One time Greenie, now rationalist Bjorn Lomborg wrote a priceless editorial in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal concerning the view on global warming from Bangladesh.
He visited the country to find out how people in a poor, low-lying country feel about what the richer countries propose to do to mitigate the presumed, yet unproven effects of global warming.
Sorry. "Global climate change," since as soon as WarmBoy Al Gore began making the former phrase popular, the damned planet began to cool.
Anyway.....
Lomborg writes,
"For Mrs. Begum, the choice is simple. After global warming was explained to her, she said:
"When my kids haven't got enough to eat, I don't think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about."
One of Bangladesh's most vulnerable citizens, Mrs. Begum has lost faith in the media and politicians.
"So many people like you have come and interviewed us. I have not seen any improvement in our conditions," she said."
So much for patrician UN-types deciding to soak the rich in developed countries for the presumed benefit of the poor in places like Bangladesh. As Lomborg noted,
"Getting basic sanitation and safe drinking water to the three billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion a year. By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 trillion a year by 2010. These cuts will do nothing to reduce the number of people with access to clean drinking water and sanitation."
Lomborg's work has consistently shown that the simplest, cheapest things that can be done by the developed world, e.g., providing clean water and working on basic diseases in the third world, offer the best returns in terms of lives improved and productivity of people around the world.
Now, he's shown that even the very people who would be affected agree with him.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Frisco Nan's Health Care Bill
Well, Frisco Nan did it. She rammed through a health care bill in the dead of a Saturday night this past weekend.
And only by the slimmest of margins, losing over 70 of her own party's members who are too afraid of voting for this abomination. And rightly so.
When is the last time you saw Congress actually imposing prison terms for citizens who fail to follow government's edicts on a completely personal matter- health care insurance?
Between income tax filing-related penalties for not showing proof of insurance, and further penalties if you remain uninsured, the liberals now in control of the federal government intends to intrude upon your life to a degree to which Republicans never even dreamt. And the latter are usually the ones accused of such intrusion into private lives, due to their general pro-life, anti-abortion stance.
It's also pretty rich to see suspected bribe-taking Democratic Senator Kent Conrad call Nan's bill's inclusion of another underfunded insurance plan a "Ponzi scheme" of which Bernie Madoff would be proud.
Perhaps civics was one of those areas Wonderboy missed in his drug-clouded youth, because he and Nan are both behaving as if it's just a matter of Senate passage and the signed bill will become law.
Anybody recall that trivial matter of the House and Senate conference to reconcile the two vastly different bills?
Even Max Baucus' grotesquely fraudulent bill, with its understatement of benefits and low-balling of costs, looks affordable next to Frisco Nan's porker.
What's worse is that every single Democratic strategist, pundit, spokesperson and leading legislator blatantly lies when they contend:
-Everyone who likes their current health insurance may keep it.
-Few people will move to the government option.
The truth is this. Most Americans are insured via their employer. When those employers see that the government option, with its interest-free startup loan and subsidized expenses, is a cheaper way to cover their employees, most will dump their current, privately-provided group insurance plans for the government option.
Employees don't actually have a choice in keeping "their" health insurance, because it hasn't been "theirs" to keep to begin with. It's provided by an employer who can change it at will.
Of course, if the GOP's recently-submitted health care proposals, including interstate marketing of health insurance and the extension of tax-preferenced health insurance premiums to individuals, as well as businesses, were in place, then these statements would be true.
But those proposals were ignored by the House and Senate Democrats, so the liberals' contentions on these points are simply lies.
Even the CBO is lying by vastly understating proposed health insurance bill costs by grossly underestimating the numbers of companies which will summarily drop private plans and stampede into unrealistically-low priced government plans.
Because of the Senate's need to pass something, then reconcile it with the House, it may not matter that Nan rushed her bill's passage prior to the Veteran's Day break, during which House members can be expected to be excoriated for its passage.
Maybe it is better that voters can be legitimately outraged over the bill's passage, threatening members with their seats rather than simply bluster against its inevitability.
If a reconciled bill returns for passage, those members may indeed quail at voting for it so close to next November's elections.
And only by the slimmest of margins, losing over 70 of her own party's members who are too afraid of voting for this abomination. And rightly so.
