Kudos to Obama. . . oh, wait

I'm often critical of President Obama, so when I get a chance to note something good that he's doing, I make a point of it. And so I've written positively of his championing of charter schools and his promise to insist that student performance be a component of teacher evaluations. It's true that I was cautious in my praise, since, up to now, Obama hadn't followed up his words with meaningful actions.

And, it appears, he won't be taking meaningful actions, as he's backtracking on all those positive ideas and promises:

The Obama Administration's education rhetoric, with its emphasis on charter schools and evaluating teachers based on student performance, has won plaudits from school reformers—and from us. But this month the Department of Education laid out in detail the eligibility requirements for states seeking federal grant money, and it looks like the praise may have been premature.

In the spring, when the White House announced its $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" initiative to improve K-12 schooling, President Obama said, "Any state that makes it unlawful to link student progress to teacher evaluations will have to change its ways to compete for a grant." Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters, "states that don't have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application."

The Administration appears to be retreating on both requirements. The final Race to the Top regulations allow states to use "multiple measures," including peer reviews, to evaluate instructors. This means states that prohibit student test data from being used to measure a teacher's performance may be eligible for the federal funds, even though the President clearly said that they wouldn't be.

Nor are states any longer required to embrace charter schools to win a grant. In June, Mr. Duncan scolded by name some of the states, such as Maine and Tennessee, that don't allow charters or limit enrollment in these independent public schools. Under the final regulations, however, states that prohibit charters can still receive Race to the Top dollars so long as they have other kinds of "innovative public schools." That's an invitation for states to game the criteria by relabeling a few traditional public schools as innovative.

The requirement to eliminate caps on the number of charter schools has also been eliminated. If the caps are generous enough, Mr. Duncan now says, they might be okay—which also gives him political wiggle room to give a state a break. Charter caps are one of the ways that teachers unions limit competition and stymie reform.

Obamistration lacks private sector experience

The Enterprise Blog calls attention to a sobering chart showing the makeup of presidential administrations since 1900. The lack of private sector experience in the Obama administration -- less than 10% of his advisers have any --is astounding, especially at a time when the economy is job one.

Also striking is that the administrations with the lowest amount of private sector experience are the modern liberals, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton. But even by that feeble standard, the Obama administration is an extreme outlier.

This explains an awful lot.

Understanding the GDP

I can't say I understand all the ins and outs of this, but the gist of it, that the GDP is artificially inflated by massive government spending is both good to know and bad to hear. In the example given, the $200,000 in salary paid by a corporation doesn't count toward the GDP. On the other hand, if the government takes $200,000 away from a corporation and spends it on waste and abuse, it does count toward the GDP.

This seems exactly backwards, as GDP is supposed to be a measure of growth. Wealth is created in the private sector, while government consumes wealth. So why is this a good formula?

More evidence that Obama is damaging the economy

Via Greg Mankiw:

From Harvard's Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna:

Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending

We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions.

So, more evidence that we should be cutting taxes instead of spending if we want to grow the economy. And more evidence that cutting spending is more effective than increasing taxes, both for controlling the debt and for combating recession.

Seems clear we should be cutting taxes and reigning in spending, no?

Yet Obama has spent as much in 11 months as Bush did in seven years. And he's just getting started. He's pushing tax rates up to levels we haven't seen in decades, and promising more taxes on top of those.

So, is Obama a fool? Or is he knowingly sacrificing the economy in order to pursue a different agenda?

Musing: The roll of government

Conservatives believe the role of government is to protect our freedoms; liberals believe the role of government is to provide our sustenance.

Obama was against it before he was for it

Ramesh Ponnuru:

In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits — and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.

Unsurprising, that.

Obama doesn't get what freedom is about

David Boaz contrasts what Reagan and Obama said about freedom in their speeches abroad. He concludes:

President Obama said some important things to the Chinese students. But his continuing failure to mention the virtues of productive enterprise in a commencement address or to note the centrality of economic freedom in the American experiment could easily lead listeners to conclude that he really doesn’t care much for business and economic liberty.

Or, as Veronique de Ruby aptly puts it, Obama "doesn't truly get what freedom is about."

She adds,

By the way, the same can be said about the way Obama uses words like competition, accountability, or fiscal responsibility. Obviously, the president doesn't understand the full or true meaning of these words, either.

Iran has absolutely nothing to fear from this president

My president:

Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal ... and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences.

What?

This is a total joke. The consequence is that we have begun discussing the importance of consequences?

We elected this man president?

I've really tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but this is beyond parody.

I'm disgusted.

Iran has absolutely nothing to fear from this president.

Unions block teacher bonuses

Boston Herald:

The Boston Teachers Union staunchly opposes a performance bonus plan for top teachers . . . insisting the dough be divvied up among all of a school’s teachers, good and bad.

There you have it. Teachers unions in a nutshell. Performance bonuses must be given to everyone, even those who don't perform.

Any questions?

