Emphasize everything and you emphasize nothing.
Herschell Gordon Lewis
New Nominee for Jackass of the Year 2011
My tongue-in-cheek annual award for uncivil or otherwise egregious behavior for Democratic politicians also qualifies for the Sore Loserman Award (my mocking reference for the unconstitutional efforts to steal the 2000 election by trying to cherry-pick its way and converting enough disqualified ballots through Democratic-controlled Florida election boards, after Florida confirmed Bush's victory through two objective statewide machine counts.) First-term progressive Democrat Steve Driehaus (OH-1) lost his reelection to the previous multi-term GOP incumbent, Steve Chabot. The loser Driehaus is suing a pro-life group, claiming its opposition to his pro-abortion choice views cost him his way of earning a living.
Ludicrously, an Obama federal district judge, Timothy Black, a past active member of the Cincinnati Planned Parenthood Association, instead of recusing himself, is allowing the frivolous lawsuit to proceed. I think IBD is right in suggesting a clear breach of judicial ethics. The lawsuit clearly violates the pro-life group's First Amendment rights, even disregarding the compelling argument that the right of the people to vote for the candidate of their choice is indisputable and can be based on any or no reasons.
Meet the Press: A Rant on 10/30/11: Part 1
When MTP has two of the most disingenuous party hacks around, the equally disagreeable David Plouffe and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, it's time for me to expand my recurring feature Sunday Talk Soup.
Let me say, before going on, that I'm not happy with the job my fellow conservative bloggers or media conservatives are doing. I think to a large extent a lot of what is going on is very reactive; you are never going to progress in the public media if you are shooting at decoys instead of the enemies' tanks. Learn how to pick your battles, and you need to press the attack.
The fact that mainstream editors and reporters have a hidden political agenda is obvious: we are spending 40 cents out of every federal dollar on borrowed money, the President now has pulled a nearly impossible hat trick of $1.3T or more annual deficits, and have I seen any reporter raise issues about cutting CURRENT spending? Talk about the myth of an obstructionist GOP, when the Democrats slammed through partisan legislation on health care, financial reform, and the stimulus act; talk about upper bracket tax rates when the proposed increase in taxes wouldn't even make a down payment on incremental debt--making it purely ideological in nature (but disastrous).
MR. PLOUFFE: Well, as you know, David, the president's put forward the American Jobs Act, which is something that would create up to two million jobs in the short-term, really give a jump-start to our economy.Absolutely not true. About 54% of the $447B proposal comes in the form of a temporary payroll tax cut. For those of us whom believe in Friedman's permanent income hypothesis, major consumer decisions are not based on temporary gimmicks but on expectations of future income. In fact, the reports I've seen showed that much (if not most) of tax rebates over the latter Bush Administration and Obama Administration went to savings, not consumption, I've cited research that the issue has been more with business versus consumer spending. Moreover, the President is playing a shell game, because payroll tax cuts, unless offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget and directed to reserves, worsens an increasingly insolvent entitlement system.
The President is right about conservatives liking payroll tax cuts, but he's being disingenuous in knowingly failing to disclose two salient issues: (1) we prefer permanent to temporary tax cuts; (2) we differ in how to pay for the tax cut. When the President talks about his program being "paid for", he is talking about anti-economic growth back door class warfare tax hikes. By increasing the tax bite on higher-income workers, it displaces--and very inefficiently-- PERMANENTLY the consumption, savings and investment of those same people, the principal source of job creators. If you believe in the permanent income hypothesis, this will more surely affect consumer behavior--in the wrong directly. In essence, it has the impact of raising the cost of capital--and, of course, whenever you raise the cost of something, like taxes on higher income, you inevitably get less of it, i.e., you shrink the tax base. Obama is trying to do this through an old trick (remember the first President George Bush?) that the Democrats devised: the "super Pease" proposal which attempts to squeeze even more taxes out of given high income by filtering or capping allowable deductions: we are talking about a nearly 50% marginal tax rate.
Reynolds (cf. above) argues that extending two years of unemployment provides an adverse affect on unemployment of 0.8 to 1.8%. And, of course, bailing out state/local governments for politically favored public employee professions (e.g., teachers, police, and firemen) does not increase jobs but basically defers a day of reckoning for unsustainable staffing levels: and those jobs come at the expense of taxpayer discretionary spending and saving. I previously criticized Harry Reid's ludicrous argument that public sector workers are more equal than others, but let's recall the following fact:
"Between June 2008 and June 2010, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of private-sector employees fell by six percent, but the number of state and local government workers declined by less than one percent."Another conservative blogger compared job levels from the prior recovery high in June 2007 for private and public sector: as of last April using BLS statistics, the private sector was still underwater by nearly 8 million jobs, while the public sector had actually slightly increased from 22 million jobs by a few hundred thousand.
Obama, to keep unemployment from rising, must grow jobs at roughly 150,000 a month--just to accommodate new workers: roughly 5 million new workers, over and beyond those laid off during his Presidency and previously laid off during the recession. I have mentioned out in recent posts that there are accounting games to use "Obama money" by creating rainy day funds or reallocating funding among government functions.
