Here are our 9/11-related posts from this blog:

In Memoriam: Ronald Paul Bucca (May 6, 1954 – September 11, 2001)

In Memoriam: Robert David Peraza (May 26, 1971- September 11, 2001)

“There are not many who remember…”

A Day That Lives In Infamy

Lest We Forget (2008)

Lest We Forget (2007)

Remembering the WTC

Not much to add. ..bruce..

Springtime in New Zealand

ITEM: I reported earlier one possible end-run by the Senate to pass the increasingly unpopular “public option” in healthcare reform.  Here’s another one:

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option — making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster — and then adding the provision later as an amendment.

The public option amendment would be there waiting, but the 60-vote test would technically be on a bill without the government plan. Then moderate Democrats could drop out for the vote on the public option, which requires just 51 votes for passage.

“It’s brilliant,” said a top Senate Republican aide. “It gets you your votes on cloture for a package that does not include a public option.”

Yeah, brilliant. I think the Democrats are seriously underestimating the growing public backlash over healthcare reform; a trick such as this will just make things worse.

ITEM: Speaking of backlash, the Anchoress has a thoughtful and spot-on analysis of the arrogance that seems to be driving the Obama Administration (and, I might add, the Democratic leadership in Congress):

The American mind is a duality of sorts. A country founded by displaced nobles and built by the strongest and most resourceful commoners from around the globe, America’s can-do attitude is one that doesn’t mind looking out for the little guy, as long as his own share is a fair one, and his options are open. The American mind is constantly dreaming; even her most newly-arrived immigrants dream, because until very recently all dreams were pronounced “welcome,” and the greatest restrictions were the ones you put upon yourself, or allowed others to put upon you. The dreaming made us exceptional; the dreams made us indispensable.

But does Obama understand those dreams? If he does not, then in truth he does not understand the people he undertook to govern. He appears to have decided that “governing” could be accomplished with an endless campaign, meant to entertain a nation enthralled with hucksterism and side-shows; that notion betrays, in meaningful measure, a disdain for the people who placed their trust in him, with their vote.

You really need to read the whole thing.

ITEM: Meanwhile, the Onion assures us that under Obamacare, seniors would have a right to choose how they are killed:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama held a nationally televised address Tuesday to “clarify any misunderstandings” about his health care proposal, assuring Americans that under the new bill senior citizens—and not the federal government—will have the right to choose how they are executed.

“Let me dispel these ridiculous rumors once and for all and set the record straight: Under my plan, seniors are going to be killed the way they want to be killed, end of story,” said the president, who acknowledged that “wiping out” the nation’s elderly population has always been his No. 1 priority. “If your grandmother would rather be euthanized in the privacy of her own home than be gutted and hanged on a high school soccer field, she is entitled to that right.”

“Once again, let me be perfectly clear,” Obama continued. “Seniors, rest easy knowing that I will never, under any circumstance, sign a bill that doesn’t give you the option of being murdered by my administration in a manner of your choosing. I promise you that.”

ITEM: Because of Obama’s refusal to see the Dalai Lama, human rights groups are now questioning his commitment to, well, human rights:

Human rights groups are beginning to question President Obama’s commitment to their issue as the administration engages authoritarian regimes, retains the option of sending terrorist suspects abroad to places where they might be tortured and puts off a presidential meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Mr. Obama’s decision to wait until after he visits China in November to meet with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists – who was on Capitol Hill Tuesday receiving an award – comes after a series of decisions that have underlined a classic tension in U.S. foreign policy between the head and the heart.

I would think that Obama’s warming up to Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, and other countries would have given them a clue. Nothing to see here. Move along.

ITEM: Remember back in 2006 how Nancy Pelosi said that the House would work five days a week now that the Democrats were back in control?

After taking control of the House in 2006 — and again when President Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) boasted that lawmakers would work four or five days a week to bring change to America.

But midway through Obama’s first year in office, Hoyer’s House has settled into a more leisurely routine. Members usually arrive for the first vote of the week as the sun sets on Tuesdays, and they’re usually headed back home before it goes down again on Thursdays.

Since the House returned for its fall session on Sept. 8, it has stuck around to vote on a Friday just once: to approve a 5.8 percent increase in Congress’s own budget.

A Democratic leadership aide vehemently defended the schedule, saying members shouldn’t be kept in Washington for four or five days when work can be completed in fewer.