"Saved" jobs in New Hampshire

Via Instapundit:

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Recovery.gov shows money flowing to nonexistent Congressional districts. “Recovery.gov also shows 2,893.9 jobs created with $194,537,372 in stimulus funding in New Hampshire’s 00 congressional district. But, there is no such thing. The site also shows $1,471,518 going to New Hampshire’s 6th congressional district, $1,033,809 to the 4th congressional district and $124,774 to the 27th congressional district. In fact, New Hampshire only has two congressional districts; inviting confusion about where the money listed for the 00, 4th, 6th and 27th districts is going.”

Where was the fact checking of Obama?

The AP fact checks Sarah Palin's new book.

That's all well and good, but I don't recall them giving this level of scrutiny to Barack Obama. Perhaps if they were more interested in the inaccuracies and misleading statements in his books, speeches, and debates, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. At the very least, we might have had a clearer picture of who this guy was.

Update: Powerline fact checks the fact checkers.

It appears to be a tribute to the factual accuracy of Palin's book that eleven hostile AP reporters can't come up with anything better than this.

Wealth redistriubtion increases povery

Just came across this, from Katherine Mangu-Ward in 2007:

In theory, redistribution of wealth is supposed to benefit the least fortunate. In practice, it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. In a new study, Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute and Paul J. Gessig of the Rio Grande Foundation crunch census data for the 1990s and find that the poor did much better in states with low taxes and low spending than in states with higher taxes. Big-spending, high-taxing states saw increases in poverty rates, despite a national economic boom. On average, big spenders in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming saw a 7.6 percent increase in poverty rates, while cheapskates in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas saw their poverty rates drop nearly 10 percent.

As evidence continues to mount that large government programs, supported by high tax rates, is a recipe for failure, we continue to put our trust in people like Obama, who, after having spent trillions in just a few months, intends to spend even trillions more.

I'm beginning to doubt that Americans will recognize this logic gap in my lifetime.

Time for Obama to stop whining about Bush

This, from Victor Davis Hanson, is too concise to parse, and short enough to post in its entirety:

George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).

In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.

At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India.

The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.

Bottom line: Obama's second year as president is coming up, and it is long past time to move on and let historians judge the Bush years.

Yep, exactly.

I don't get it

So I'm watching Fox News, and they are talking about how Kahled Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who planned the murder of 3000 Americans on 9/11 will be tried in a federal courtroom.

I'm baffled. This guy didn't live in America. He did his planning from a foreign country. He was captured in a foreign country. Why is he entitled to constitutional protections? As far as I'm concerned he shouldn't be allowed to set foot on American soil. If gets a trial, it should be a military trial. This has nothing to do with our criminal justice system or our constitution.

Equally baffling is why this guy should be getting a trail at all. The banner on Fox read "Confessed mastermind of 9/11 to face federal trail in NYC." He confessed. He did it. Everyone knows he did, and he admits he did it. So what's the trial for? And why is Attorney General Eric Holder on my TV saying KSM will stand trail for the acts he "allegedly" committed? Seems to me, once a guy has confessed we can stop all this alleged nonsense.

This is so wrong in so many ways. And now his lawyers are going to put the US on trial. We'll spend a year documenting every detail of how this guy was treated and how immoral America is. The world will get turned upside down, with KSM being the victim and evil George Bush being the bad guy.

The country doesn't need this. It's a distraction from what matters. It's an insult to Americans. And it's a moral outrage.

The man confessed to murdering 3000 Americans. It's pure insanity that he's still breathing. Put a bullet in his head and lets move on.

Plus, this:

Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda, tie up our courts for years on issues best left to the president and Congress, and further cripple our intelligence agencies’ efforts to fight terrorists abroad.

KSM and his co-defendants will have all of the benefits and rights that the U.S. Constitution accords those who live here, most importantly the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it was obtained.

Tax facts

McQ runs down some tax facts from by the Tax Foundation. Everyone should keep these handy and reread them periodically. An excerpt:

Fact 3: High corporate taxes punish workers.

As the new study explains, there is a growing body of evidence that a large share of corporate taxes is really borne by workers—most of whom are not wealthy. Using statistical methods, the new study found that for every $1 rise in state and local corporate tax collections, real wages in that area fell by $2.50 five years later. The reverse is also true: wages rose by $2.50 for every $1 reduction in state and local corporate income taxes.

If wages are depressed in your particular state or locality, check out the corporate tax rate – as we’ve pointed out for years, corporations don’t pay taxes, they pass them on.

Blue states struggling under financial woes

KnoxNews.com has a couple of simple graphics showing that the states that are in the worst financial trouble are those that voted for Obama.

Is health care the government's responsibility

Some encouragement from a recent Gallop poll:

More Americans now say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government's responsibility.

I have to say, I'm surprised by these results -- surprised that most Americans could identify anything they don't feel is the government's responsibility. Looking at the graph in the article, I note that the numbers on this question jump around significantly over time, so the results probably have a lot to do with who is in power and what they're up to, as well as the state of the economy. Still, I would have bet against a result like this and hope it's a continuing trend.

On the downside, the poll found this:

Most polling shows that Americans tend to favor a "public option" in which the government would provide a healthcare plan that would not be mandatory but one of several options for those seeking healthcare insurance. Americans apparently do not equate this with government's guaranteeing that all Americans have healthcare coverage.

