To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott
Joe Klein / Time, "The Ice Is Breaking": part 2 (part 1)
It was a confident speech. It marked a new reality in Washington: the ice is breaking. The President has demonstrated in recent weeks that he now has a working majority in the House of Representatives for many of his initiatives.Joe Klein clearly had tingles going up both legs. I didn't even bother listening to it because nothing he says is different than I've heard him say at least a dozen times before: There's a danger when you've become the most overexposed President in American history. It's like the boy whom cried wolf. The only interest I have in an Obama speech is the occasional boneheaded gaffe ("you didn't build that") or lapse of civility (attacking SCOTUS at the State of the Union over Citizens United), not unlike those whom go to hockey games in the hope of seeing a fight.
Confident? Well, as term-limited Obama certainly no longer has to pretend to be a centrist, but he can risk his party's chances in subsequent elections (just ask George W. Bush). Granted, he's at a 52 approval rating now, but I think Bush was in the mid-50's. First, extending middle-class tax cuts and Hurricane Sandy relief had broad political support; what made them difficult was the President's (or other Democrats') divisive Politics of Envy and Profligate Spending. We who do applied statistics routinely warn against generalizing from small sample sizes, and the votes here are cherry-picked. This President is stubborn, refuses to compromise/demands capitulation, procrastinates, and leads from behind; he declares in advance he won't negotiate terms for a debt ceiling, when in the real world banks charge more for riskier loans. For example, what happens to the budget when interest rates reach 5%? How is he going to find the extra money?
The mark of a truly intelligent person is a certain humility and acknowledgment of his limitations. It takes arrogance for a first-term senator with no major accomplishments, public executive experience or expertise to think he has the stuff to lead the free world. I know for a fact I would make a better President than Obama; I could pass a polygraph. Why? I've had to turn around projects where I had no formal authority. I'm more proactive; I've worked with government clients at the local, state and federal level, and I've had to cope with bureaucratic inertia. I don't have unrealistic expectations.
But nerds don't enter or win student council races in high school, and I would expect the same of myself as I would of others, e.g., public sector executive experiences. I would never claim, based on the facts that I first visited Mexico as a newborn (and Mom said Mexican women blessed me: I used to be cute), had Mexican students at UTEP and took 2 years of Spanish in high school, that I'm an expert on Mexico.
Of course, Klein might argue that he left himself wiggle room by saying "for many of his initiatives". The fact is that he failed to promote the same initiatives when he had control of both chambers of Congress with super-majorities. Klein is plainly attempting to suggest that just like there were Reagan Democrats, there are "Obama Republicans". I guarantee there is no such thing as a free-spending, high-regulation, high-tax Republican; and if there were, the Tea Party would primary them. There had always been conservative Dems, at least through Reagan. Two of the 3 GOP votes for the 2009 stimulus are no longer in Congress.
On Fox News, the normally reasonable Chris Wallace called the speech an "unyielding, uncompromising espousal of a liberal agenda." Which would be true if we were living in 1961. But not so much now, unless you consider the preservation of Social Security and Medicare and the acknowledgment of civil rights as a starkly liberal vision. Most Americans see these things as ... reality. There was, in fact, a presidential nod toward the American "skepticism of central authority." We must, Obama said, "make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care" and "we understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time," and we must "remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools."I can't believe this unprofessional jerk just took a cheap shot at the best moderator in the business. I have seen the speech; Wallace is correct (if time permits in future posts, I'll do the same thing to Obama's inaugural address I'm doing to Klein).. It is NOT the role of the federal government to fix our public schools; that's a local/state issue, and federalism distributes responsibilities between the Feds and the states; the Fed's proper role is quite limited. All this is progressive hubris and crap. Government can't reduce the health sector's costs, in part correlated with population aging, beyond government's locus of control; it can obfuscate costs and impede the functioning of the free market. Obama often pays lip service to things conservatives have argued for years, like gradually phasing in initial eligibility dates but Klein ignores what McConnell and others are saying: talk is cheap: where's the proposal? Klein doesn't seem to understand the difference between political spin and policy. This is not just a matter of opinion: Obama has been late in submitting 4 out of 5 budgets; he's even worse than my ex-students. About "revamping our tax code": who's responsible for a hiring binge at the IRS (for healthcare policy enforcement), various small business and green energy tax breaks, etc.? Not to mention a wide assortment of new tax hikes?
Rent Seeking: An Introduction
Professor Munger chooses interesting examples; I embedded a video of his discussing freeloaders several posts back. Basically rent-seeking players are trying to use the political process to their economic benefit: for example, psychologists may lobby for expanded government funding of mental health, teachers want to strengthen the education requirements before a retired engineer can teach math or science in high school, and insurance companies want individual mandates or government subsidies for covering the losses due to policy holders whose premiums are capped below their cost.
Political Humor
Last Saturday, up in Punxsutawney, Pa., little Phil -- the groundhog -- stuck his little head out of his little hidy-hole. He looked around, but it was cloudy and he didn't see his shadow. So we have four more years of President Obama. - investment newsletter
[You know, if California university researchers can spend part of a $325K NSF grant building a robotic squirrrel, can a RoboGroundhog with infrared vision be far behind? Should we be surprised some of the rattlesnakes were able to successfully bite RoboSquirrel's head, the same way certain snakes in the grass pounce on Congressional earmarks?]
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- I'm not sure about Obama skeet shooting. It isn't so much the photo, but the claim that the White House freezer is full of skeet, and he likes his skeet broiled with a touch of lemon juice and sea salt and served with arugula on the side.
The Association, "Windy". This is one of those perfectly crafted, infectious pop songs (like "Walking on Sunshine". I have this picture in my mind of a fun, flirty, spontaneous, lovely sweetheart....