On the other hand, given the track record of the House to date, I’m happy to have them gone as much as possible. Primum non nocere and all that.  ..bruce w..

Not just another trip back to the barn.

ITEM: Milk prices have plummeted here in Denver over the past year. I used to spend close to $3/gallon for my favorite milk (Lucerne Skim Supreme Fat Free milk); now the price is around $1.60/gallon. It’s hurt the dairy farmers here in Colorado, and their response is to kill cows in order to reduce milk production. The problem is — as the article notes — this will only work all the dairy farmers participate (emphasis mine):

Others say the herd-retirement program combined with other price supports still can’t sustain dairy farms in the long run. Before the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed in August to increase dairy price supports, the price of milk was expected to fall to its lowest annual average in 20 years.

Consumers pay about $1.50 per gallon of milk, about the same as they paid in the 1970s, said Bill Wailes, head of the department of animal sciences at Colorado State University.

The problem is that dairy farmers are able to produce so many cows and so much milk that the market has been flooded, Wailes said.

“We now have too many dairy cows who produce a lot of milk with ease,” he said.

Herd retirements, he said, will work only if 100 percent of the nation’s dairy farmers agree to participate.

“Right now, only about 70 percent take part, and you need full participation to get the benefits in higher prices,” Wailes said.

The departure of the herd at the Bernhardt spread tore at the family, which began farming in northern Colorado in 1920. But a March meeting with their bankers convinced the Bernhardts that their Weld County dairy was no longer viable.

“I got double the prices in the program than what I would have if I sold the cows at market,” Tim Bernhardt said.

At first, I thought this might be a government-funded program, but not, it’s not: it’s funded by a private nation-wide dairy production organization, Cooperatives Working Together (CWT). The basic idea is to create artificial scarcity by selling off large portions of the nation’s dairy herds for other uses (e.g., meat). I’m unclear how CWT is able to pay “double the [market] prices” for the retired cows; it seems to me that the overall numbers just wouldn’t add up, unless this is a short-term wealth transfer from CWT members who aren’t selling off herds to those who are in anticipation of being able to get it back (via higher milk prices) in the long run.  I also remain skeptical of the artificial scarcity approach per se; it didn’t work when FDR mandated that farmers cease production or destroy crops and goods, and I don’t think it will work now.

ITEM: You know what’s so scary about this tongue-in-cheek item from the Onion?

PURCHASE, NY—PepsiCo sent shockwaves through the carbonated beverage industry Monday when the multibillion dollar corporation announced that it would cease all advertising of its popular soda product, effective immediately.

“We know it’s good, and everyone’s pretty happy with the overall taste, so why spend all our time worrying about what other people think?” PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi told reporters during a press conference at the company’s corporate headquarters. “Frankly, it just feels sort of weird and desperate to put all this energy into telling people what to drink. If they don’t like it, then they don’t like it.”

It’s that I find myself wondering: just what would be the impact on Pepsi sales and market share if they simply ceased all advertising? And might any lost sales be offset by the savings in advertising?

ITEM: Speaking of losing market share, it’s a bit startling to read that the largest trial lawyers lobbying firm is in debt and losing members:

The trial lawyers lobby has been awash in debt and bleeding members – just as it embarks on a national campaign to block any clampdown on medical malpractice lawsuits as part of President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The American Association for Justice, the most prominent group representing plaintiffs’ attorneys, has seen a shake-up in its executive suite and has struggled to deal with what appears to be a mounting budget shortfall. To help it fight congressional efforts to make it harder for patients to sue doctors and lawyers, it recently sent out an extra solicitation to its members, asking them to fork over money for a lobbying campaign. . . .

The biggest hit to its books was in membership dues, which dropped from $28.6 million in 2005 to $19.2 million in 2008, according to the annual AAJ financial report for that fiscal year filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

I have to wonder how much of the AAJ’s drop in membership and income is due to the overall economic struggles of the legal profession, which has seen many law firms freezing or cutting salaries, while other law firms simply close their doors.

ITEM: Bill Frezza argues that Uncle Sam is supplanting the venture capital (VC) community and by so doing is distorting market realities (emphasis mine):

Sure, Uncle Sam has financed Big Science ever since the Second World War. But selecting which science is ready to be turned into technology to power what new products, and which of these products are ready to be produced at scale to support what emerging market, has always been the job of private industry. Under the rubric of “crisis,” be it climate change or energy independence or green job creation, this painstaking trial and error process is being replaced by technology czarism.