This result doesn't surprise me, though it continues to disappoint me. I understand that when something is presented as an "option" that exists apart from the current system, it's very tempting. But the best available analysis, including that by the Congressional Budget Office, suggests that the "public option" wouldn't exist apart from what we have now. It would drain tax dollars, increase health care costs, and shrink the private insurance industry.

I believe if Americans were better informed about this, most would oppose the "public option." But perception trumps reality, and I doubt conservatives will make any headway in educating the public on this.

Don't go there

I can't get to the original article, but McQ at QandO links to a Financial Times piece that documents the dire straights the EU is in due to the drain of nationalized health care.

In a little noted Financial Times article yesterday, it reported:

The European Union’s public debt could by 2014 rise to 100 per cent of gross domestic product – a year’s economic output – unless governments take firm action to restore fiscal discipline, EU finance ministers will be warned on Monday.

The EU claims that the measures the countries of the union took to “rescue Europe’s financial sector and combat recession” are to blame.

But then, 7 or 8 paragraphs later, we get to the real “tip of the iceberg”:

The Commission identifies five countries as at particular risk – Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Spain and the UK – because their public finances will come under strain from large increases in pension and healthcare costs, and high deficits triggered by the financial crisis.

This is particularly the case for Greece, which faces the second-highest increase in age-related expenditure in the EU, while its high debt ratio adds to concerns on sustainability.

Pension and health care costs? Translated into US lingo – Social Security and Medicare. You know the two programs with 50+ trillion in unfunded future liabilities? So tell me again why we want to go even further off this debt cliff by enacting government run health care?

Misleading claims about Obamacare

I may have linked to this before, but just in case, Michael Cannon has a list of 20 false or misleading claims about Obamacare.

Are people dying because the lack health insurance?

A lot of claims are being thrown around about the number of people who die each year because they don't have health insurance. If I recall, President Obama said it was 14,000 per year in his address to Congress. John Goodman says this is mostly bunk:

They’re talking about a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study [gated, but with abstract]. But between the media hype and the actual study is an enormous chasm that separates fact from fiction. In truth, the authors of the study did not establish that anybody, anywhere, died of any cause whatsoever because of a lack of health insurance.

There's also this, from from Health Services Research:

The Institute of Medicine's estimate that lack of insurance leads to 18,000 excess deaths each year is almost certainly incorrect. It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analyses, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States.

Correction: My recollection failed me. (Serves me right for being too lazy to look it up.) Obama didn't claim that 14,000 die each year due to lack of health insurance. He claimed that 14,000 lose their health insurance each year -- a claim that is also false.

Reports of Obama's decisiveness have been greatly exaggerated

After reports that Obama had finally made a decision on Afghanistan, it turns out he hasn't:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

So, the dithering continues.

I support the idea of having a clearly defined exit strategy -- to the extent that's possible -- as long as it's based on outcomes and not tied to hard dates. Wars are unpredictable. You fight until you've accomplished your mission, not to a date certain. So I have some degree of understanding when Obama says he wants an exit strategy in place before committing the additional troops.

But my understanding only goes so far given that Obama was elected over a year ago. He's had plenty of time to get up to speed and craft an effective strategy. In fact, he announced he'd done so on March 27th. Now, 8 months later, he's acting like all this is new to him and he's having to start from scratch. Reportedly, things haven't changed all that much since then, so that's not an excuse. To the extent things have changed, we can expect them to continue to change, so there's no benefit to waiting.

Meanwhile, we've got tens of thousands of troops in harms way, and the longer Obama takes to commit to a plan, the more danger they are in. As the article points out,

The war is . . . claiming U.S. lives at a record pace as military leaders say the Taliban has the upper hand in many parts of the country.

I don't recall who said a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow, but it would seem to apply here. Exit strategies are important, but when you're in the middle of it, you go with the plan being recommended by the experts in the field and work out the details later. This isn't a chess match, where the other side is forced to wait until you've calculated every variation and selected the best possible move. The Taliban are taking advantage of this delay to strengthen their position and take new ground.

Obama isn't a military expert, so he should listen to the military experts who advise him. He may not like his options, but that's the nature of war. He wanted the job, and with it comes tough decisions. People will die. Mistakes will be made -- just as they were by Bush and every other commander. But that too is the nature of war.

I fear Obama doesn't understand this.

Obama's "saved" jobs scam continues to be uncovered

The Boston Globe uncovers more of Obama's "saved" jobs scam:

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

Via Betsy, who remarks,

Remember these were the numbers that the White House's own guy in charge of compiling the data joked that he'd scrubbed the numbers so hard that he had "dishpan hands."

Ignoring reality

Stephen Green boils it down:

How do you cure high unemployment and sluggish growth?

Proven methods include reducing regulation and lowering taxes.

So it comes as no surprise that the House has just approved one of (if not the) biggest increases in taxes and regulation after virtually zero debate and in the middle of a weekend night when almost no one is paying attention.

Obama finally makes a decision

It's hard to find a report on Obama's strategy for Afghanistan that doesn't include the word dithering.

