…by stealth:
The editorial hints that these sorts of provisions have been inserted because the bill’s authors are counting on fellow members of Congress not to read what they’re voting on. They undoubtedly remember how easy it was to get Congress to ban incandescent light bulbs by sneaking a provision into the Bush-era energy bill.
Tar. Feathers.
Virginia Postrel says do Medicare first:
Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let’s see what “better management” looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.
This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it’s making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.
Because they think we’re rubes. And judging by the voting results last fall, many of us are.
This reminds me of the old Soviet joke (that I’m sure I’ve related at this blog, perhaps more than once, but it remains appropriate). A teacher is lecturing schoolchildren on the brilliance of Karl Marx. A kid raises his hand, and says, “Teacher, was Marx truly a great scientist?” She beams and nods, and declares him the greatest scientist in the history of mankind. “Well,” he went on, “then why didn’t he try this crap on rats first?”
[Saturday afternoon update]
Peter Orszag has responded to Virginia’s question. Hail the blogosphere.
I find this quite telling:
Medicare First–changing Medicare and waiting to see how it works before messing around with the rest of the health care system–won’t work politically.
You don’t say…
Some people might think that cause to rethink. But not these people.
[Bumped]
Will Pomerantz responds to concerns about the rules for the Lunar Landing Challenge.
A warning to modern “progressives” to be careful what they wish for:
I’m thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.
Oh, and I’m not thinking of George W. Bush, but another “W” – actually “WW”: Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.
President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of “self determination” and the author of the idealistic but doomed “Fourteen Points” – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.
That’s a shame, because Wilson’s two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson’s racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview. And since “progressivism” is suddenly in vogue – today’s leading Democrats proudly wear the label – it’s worth actually reviewing what progressivism was and what actually happened under the last full-throated progressive president.
The record should give sober pause to anyone who’s mesmerized by the progressive promise.
But they don’t even understand their own intellectual history.
Half full, or half empty?
I was surprised that no administration officials were on the business news channels this morning. That is highly unusual for Jobs Day. Maybe they are afraid of the following sequence of questions:
1. Is the economy recovering? (They would like to answer this one, “Tentatively yes. We’re seeing positive signs, but there’s a long way to go.”)
2. If so, is the economy recovering because of the stimulus? How can you claim that it is if only $40-ish billion has gone out the door so far?
3. Or are the green shoots growing just because it’s springtime? Is the less worse economic news primarily a result of financial institutions raising capital and the passage of time?In addition to being inefficient and wasteful, the stimulus was poorly timed. By deferring to congressional desires to shovel taxpayer funds to slow-spending infrastructure projects, the administration got a stimulus law that isn’t helping GDP growth now, and won’t have a quantitatively significant effect until 2010. The administration is in a tough spot — if the economy is not healing, then at some point the president will take the blame. If instead the economy is healing before the stimulus takes effect, then maybe the stimulus was unnecessary or even counterproductive.
Gee, it’s not like nobody predicted this months ago when the fool bill was passed without anyone having a chance to read it.
Clark Lindsey points out a potential issue with the Lunar Landing Challenge:
Section 4 of the document, especially subsection 4.2, seems overly aggressive to me with respect to the X PRIZE Foundation’s clams to media rights. Apparently, a team has to give up the right to any income generated from their own videos, photos, etc. even for preparatory activities away from the place and day they attempt the competition flights. In fact, sounds like even posting a video on YouTube requires permission from XPF.
I don’t understand why XPF should get all of these rights just for managing the contest for NASA. I don’t see such rights going to the Spaceward Foundation in the rules (pdf) for the Power Beaming Challenge.
I agree. Since the prize money is put up by NASA, how does XPF have sufficient “skin in the game” to justify this clause? I’ve already received an email from one potential participant that this is a “deal killer.”
As I asked him, though, what does that mean? It seems to me that if you enter into this agreement, you believe that the expected value of the prize (purse times estimated probability of win) exceeds the potential revenues from media use of the event. If you believe that the latter is the main value, and not the purse itself, then you wouldn’t enter, but would instead simply perform the feat independently, video it, and make a big deal that you had done what was needed except unofficially, thus embarrassing NASA and the XPF, taking away the value of the competition itself, while generating more publicity (and perhaps potential customers) than actually winning the prize (see Prejean, Carrie).
On the other hand, if you consider NASA a potential customer for your vehicles, you might not want to do that. It is something that, to quote the “Fat Man” from The Maltese Falcon, “calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. ‘Cause as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away…”
“At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers — Shouldn’t we start punishing them now?”
Yes, they are obviously enemies of the people and the planet. They cannot be allowed to continue their thought crimes.
Your tax dollars at work:
According to today’s Washington Post, the company currently employs 88,000 workers in the United States. (That seems low, but that’s what the paper says.) GM has gotten $19.4 billion in loans from the U.S. government and Obama promised another $30 billion yesterday.
$49.4 billion divided by 88,000 workers comes out to $561,363.63 per worker.
Can that possibly be right? That in an effort to avoid layoffs, Uncle Sam has pursued a course more expensive than handing each worker a check for a half a million dollars?
