California - March 2010

Dronism - Victor Davis Hanson

It is taboo to ask our failing youth a simple question, “What exactly have you done the last month to ensure your birthright to the world’s most sophisticated lifestyle propped up by advanced math, science, social stability, and political tranquility?”

It other words, our elite is becoming more elite and refined, while our non-elite is becoming more rough around the edges. But they share a disturbing commonality: both expect something that they are not willing to invest in.

Low-tax Texas beats big-government California - Michael Barone

In the two decades after World War II California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land, for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government.

Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity. So it's not surprising that Texas voters preferred Perry over an opponent who has spent 16 years in Washington. What's surprising is that Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those that have proved so successful in Texas.

Billions in red ink drowning California's cities, schools and counties, too - Steve Bartin

Here's the money quote about saving the status quo:

"We cannot survive without raising taxes," Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone said. "We're just going to sit and wallow in deficits until somebody steps up."

How the Campuses Helped Ruin California's Economy - John Ellis

In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country's highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.

...

The irony here really cries out for attention: a large state university system needs a free market economy that hums along in top gear so that the revenue needed to support it can be generated. But California's two unusually well developed state university systems provide enormous local voting power in many Assembly districts for a bitterly anti-capitalist ideology that sabotages the California economy. The campuses are shooting themselves in the foot. The power that those students and faculty chanted about is indeed theirs, and if they used it to elect sensible assemblymen and state senators their problems would be solved by the healthy business climate that would result. The votes that they actually cast are the source of their troubles.

Sun and Socialism - Victor Davis Hanson

So far, the sunny socialist state has gotten by on two general truths: Most people won’t leave the beautiful coastlines, sunny weather, and scenic landscapes no matter how high the taxes go to subsidize less productive or more needy others; and, second, lots of tourists will visit to bask in the beauty and warmth — and pay quite a lot for even that brief taste of natural paradise.

Yet those smug assurances of the Lala Land redistributive state may be ending. An estimated 3,500 upper-income Californians are leaving their beautiful state each week. They seem to think that crumbling highways, schools rated at near to last in the nation, 5 to 7 million illegal aliens, and overfilling prisons aren’t worth the 10 percent sales tax, 10 percent income tax, and 63-cent-a-gallon combined state and federal gasoline taxes. And they don’t think that Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, or the California legislature can or wants to fix things.

On Citizenship

To Keep and Bear Arms - Doctor Zero

Citizen access to firearms has reduced crime rates time and again, but this is more than a matter of practicality. It’s a question of principle. The people of an orderly nation surrender the business of vengeance to the government, replacing it with the rule of law. They cannot be expected to surrender the right of defense. The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child.

The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children. They’re not dealing very well with the invasion of a determined ideology that has complete confidence in its own righteousness, and few reservations about using violence to assert itself. Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements.

Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof - Glenn Harlan Reynolds

The political class sold its legitimacy off in drips and drabs. As "smart politics" has come over the past decades to mean not persuasion but the practice of legerdemain, the use of political deals, cover from a friendly press apparat and taking advantage of voters' rational ignorance, the governing classes have managed to achieve things that would surely have failed had the people known what was going on.

But though each little trick may have slipped by the voters, the voters have nonetheless noticed that the ultimate product isn't what it used to be. The end result, as with Schlitz, is a tarnished brand.

Imperishable - Bill Whittle

When Abraham Lincoln, now sitting on his throne in that temple of glory, wrote that We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth he was talking about the Declaration. He was talking about the idea that free people consent to be governed by their representatives, not ruled over by people who see them only as a source of revenue. And that one essential ideal is preserved not in marble, or even on parchment, but rather in the hearts of people willing to stand out in the rain and say they will not tolerate this any longer.

There is no marble monument to these ideals. This we will have to do ourselves. We will keep these ideals alive. We will copy them by hand. We will keep these imperishable ideals alive because they keep us alive. And as long as we do this, with our own hands, they – and we – will never die.

The Economy - February 2010

We Are So Screwed - John Mauldin
Quoting from A Crisis of Confidence by Reinhart and Rogoff:

Perhaps more than anything else, failure to recognize the precariousness and fickleness of confidence-especially in cases in which large short-term debts need to be rolled over continuously-is the key factor that gives rise to the this-time-is-different syndrome. Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang!-confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.