Obama announced last March that he had done a complete review and put together a cohesive strategy. (It was actually the Bush administration that did the review and put together the strategy. Obama adopted it as his own, then complained that Bush hadn't put a strategy together -- pretty slimy, even for a politician.) Then, after Obama's handpicked general requested the troops that he needs to execute the strategy, Obama suddenly announced that we've never had a strategy, and that he needed to do a review and put one together. (Guess that whole thing back in March was a sham, or incompetence, or whatever.) So, after many weeks of, um, dithering, it seems Obama has finally decided to go with the surge strategy that Bush recommended from the beginning. Which brings us to this:

[General] McChrystal wanted 40,000 and the president has tentatively decided to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops. A senior officer says "that's close to what [McChrystal] asked for." All the president's military advisers have recommended sending more troops.

So all the president's military advisers agree with McChrystal's estimate of what is needed to win the war, but Obama, who has no military experience whatsoever, ignores them. Make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me. Then there's this:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.

No. That makes the Afghanistan surge not a surge, but rather a slow build up -- an, um, swell maybe? Haven't we learned anything from our experiences in Iraq? We have to stop trying to win wars on the cheap. We need to go in strong and win and get out. I'm very wary of anything Colin Powell has to say, but he was right about one thing: if you're going to fight, you go in with overwhelming force.

I hate to think Obama is willing to risk American lives and defeat in Afghanistan in order to appease his anti-war base, but I can't think of any other reason why he would ignore his own experts and opt to go with surge-lite. I'd rather believe that he's acting out of incompetence than trying to win political points. But he's supposed to be intelligent, so if he doesn't know what he's doing, why not listen to the experts?

Not good, this.

More here.

Bill Clinton hasn't any more class than Obama

First we had President Obama using vulgarities to denigrate those who disagree with him. Now we have ex-President Clinton doing the same:

The reason the tea-baggers are so inflamed is because we are winning.

Like I said, say what you will about Bush, at least the man has class.

A modest proposal

The Democrats finally found a way to make their health care proposals appear to "save" money. They do this by making us pay for them for nearly a decade before they are fully implemented in 2019, and by forcing the Congressional Budget Office to assume that revenue will be generated from a bunch of sources that the CBO describes as "unlikely."

So here's my idea. Let's put a "trigger" into any health care proposal that is passed that says if the promised sources of revenue do not materialize by 2019, the entire project is permanently terminated. This way, we're not on the hook for this monstrosity unless it actually delivers. In the "unlikely" event that revenue planets align, the project continues on course. Otherwise we pull the plug on Obamacare and let it die.

Now, I'm not in favor of doing this. There are many reasons to oppose Obamacare aside from the cost. But the Dems have the numbers to shove this turkey down our throats, so we may have to live with it. If it looks like that's going to happen, I think the above proposal is one that any reasonable person, Democrat or Republican, should be willing to accept. If they won't, we'll at least know that they don't buy what they're selling either.

Suing schools for malpractice

I predict we'll be seeing more of this:

The ACLU is suing Florida’s governor, Board of Ed and other officials for “failing to ensure that students in Palm Beach County receive a high quality education.” The state’s constitution requires Florida to provide a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality education. “Palm Beach County is clearly not upholding its responsibility to provide a quality education to all of its students when so many of them are not graduating,” said the ACLU in a statement. According to the suit, up to one-half of the county’s students do not graduate on time.

At least Bush had class

Reportedly, in his pep talk to push ObamaCare through the House, President Obama asked:

Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit” Democratic voters “and it will encourage the extremists.

So here we have the president of the United States stooping to vulgar attacks on those that disagree with him. Say what you want about Bush. At least the man has class.

Considerable quote

William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man:

[T]he characteristic of all social doctors is, that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a re-adjustment of all interests and rights. They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion - that the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.

Ruining health care in the name of health care

New York Post:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right last week when she called her latest health-care-reform proposal a "his toric moment" [sic]: After decades of life-saving and cost-cutting scientific innovations from drug and medical-device companies, the government is about to step in and stifle the R&D that is our best hope for improving health outcomes.

Pelosi's bill may cost pharmaceutical companies $150 billion over a decade -- nearly double the amount they conceded when they cut a White House-approved deal with Sen. Max Baucus this summer.

The Pelosi bill is a prescription for fewer new life-saving drugs. By stifling innovation, it would hurt not only industry, but also all of us who'd benefit from new-drug development.

Obama had strong-armed drug companies into "giving back" $80 billion of their profits by threatening to exclude them from health care reform negotiations. Having "agreed" to this extortion, the drug companies are now seeing the vice tightened even further.

But now Pelosi has set up her own "negotiating table" -- nearly doubling the amount Washington would confiscate from the industry and planning vast cuts in what Medicare would pay for drugs -- a provision that the industry was assured was off the other table. Give 'em a hand, they'll take an arm.

We hear repeatedly that ObamaCare won't reduce the quality of health care, but that's a difficult pill to swallow when they are siphoning off billions that would be used for R&D to pay for it. Wasn't this monstrosity supposed to save us money?

"The chart" - October, 2009

Glenn Reynolds has the latest update of "the chart," comparing actual unemployment numbers (10.2) to where Obama said they'd be if we passed his "stimulus" program (8.0).

