Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

There’s Got To Be A Catch

18 Comments

…and there is:

…as a result of the Obama decision, the Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard. If a tract is deemed suitable for development, it is listed for sale in a competitive bidding system. The next lease sales — if any are authorized by the Interior Department — would not be held before 2012.

Emphasis mine. And the entire west coast remains off limits. Which is too bad, because the Santa Barbara platforms could be producing oil within a year. For the refineries that the California government refuses to allow to be built. At least until we change it out this fall.

This looks more like lip service to pretend to compromise, than a serious energy production proposal.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Liberty Over Big Government

3 Comments

Michael Barone writes about the Tea Parties and the great ongoing debate about the purpose of America:

The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century. But it became apparent that centralized experts weren’t disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.

It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought. By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.

The Progressives’ scorn for the Founders has not been shared by the people. First-rate books about the Founders have been best-sellers. And efforts to dismiss the Founders as slaveholders, misogynists or homophobes have been outweighed by the resonance of their words and deeds.

The Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal” with “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” has proved to be happily elastic. It still sings to us today, thanks to the struggles and sacrifices of many Americans who gave blacks and women the equality denied to them in 1776.

In contrast, the early Progressives’ talk of an “industrial age” and an outmoded Constitution sounds like the language of an age now long past. Their faith in centralized planning seems naive in a time when one unpredicted innovation after another has changed lives for the better.

The “progressives” are retrogressive. A set of “elites” (who are elite only in terms of their power, not their intellect or competence) running the lives of the rest of society is the oldest idea in human history. It was opposition to such a notion on which the Constitution was based.

And central planning works no better with space policy than with any other.

Economics, Education, Political Commentary

Inflating The Education Bubble

41 Comments

The government student-loan takeover looks like it has a high potential for disaster:

…the bill’s student loan provisions will not save the $68 billion promised, and will move the country closer to a European-style socialism that has brought that continent stagnation. Going to a Soviet/U.S. Postal Service model of student-loan services goes against the sound maxim that competition is always better than monopoly. Moreover, the bill’s repayment terms will lead to increasing student-loan defaults, adding to the crushing fiscal burden on a government whose IOUs are now trusted less than those of some private corporations.

Third, the bill proceeds from a false premise. President Obama asserted Saturday that “by the end of this decade, we will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” Putting aside the nasty reality of a 45 percent six year college drop-out rate, the Labor Department forecasts that, over the next decade, there will be fewer new jobs requiring college degrees than there will be new college graduates.

But it continues to prop up Big Academia, which is supportive of all this continuing collectivism, so it has that going for it.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Statesman Of The Year

7 Comments

Found by Howard Fineman:

So, just to clarify, some Democratic senator admitted to Fineman that he thinks the bill is political suicide, raises premiums for his constituents and feeds public anger, but voted for it anyway out of personal and party loyalty?

Gee, why would he want to remain anonymous?

[Late afternoon update]

More thoughts from Allahpundit:

And so the big Democratic surge in enthusiasm, which nutroots pundits insisted made passing O-Care an absolute political necessity, ends up being less than the surge in enthusiasm among Republicans — as expected. In fact, the GOP actually picked up a point on the generic ballot after the bill passed. They lead 49/45 now overall and 53/35 among independents. And so, I wonder: Did the left ever really believe that the mother of all welfare-state incursions would produce a stronger reaction among Democrats than Republicans? Or was that cynical garbage they were pushing in hopes that some of the dimmer lights in the Democratic caucus would be scared by it? Let the debate rage.

It seems moot now. They die was cast, and they’ll suffer the consequences this fall. And for another decade afterward, because they’re going to also lose a lot of legislatures and governors in a reapportionment year. Good.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Lack Of Empathy

96 Comments

Some thoughts on this feature of many so-called “liberals.”

I wouldn’t compare them to psychopaths, though. More like sociopaths. Bill Clinton is a classic example.