Economic theory tells us that it is precisely the fickle nature of confidence, including its dependence on the public's expectation of future events, that makes it so difficult to predict the timing of debt crises. High debt levels lead, in many mathematical economics models, to "multiple equilibria" in which the debt level might be sustained - or might not be. Economists do not have a terribly good idea of what kinds of events shift confidence and of how to concretely assess confidence vulnerability. What one does see, again and again, in the history of financial crises is that when an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does. When countries become too deeply indebted, they are headed for trouble. When debt-fueled asset price explosions seem too good to be true, they probably are. But the exact timing can be very difficult to guess, and a crisis that seems imminent can sometimes take years to ignite.

Inspector General: TARP Has Created a Looming Disaster - Morgen Richmond
From the Inspector General's report:

The substantial costs of TARP — in money, moral hazard effects on the market, and Government credibility — will have been for naught if we do nothing to correct the fundamental problems in our financial system and end up in a similar or even greater crisis in two, or five, or ten years’ time. It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.

Unsustainable - John Hinderaker
Elmendorf:

The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services that people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are prepared to send to the government to finance those services. That fundamental disconnect will have to be addressed in some way if the nation is to avoid serious long-term damage to the economy and to the well-being of the population.

Hinderaker:

We need deep and fundamental cuts in federal spending, which means, above all, Medicare and Social Security, because that's where the money is. The whole concept of an "entitlement" was a mistake--really, a disaster--that must be repudiated. But for the foreseeable future, there will be no political will to make such changes. So we're going to see a race between political will and economic collapse. It's hard to be optimistic about the outcome unless a drastic change in our political culture takes place, soon.

Reason amid the madness - Tony Blankley

Almost everything that is disturbing Americans about the current administration, domestically, can be found in one of the most shocking documents ever issued by the U.S. government -- last week's 2011 federal budget. It even shocked The New York Times, which led, top right above the fold, with David Sanger's spot-on analysis headlined: "Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power."

"In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning for the way they may change American politics and American power. The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country's entire economic output. ...

"But the second number, buried deeper in the budget's projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years."

The truly shocking part of the budget is what was left out: a road map out of the economic calamity.

Where Did Our Real Wealth Go? - Victor Davis Hanson

In other words, Greece is the canary in the mine of the impending crack-up of the modern welfare state. It is a great gift to us all, this example. A year ago, the socialists, even as they were juggling and falsifying their books, were bragging that the Wall Street meltdown was a referendum — and capitalism was doomed. Now, the entire socialist dream is exposed and even the most ardent statist knows that there is no longer enough “others” to pay the tab.

Glaciergate

Pachauri: the real story behind the Glaciergate scandal - Christopher Booker

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified - David Rose

Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general.

Climategate: The Wheels Come Off for the IPCC - by Charlie Martin

The result was that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — after Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, called the 2035 story “voodoo science” — eventually had to withdraw that section of the report.

Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen - Ben Webster

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The Election of Scott Brown

Feeling the Heat, Obama Pours Kool-Aid - Jonah Goldberg

The question isn’t, “Do you regret tackling these issues?” The question is, “Do you regret how you tackled these issues?” According to Obama, there was no other way than his way. And these ungrateful, confused, angry voters just don’t understand that.

The Meaning of Brown - Charles Krauthammer

The reason both wings of American liberalism — congressional and mainstream media — were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they’d spent Obama’s first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.

The Context Of Middle-Class Frustration - Doctor Zero

The middle class is the great enemy of collectivist politics, under any of its names: progressivism, communism, fascism, or “liberalism.” As far back as Karl Marx, the apostles of collectivism have understood that they must subjugate the middle class before they can claim total victory.

The Economy - January 2010

America's New Year's Unemployment Hangover - by Rep. John Carter



Bernanke and the Beast - N. Gregory Mankiw

IS galloping inflation around the corner? Without doubt, the United States is exhibiting some of the classic precursors to out-of-control inflation. But a deeper look suggests that the story is not so simple.

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem


ObamaNomics: An Endless Downward Spiral - BoomerJeff



A REALITY CHECK FOR A LAME WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT TALKING POINT - Glenn Reynolds

Note that the following table is of actual and estimated annual federal budget deficits, not the cumulative national debt.

Bush Staff Interviews

The John Yoo Interview
Jon Stewart interviewed the "torture memo" author John Yoo. Here is the link to Daniel Foster's entry at The Corner, which has links to the videos.

The Marc Thiessen Interview
CNN's Christine Amanpour interviews Marc Thiessen on enhanced interrogation.