More on the "saved jobs" scam

Betsy has a nice roundup of some of the creative counting that drives the "saved jobs" scam.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Brian Riedl:

Those dissecting the White House claim that the $200 billion spent on the stimulus has created or saved 650,000 jobs have focused on the arithmetical errors in counting the hirings. They are ignoring a much more fundamental issue. Before Congress could inject $200 billion into the economy, they had to borrow $200 billion out of the economy. So the more central question is thus: If injecting $200 billion into the economy supported 650,000 jobs, then how many jobs were lost by first borrowing that $200 billion out of the economy?

The White House says zero. Their job numbers assume all $200 billion is “new” and supports jobs that would not otherwise exist.

This is absolutely implausible. How can adding $200 billion to one part of the economy support 650,000 jobs, but removing $200 billion from another part of the economy not cost a single job anywhere?

Considerable quote

Thomas Sowell:

Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

In various states, medical insurance must cover the costs of fertility treatments, annual checkups and other things that have nothing to do with risks. What many people most want is to be insured against the risk of having their life's savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness.

Thug tactics from the White House

The White House is threatening Democratic strategists not to appear on Fox News:

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, “We better not see you on again,” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that “clients might stop using you if you continue.”

Geez.

Update:

The White House is strongly denying a story claiming that White House officials privately threatened to retaliate against a Democratic strategist for appearing on Fox News — a claim generating a big stir on the right as the latest example of the White House’s victimization of the network.

Obama continues to thwart economic recovery

CNN:

Unemployed Americans are set to get up to 20 additional weeks of jobless benefits, while new homebuyers are poised to see the $8,000 tax credit extended into mid-next year.

The House approved the measures by a 403-12 vote Thursday afternoon, a day after the Senate passed the legislation. The bill now moves to the White House for the president's signature.

The closely watched legislation would extend jobless benefits in all states by 14 weeks. Those that live in states with unemployment greater than 8.5% would receive an additional six weeks. The proposal would be funded by extending a longstanding federal unemployment tax on employers through June 30, 2011.

President Obama announced this morning that he signed the bill.

Question: If we're really interested in reducing unemployment, does it make sense to tax the very people who create the jobs?

Forget reading the bill. Read the Constitution

CNSNews:

When asked by CNSNews.com what specific part of the Constitution authorizes Congress to mandate that individuals must purchase health insurance, Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) pointed to the part of the Constitution that he says authorizes the federal government "to provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country." In fact, the word "health" appears nowhere in the Constitution.

“Well, that’s under certainly the laws of the--protect the health, welfare of the country," said Burris. "That’s under the Constitution. We’re not even dealing with any constitutionality here. Should we move in that direction? What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.”

I'm liking the idea that every bill that goes through Congress must include a citation to the specific article of the Constitution that grants Congress the authority to pass it.

Obama's Folly

This morning, in a segment discussing the economy, CNN anchor Tony Harris lamented the fact that so many businesses are "hoarding their money." This is a real problem. Economic recovery depends on businesses investing, banks lending, and consumers buying. Each of these entities does these things instinctively, and yet they've largely stopped doing the very things they are designed to do. Why?

Uncertainty.

The economy is rocking and rolling and no one knows what to expect. In times of uncertainty, the natural thing to do is draw back, be cautious, and wait to see what develops. Unfortunately, our government is doing exactly the opposite. It's bailing out some companies while leaving others to fail. It's spending massive amounts of money reshaping the entire political and economic landscape. It's taking over entire industries and clamping down on others with regulations that severely limit options at a time where flexibility is desperately needed.

In short, our government is making things worse -- making the already uncertain even more unpredictable. Is it any wonder that businesses are "hoarding their money?" They're simply trying to survive until the government stops rocking the boat and they can get back to doing what they were designed to do: create wealth.

This isn't the first time this has happened. As Amity Shlaes writes in The Forgotten Man:

One of the most famous [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt phrases in history, almost as famous as "fear itself," was Roosevelt's boast that he would promulgate "bold, persistent experimentation." But Roosevelt's commitment to experimentation itself created fear. . . The trouble was not merely the new policies that were implemented but also the threat of additional, unknown policies. Fear froze the economy, but that uncertainty itself might have a cost was something the young experimenters simply did not consider.

Sound familiar?

Obama has publicly proclaimed that he is running the FDR playbook. In a interview with 60 Minutes, he said,

There's a new book out about FDR's first 100 days and what you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate, is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things. And experiment in order to get people working again.

Obama's experiment is failing miserably. Today the unemployment rate clocked in at 10.2%, 28% 20% worse than he warned it would be if we didn't adopt his policies.

There is increasing evidence that FDR's massive social policies and grand experimentation are what put the "Great" in the Great Depression. We seem to be witnessing a calculated reenactment of that play.

Roosevelt's solution to businesses "hoarding money" was to pass the "undistributed profits tax," which simply took that money away from them. Obama is following suit by increasing taxes on the most productive segment of our society, the segment that creates the jobs and generates the wealth we so desperately need.

As it did with FDR, the American economy will recovery, in spite of Obama's recklessness. But the recovery will likely be more lengthy and more painful than it ought be. "FDR's Folly" can be excused, in part, for he hadn't the benefit of economic history and analysis. Obama doesn't have that excuse, and so his folly is doubly tragic for not having availed himself of the lessons FDR wrought.

