So That’s Where I Left My Racism!

Things aren’t looking so great for our president.  His approval rating is just above 50%, in some polls.  American citizens are rallying against his spending, energy, and health care plans, with many expressing anger and frustration to their representatives at town hall meetings, and with phone calls and emails.  Some politicians have taken the gloves off, with one congressman even daring to shout, “You lie!” at the president, during his health care sales pitch to Congress.  What is going on?  Thankfully, we have brilliant and dedicated servants of the public like Maureen Dowd and former president Jimmy Carter to solve the mystery for us:  Racism!  All of us who are opposed to the presidents actions and proposals?  Well, we’re just racists.  At least that’s most of the issue (the “overwhelming part” of it, according to President Carter).

The funny thing is, I was under the (apparently false) impression that racists are racists — not part-time, but all the time.  Wasn’t it less than a year ago that Barack Obama was elected president with more votes than any president had ever received?  Didn’t he receive support from across the political and societal spectrum — even from “disillusioned conservatives?”  Wasn’t it less than 8 months ago that the president’s approval rating was around 70%?  So, did millions of racists just forget their hate, for a while?  Does that make any sense at all?  Apparently, it makes perfect sense to Carter and Dowd.  President Obama still hasn’t sunk to the approval depths that Bill Clinton reached or at which George W. Bush spent most of his 2nd term.  He still doesn’t suffer the same kinds of vitriolic attacks on who he is as a human being that either of those previous two presidents did.  Heck, his personal favorability rating is still in the 60s.  But he’s the poor victim of cruel, despicable racism.

Obama ran as something new, an agent of “hope” and “change” that would rise above the petty partisanship of the past, respect the ideas and concerns of people across the political spectrum, and be cautious, pragmatic, and above all else “serious,” in tackling the nation’s problems.  He has not followed through.  He has farmed out the writing of his big, important policies to the more radical members of his party.  He has cut the Republican Party out at nearly every turn, and accuses them of partisanship and bad faith whenever they express their opposition to his plans.  He has expanded the role of government, dramatically, and plans to do so even more.  And he expects all of his plans to be past hastily, regardless of how radical they may be.  He has misinterpreted the public hunger for a change in how political business is conducted as a desire for fundamental change in the foundations of our country.  This is why public opinion has started to swing against him.  This is why the frustration of his political opponents has begun to bubble over.  Not because of some rediscovered racism.

I even held out slight hope that President Obama would really be something different.  That he’d be able to inspire the nation to have a respectful, serious discussion about how to address some of the big problems we face.  I didn’t really believe it, based on the positions he’d taken in the past, and the outrageous (and uncritically reported) promises he made during the campaign.  But I did believe that he was a decent man, and that he just might be able to change our politics for the better, even though I might not agree with his political philosophy.  I know now that I was wrong to hope.  Either that… or maybe I’m just a racist.

The President Thinks You’re An Idiot

Imagine:  It’s 5 AM.  You’re tied up and stuck on some railroad tracks, certain to die, if no one comes along to free you before the 4 PM train comes through.  From somewhere over on your left, a man claiming to be your hero appears, telling you he can burn the ropes off of you and pull you from the tracks, but he thinks your shoes are stuck, so he says he’ll have to cut off your feet.  Oh, and he’s going to blow up the tracks, too — just to be safe.  You’re not too excited about his solution.  Then, from somewhere to your right another person appears.  He tells you there’s no need for fire or hacksaws, he can just untie the rope (and your shoes, if they’re really stuck) and you can walk away.  Hero-man on your left shouts at you that his way is better, and that he must do it NOW!  The other guy repeats that such drastic measures are not necessary, but hero-man presses on.  “Some people say we should do nothing!  But doing nothing will be much worse than my plan,” he assures you.