Technologies that are a decade away from feasibility are being rushed directly into production. The discipline of venture financing and the winnowing process of early stage failure are being skipped as politically favored projects go directly to large scale project financing. New constituencies whose survival depends on the uninterrupted flow of federal largess are sprouting up like weeds, funneling a percentage of that money back to the Congressmen who keep the whole thing going. The antiquated theory that in order for a business or industry to be sustainable it must create more wealth than it consumes is being discarded in favor of the belief that if you fervently hope for something good to come true, then it will.

That last statement sums up much of what I think is wrong with the Left’s approach to health care, alternative energy, and most of its other ardent causes. Be sure to read the whole article.

ITEM: Speaking of health care reform, Robert Samuelson — on point as always — argues that the current efforts of Congress and President Obama are driven far more by ego than by either popular demand or economic necessity (emphasis mine):

If only all this were irrefutable. But Baucus’ claims are shaky. It’s questionable whether more insurance would save 45,000 lives a year. Unfortunately, just having insurance doesn’t automatically improve people’s health. Sometimes more medical care doesn’t really help. Sometimes people don’t go to doctors when they should or follow instructions (take medicine, alter lifestyles). Indeed, many people don’t even sign up for insurance to which they’re entitled. An Urban Institute study estimated that 10.9 million people eligible for Medicaid or CHIP in 2007 didn’t enroll.

The 45,000 figure cited by Baucus is itself an unreliable statistical construct built on many assumptions. It’s based on a study of 9,004 people aged 17 to 64 who were examined between 1988 and 1994. By 2000, 351 had died; of these, 60 were uninsured. The crude death rates among the insured (3 percent of whom died) and uninsured (3.3 percent) were within the statistical margin of error. After adjustments for age, income and other factors, the authors concluded that being uninsured raises the risk of death by 40 percent. They then extrapolated this to the entire population by two techniques, one producing an estimate of 35,327 premature deaths and another of 44,789.

This whole elaborate statistical edifice rests on a flimsy factual foundation. The point is not to deny that the uninsured are more vulnerable (they are) or that extra insurance wouldn’t help (it would). The point is that estimating how much is extremely difficult. Advocates exaggerate the benefits. Remember: Today’s uninsured do receive care.

Again, read the whole thing.  Happy Monday!  ..bruce w..

Crocodile tears

ITEM: See the guy weeping above? This is the ACORN community organizer (the paper’s phrase, not mine) in San Diego who offered to help smuggle underage girl into the United States for prostitution. Turns out that ACORN actually fired him.

NATIONAL CITY – Local ACORN officials reversed an earlier decision Thursday afternoon and fired a community organizer who was caught on video providing advice about human smuggling to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute.

In an afternoon press conference, Lagstein said he believed his employee, Juan Carlos Vera, did his best to deal with a challenging situation, and would not be disciplined.

But two hours later, Lagstein stated he had reevaluated the videos posted online in which Vera was secretly filmed answering questions about smuggling people across the Tijuana border. Lagstein said in his earlier evaluation, he had only found a short, 52-second video, and not a longer seven-minute video. After consulting with supervisors and state ACORN officials, he decided Vera had contradicted his earlier statements and his conduct was “unacceptable.”

The recording showed Vera appearing to suggest he could help get people across the border and asking the woman posing as a prostitute how much her services cost.

At the news conference, Lagstein said the organization is “furious” that hidden cameras filmed employees of the community-organizing group, and he called such actions “immoral if not illegal.”

Unlike, say, all the ACORN workers giving advice on child prostitution? But wait — it gets better:

[Lagstein] also added that “we accept the imperfections that it exposed.”

Vera was at the news conference and he gave an emotional recounting of what happened. He broke into tears at least twice.

He said that English isn’t his first language and that he was confused about what was going on. He said he was just trying to help.

ITEM: Speaking of ACORN, JammieWearingFool posts this Jay Leno clip:

ITEM: Charlie Cook over at the National Journal wonders if the Democratic leadership is really aware of their potential problems in 2010:

. . . Democrats ought to keep in mind that 84 of their current House members represent districts won by President Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008.

A whopping 48 of those Democrats — eight more than the size of their party’s majority — are from districts that voted for both Bush and McCain. That America is very different from the Democratic base in blue America, and it sees many major issues very differently. . . .