Correction: I originally wrote that unemployment is now 28% higher than Obama predicted it would be without his policies. My memory failed me, as I recalled him predicting unemployment would get as high as 8% unless we passed his "stimulus" package. He actually said it would reach 8.5% without his policies, and only 8% with his policies. Today, it reached 10.2%, which is 20% higher than he warned it would go if we didn't adopt his policies.

The "forgotten man"

From Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man:

About half a century before the [Great] Depression. . . [Yale philosopher William Graham] Sumner warned that well-intentioned social progressives often coerced unwitting average citizens into funding dubious social projects. Sumner wrote:

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine. . . what A, B, and C shall do for X". But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, "the man who is never thought of."

In 1932, a member of Roosevelt's brain trust, Raymond Moley, recalled the phrase, although not its provenance. He inserted it into the candidate's first great speech. If elected, Roosevelt promised, he would act in the name of "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid." Whereas C had been Sumner's forgotten man, the New Deal made X the forgotten man -- the poor man, the old man, labor, or any other recipient of government help.

Roosevelt's work on behalf of his version of the forgotten man generated a new tradition. To justify giving to one forgotten man, the administration found, it had to make a scapegoat of another. Businessmen and businesses were the target. . . Roosevelt and his staff were becoming habitual bullies, pitting Americans against one another. The polarization made the Depression feel worse. Franklin Roosevelt's forgotten man. the constituent X, perpetually tangled with Sumner's original forgotten man, C.

Sound familiar?

Once again social progressives are turning unwitting average citizens into useful idiots. Once again an administration is indenturing C to remedy the concerns of A and B. Once again X is being held up as the forgotten man at the expense of the C, the real forgotten man who gets hit with the bill. And once again, an administration justifies this by scapegoating private businesses -- be they financial, automotive, or insurance businesses.

Pelosi breaks her promise

Weekly Standard:

On September 24, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that she was "absolutely" committed to putting the text of the final House bill online for 72 hours before the House votes:

TWS: Madam Speaker, do you support the measure to put the final House bill online for 72 hours before it's voted on at the very end?

PELOSI: Absolutely. Without question.

But tonight, when asked if Speaker Pelosi will leave the bill online for 72 hours after we see what's in the rule, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly replied in an email: "No; [the] pledge was to have manager’s amendment online for 72 hours, and we will do that."

Apparently Pelosi's agreement to leave the "final" bill online "at the very end" of the process wasn't such a straightforward pledge.

Obama's "seven minutes"

President Obama is catching some heat for his insensitivity after yesterday's shooting at Fort Hood. While America waited somberly for details of the mass murder, an "inappropriately light" Obama came out in business-as-usual mode, issuing "shout outs" and making unrelated introductory remarks before finally acknowledging the tragedy several minutes into his speech.

This is obviously bad form. Given that there was time to work remarks about the events at Fort Hood into his speech, its difficult to understand why Obama chose to relegate them to an aside. He should have preempted his planned speech, or at the very least lead with comments on the emotional tragedy that was playing out across America. This was a huge blunder in judgment.

These are exceptional events, and I don't expect people, even presidents, to respond "perfectly" when stunned by them. George Bush got beat up on for his now-famous "seven minutes," during which he continued reading to small school children after learning of the initial attack on 9/11. I always felt he was criticized unfairly for this. In retrospect, I think he probably did the best thing, but even if he didn't, so what? It was a fluid situation and, as I said, I don't expect perfection in my president.

But Obama didn't get "caught in the headlights." He had ample time to rework his speech, and the options of postponing or canceling his prepared remarks. Nor is this the first time he's committed this type of unforced error. He demonstrated a similar lapse in judgment when he proclaimed that Cambridge police had acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Gates, even as he admitted to not knowing the facts.

Given the overall demands of the job, these are trivial fumbles. But they are fumbles nonetheless, and ones that could have been avoided.

Update: Jonah Goldberg:

I always thought Bush's response was fine. It was also very different than Obama's, at least as I understand it. Obama was briefed on the shooting before he went out. He opted to do the schmoozy stuff. Bush was presented with staggering news and kept his cool.

Lars Larson:

[A]s the Nation and the world waited to hear the President’s response to this horrific incident — what light he could shed on who did it and the motive, as well, of course, as an expression on behalf of all Americans of sympathy and solidarity with the victims and their loved ones — the commander in chief’s focus was elsewhere.

A history lesson about the "public option"

Those who oppose a government-run health insurance option argue that it would kill the private health insurance industry and result in a government takeover of one-sixth of the American economy. Advocates of the so-called "public option" say this is nonsense, but if Florida's property insurance "public option" is any indication, there may indeed be much to fear:

After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992 some Floridians were having difficulty purchasing homeowners’ insurance. (The reason: rates are regulated, and at the regulated rates some properties are too great a risk.) So, the state government formed Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, which is owned and operated by the State of Florida. . . .

[The] idea, like President Obama’s idea with health insurance, is that with a public option, private insurers would have to keep their rates in line or risk losing customers to the government insurer.