This is what our president is doing.  He’s proposing fire and hacksaws and demolition crews to avert the imminent disaster that our health care system will lead us to, and equating anyone advocating a less drastic alternative with someone wanting to do nothing.  He did the same exact thing with the stimulus bill, claiming a $750B mess of Democrat pet projects — a bill he did not write and probably did not read — was absolutely necessary to rescue the economy, and had to be passed immediately.  Anyone who disagreed was said to prefer to “do nothing,” the implication being that they did not care about suffering Americans.  Now, he wants to completely overhaul the US health care system, using new powers and hundreds of pages of new rules and regulations, involving the government deeply in an area in which it is at least questionable (to any reasonable person) for it to be involved.  And he wants his plan approved before people have time to really understand it.  Those who believe that he is going too far?  According to him, they just want to do nothing.  This has been his m.o. all along: promote his plans by attacking straw men.

Can this strategy work?  Only on idiots.  Yet the president uses it, repeatedly.  You decide what that means.

Well, Something Sure Was ‘Ill Chosen’

“I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

This is how President Obama hopes to defuse the the controversy he created, when he decided to basically tag some cops in Massachusetts as at least stupid, if not racist.  Yes, I know he didn’t exactly call the cops racist, but he did link their “stupid” behavior with the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”  How did brilliant Mr. Obama expect people to take his statement?  He was saying that either the cops were stupid for arresting Gates knowing how it would look, or that the arrest itself was stupid (i.e., wrong) and they only did it because they must be racist.  Either way, it was a ridiculous thing for him to say without (as he admitted) having all the facts.

Obama conceded his words had been ill-chosen, but he stopped short of a public apology.

In typical spin-it-as-somebody-else’s-problem form, the White House has said the president “would regret distracting [the media] with obsessions,” when asked about his comments.  Right, that’s the problem with what he said, that it’s going to cause the obsessive media to be distracted.  It’s not that he unjustifiably labeled some cops as racist (whether intentionally or not) and stupid.  It’s not that he stoked racial tensions, without even knowing what the heck he was talking about.  It’s not that he, the leader of our government, reactively called into question the integrity of law enforcement in America.  No.  It’s that he drew some attention away from the disaster that his health care reform proposal is becoming.  I’m sure he really regrets that.

“Could’ve calibrated those words differently,” comes up way short of what is required here to make this right.  How about that fresh candidness that you were supposed to be bringing to politics, Mr. President?  “I’m the one who acted stupidly, by stoking racial tensions unnecessarily.”  That would be more like it.

One by one, this president is destroying every reason that a large number of moderate Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans were able to support him, or at least hope that he would be something different.  Great work.

Good for the Goose…?

The other day, I saw an article about how President Obama is opposed to the move by congress to restore some of the dealerships cut in the restructuring plans of GM and Chrysler.  While I happen to agree with the president, 100%, that the dealers should not be reinstated, it still struck me as funny that the president is essentially telling congress not to do what the president himself has done:  intervene in what should be a matter handled by the bankruptcy courts and the parties involved in the business relationships impacted by the bankruptcy.  Just as the president stepped in to “save” the automakers, with “saving jobs” as the stated rationale and rewarding political supporters as the practical effect, the various representatives simply want to do the same thing.  This is yet another example of why it is stupid to get the government involved in running businesses.  Congress has just as much of a legitimate claim — as representatives of the taxpayer owners of these companies — as the administration does for making business decisions (good, bad or terrible).

Meanwhile, I heard President Obama on the radio today, dismissing critics of the ridiculous monstrosity of a health care reform bill working its way through congress as simply trying to “score political points.”  Right.  Couldn’t be that anyone who doesn’t like the bill might have any legitimate concerns about handing over so much more power and responsibility to the federal government, or about the price tag, or the possible effects on the quality of care.  No.  They just want to stop these thousand plus pages of complex legislation from flying through congress, before anyone can even truly understand what they say, for political gain.  I see.  So, when your were on the campaign trail, Mr. President, and you criticized anything your opponent said, or the previous administration did, or when you were a Senator (all those long 3+ years) and you spoke out against or voted to block legislation you did not agree with, was that simply to “score political points?”  How absurd.  Oh yeah, I forgot — change, right?

