The greater danger for most of us is not
that our aim is too high and we miss it,
but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo
Perky Economics = Grand Illusion
Mortimer Zuckerman has a notable WSJ op-ed post "The Great Recession Has Been Followed by the Grand Illusion". He points out how the mainstream media have all but taken their talking points from the White House:
- After 2.4% annual growth rates in gross domestic product in 2010 and 2011, the economy slowed to 1.5% growth in 2012. Cumulative growth for the past 12 quarters was just 6.3%, the slowest of all 11 recessions since World War II.
- Other numbers reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have deteriorated. The 236,000 net new jobs added to the economy in February is misleading—the gross number of new jobs included 340,000 in the part-time, low wage category. Many of the so-called net new jobs are second or third jobs going to people who are already working, rather than going to those who are unemployed.
- Since World War II, it has typically taken 24 months to reach a new peak in employment after the onset of a recession. Yet the country is more than 60 months away from its previous high in 2007, and the economy is still down 3.2 million jobs from that year. Just to absorb the workforce's new entrants, the U.S. economy needs to add 1.8 million to three million new jobs every year. At the current rate, it will be seven years before the jobs lost in the Great Recession are restored. Employers will need to make at least 300,000 hires every month to recover the ground that has been lost.
- The job-training programs announced by the Obama administration in his State of the Union address are [not short-term fixes]; [Obama didn't mention] any reform of the patent system, which imposes long delays on innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs seeking approvals. [Immigration politics over unauthorized immigrants ignores entrepreneurial foreign-born, American-educated higher-level graduates not given an opportunity to stay.]
SCOTUS Looks at Marriage
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| Courtesy of Dalton Glasscock |
The California Proposition 8 case was heard today, and now I have contempt for Justice Elena Kagan whom asked an amateurish gotcha question one might expect from a smartass student in a freshman philosophy class: in essence, if procreation is tied to marriage, wouldn't this seem to rule out infertile (by nature or age) people from marrying? Why not point out adopted children are not natural children either? (I haven't read the transcript; maybe she did add it--it's utterly predictable...) Marriage provides a socially accepted context for family and children. Of households with multiple children, over 80% consist of only full siblings, i.e., with the same biological father and mother. As my fellow mathematicians would say, gender differences are a necessary but insufficient basis for procreation. In Catholic thought, the married couple should be open to God's blessing of children in their lives. Same-gender couples cannot have children by natural design. However, and I don't think Kagan made this point because it's politically inconvenient, polygamous relationships can result in some permutations of fruitful married coupling. And to reprise a point I made in the blog some time back, the nature of marriage (polygamy was an accepted practice in the early LDS Church) was a question bearing on the Utah territory's application for citizenship. (I should point out Kagan wasn't alone in espousing this sophistry; the other liberal justices, as an example of the absurdity the arguments went to, even speculated on post-conviction convicts with few or no conjugal visits.)
Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hardly a pro-life jurist, is well aware of the polarizing effects Roe v Wade has had and continues to have in America; Sotomayor and Kennedy also seemed to question, given the propaganda of vaguely-worded polls showing 53-57% support for "gay marriage", whether SCOTUS really wants to issue a ruling overruling traditional marriage affirmation in other states.
I think the justices will uphold state regulations and Proposition 8: they may figure it's just a matter of time before the People's Republic of California approves a new "gay marriage" proposition. That being said, swing court voter Kennedy said a couple of things that bothered me (one of them worrying about the self-esteem of children adopted by unrecognized "gay parents"). I heard no discussion about California's domestic partnerships: "A California domestic partnership is a legal relationship available to same-sex couples. . It affords the couple "the same rights, protections, and benefits, and... the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law..." as married spouses." What the devil is Kennedy worrying about? If it quacks like a duck... It's because gay activists want to control the word 'marriage'; it has nothing to do with legal rights. You can put lipstick on a pig.... Does Kennedy think judicial fiat can confer social acceptability when California's mostly liberal voters, unlike other liberal states like Maryland, wouldn't confer it directly?