It would be one thing if Obama was calling broad-based sacrifice--including the 47% of workers not paying a dime for federal government operations--or broad-based tax simplification in place of his bias in favor of green energy boondoggles and other industrial policies fundamentally inconsistent with the free market. His process is purely ideological and intentionally discriminatory.
As for infrastructure spending: the devil is in the details. The Obama Administration picking the projects (e.g., high speed rail) is a non-starter; government-run rail services (e.g., Amtrak) rarely cover operating costs. I don't believe in paying for local school construction; that is yet another morally hazardous bailout.
But in the meantime, the president's going to do everything he can, whether it's on housing, student loans, we're going to keep this up.First of all, the context in which the execution actions were announced, by saying he would act where the Congress won't, suggests the President's actions are unconstitutional; they are not authorized by the people (i.e., the Congress), and the President has materially violated the balance of powers. However, if passed legislation gave the President broad authorization on disbursement, say, of residual funds from TARP, then President Obama was intentionally misleading the American people for political reasons.
The housing action (to subsidize housing for high-risk applicants) shows a President absolutely out of touch with reality given the role high-risk mortgage loans played in the real estate market crash. What, of course, David Gregory did not note (I guess he doesn't read the Washington Post), is the fact Obama pledged to help 9 million homeowners with a $50B program; to date, since that money was allocated and available, Obama has spent just $2.4B and helped 1.7M; in the meanwhile, a quarter of homeowner mortgages are underwater. Don't get me wrong: I'm very happy that the President hasn't (yet) thrown $47.6B down the drain, but when he's trying to posture himself as this proactive leader--give me a break: it's taken him 2.5 years to issue this executive order? And he has the nerve to talk about a do-nothing Congress! But here's the point: if you're going to spend this money, why are you throwing it at high-risk homeowners?
As to student loans: basically, just like the housing action above, the President is exaggerating the significance of his executive order. Neal McCluskey of CATO points out that the actions focus on consolidating defunct guaranteed private loans (recall that the Democrats have nationalized student loans, yet another unconscionable intervention under the sham rationalization that a government that requires funding of $1.3T deficits is more efficient and effective in processing these versus other types of loans) with direct (federal) loans, which will save borrowers a narrow interest-rate differential between loans; but there are few that have both loans. In addition, Obama announced some loaner-friendly tweaks (payment amount, tenure) for long-term (> 20 years) student loans, but McCluskey points out these are of minor significance, because the average federal loan runs 10 years and that the average aggregate student loan is under $30K, which is more like buying a new car. He is justifiably scornful of the promise that these tweaks are of no additional cost. First of all, generous federal loan programs help prop up the college cost bubble. Second, certain degrees are more marketable than others (e.g., the humanities); do we expect English, art or philosophy majors to command decent salaries to work off six-figure college loans? And worse, what if they don't graduate? I do not believe that the Congress is any better at managing student loan risk any more than they were good at managing risk during the real estate bubble.
We're going to have a vote this weekend in the Senate on putting construction workers back to work rebuilding America. I find it impossible to believe, by the end of the year, that Republicans in Congress aren't going to report back to their constituents that they did something to help the economy, cut taxes for the middle class for small businesses, help rebuild America.Do all those construction workers work for the US government? No, private industry. Construction workers are employed primarily by the private sector, for the private sector. And construction workers are not more equal than other workers, including white-collar workers, whom have been laid off during the recession. And certainly some infrastructure plays are more worthy than others (e.g., the Bridge to Nowhere). What we need is comprehensive economic growth policies, not the President pick and choosing which businesses (e.g., smaller scale) deserves preferred treatment.
The GOP House has already passed over a dozen bills languishing in the Senate, including a framework for long-term entitlement reform. If Obama was a legitimate, true leader, he would work with Boehner and McConnell on reaching a legitimate compromise, not pull a bait and switch on the American people, trying to pass off yet another Democratic tax-and-spend bill under the misnomer of being an "American jobs bill".
The single best things Obama could do for the economy would be to call a truce on ObamaCare, financial reform, and EPA's war on the private sector, roll back spending across the board beyond baseline numbers, and work on comprehensive tax, regulatory and entitlement reform (without class warfare politics). I'm not holding my breath, because Obama's politics are all-or-nothing; he is incapable of legitimate compromise.
MR. GREGORY: But you talk about Republicans. In fact, the president's effectively campaigning against a do-nothing Congress of Republicans, but are Democrats a problem, too? Bill Daley, the chief of staff, told Politico this in a column with Roger Simon on Friday. "On the domestic side," Daley said, "both Democrats and Republicans have really made it very difficult for the president..."For once, Gregory asks a reasonably good question, but I think there are nuances here. First, the tacit assumption is that Obama is above the fighting in Congress. He's not. He opposes the agenda of the GOP-controlled House. He is constantly threatening vetoes against GOP legislation.
I think the real issue is NOT a do-nothing Congress; it's a do-nothing, lead-from-behind President. What did he do with his own bipartisan deficit reduction committee which had majority support? Obama has distanced himself from the recommendations. Instead of building on that consensus, he had engaged in partisan sniping.