Sotomayor Should Be Approved – That’s How It Works

I have no idea how “liberal” or “moderate” or “activist” or “restrained” Judge Sotomayor really is.  But it doesn’t really matter.  The people of the United States elected a liberal Democrat as president, and gave him a large, sympathetic majority in the US Senate.  That means that, barring the discovery of any truly disqualifying behavior (abuse of her position on the bench, illegal activity), the president should get his choice.  Every Republican in the Senate should vote to approve the appointment.  Their job is “advice and consent” — that’s all.  While I’m sure the president didn’t seek much advice from Republicans, and probably disregarded any he received, it is still not the responsibility of the Senate to make the appointment.  That is the sole responsibility of the president, whether a Republican or Democrat.  The Senate’s role is basically to guard against an outrageous appointment.   So, approver her, Republicans, and don’t make a silly show of the hearings. And next election cycle, try making a better case for your point of view about the role of government, the importance of the Constitution, and how the Supreme Court fits into that picture.

This Health Care Bill Must Be Stopped

Look, I admit there are issues with the health care system in the United States.  The entire industry could do with some reform to help bring costs down and make access to care easier for more people.  But having the government basically take over the entire system is simply not the way to do it.  This is true for a number or reasons:

1) The federal government does almost nothing right.  Waste, fraud and corruption are almost inevitable in any large government enterprise.  It is impossible for a massive federal bureaucracy to be responsive to the needs of individuals.  Politics will invariably play a role in the administration of the system, and will most certainly lead to inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

2) It is beyond ridiculous to believe that putting the government, with its propensity to spend money it does not have, in charge of health care will lead to anything but higher overall costs and lower quality.  In an effort to control costs, the government will likely impose some form of price controls on services and drugs, and some form of rationing.  These things will be necessary, because otherwise doctors will charge as much as they want, and people will take much more than they need.  Clamping down on such overindulgence will involve some amount of arbitrary decision making (and some based on politics and lobbying), meaning doctors will have an incentive to seek out procedures that maximize what they can earn, and people will not necessarily get the care appropriate for their needs.  Price controls will also provide an incentive for health service providers to try to make up in volume what they lose in margin.

3) Most importantly, it is an absolutely improper role for the federal government, and is a threat to the very idea of liberty upon which this country was built.  The federal government will wind up with an unbelievable amount of control over the health of every individual.  Even granting that it is not the intention of the plan’s backers to wield such influence in any harmful way, the power will nonetheless have been given to the government, with its passage.  Think about it, the current private health insurers already (rightly) try to influence how we live, by providing incentives for healthier living (no smoking, exercise, preventative care, etc).  They do so in their own self-interest, which generally happens to mesh with the interest of better health.  They also each have their own rules for what is covered, which drugs patients have access to, which doctors patients can see.  But at least right now, if you don’t like what your insurance company offers, there is at least a possibility for you to go elsewhere.  There is competition (though it is distorted, and could use some opening up).  But with only one massive insurer in the picture, and that is what a federal system would almost certainly become, there would be no alternatives for anyone.  They could tell you what kind of care you could get, and that would be that.  They could tell you how to live, using the threat of withholding care or higher taxation, and you would have no possible recourse.  They could — and would — tell drug companies which drugs to develop, based on their idea (subject to lobbying and political pressure) of what is most needed, as opposed to the free market’s.

The federal government of the United States was created with one idea in mind: maximizing the liberty of all US citizens.  To achieve that goal, the founders placed limits on the role of the central government, with the purpose of keeping power as close to the people as possible.  The federal government exists essentially to facilitate cooperation between the states, allowing for the pooling of resources, where necessary, such as in the area of defense, and in most areas providing rules under which the states must operate, when dealing with one another.  Its other essential responsibility is to insure that none of the individual rights, enumerated in the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments, are denied to any citizen.  Access to health care is only a right insofar as no government should have the power to deny such access to any citizen.  This does not mean the government must or should provide that care, just like it is not the business of the government to provide you with a religion, just because it guarantees your freedom to access the religion of your choice.  Nor should the government provide you with a gun, even though it is supposed to protect your right to have access to one.  It would be foolish beyond imagination to grant so much more power to a government so unresponsive to the people whose freedom it is supposed to protect.  This bill must be stopped.