[Update a while later]

Here’s some empathy for “liberals” from Frank J. — they’re mostly not exactly like terrorists:

For one thing, what do we do when we capture terrorists? That’s right: We waterboard them to get them to talk and tell us where their base is or what their secret plans are or what their favorite color is. Terrorists have information we need. With liberals, we’ll do anything we can to keep them from talking. They talk way too much as it is and often in venues where it’s completely unwelcome, and we’d just as soon waterboard ourselves as listen to them (which is the problem MSNBC has with ratings). Plus, it’s not like they have any secret plans we don’t know about. What are they going to tell us if we waterboard them?

“I’ll admit it! ObamaCare is the first step towards single-payer and a complete government takeover of health care!”

Who doesn’t know that? Liberals are too dim-witted and too arrogant to keep any of their thoughts secret. As we learned with Obama, if we want to find out what liberals really think of Americans, we just have to slip a tape recorder into a fundraiser with elites in San Francisco.

Another difference between liberals and terrorists are sleeper cells — terrorists could have infiltrated American society and be waiting to attack. Liberals, on the other hand, are completely incapable of associating with normal Americans. Remember when John Kerry tried to go hunting to appear like an American? If only terrorist sleeper agents were that obvious and awkward.

Now that’s what I call compassionate conservatism.

[Update mid morning]

This seems pertinent, particularly to the discussion in comments. Dennis Prager: Leftism as a religion:

Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion (which is why I have begun capitalizing it). The Leftist value system’s hold on its adherents is as strong as the hold Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have on theirs. Nancy Pelosi’s belief in expanding the government’s role in American life, which inspired her passion for the health-care bill, is as strong as a pro-life Christian’s belief in the sanctity of the life of the unborn.

Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion.

Now, most Leftist Jews and Christians will counter that Leftist values cannot trump their religion’s values because Leftist values are identical to their religion’s. But this argument only reinforces my argument that Leftism has conquered the Christianity and the Judaism of Leftist Christians and Jews. If there is no difference between Leftist moral values and those of Judaism or Christianity, then Christianity is little more than Leftism with “Jesus” rhetoric and Judaism is Leftism with Jewish terms — such as “Tikkun Olam” (“repairing the world”) and “Prophetic values.”

But if Christianity is, morally speaking, really Leftism, why didn’t Catholics and Protestants assert these values before 19th century European Leftism came along? And, if Judaism is essentially a set of Left-wing values, does that mean that the Torah and the Talmud are Leftist documents? Or are the two pillars of Judaism generally wrong?

As a provisional atheist, I find this fascinating.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Insurance Death Spiral

5 Comments

I’m pretty sure this was the plan all along:

So there are penalties for not purchasing insurance. But there’s no serious enforcement mechanism allowing the IRS to make sure those penalties get paid?

Given the importance of the mandate to the health reform project, this doesn’t make much sense. The law was designed to expand the number of individuals with health insurance. But without the ability to enforce the individual mandate, any expansion will likely be significantly smaller than projected.

But remember, if you like your plan, you can keep it! Untilless your insurance company goes out of business…

[Update a few minutes later]

You mean they don’t have to cover pre-existing conditions? More thoughts here and here.

Gee, do you mean that when a multi-kilopage bill is rushed though without anyone actually reading it, there could be screwups? Who would have guessed? Certainly not some of the morons in my comments section, who think that passing bills without reading them is just dandy.

Every day, November is a day closer.

[Update a couple minutes later]

And speaking of November approaching, this isn’t good new for the Dems, though it’s great news for the Republic:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

…Supporters “are not only going to have to focus on implementing this kind of major reform,” says Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard. “They’re going to have to spend substantial time convincing people of the concrete benefits of this legislation.”

This is hilarious. The president and the Democrats have spent the last fourteen months telling us how wonderful this plan is, to no avail. Now that it’s going to start to actually bite, they think that they’re going to be able to explain it better, and be more convincing? Especially when they don’t know what’s in it any more than they did before it passed?

And note, this is a Gallup poll, which means it’s “adults.” I haven’t checked Rasmussen yet, but I’m sure that the news for them from “likely voters” is even more grim. For them, that is, not for us.