PLOUFFE: So there's only one reason, one reason we won't make a huge impact on the economy, and it's because the Republican Party...The President's last massive spending proposal didn't measure up to its own criteria regarding employment and economic growth. The President has no credibility in this current tax-and-spend proposal, which is even less significant than the first one relative to the size of the economy.
The reason that Obama's Presidency has not had a huge impact (in the positive direction) on the economy is because of uncertainty in tax, regulate, and spend policies. He's done very little on the business side of the economy, other than an odd lot of tweaks to help small businesses but he's done other things that hurt small businesses. It took him nearly 3 years to move on 3 trade pacts that had been pending long before George W. Bush left office. He has done very little to help alleviate American dependence on foreign energy supplies, while we own enough of our own; this has more to do with Obama's ideology in favor of green energy and the American economy is being held hostage by Obama's counterproductive economic ideology.
The fact is--Obama is trying to wring as much federal taxes out of business as he is from high income earners. Oh, he can talk about wanting to double American exports, but we were already on our way there DESPITE Obama, not because of him.
Let me make a point, the Republicans out in the country, mainstream, commonsense Republicans, whether it's having the wealthy pay a little bit more to help balance our budget and create jobs, doing things on jobs, the Republican Party out in America supports the things the president's trying to do. So you see this distance between the sort of tea party Republicans here in Washington and the presidential candidates and what Americans want.Utter, pathetic rubbish. This is a laughably absurd attempt to divide-and-conquer Republicans. This is some sort of weird fantasy life that Obama and Plouffe are sharing. Go back to even the 2009 stimulus bill; the Maine GOP senators and Specter demanded considerable trimming of the original stimulus before they agreed. The moderate and conservative Republicans all loathe tax-and-spend policies and huge deficits; they all subscribe to pro-economic growth policies and strong defense policies.
I consider myself as part of the Tea Party (I'm far more libertarian than most members of the Tea Party), but I strongly supported Mike Castle in Delaware, Murkowski in Alaska, and more mainstream GOP candidates in Nevada and Colorado. I have supported, and continue to support, more moderate Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie and Scott Brown. I even initially supported Crist against Rubio in Florida until Crist backtracked out of teacher reform legislation in opening pandering for teacher union support. Moreover, Plouffe is disingenuously trying to portray the Tea Party as a radical faction of the GOP when in fact it includes a number of conservative Democrats and independents.
In fact, much of the opposition to the President does not come from the Tea Party but from media conservatives whom disliked progressive policies far before the Tea Party emerged. I've looked at several votes where the hardcore Tea Party members staked out a principled stand and they did not enjoy partisan support.
MR. GREGORY: Stimulus, financial reform, healthcare reform, all big measures. They didn't work out in terms of economic impact the way the administration expected they would. Here are the Republicans saying, "We don't want to go along with anymore." You call that obstruction. They call it principled opposition.
MR. PLOUFFE: Well, it's ironic. Let's remember what Senator McConnell said, which he said his number one goal was not to put people back to work, help the middle class grow the economy; it was to defeat President Obama. So that's where they started this president's term. So...First of all, kudos to Gregory for doing a good job framing his point. You know, if I hear another intellectually challenged Democratic party hack misquote Mitch McConnell... These imbecilic analysts should not be surprised that the opposition leader wants a different President. Harry Reid publicly humiliated McCain during the TARP legislative process, right after McCain threw his support behind the legislation for which Reid was ecstatic. Obama is very difficult to deal with and unwilling to compromise unless his back is to the wall (like over the Bush tax cuts, 3 weeks before they were scheduled to expire). But what people forget is that the Senate GOP forced Obama to act because they filibustered Pelosi's class warfare tax hike earlier in the lame duck session.
What McConnell was saying was effectively comparing Obama to Clinton. The GOP found ways of making deals with Clinton, even though his policies were far more progressive/liberal than theirs. The GOP is not trying to oppose legislation because of antipathy to Obama; it's because they know Obama's tax, regulate, and spend agenda is against their own principled positions, as Gregory noted. I can say, without reservation, that the same bill would be opposed by all Republicans, regardless of whether Obama was President: it's that bad. All Plouffe is trying to do is repeat a big lie.
I'll continue my commentary in tomorrow's post.
Political Humor: The Cain Ad
Conan O'Brien's New Cain Ads
David Letterman's New Cain Ad
Absolutely lovely young Huntsman daughters...except they need to "shave" those upper lips. Ladies with mustaches better than mine intimidate me... (PS I like Huntsman)
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Foreigner, "Feels Like the First Time". There were two American rock bands in the 1970's that captivated me from their first hit singles and kept churning out classic rock hits: Boston and Foreigner. Lou Gramm, an outstanding rock vocalist, and Mick Jones crafted brilliant rock songs with memorable arrangements (I particularly like the bridge verse in this song). The only question I had was how could they possibly follow up an instant classic? And then I heard "Cold As Ice" for the first time...