Everyone Wants To Keep Their Cake

If you didn’t know, we’re in some pretty tough economic times.  Oh, you’ve heard?  Because, obviously, many people have not… or at least that’s the conclusion you could draw, if you’ve been following some of the big developments, lately.  Exhibit A:  The auto follies.  The headlines this week tell of how GM and Chrysler will now have to defend their decisions on dealership closings before the senate.

Because the federal government is slated to own most of General Motors and 8 percent of Chrysler, some of the senators said they have a responsibility, as major shareholders do, to review company decisions.

Oh, sure.  And “as major shareholders do,” I’m sure you’ll be considering what’s best for the company, rather than what’s going to help you look good for voters in your state. Hey folks, welcome to reality!  GM and Chrysler are bankrupt.  They are restructuring, under the direction of the courts and the federal government.  They were told to trim their product lines, eliminate brands, and ratchet down their operations, in order to achieve something like sustainability.  This has to happen.  If it doesn’t, GM and Chrysler die.  And then ALL of their dealers will be out of luck.

“Let me be very clear — I don’t believe that companies should be allowed to take taxpayer funds for a bailout and then leave local dealers and their customers to fend for themselves with no real notice and no real help. It’s just plain wrong,” [Sen. Rockefeller] said.

Just plain wrong?  The whole idea here is to try to save an American industry so that it can again become a job creator, and so that it can again support the businesses built up around it (parts suppliers, tool makers, dealerships, etc).  Is there to be no pain?  Should we be bailing out the auto dealerships, too?  Yeah, let’s send ‘em all a check for the money they would have made had GM and Chrysler not gone belly-up.  The Fed can print more money.  Who cares?

Exhibit B:  The (Once) Golden State.  California is on the brink of bankruptcy.  Years of free spending in fat times have finally caught up to the state, and now, if it is to have any hope of avoiding a financial collapse, meaningful cuts have got to be made.  But, surprise surprise, no one wants to be on the receiving end of those cuts.  The California state government worked out a plan that would have involved trimming the state contribution to home healthcare workers’ wages, and the SEIU (which represents those workers) rebelled, taking the case to Washington.  The Obama administration decided to use the stimulus money slated for California as a stick (another big surprise) to bully the state into undoing the wage cutbacks.  So, instead of a $2 per hour cut, the SEIU would prefer to have the state go bankrupt.  Another example comes with California’s decision to close ~220 state parks — people are rallying against it.  Sure, there’s a potentially legitimate argument to be made that shutting down the parks will impact economic activity to such an extent that the move defeats its own purpose.  But there are still plenty of reasons for tourists to visit the state — and something has to be cut.  If California cannot close it’s budget gap, destroys its credit rating, and cannot secure the funds it need to keep operating, more than just the state parks will be closing.

I hate to resort to generational generalizations, but it’s hard not to see that Americans have become incredibly spoiled.  We can’t all have everything we want, all the time.  We can’t always expect things to be the same as they are during the best of economic times.  The government can’t artificially support the fat living that we’ve grown accustomed to, when times are lean.  The economy and the financial system have to go through a necessary process to right themselves.  The process can be painful, but if it doesn’t happen, nothing gets fixed.  We simply cannot have our cake and eat it, too.

Because the federal government is slated to own most of General Motors and 8 percent of Chrysler, some of the senators said they have a responsibility, as major shareholders do, to review company decisions.

A Lesson In The Problem Of ‘Big Government’

<sound of cobwebs being cleared…>

Got back from a 2-week semi-vacation (I worked, most of it) about 2 weeks ago.  I had meant to post something sooner, but I couldn’t find much motivation.  But just now I came across an article in Forbes describing what is being done wrong, with respect to the Chrysler bankruptcy.  After reading it, I realized that what’s happening in this case actually illustrates a point about government expansion that I had tried to make in a pre-election post.  Essentially, that point was that handing over more of the private economy to the government is a bad idea, because government agencies do not respond to the realities of the market, and are therefore destined to be inefficient and to exacerbate the problems they’re supposed to be addressing.  Or, more generally, giving more power to the government will inevitably lead to abuse of that power, as well as waste.  The Chrysler saga seems to demonstrate this pretty well.