The 17-point advantage that Democrats enjoyed in the January Gallup Poll (when “leaners” were included) shrank to 5 points in August. Their edge on the generic congressional ballot test has vanished, according to most national polls. For three years, Democrats enjoyed high single-digit or low double-digit leads on this question — a very good indicator of which direction (and how hard) the political winds are blowing as a congressional election nears.

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Dana Milbank — who, to his everlasting credit, seems just as willing to aim his snark at the Obama White House as he did at the Bush White House — rolls his journalistic eyes at Michelle Obama’s visit to a nearby “farmer’s market” in DC:

The first lady had encouraged Freshfarm Markets, the group that runs popular farmers markets in Dupont Circle and elsewhere, to set up near the White House, and she helped get the approvals to shut down Vermont Avenue during rush hour on Thursdays. But the result was quite the opposite of a quaint farmers market. Considering all the logistics, each tomato she purchased had a carbon footprint of several tons.

The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there’s a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Iowans didn’t have a Whole Foods.

For that reason, it’s probably just as well that the first lady didn’t stop by the Endless Summer Harvest tent yesterday. The Virginia farm had a sign offering “tender baby arugula” — hydroponically grown, pesticide free — and $5 for four ounces, which is $20 a pound.

Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it’s hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of “walnut dacquoise” from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris’s Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn.

The first lady said the market would particularly appeal to federal employees in nearby buildings to “pick up some good stuff for dinner.” Yet even they might think twice about spending $3 for a pint of potatoes when potatoes are on sale for 40 cents a pound at Giant. They could get nearly five dozen eggs at Giant for the $5 Obama spent for her dozen.

Again, be sure to read the whole thing.

ITEM: Speaking of snark, this item over at the Politico tries to dish some up in reviewing the Right’s adoption of Saul Alinsky, but ends up making some grudging admissions:

Still, enough of the co-opting is intentional that the Democrats might be wise to stop snarking, sit up, and take notice. And some of it is already working, notes Lakoff: In the health care debate, he says, the right has taken “all the progressive arguments and made them conservative arguments.”

Says Zelizer: “The tactics can be powerful. Direct confrontation, community organizing, in-your-face politics, as we’ve seen in August, can get a lot of media attention and can scare politicians away from taking certain positions.”

They can also be their own reward. At FreedomWorks, says Brandon, “We’re having fun. I have been pissing people off left and right calling myself a progressive, because I’m fighting myself against the establishment.”

And, according to Alinsky, that’s one of the keys to a good uprising: As he put it in “Rules for Radicals,” “A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Heh. Not only did we have a lot of fun in DC last Saturday, we left it clean — unlike some gatherings.

ITEM: Lots of coverage on Obama’s abandonment of Eastern Europe, reconsigning it to be Russia’s “near abroad”, and doing so on the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s invasion of Poland, so I won’t repeat it here. However, Darleen at Protein Wisdom did put up this great cartoon by Ramirez:

ITEM: Oops!

SPOKANE, Wash. — A killer committed to Eastern State Hospital in 1987 escaped Thursday during a supervised field trip to the Spokane County Interstate Fair, resulting in a manhunt and a freeze on further field trips from the mental institution.

Phillip Arnold Paul, 57, was last seen Thursday morning in the northeast part of the fairgrounds, Spokane County sheriff’s Sgt. Dave Reagan said. A store clerk told authorities she saw someone matching Paul’s description later in the morning, and authorities believe he managed to get outside the fairgrounds.

ITEM: And we’ll wrap up with ACORN again, the gift that promises to keep giving for some time to come:

..bruce w..

9/12 UPDATE: Sandra and I are now here in DC, staying right downtown. We’re attending a meeting this morning over at the DC Armory and then will hit the National Gallery of Art. (It is sad how few times when went there during the nearly 8 years total that we lived in DC and the surrounding area.)

ITEM: When I finally left the Democratic Party a year ago and registered as a Republican, I stated that one reason I hadn’t done it earlier was that “every time I consider registering as a Republican, some major Republican (or group thereof) does something so profoundly stupid or appalling that I can’t bring myself to switch parties.” Well, Congressman Joe Wilson is neither a major Republican nor a group thereof, but that didn’t stop his own appalling stupidity (and bad manners) from giving ammunition to Democrats claiming that those opposed to Obamacare are fringe nuts:

All eyes were on Barack Obama entering Wednesday night’s address to Congress, but a little-known South Carolina Republican may have done more than the president’s combative speech to unify besieged Democrats around health care reform.

