Did the White House undercut Congress? I’m shocked, shocked.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Magnificently Right
Here’s why the Tea Party is:
Republican consultants report that in focus groups, TV commercials about out-of-control debt prompt strongly positive responses even from Democrats. Even Democrats have to live somewhere and a lot of them own homes. And there are a lot more Democratic taxpayers and homeowners than there are government workers. This is a wedge issue for Republicans that won’t quit.
Here’s one result that I found remarkable: It shows the aggregate property taxes paid to state and local governments, against aggregate mortgage payments (the outstanding volume of mortgage debt multiplied by the current mortgage rate). The result is somewhat exaggerated, because about a third of property tax collections are commercial rather than residential, but it’s still compelling: the property tax burden on homeowners is now roughly equivalent to the interest burden on their mortgages!
When one gets to that point, one is no longer a home owner, but simply renting their home from their local government. That’s the way it feels here in CA. Our mortgage is still more than taxes, but not by all that much.
Are Schoolteachers Underpaid?
No:
Most teachers have Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in education, and most people with education degrees are teachers. Decades of research has shown that education is a less rigorous course of study than other majors: Teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but receive much higher GPAs than other students. It may be that a degree in education simply does not reflect the same underlying skills and knowledge as a degree in, say, history or chemistry. When we compare salaries based on objective measures of cognitive ability — such as SAT, GRE, or IQ scores — the teacher salary penalty disappears.
I’d always suspected that, but I had never actually seen the statistics. Colleges of Education should be abolished, or at least not eligible for federal funding of any kind, including student loan guarantees.
How Honest Is The Obama Administration?
…not very:
Barack Obama wants to run for reelection posing as a crusader for clean government battling against the special interests. In 2008, I know that Obama convinced much of the press corps that he was running a “cleaner” campaign than his rivals.
Obama attracted some libertarian, moderate, and conservative support because he convinced people he would bring good government to the White House and curb the influence of special interests. Even if his is a liberal White House, the thinking went, at least it will be a HONEST liberal White House.
Team Obama has already indicated it plans to try to ride this wave again in 2012. David Axelrod pushed these lines on Sunday morning television. And now, liberal columnist Jonathan Alter, intimately dialed into the West Wing, is trumpeting this very argument. I quote Alter’s claims not to pick a fight with him, but because if Alter is saying it, you can bet this is the talk behind closed doors in Obama’s inner circle.
“He has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.”
But Obama frequently tells blatant falsehoods about important matters, and then in a Clintonian fashion explains how some interpretation of his words could be made to correspond to the truth.
For your consideration, I provide some counter-examples:
Lots of links there.
Occupy Wall Street Supporters
The comprehensive list:
Communist Party USA
The American Nazi Party
Revolutionary Communist Party
Black Panthers
Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan
CAIR
Some big names in the political world have also lent support to the cause:
President Barack Obama
Vice President Joe Biden
Nancy Pelosi
International Leaders and Governments:
Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei
Hugo Chavez
Revolutionary Guards of Iran
The Govt of North Korea
Communist Party of China
Hezbollah
They’re uniters, not dividers.
The Government Caused The Housing Crisis
This shouldn’t be news, but it is, because it doesn’t fit the leftist media narrative, which is that it was caused by underregulation.
[Update late morning]
Will the Republicans break their pledge to stop interfering in the housing market? If so, I will be disappointed, but not surprised.
Is The Tea Party About God?
It certainly shouldn’t be. Making religious beliefs a litmus test will splinter the movement. It’s about individualism and limited government.
[Update a few minutes later]
Vaguely related — what leftism does to people. It’s a religion, and a pretty nasty one.
The Lower Elite Versus The Upper Elite
More thoughts on Kenneth Anderson’s post, from Megan McArdle.
David Axelrod and Lobbyists
Is he lying?
Any time someone asks if David Axelrod is lying, I know the safe way to bet.
[Update a while later, after being away from computer]
Link fixed now, sorry.