Well, the math is correct, but it’s not right, in any sense of the word. I see some very interesting campaign ads coming out of this in 2010.
Many on the left predicted (usually without even reading it) that Jonah Goldberg’s book would end up remaindered shortly after publication (I even had such idiotic prophecies in my own comments section here).
Well, the new edition, in paperback (with a new afterword on the Obama phenom), came out today, and it’s #32 at Amazon
There’s an interview with the author on the new edition over at NRO:
One of the points of Liberal Fascism isn’t to simply say “I know you are but what am I?” to the Left (though that’s definitely in there), it’s to point out that because we’ve made fascism into this cartoon villain we’ve allowed truly fascistic (or if you prefer, statist or progressive) assumptions to suffuse modern life on both the right and the left. I don’t think all of this stuff is evil or even necessarily bad. Rather, I think it advances without us questioning it. I have a chapter in the book called “We’re All Fascists Now.” I wasn’t aiming that purely leftward, but inward. People need to understand that these movements didn’t arise out of a society-wide desire to be villains. It arose out of a desire, a yearning, for progress. I think that’s one of the most basic points I failed to communicate as clearly as I should have.
LOPEZ: Speaking of Liberal Fascism’s endurance, what do you make of events since the book came out, specifically the election of The One?
GOLDBERG: Well, first of all I think I have to thank Barack Obama. Here I wrote a book, working on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee (hardly a harebrained assumption at the time), about how contemporary progressivism is a political religion with its roots in German state theory, sharing a close family resemblance to fascism. Among the anatomical and genetic similarities: cult of unity, sacralization of politics, philosophical pragmatism, corporatism, relativism, Romanticism, hero-worship, collectivism, and so on. And out of nowhere comes a guy who campaigns as a secular messiah, spouting deeply spiritualized political rhetoric, claims the Progressives as his inspiration, and proudly sees himself as carrying out FDR’s mission. I haven’t counted them, but I’d guess I’ve received a couple hundred e-mails from readers telling me how they thought the whole book was written with Obama in mind, even though I finished it before he was even ahead in the Democratic primaries.
It does seem prescient now.
[3 PM Eastern update]
The book has moved up to #30…
I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he has a good diagnosis today of why Government Motors is doomed to fail:
First, the Obama plan will reduce the influence of commercial outsiders. The best place for fresh thinking could come from outside private investors. But the Obama plan rides roughshod over the current private investors and so discourages future investors. G.M. is now a pariah on Wall Street. Say farewell to a potentially powerful source of external commercial pressure.
Second, the Obama plan entrenches the ancien régime. The old C.E.O. is gone, but he’s been replaced by a veteran insider and similar executive coterie. Meanwhile, the U.A.W. has been given a bigger leadership role. This is the union that fought for job banks, where employees get paid for doing nothing. This is the organization that championed retirement with full benefits at around age 50. This is not an organization that represents fundamental cultural change.
Third, the Obama approach reduces the fear that impels change. The U.S. government will own most of G.M. It would be politically suicidal for the Democrats, or whoever is in power, to pull the plug on the company — now or ever. Therefore, the current managers can rest assured that they never need to fear liquidation again. There will always be federal subsidies for their own mediocrity.
As a taxpayer, I want to divest immediately.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related thoughts from Jim Manzi:
The US government is now the majority owner of the nation’s largest car company. The government has chosen GM’s CEO, Fritz Henderson, and will directly select numerous board members. It will be all but impossible for Congress and various regulatory agencies to avoid meddling with detailed operating decisions.
There is already enormous pressure on GM to abandon the vehicles that make it money — gas-guzzling SUVs and pick-ups — in order to focus on fuel-efficient cars that lose money. I doubt we’ll see many production facilities sent offshore, even if this would make economic sense for GM’s shareholders.
This is a terrible harbinger for the US economy, especially when combined with the Obama administration’s apparently heavy-handed negotiating tactics in favor of Chrysler’s unionized employees at the expense of bondholders.
We appear to be headed for European-style industrial policy circa 1975, with a complicated set of favors being traded between elected officials, government bureaucrats and corporate bureaucrats in semi-private companies.
Great.
[Update a couple minutes later]
[Late morning update]
Obama is busy not running GM:
…while Obama is busy “not running GM” he still has time to make calls to the mayor of Detroit to assure him that GM’s headquarters won’t be moving to Warren, Mich., as it was offered to, but that it will be staying in Detroit.
You know, when the president says he doesn’t want to run GM? I don’t believe him.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Obama says that he has to destroy the village in order to save it:
After a while, the endless, “I have no intention to run GM” pledges begin to sound a bit like the guy insisting he means to eat healthier and cut back on the fatty foods… in a little while.
He actually used the line, “I’m not spending this amount because I want to spend taxpayers dollars; I’m doing this to protect taxpayers”, which I suspect will stir a combination of incredulousness and mockery. Most people who loudly pledge that they don’t want to do something don’t do it.
The wilful suspension of disbelief about this guy from the Dems and the media is astounding.