Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
Sunday Talk Soup
This time I'm going to pick on Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation. (I haven't listened to David Gregory on MTP; veggies are sometimes the last thing I eat off my plate. Maybe there will be a follow-up rant this week.) The first part of the rant involves Schieffer wanting to make some trouble for guest Michigan GOP Gov. Snyder by drilling him over a federal bailout of Detroit, making a reference to Detroit Mayor Bing raising the prospect on an earlier talk soup program. Snyder went on to discuss local/state responsibilities, when Schieffer persisted, channeling his inner teenage smart ass: but what about the federal bailouts of GM and Chrysler?
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this: Mayor David Bing said this morning on ABC, I think, that no decision has yet been made on asking for a federal bailout. Do you think there is a federal bailout in Detroit's future?
SNYDER: No, and I don't expect one. I've said before the state cannot bail out the city of Detroit. And part of the context I would say that to you in is it's not about just putting more money in a situation; it's about better services to citizens. Again, it's about accountable government. And so what we're doing at the state level -- and I would ask the federal government the same thing -- is let's use -- let's come up with targeted programs where we can see there's real value to citizens for improvement. I'll give you one tangible illustration we are partnering with the city government, the state, and the federal government on is about taking down blighted structures. We were able to obtain $100 million that, hopefully within the next 30 days, we'll start deploying those dollars toward taking some of those 78,000 abandoned structures down. They have been going on for years.
SCHIEFFER: But, you know, the federal government bailed out General Motors. It bailed out Chrysler. That worked out pretty well. Are you saying that that is just simply not on the table as far as you're concerned?
SNYDER: If the federal government wants to do that, that's their option. That's always their alternative. The way I view it is, I want to partner with all levels of government and stay focused on services to citizens.Apparently Gov. Snyder doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth; Governor, that cop-out response is not the principled response I was hoping for and earns you a nomination for my Bad Elephant of the Year award. Until then Snyder had done well, putting a positive, constructive spin on government services, similar to former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, whom I much admire. (Remember how he focused on wait times at DMV? Clearly a one-hour wait time for police via 9/11 is unacceptable...)
It's not Snyder's responsibility to teach the economically illiterate mainstream media basic business and economics. But there's a world of difference between the private sector providing goods and services and the public sector, which is basically a drain on the private sector, has extremely high personnel costs, is a monopoly protected from competition, and has vested interests (e.g., public union collective bargaining agreements) impeding managerial cost-cutting: consider for instance seniority-protective layoff policies, which do not assure the most productive workers are retained.
When Schieffer manages to slip in some propaganda point about how the bailouts and crony bankruptcies "worked out pretty well", he lost contact with reality. What happened there was a violation of the rule of law, pure and simple; when the Congress passed TARP, the idea was to target toxic assets, like underwater mortgages to unqualified buyers, with little skin in the game in terms of a conventional 20% down payment. By making money available to high-risk buyers and threatening banks which didn't grant enough politically correct loans, the Dems and GSE's fed the unsustainable housing bubble. (The GOP did its own part by giving tax breaks used by mostly higher middle-class home buyers and providing an incentive for intermediate-interval house flipping, and Bush himself was promoting an all-time high in home ownership.) The TARP funds became sort of a convoluted political slush fund that benefited the politically well-connected, including the GSE's (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), AIG and the auto companies.
Poor Schieffer! He's analytically challenged; he seems to confound the difference between bailouts and bankruptcy. The Democrats didn't want GM and Chrysler to go into bankruptcy where union contracts could come under scrutiny. They wanted US taxpayers to be on the hook for huge loans to companies that were sickly even before the Great Recession started and had failing business models; with nearly 8 million people losing jobs, millions more worried about losing theirs and reluctant to take on major purchases like new cars, this was like throwing good money after bad, just to defer the day of reckoning. Their rationale was that nobody would ever buy a car from a bankrupt company... They did, in the end of course, go through a bankruptcy. "Worked out well?" In what sense, Schieffer? The last I saw, the US taxpayer is still in the red on GM stock. If GM and Chrysler had filed earlier, they could still be recovering in improved auto sales FOUR YEARS into the Obama "recovery"; there are still over 100 million workers out there, many of whom will have to buy a new car sooner or later, so it was inevitable there would be a relief rally in auto sales from pent-up demand. There's nothing magic about a GM or Chrysler signature plate; there were still profitable domestic-produced auto operations (Ford or subsidiaries of Toyota, etc.) with plenty of capacity, and that's even in a worst-case scenario of GM and Chrysler liquidation. Besides the Obama Administration corruptly hijacking the bankruptcy proceedings on behalf of its union cronies, there was nothing done that couldn't have been done directly by the private sector sooner rather than later, without putting the taxpayer on the hook.