That’s what’s happened in Florida. Today about 30% of homeowners’ policies are written by Citizens, which is the largest property insurer in the state. It’s about to get bigger too. The largest private insurer, State Farm, had a rate request rejected last year, and now is pulling out of the state altogether (for property insurance; they’ll still insure your car). As the largest private insurer pulls out over a three-year period (that period negotiated with the state), Citizens will get an even larger share of Florida’s property insurance.

Everybody in Florida knows Citizens is a fiscal time bomb. Already, every Florida insurance policy (on homes, boats, cars, etc.) pays a surcharge that goes to Citizens, but Citizens still doesn’t have sufficient reserves to weather a major hurricane. When one comes, Florida taxpayers will be on the hook for the bill.

The legislature knows this, and actually passed a bill last year that would have done a great deal to solve the problem by partially deregulating rates private insurers could charge. State Farm would have stayed in Florida had that bill taken effect, but it was vetoed by the Governor. The public option is displacing private insurance.

In Florida, the public option has meant a substantial socialization of insurance, subsidization of the public option by those who take a private option, and the creation of a fiscally-unsound public insurance company despite the subsidy. Now, we have an opportunity to do the same thing at the national level with health insurance. The results have not been good in Florida, and everyone in Florida knows it. Why would it be any different at the national level?

Yep, exactly.

It's a scam, and anyone who supports it is either complicit in that scam or being co-opted as a useful idiot.

Illinois schools cheat to raise test scores

It's usually easier to give the impression of success than to actually achieve it. The latest example comes from Illinois, where high schools are using slight of hand to inflate their test scores. The scam works like this: the state test is given each year to high school juniors, so the high schools simply reclassify low-end juniors as "sophomores." Now they don't have to take the test. Poof! Look at those rising test scores. See what a good job we've done!

The low-end "sophomores" retain their status until the next year, when they emerge as seniors, never having been called juniors, hence never having had to take the test.

Considerable quote

“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job."

~ Health and Human Services spokesperson Luis Rosero, explaining how stimulus money used to increase salaries should be counted as "saving jobs."

Got it?

Update: But wait. It gets worse. Here's how those "saved jobs" were counted:

At Southwest Georgia Community Action Council in Moultrie, Ga., director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved.

"I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given."

Note that 508 multiplied by 1.84% works out to 9.35 jobs, not 935.

It's bad enough that the Obama administration invented the concept of a "saved job" to spin the failure of the "stimulus" plan. (Same lousy product in a new, flashy package!) It takes the charade a step further by claiming that the "saved" job is really worth more than a job. Then it adds absurdity to the madness by failing to check its own specious math, overestimating the farce by a factor of a hundred.

Republicans betray their mission

It's this kind of thing that has people like me leaving the Republican party and drives "tea party" demonstrations, not motivated only by contention with Obama but by disgust with all those in power who perpetuate a rigged and bloated system. The solution is not to "throw the bums out," but to take away their power.

On Nov. 19, 2008, House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor created a select committee on earmark reform to bring “meaningful change to the process by which Washington spends taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”

Nearly a year later, the committee has done virtually nothing about earmarks — except to request more of them.

When Boehner and Cantor announced the creation of the committee last November, they proposed that Republicans in the House refrain from requesting any additional earmarks until the committee reported back with its recommendations for reform.

That report was to be delivered “no later than Feb. 16, 2009,” but it still hasn’t come. While a Republican aide said earlier this month that the report is a “work in progress,” committee members acknowledge that they haven’t met once since their February deadline came and went.

In the meantime, the vast majority of House Republicans — including eight of the 10 on the committee — have continued to seek earmarks.

Charter schools help traditional schools improve

Opponents of school choice are running out of excuses as evidence continues to roll in about the positive impact of charter schools.

Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently found that poor urban children who attend a charter school from kindergarten through 8th grade can close the learning gap with affluent suburban kids by 86% in reading and 66% in math. And now Marcus Winters, who follows education for the Manhattan Institute, has released a paper showing that even students who don't attend a charter school benefit academically when their public school is exposed to charter competition. . . .

One of the most encouraging findings by Mr. Winters is how charter competition reduces the black-white achievement gap. He found that the worst-performing public school students, who tend to be low-income minorities, have the most to gain from the nearby presence of a charter school. Overall, charter competition improved reading performance but did not affect math skills. By contrast, low-performing students had gains in both areas, and their reading improvement was above average relative to the higher-performing students.

Nothing extreme about the tea party movement

During last night's election coverage, MSNBC's Chris Matthews characterized those who attend "tea party" rallies as extremists and "wing nuts." These types of characterizations have become common, but they are inaccurate.

The typical "tea party" goer tends conservative or libertarian, so it's easy to see why Matthews and his ilk would see them as out of the mainstream. To a liberal, in a liberal town, on a liberal network whose guests lean decidedly liberal, conservatives must indeed appear alien.

But "tea baggers," as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper crudely derides them, hold opinions and values that are shared by roughly half the country. They believe in limited government, fiscal responsibility, traditional values, and American exceptionalism. These are mainstream tenets, albeit admittedly conservative ones.

It's not surprising that those who disagree would want to denigrate, downplay, and marginalize the increasingly relevant "tea party" movement, but they do so at their own risk. When network commentators and newscasters regularly compromise their stature and integrity by taking cheap shots and playing petty partisan games, America takes note.