The night’s defining moment — which Democrats hope to transform into a turning point – came when Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted “You lie!” as Obama claimed his plan wouldn’t offer free care to illegal immigrants.

Wilson’s boorishness — for which he quickly apologized — enraged audience members on both sides of the aisle.

On the other hand, I think that Wilson’s impact will last less than 48 hours.

ITEM: As noted, Wilson’s classless outburst came when Obama said that Obamacare wouldn’t offer free care to illegal immigrants. But, as many commentators have noted, Obama in his speech revised the frequently-cited “47 million people in this country without health insurance” down to “more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.” He gave no reason for the sudden loss of 15+ million uninsured people, but one obvious source: excluding illegal immigrants. Of course, whether the Democratic Congress will go along with that remains to be seen.

ITEM: In the meantime, the LA Times — hardly a bastion of conservative thought — said, in effect, “Nice speech, but we still don’t know how you’re going to pay for this“:

Still, the president’s comments about the savings available in Medicare were disingenuous, as was his assertion that a new tax on insurers would lead them to “provide greater value for the money” instead of simply passing the cost on to policyholders. Obama will have to come up with a more complete approach to paying for reform as the legislation moves forward. He claimed the plan as his own with this speech, but he left some of the hardest questions unanswered.

Likewise, the Associated Press raised its own questions about Obama’s math, calling it “iffy”. (Hat tip to Say Anything.) See, Rep. Wilson shouldn’t have been so rude; he just needed to wait for for the LA Times and the AP to raise questions. We’re back to the “then a miracle occurs” fallacy that has dogged Obamacare all along.

ITEM: While Pres. Obama claims that Obamacare will be revenue neutral, paid for by eliminating “Medicare fraud”, the Heritage Foundation has a different calculation:

President Obama has engaged in a rhetorical sleight-of-hand by asserting that the House bills’ (alleged) deficit neutrality proves that it meets his standard of not increasing federal health spending. Not only is the House bill not deficit-neutral, the vast majority of its savings from tax increases. In fact, the bill increases federal health spending by $2.4 trillion over twenty years (and would also likely raise private health spending).

One could chalk this up to partisan sniping, were it not that the Obama Administration has utterly failed at all all of its economic projections to date (e.g., note the graphs here). ..bruce..

More paper! More paper on the fire!

MID-MORNING LINKS [updated as I run across them]

ITEM: It turns out there’s at least one thing that the Communist Chinese government and I agree upon:

China alarmed by US money printing

The US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.

Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to “credit easing”.

“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.

“If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.

I don’t know about you, but I find it a bit embarrassing to be lectured by the ChiComs about fundamental government economic policy and have them be right.

ITEM: As I note below in the morning links and in my “cult of personality” post last week, my objection to Obama’s address to schoolchildren isn’t the talk per se, it’s the “lesson plan” distributed ahead of time to the teachers, particularly for the preK-6th grade age group.  However, Ken over at Popehat lists some additional cogent, rational reasons for objecting to the President’s speech.  The most telling one is that the kids are just a prop and the speech is really a political speech aimed at adults:

Here’s why. The speech, as I understand it, is for grades K-12. No speech aimed at that wide range can be age-appropriate. Either you leave behind the younger kids to say something worthwhile to the older ones, or you dumb it down to the point that the older kids are bored, or most likely you manage to do both. You can’t aim a speech of any real substance to the range K-12. You can, however, aim the speech to the other audiences listening — the press and the public that will view the speech via the press.

Any speech by a partisan elected politician aimed at those audiences is political — even if the speech is kept so inoffensive that the only political message is the implied one “look how much I care about kids and education.”

Read the whole thing.

MORNING LINKS

Since Sandra and I are marching on Congress this Saturday, it’s probably time for me to resurrect my daily links. Note that Sandra and I will arrive in DC on Wednesday (9/9) and will be there through Monday afternoon (9/14); if you’re going to be in town as well, let me know. And it’s not too late to sign up for the 9/12 March on Washington.

ITEM: There are some interesting signs of division within the Obama White House itself. Politico reports that sources within the White House are distancing themselves from Jones and are pointing some interesting fingers (emphasis mine):

And it was a fresh reminder that the White House’s vetting process didn’t fall down only on high-profile nominees like Tom Daschle. It barely touched the lower reaches of the administration – a White House official conceded Sunday that Jones’ past statements weren’t as thoroughly scrubbed due to his relatively low rank. Jones’ selection also was propelled by powerful patrons, who included the first lady and the vice president.