The point is that companies go out of business all the time; there's a moral hazard and a violation of the rule of law in picking and choose what entity to bail out. If the federal government bails out a big city, it's giving irresponsible city leadership a blank check to run up debts guaranteed not by local governments but US taxpayers whom have no stake in management and control. It's also only a short-term fix. It still has a high, unsustainable cost structure in place; the only way you are going to be able to attack the disease versus the symptoms is by going to bankruptcy and address things like work rules which make cost management all but impossible.
Let me now shift to what I consider disingenuous discussions on immigration and healthcare. It seemed to me that the House GOP was hinting at a path for citizenship for minor aliens whom were not responsible for the decision to immigrate through unauthorized channels, the GOP version of a Dream Act. I don't see a scenario where the GOP would cause families to split by deporting parents; I would have to believe they are willing to confer legal status at minimum on parents (assuming a clean criminal record check). This, if true, is a huge step forward. The Democrats should embrace the deal if offered. There was ZERO discussion of this on their panel: the conventional analytically-challenged discussion was political, i.e., the GOP must embrace the Latino vote because of a ticking demographic time bomb, and the Dems hold the Senate and White House, and Obama will veto any half-measure. This is a pathetic argument; first of all, the only demographics that matter to politicians is their next election; second, the House can and will veto the bill Obama wants. The real question is whether Obama wants to explain to Latinos why he vetoed the first immigration bill in decades; there are enough Republicans whom oppose any deal, they would be quite happy to see Obama kill it--and point their fingers at the Dems. Reid can bluff all he wants is the passed Senate bill or nothing, but the Senate bill will not pass the House. Fact of life; deal with it. I think the GOP has the Dems boxed in, especially if the House passes a Dream Act; after all, didn't the Dems themselves propose a Dream Act. The FTN round table had no real ideological diversity.
Healthcare--how many times are left-wing partisan hacks going to continue to recycle their misleading discussion on House votes on ObamaCare? Indisputable fact: the vote on the whole bill has been only once per session--there's no need to vote a repeal more than once. Fact of life; deal with it. Why a vote on a full repeal knowing Reid will bury it and in any event Obama can veto and have it sustained in either chamber? Simply put: House members committed to a repeal vote, and they can put Dem legislators on the record for the next election. The other votes are more specific in nature.
Once again, Schieffer's panel was incompetent on this issue. When Obama announced a one-year delay in delaying the employer mandate, his action is clearly illegal and unconstitutional; the bill/law did not give him an option to defer the mandate. Now I would like to permanently repeal both mandates (employer and individual). But the GOP is more than willing to give Obama authorization to delay hopefully both mandates. (And if Obama thinks he's got a problem with businesses, imagine when unemployed people whom can't afford health insurance find themselves being extorted by the government, say, for a $2K tax penalty they don't have...) Listen, these fools are playing games with the same old same old talking points: e.g., happily pointing out parents can continue to hold their unemployed college graduate kids on their policies. Really, what kind of economic illiterates are these people? If coverage of adult kids is without cost, there would be no need for regulation; the free market vendors would offer it on their own initiative. If there are costs (unless the kids never use benefits, there will be costs), these costs get ultimately charged back against policies--whether indirectly through the employer side of compensation and/or higher premiums for the policyholder. Now maybe as a single person, I'm being forced to pay towards the healthcare costs of your freeloading kids.... But still, I expected more than "progressive" groupthink and shallow analysis out of this group.
