“Somewhere in the White House attic is a picture of Barack Obama getting smarter.”
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Road To The Nomination
As Treacher notes, Huntsman has secured the crucial Howard Dean endorsement.
Schools Of Education
It’s not a new topic for me, but here’s more reason to simply abolish them:
The education sector is notoriously ineffective at identifying high- and low-quality workers, making it difficult for the labor market to penalize students from education departments that produce low-quality teachers. The culture of low standards in education is partly to blame, as those within the education establishment have shown little interest in distinguishing good teachers from mediocre teachers, but why can K-12 schools get away with not distinguishing high-quality workers from low-quality workers? What makes education different?
Two words: teachers’ unions. As that famous report noted three decades ago, if a foreign entity had imposed on us this educational system, it would rightly be considered an act of war. What should we think about the domestic enemies that have done, and continue to do so?
New York Nine
Could a Republican be about to take the seat of Gerri Ferraro and Chuckie Schumer? It’s about Israel, and gay marriage.
Albany is run by the Dems, and if they lose that seat, they may just redistrict it out of existence (something they were considering after Weiner imploded anyway). But psychologically, such a perceived referendum on the White House won’t bode well for the election next year and traditional Jewish support for both Obama and Democrats in general.
The Palestinian State
…there is none. And as Michael Ledeen reminds us, events in Libya, Syria, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan are not unrelated — they are all battles in a much larger war, the one that replaced the Cold War in pitting totalitarians against the liberal West.
Bon Mot
Frank J.: “Obama inherited his problems from Bush, and being a good steward, he’s preserved his inheritance for future generations.”
Vague Generalities
So, the Aerospace Industries Association has issued a position paper for a strategy on human space exploration, but it’s pretty unspecific about what the actual policy should be:
Developing this recommended path forward will not be easy; to that end, AIA encourages this Independent Study on Human Exploration of Space to address in detail:
• Near term human exploration milestones including robotic precursors. The lack of proximate exploration activity now could severely hinder our future exploration capability.
• Mission-oriented technology priorities that tie development of needed enabling technologies to milestones on our track toward eventual Mars exploration.
• Integration of science and technology missions with a parallel human exploration strategy. Exploration, science, and technology must progress hand in hand.
• The implementation, within fiscal constraint guidance, of societal and national goals stated as Key Objectives in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
• Path forward options if fiscal constraints change.
One good thing — there’s no mention whatsoever of heavy lift. The only way defenders of it will find it is to call it a “mission-oriented technology” or “needed enabling technology” for Mars. But it’s a hard case to make, if orbital storage and transfer of propellant is deployed.
The “Fairness” Doctrine
Good riddance. We should celebrate such a rare event — a less obtrusive government, and a victory for the First Amendment.
What Are You Compensating For?
I’m compensating for the fact that criminals don’t obey gun laws, myself. Not to mention that some of them might be jealous of the size of my…you know.
The Most Murderous Faith-Based Religion
No, it isn’t Islam — it’s Marxism.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related, somehow. How is Warren Buffett like the Pope? They’re both completely clueless about how economies work:
The great advantage of competition in markets is that it exhausts all gains from trade, which thus allows individuals to attain higher levels of welfare. These win/win propositions may not reach the perfect endpoint, but they will avoid the woes that are now consuming once prosperous economies. Understanding the win/win concept would have taken the Pope away from his false condemnation of markets. It might have led him to examine more closely Spain’s profligate policies, where high guaranteed public benefits and extensive workplace regulation have led to an unholy mix of soaring public debt and an unemployment rate of 20 percent. It is a tragic irony that papal economics mimic those of the Church’s socialist opponents. The Pope’s powerful but misdirected words will only complicate the task of meaningful fiscal and regulatory reform in Spain and the rest of Europe. False claims for social justice come at a very high price.
A similarly harsh verdict must be rendered on Warren Buffett, whose much discussed editorial in the New York Times foolishly condemns the very economic system that allowed him to flourish as an extraordinary investor. Rhetorically, Buffett’s editorial reads like the confession of a man who got away with putting his hand in the cookie jar. He starts by insisting that in difficult times the principle of “equal sacrifice” should guide collective deliberations. In good autobiographical fashion, he then admits that the current tax system has allowed him to get away with paying just under $7 million in taxes this past year, which works out to be 17.4 percent of his $40 million personal income.
In Buffett’s utopian world, higher taxes, including higher capital gains taxes, magically generate the revenues needed to eliminate the current massive deficit. For this bold proposition, we have Buffett’s personal assurance that he has never seen capital gains rates that approach 40 percent “scare off” large or small investors. This is a simple case of sampling error, for those people who are scared off by high capital gains taxes don’t beat a path to his doorway in the first place. It would have been better if Buffett had addressed the “lock-in effect” with respect to capital gains. People only pay capital gains when they sell their stock. Accordingly, investors are highly sensitive to the capital gains rate, because why sell if the net proceeds from the sale are so small that they more than negate a higher rate of return from a shrunken capital base?
On this logic, lower capital gains rates generate more tax revenue for the federal government.
Of course, according to the president, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is “fairness.”