Some Updates from the Institute for Justice
- The Caswells Win: the Boston US Attorney's Office won't appeal the dismissal of civil forfeiture case. If you recall, the government sought to steal the Massachusetts motel property of the older couple because some people, without their knowledge or consent, made drug transactions on their property.
- You Can Rest in Peace: The monks of Saint Joseph Abbey in Louisiana can sell caskets. "the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous final decision in favor of the casket-making monks of Saint Joseph Abbey, setting up what could become a historic clash at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals squarely rejected Louisiana’s argument that it was constitutional to enact a law forbidding anyone but a government-licensed funeral director from selling caskets, especially if the only purpose of the law is to make funeral directors wealthier by limiting competition."
- School Choice Wins Over Teacher Unions in Indiana: "In a landmark legal decision issued today, the Indiana Supreme Court held that the state’s Choice Scholarship Program does not violate the Indiana Constitution. In a unanimous decision, the Court rejected every legal claim brought by the plaintiffs—who are supported by both state and national teachers’ unions—against the program, and it ruled in favor of both the state and two parents, Heather Coffy and Monica Poindexter, who have intervened in the lawsuit in defense of the program. Those parents, who use Choice Scholarships to send their children to private schools, are represented in the case by the Institute for Justice.In rejecting the argument of the plaintiffs that the Choice Scholarship Program improperly benefits private religious schools, the Court held that the program “provide[s] lower-income Indiana families with the educational options generally available primarily to higher-income Indiana families. The result is a direct benefit to these lower-income families—the provision of a wider array of education options, a valid secular purpose. Any benefit to program-eligible schools, religious or non-religious, derives from the private, independent choice of the parents of program-eligible students, not the decree of the state, and is thus ancillary and incidental to the benefit conferred on these families.”
Christopher Prebles' post on those whom should have known better but didn't is here. I have little patience with ideologues whom parrot the same old, same old disingenuous nonsense, e.g., they promised costs would be repaid with Iraq oil revenues, they said the occupation would be short, that we would be greeted as liberators, etc. There may have been a few clueless Administration members whom spouted such nonsense, but Bush never expected a nearly decade long costly divisive quagmire. Any idea that the US would confiscate oil would have fed anti-American propaganda, As Prebles pointed out, Powell warned months in advance "You break it: you own it."
Let me point out a few points: at the tail end of the first Gulf War, a number of (majority) Shiites rose up, as Bush 41 had encouraged--and then stood by as Hussein ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion. Part of the response was no-fly zones enforced by the US, as a measure of control over Hussein atrocities against out-of-power Kurds and Shiites. There's a difference between a ceasefire and a treaty ending the war. Hussein had attempted to assassinate former President GHW Bush. By the end of Clinton's Presidency there was a policy of regime change in Iraq. There was a long string of failed UN resolutions.
Am I attempting to justify the 2003 decision? No. It's easy to say today I would have never made the decision, not seeing the flawed intelligence and knowing the botched aftermath, the casualties and cost. But like Bush 43 had campaigned, I don't believe in nation building, I would have done my due diligence and exhaustively studied the history of Iraq , and I would never wanted to open up the Pandora's box of sectarian strife. Being responsible for the lives or health of someone's son, husband or fiance, or father is something I would not take lightly (I'm not alleging GWB did, but I think he and I had different decision styles; I've emphasized iterative design in classes and research, which would have triggered earlier review cycles and corrective policies or even an exit; I would have definitely pulled the trigger sooner than Bush did on Rumsfeld and Petraeus.)
Political Cartoon
No doubt a victim of sequester, replaced by RoboSquirrel; given his forecasting skills, might I suggest a career as a government economist?
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel and PatriotPost |
Yet another government-maintained highway on the road to serfdom: they still haven't paid for repairs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.
Political Humor
Courtesy of PatriotPost.us and the original artists:
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Earth, Wind and Fire, "Shining Star"