Wowza. I can see someone pointing fingers at Joe Biden, but at Michelle Obama? Hope that person is under deep cover and has fireproof underwear. Unless, of course, that “White House official” is speaking on behalf of the President. And perhaps even then.

Here more evidence of White House distancing (Stay under the bus, dammit!) from Jones:

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said he did not believe the president knew about all of Mr. Jones’ previous associations and was unfamiliar with his remarks, which included calls for an investigation of whether the George W. Bush administration had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but let them happen in order to provide a pretext for war.

Oh, really? Isn’t this the same Van Jones about whom Valarie Jarrett said just a few weeks ago:

Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him, uh, really, he’s not that old, for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House.

I guess Obama didn’t really know him.

ITEM: In the meantime, Obama is losing economists. Actually, he probably lost a majority of non-Keynesian economists months ago, but the current batch includes a Nobel Laureate (emphasis mine):

Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan. . . .

There are “troubling similarities” between the US President’s actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

In particular, the authors, economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute, claim that the White House’s plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars of cash into the economy will undermine it in the long run. They say that by employing deficit spending and increased state intervention President Obama will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the US economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years. . . .

The paper, which recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity, has been endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who said: “We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s’ Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.“

Here’s the place to insert another plug for The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, a book that really should have gotten the Pulitzer Prize.

ITEM: Speaking of fiscal disasters, here’s another assessment, this time from Larry Kudrow:

Veep Joe Biden is out there saying the Obama stimulus plan has saved or created 150,000 jobs in the administration’s first 100 days and another 600,000 in its second 100 days. But he sure isn’t talking about small-business jobs.

In fact, it’s hard to know what he’s talking about. Uncle Sam has borrowed $388 billion in the second quarter and is scheduled to borrow $406 billion in the third quarter and nearly $500 billion in the fourth. In order to provide $152 billion in so-called fiscal stimulus, the government is draining close to $800 billion from the private-sector savings supply — $800 billion that will not be invested in new-business enterprises, including small businesses.

Borrowing from Peter to redistribute to Paul is not fiscal stimulus. It’s a fiscal depressant. Small businesses are having enough trouble getting their hands on credit. And now they can’t find enough capital for new start-ups. The government prospers, but the small-business sector sinks.

And from David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office, as interviewed by John Fund of the WSJ:

David Walker sounds like a modern-day Paul Revere as he warns about the country’s perilous future. “We suffer from a fiscal cancer,” he tells a meeting of the National Taxpayers Union, the nation’s oldest anti-tax lobby. “Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that’s before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!” . . .

One way the Peterson Foundation wants to change that is to bring big numbers down to earth so people can comprehend them. “Our $56 trillion in unfunded obligations amount to $483,000 per household. That’s 10 times the median household income—so it’s as if everyone had a second or third mortgage on a house equal to 10 times their income but no house they can lay claim to.” As for this year’s likely deficit of $1.8 trillion, Mr. Walker suggests its size be conveyed thusly: “A deficit that large is $3.4 million a minute, $200 million an hour, $5 billion a day,” he says. That does indeed put things into perspective.

Finally, Robert Samuelson — one of the most intellectually honest and even-handed economic commentators out there — paints a bleak picture of his own (emphasis mine):

What’s most ominous is not today’s job market; it’s the outlook. After the 1981-82 recession, unemployment dropped steadily from an annual average of 9.7 percent in 1982 to 7.5 percent in 1984 and 5.5 percent in 1988. The descent this time is expected to be much slower. In 2014, the unemployment rate will still average 7.6 percent, forecasts IHS Global Insight, which predicts a peak of 10 percent early next year. Reducing unemployment requires an economic expansion fast enough to absorb today’s jobless plus the natural growth of the labor force. Most forecasters expect a tepid recovery will only gradually dent unemployment, despite slowing labor force growth.

Ouch.

ITEM:  I like Willie Brown. Though he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and one who likely enriched himself during his tenures as Speaker of the California State Assembly and mayor of San Francisco, he’s refreshingly honest (he likes Sarah Palin, for example). So when he tells us to lighten up on Obama, I listen — and, as it turns out, his “defense” of Obama is reasonable and not at all in line with those worshiping the One:

The media seem to have forgotten that nearly 60 million people voted against Obama in November. Of course they’re going to show up at these town halls and bash him.