Finally, there was gushing, "thrill up my trousers" praise for Obama's "personal experience" comments on the Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman item. What did this have to do with a kid beating the hell out of Zimmerman without provocation? That's criminal assault and battery. You don't have a right to attack people for following you, unsettling as it may be--ask any celebrity whom wishes he or she could. I have not read Obama's autobiographies, but I'm sure he must have discussed his experience about being a person of color. I know that he threw his white grandmother under the bus. But really, what does hearing locks click or women clutching their purses in elevators have to do with a murder trial? This is all about victimization; we need to know that Obama ,who somehow got into and graduated from 2 Ivy League schools, was elected editor to the Harvard Law Review, US senator and President, and owns a mansion in Chicago, identifies with the people in the hood. What did he say that I haven't already heard hundreds of times before from other people of color? That we "white people" don't know what it's like to have other people avoid eye contact, move away from us in an elevator, etc.? How does he know? I've experienced this many times on my own; the difference is I don't take it personally--and he is paranoid enough to believe it has to do with his skin color.
Let me quote from HuffPost contributor Janet Tavakoli:
On Friday, President Obama gave an off-the-cuff speech at the White House, and he raised other issues:
"There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often."
President Obama merely mentioned "a woman," and he didn't mention any particular race. He was talking about his own experience, but I guarantee you, men of every race have had that experience.C'est vrai.
My Third Nominee for Bad Judge of the Year: Timothy Black
The Obama-nominated federal district judge has essentially ruled Oho's traditional marriage definition "unconstitutional", in essence trying to exploit Justice Kennedy's inconsistency between backing federalism on the DOMA decision but sustaining a California district judge decision overturning the Prop 8/traditional marriage initiative on a technicality of standing (the Governator and then AG Jerry Brown unethically refused to defend laws they personally disagree with). The Obama Administration has set the lawless standard by picking and choosing which laws they'll enforce (e.g., the Black Panthers voter intimidation case, INS, etc.)
Ohio in 2004 passed a traditional marriage initiative:
86.6% 15.11 - Marriage AmendmentIn this case, you have a brief sham "wedding" between two gay men on the premises of BWI (in MD, which narrowly confirmed a gay "marriage" proposition) by one of the grooms' aunts whom was ordained over the Internet. The is exactly the kind of game playing that was the chief motivation behind DOMA and the California marriage propositions.
Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.
(Adopted Nov. 2, 2004; Proposed by Initiative Petition) Marriage Amendment
Black is a disingenuous judicial hack whom tries to argue a slippery slope. For example, suppose for the sake of argument that Ohio has a minimum age of 17 for marriage, it's 18 in Pennsylvania; if Ohio and Pennsylvania have a marriage reciprocity agreement, in Black's Alice in Wonderland view, a gay "marriage" from Maryland (never mind the participants above weren't Maryland residents but Ohio residents) is no different than a 17-year-old spouse in Ohio moving to Pennsylvania and having his/her marriage recognized; any variance implies all variances. By this reasoning, if Utah decided to recognize plural marriage, it would dictate plural marriages in any state with which it has a reciprocity agreement. Just like the gay Ohio couple, the polygamous couples could fly to Utah and have quickie weddings on the runway, head back home, and file a federal suit.
I think ultimately this argument fails on appeal; SCOTUS dodged this issue, but they pointedly did not find a constitutional right to marry. I don't see Kennedy explaining away his federalism argument; why argue the Tenth Amendment unless states had a right to maintain traditional marriage laws? The only question is whether they will decide the question directly or by technicality (e.g., incidentals of the quickie "wedding" in Maryland). I have mentioned in past posts a free market among states; some states could market themselves as gay-friendly and use policies as ways to attract gays. I could see a justice asking the gay couple why they just didn't move to Maryland, which is certainly their constitutional right.
How the Government Feeds Crony Farmers
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen and Townhall |
The Beatles, "Got To Get You Into My Life". This was an odd Top 10 hit for the Beatles, released as part of a compilation album several years after the group broke up, a decade after its original release. I loved the brass flourishes here and on "Penny Lane" (which I recently covered). I was disappointed to read Sir Paul called the tune a subtle ode to marijuana. No, thanks: I still prefer to think of it as a love song.....
