ms. Amanpour, is intellectually dishonest: you are begging the question, assuming the validity of what is to be proven.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
CCR, "Travelin' Band"