Conventional wisdom has it that his numbers are sliding because he’s not being decisive enough on the health care issue. Often this assessment comes from the same folks who slammed Hillary Rodham Clinton for putting together her ill-fated health care plan without public input a few years back.

Obama was determined not to have a repeat performance. So, rather than hand Congress a full-blown plan put together by his experts, he told lawmakers to put something together and he would react to it.

Then he went around the country laying out the broad parameters of what a health care plan should contain without getting specific.

As a result, Obama wound up defending or explaining proposals that were never fully vetted, never fully understood and probably not even fully read by anyone but their own authors. . . .

When Obama finally lays it out before Congress on Wednesday, critics on both sides are promptly going to slam him for having supposedly changed his positions. They’ll say he’s giving up on this, he’s giving up on that.

I say, “So what?”

A good leader never imposes his will on his followers. A good leader tries to blend his vision into something that his followers can adopt as their own.

The real challenge for Obama is not to present an ideal plan, but to present a plan that can pass with the minimum political risk to the politicians who have to vote for it.

As for his slip in popularity, his exalted status was never anything but a myth anyway. The idea that Obama was a Hercules who would right the world Jan. 21 was way overblown.

Heresy! Heresy! And has someone explained this to Obama himself? Or to the idiots on the Left who worship him?

ITEM: Calling the public “silly” about concerns over the Obama-to-schoolkids talks will not calm the troubled waters. EdSec’s Arne Duncan’s comments are almost as tone-deaf as the original questionnaire:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Sunday decried as “silly” the public “hoopla” over White House plans to air a message for the nation’s schoolchildren and said students would not be forced to watch it. . . .

He did acknowledge, however, that “there is one [assignment] that wasn’t worded quite correctly,” adding that the intended reference was “about helping the president hit his goal of having the highest percent of college graduates by 2020.”

Really? Go judge for yourself what the original lesson plan for pre-Kindergarten through 6th grade says. There’s nothing there about “having the highest percentage of college graduates”. There is, however, an almost overwhelming focus on the President himself. That’s what got people upset, not the idea of having the President talk to schoolkids.

ITEM: Speaking of tone-deaf and burying news on the Labor Day weekend — are you aware that Pres. Obama last Thursday (9/3) declared this past Labor Day weekend (9/4-9/6) as the “National Days of Prayer and Remembrance” for the 9/11 attacks? (hat tip to Say Anything):

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Friday, September 4, through Sunday, September 6, as National Days of Prayer and Remembrance. I ask that the people of the United States, each in their own way, honor the victims of September 11, 2001, and their families through prayer, memorial services, the ringing of bells, and evening candlelight remembrance vigils. I invite the people of the world to share in this solemn commemoration.

You all got the memo, didn’t you?

So, why didn’t Obama declare 9/11/09 as the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the 9/11 attacks? Because he already declared it to be a National Day of Service via legislation passed by Congress.

ITEM: Back to the Obamacare disaster. With Rahm “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” Emanuel as Obama’s chief-of-staff, why am I not surprised to see this crop up just a few days before Obama’s health-care address:

Obama May Need Sense of Crisis to Revive Health-Care Overhaul

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama returns to Washington next week in search of one thing that can revive his health-care overhaul: a sense of crisis.

Facing polls showing a drop in his approval, diminished support from independents, factions within his Democratic Party and a united Republican opposition, Obama must recapture the sense of urgency that led to passage of the economic rescue package in February, analysts said. . . .

I’d say there’s a sense of crisis all right, but probably not the one that will benefit Obama.

That’s it for now; maybe more as the day goes along.  ..bruce w..

I'm from the government, and I'm here to tax you.

OVERNIGHT LINK (note the singular)

ITEM: The Onion has become so much better than Saturday Night Live at video humor:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

Well, that’s probably it for the day. I have work to do.  ..bruce w..

Starting the week off right.

MORNING LINKS — again, blogging will be light this week, due both to work and to hardware problems

ITEM: If there’s any question whether the departure of Sen. Arlen Specter (ID-Ego) from the Republican Party is a good thing, he settled it this weekend:

Mr. Specter continued: “If  [the Republicans] had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”

Mr. Kemp died Saturday of cancer. He had been the running mate of 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole.

The sheer lack of tact and taste of this remark — with Jack Kemp less than 24 hours dead and his wife and children still grieving — shows what a true classless act Sen. Specter really is.

Maybe more tomorrow.  ..bruce w..