One wonders how much lower CNN and MSNBC's ratings will fall before they make a course correction and reel their talking heads back in.

Tale of Two Networks

In August, John Stossel spoke at an event for the Americans for Prosperity. This got little notice.

Last week, John Stossel spoke at an event for the Americans for Prosperity. This prompted a critical New York Times piece citing the speech as evidence of journalistic bias at Fox News, where Stossel works.

The difference? In August, Stossel worked for ABC.

Apparently, what is evidence of journalistic bias when one works for Fox is evidence of, um, nothing, when one works elsewhere.

Funny, that.

Wednesday morning coming down

All "my guys" lost in the yesterday's local election. It's always a downer when that happens. You spend the time reading and listening to the candidates, educating yourself on the issues, and forming opinions about what's best for the city. You, naturally, think you got it right, and so you're left to wonder in disappointment how "everyone else" got it so wrong.

I experienced this in big city Los Angeles. Now I'm experiencing it in small town New Hampshire. It's tougher in a small town. The margins are so close. One of "my guys" lost by 62 votes, a relatively comfortable margin in our small town, but a number small enough to drive home the just-out-of-reach factor. A change in only 32 votes would have altered that outcome. In a race outside my ward, the margin of victory was a mere 3 votes. I'm sure we'll see a recount on that one.

There was a clear pattern in this year's election. The incumbents were well established and liberally inclined. The challengers were business oriented, small-government types who championed free market solutions. One of them even evoked Adam Smith and his "invisible hand" during Candidate Night. I'm a sucker for the free market, of course, so this was music to my ears.

Unfortunately, free market ideas can be tough to sell. If they are articulated well, and supported by concrete examples, people "get it." They recognize the simple truths that have been born out by their own experiences, and they readily embrace them. Ronald Reagan was a master at this. He had a talent for stating in simple terms the life lessons Americans had internalized but never given voice to. He spoke for us.

On the other hand, if these ideas are articulated poorly, or go unarticulated, a candidate comes across as not having any ideas or being in favor of "doing nothing." This was the case in our local election. It may have been music to my ears, but I'm sure references to Adam Smith's "invisible hand" fell deaf on the ears of most of our citizenry. I doubt one in twenty voters in our town knows who Adam Smith was or has heard of his "invisible hand." The candidate would have done better to leave Smith out of it and instead cite examples of small businesses who, in a quest for profit, provide valuable services to our city by which all our lots are improved.

Worse, when asked if he had a plan, as a prospective councilman, for filling the empty store fronts in our downtown area, the candidate refused to expand beyond an emphatic "no!" This is fine for a member of the choir, like me, for I understood his implied contention that it's not the job of government to fill those store fronts. I recognize that our city's onerous regulations and high tax rate make it unattractive to business, and that the private sector would take up the cause of filling those store fronts if only our government would "get out of the way."

I'm sure most voters, understandably, took his terse "no" to mean that he had no ideas, and likely had given the matter little thought. And so, with one word, the candidate with the best solution and the clearest understanding of how the world actually works offered up a ringing endorsement for his opponent.

So, my disappointment is not only in my fellow citizens for not "getting it," but also in my candidates for not making "it" accessible. It's not enough to be right. You've got to sway minds, and "my guys" just didn't do a good job of it this time around.

The conversion of a pro-abortionist

Abortion isn't a hot issue with me. I find it morally troubling -- much less so when performed very early, very much so when performed late term -- but we seem determined to resolve the issue via the court system, so I don't have much interest in the politics of it. This, however, caught my attention at the human level:

The former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in southeast Texas says she had a "change of heart" after watching an abortion last month — and she quit her job and joined a pro-life group in praying outside the facility.

Abby Johnson, 29, used to escort women from their cars to the clinic in the eight years she volunteered and worked for Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. But she says she knew it was time to leave after she watched a fetus "crumple" as it was vacuumed out of a patient's uterus in September. . . .

Johnson said she became disillusioned with her job after her bosses pressured her for months to increase profits by performing more and more abortions, which cost patients between $505 and $695.

"Every meeting that we had was, 'We don't have enough money, we don't have enough money — we've got to keep these abortions coming,'" Johnson told FoxNews.com. "It's a very lucrative business and that's why they want to increase numbers. . . ."

Johnson said her bosses told her to change her "priorities" and focus on abortions, which she said made money for the office at a time when the recession has left them hurting.

"For them there's not a lot of money in education," she said. "There's as not as much money in family planning as there is abortion."

The politically correct label is "pro choice," but it's tough to read this last part without concluding that "pro abortion" really is the more appropriate description.

Medicare versus those evil insurance companies

Weekly Standard Blog:

As 60 Minutes reported last week, Medicare fraud is rampant and has now replaced the cocaine (ahem) business as the major criminal activity in South Florida. Both 60 Minutes and the Washington Post report that Medicare fraud now costs American taxpayers roughly $60 billion a year. That may sound like a lot of money, but surely it pales next to the extraordinary profits of private insurance companies, right?

Well, let's see.... Last year, the profits of the ten largest insurance companies in America were just over $8 billion -- combined. No single insurance company made even five percent of what Medicare reportedly loses in fraud.