As we all know, the federal government got involved in the “rescue” of GM and Chrysler, by loaning them billions of dollars, intended to give them a chance to fix themselves.  At the time, there were some voices saying that the companies should be allowed to go into bankruptcy, if they were not able to fix themselves without government help.  But, mostly, what we heard were things like, “Bankruptcy is not an option!” and “They’re too big to fail!”  President Obama promised to “save” the US auto industry (yes, I know the Bush administration started the ball rolling), while also saying he had no interest in running the car companies.

And where are we now?  The president has demanded that Chrysler and GM submit to his administration plans to achieve viability — and has rejected parts of the plans, demanding revisions  (so much for “no interest” in running the companies).  In the case of Chrysler, after dumping billions more in taxpayers’ money into the company (read: waste), he has forced it into bankruptcy (not an option?) and into a deal that will divide ownership of the company among Fiat, the US and Canadian governments, and the UAW — with the union getting the majority stake in the company.  In the process, the administration is strong-arming Chrysler’s creditors into taking a much less equitable deal than they would expect under the law, in a normal bankruptcy (read: abusing power).  He has allegedly used the TARP money awarded to many of those creditors as leverage to get them to agree to the deal.  (Funny thing here, he’s actually forcing TARP-receiving creditors to further hurt their own balance sheets by giving up money to which they are legally entitled.)

Why are things being done this way, when Chrysler declaring bankruptcy months ago would have saved billions in taxpayer money, and left legal decisions in the hands of the courts, where they belong?  Well, the two reasons I can come up with are foolishness: the president believes he knows better than the bankruptcy courts and people with relevant industry experience; and politics: the president gets to claim that he’s “doing something,” he gets to tilt the deal to favor a major constituent group (unions), and he gets to gain more leverage over private industry, and therefore more political power.  This is exactly the problem with expanding the role of government further into the private sector.  The motivations and accountability are very different, and most often are not focused on or responsive to the true needs of the market, a.k.a., the people.  Instead of getting the most efficient solution to the problem at hand, we get grandstanding, power-grabbing, and billions more dollars wasted.

Now, let’s get the government into the health care business….

Brilliant!

This is absolutely fantastic.

Give Them Enough Power And They *Will* Abuse It

This is just beautiful.  Because they are so outraged at the AIG bonuses, members of the US Congress are seeking ways to “get the money back.”

Still, lawmakers are moving quickly to take the initiative in responding to the public outcry. Montana Democrat Max Baucus and Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, proposed taxes totaling 70 percent on companies and individuals getting bonuses at firms that receive federal aid.

The tax would apply to bonuses over $50,000 paid out beginning on Jan. 1, 2009, and to the full amount of any retention bonuses, the two senators said.

Pelosi directed House committees to draft several alternatives and said her chamber may consider a bill as early as this week. Other lawmakers introduced their own plans.

Using the power it has to manipulate the tax code, and to make changes to tax law retroactive, the government is going after a very small set of citizens for political reasons.  That’s not supposed to happen.  What about “equal protection under the law” (i.e., not targeting specific citizens) and due process (meaningless, in light of retroactive laws)?

This demonstrates exactly why we should be very wary of transferring ever more power to the government.  Once they have it, regardless under what pretense they request and are granted it, it is inevitable that they will use it in ways that were never intended.  In the heat of a political moment, they will twist their power to advance their current agenda.  In this case, they’re not taxing specific citizens by name — a power they do not have — but they are using the power they do have to manipulate the tax code to achieve the same effect — exacting retribution on law-abiding citizens to placate the angry hoard.

UPDATE (3/19): I’m happy to see people with more knowledge of constitutional law than I have, pointing out the issues with this approach:

Two of those difficulties, lawyers say, lie in Article I of the U.S. Constitution — a section stating Congress cannot pass any “Bill of Attainder” or “ex post facto” law.

A Bill of Attainder is an act of the legislature that singles out and punishes a group or individual without trial. An ex post facto law retroactively changes the legal consequences of an act.

But hey, we’re talking about Congress, here. Why would they let a little thing like the US Constitution get in the way of political opportunism?