But wait! Pollution may actually _cool_ the earth!

MORNING LINKS — such as they are

ITEM: Warmists are realizing that when you’re losing the data debate, the  scientific debate and the popular debate — you should just change the terms of the debate!

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

Which underscores the fact that the warmists’ real concern is not global warming per se — it’s being given the money and power to reshape civilization to what they think it should be (which generally means reducing the standard of living as well as the absolute number of humans).

ITEM: Creeping socialism/fascism update — Remember when the mainstream media fretted over the power of the Presidency? I guess you can have all the power you like if the journalists worship like you.

ITEM: Speaking of fascism, remember that link about the Egyptian government ordering the slaughter of all pigs due to swine flu? Well, it turns out to have nothing to do with the flu at all:

For some time now, part of the modernization and continued corruption of Egypt by the Mubarak dynasty, they have wanted to take away that work from the Zabaleen and give garbage contracts to corporations that will do the service for a price.  Trucks sold by European companies, contracts, charges etc.  Of course the reasons used are sanitation, public health.  Instead, they should be looking for a way to help the Zabaleen enter into modern methods and sustain their way of living.

So, what an excuse, the swine flu.  Now the Egyptian government wants to slaughter the 300,000 pigs owned by Zabaleen for the prevention of the swine flu.  The original decree was that the Zabaleen would be compensated for the pigs, but now they are saying that since they can sell the pigs, they will not be compensated.

The Zabaleen sell pigs one by one.  They are not butchers and have no refrigeration or a system to sell the pigs.  So, it’s impossible to sell pigs slaughtered en masse.  Not to mention the danger of cholera.

Read the whole thing. Hey, as the US White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel likes to say, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Hat tip to the Drunk Report.

ITEM: Speaking of the White House, Glenn Reynolds has the latest Hope-and-Changiness update. Plus my own bold prediction: “Hope and Change” will come back to haunt President Obama in the 2012 Presidential election pretty much the same way that “Read my lips: no new taxes!” did for Pres. Bush the First.

Gotta work today; more links if I get the time and opportunity.  ..bruce w..

Mayday! Mayday!

ADMIN: Yeah, I know today’s post title doesn’t rhyme with the others — but here’s a quick test of your own nit-pickiness: did the difference between Monday’s title and the rest of the week bother you?

MORNING LINKS (and these are likely the only link you’ll get today).

LINK: Speaking of workers, I’m going to be tied up all day today. So for this glorious morning, let us remember, courtesy of Amity Shlaes, the true efforts and consequnces of the New Deal:

As for President Hoover, his tenure was marked not by laissez faire or respect for private property–indeed, Hoover had labeled property a “fetish” before he became president. The Great Engineer was in fact the Great Intervener, meddling in multiple areas, raising taxes and backing tariffs, to the economy’s detriment. Mistrusting the stock market as unreal, Hoover berated short-sellers and exhorted businesses to keep wages high when they could ill afford it.

International, monetary and banking factors all played a role in creating the Depression, but the counterproductive Hoover mattered as well. As economist George Selgin has noted, the most absurd of the Hoover increases was a 2% levy on checks, which caused people to further drain money out of their bank accounts so they could pay their bills, untaxed.

Roosevelt, for his part was indeed courageous, and his call to action did inspire. FDR’s free-trade moves and some of his regulatory moves–the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal deposit insurance–helped to stabilize the economy. But the argument that FDR saved the U.S. from fascism is an exaggeration. And, like Hoover and his interventionists, FDR and his New Dealers did much to hurt the economy.

Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, created in 1933, pulled wages up when perishing companies could not afford it; come 1935, the Wagner Act gave unions more bargaining power, forcing further wage increases on companies. Roosevelt’s multiple tax increases caused businesses to postpone investment. Especially counterproductive was FDR’s “undistributed profits tax,” which punished firms for being cautious and forced them to disgorge cash at the worst possible moment.

Read the whole thing, as they say. Then go out and by Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. It’s now in paperback, and we have massive deficits as far as the eye can see, so it really behooves you (so to speak) to do so.

ITEM: Speaking of inappropriate steps, can you imagine the reaction if back during the 2000 recession, Laura Bush made a public appearance in a $540 pair of sneakers? I’ll be it would have appeared in far more places than the New York Daily News. (Hat tip to the Drudge Report.)

Some links sometime on the weekend, I think.  ..bruce w..

P.S. Behooves — Hoover — get it?