When is the last time you saw Congress actually imposing prison terms for citizens who fail to follow government's edicts on a completely personal matter- health care insurance?
Between income tax filing-related penalties for not showing proof of insurance, and further penalties if you remain uninsured, the liberals now in control of the federal government intends to intrude upon your life to a degree to which Republicans never even dreamt. And the latter are usually the ones accused of such intrusion into private lives, due to their general pro-life, anti-abortion stance.
It's also pretty rich to see suspected bribe-taking Democratic Senator Kent Conrad call Nan's bill's inclusion of another underfunded insurance plan a "Ponzi scheme" of which Bernie Madoff would be proud.
Perhaps civics was one of those areas Wonderboy missed in his drug-clouded youth, because he and Nan are both behaving as if it's just a matter of Senate passage and the signed bill will become law.
Anybody recall that trivial matter of the House and Senate conference to reconcile the two vastly different bills?
Even Max Baucus' grotesquely fraudulent bill, with its understatement of benefits and low-balling of costs, looks affordable next to Frisco Nan's porker.
What's worse is that every single Democratic strategist, pundit, spokesperson and leading legislator blatantly lies when they contend:
-Everyone who likes their current health insurance may keep it.
-Few people will move to the government option.
The truth is this. Most Americans are insured via their employer. When those employers see that the government option, with its interest-free startup loan and subsidized expenses, is a cheaper way to cover their employees, most will dump their current, privately-provided group insurance plans for the government option.
Employees don't actually have a choice in keeping "their" health insurance, because it hasn't been "theirs" to keep to begin with. It's provided by an employer who can change it at will.
Of course, if the GOP's recently-submitted health care proposals, including interstate marketing of health insurance and the extension of tax-preferenced health insurance premiums to individuals, as well as businesses, were in place, then these statements would be true.
But those proposals were ignored by the House and Senate Democrats, so the liberals' contentions on these points are simply lies.
Even the CBO is lying by vastly understating proposed health insurance bill costs by grossly underestimating the numbers of companies which will summarily drop private plans and stampede into unrealistically-low priced government plans.
Because of the Senate's need to pass something, then reconcile it with the House, it may not matter that Nan rushed her bill's passage prior to the Veteran's Day break, during which House members can be expected to be excoriated for its passage.
Maybe it is better that voters can be legitimately outraged over the bill's passage, threatening members with their seats rather than simply bluster against its inevitability.
If a reconciled bill returns for passage, those members may indeed quail at voting for it so close to next November's elections.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Is The Federal Reserve System Constitutional?
The Wall Street Journal carried a very interesting editorial on Saturday by Mark Spitznagel, the hedge fund manager who currently employs Nassim Taleb, the author of a noted book on financial systemic risk, "The Black Swan."
Spitznagel's piece focuses on Austrian Ludwig Von Mises' predictions of credit problems in the 1930s, and his book, The Theory of Money and Credit.
The editorialist cited Von Mises' work as he noted the folly of current Fed interest rate policy,
"Government-imposed interest rates artificially below rates demanded by savers leads to increased borrowing and capital investment beyond what savers will provide. This causes temporarily higher employment, wages and consumption.
Ordinarily, any random spikes in credit would be quickly absorbed by the system- the pricing errors corrected, the half-baked investments liquidated, like a supple tree yielding to the wind and then returning. But when the government holds rates artificially low in order to feed ever higher capital investment in otherwise unsound, unsustainable businesses, it creates the conditions for a crash. Everyone looks smart for a while, but eventually the whole monstrosity collapses under its own weight through a credit contraction or, worse, a banking collapse.
The system is dramatically susceptible to errors, both on the policy side and the entrepreneurial side. Government expansion of credit takes a system otherwise capable of adjustment and resilience and transforms it into one with tremendous cyclical volatility."
With these passages in mind, I wondered aloud, over coffee, to a colleague this weekend whether the Federal Reserve Act was unconstitutional?
How could the income tax have required a constitutional amendment, whereas creating a central bank did not?
Surely, as you read the Constitution, you cannot find any basis on which Congress can simply create a central bank. There's not even a reference to the control of the US currency in the founding document.
From another Journal editorial last year, I know that the creation of the Federal Reserve System dates from the Progressive Era of about a century ago. It was a sop to the Populist movement which demanded free coinage of silver to inflate farmers out of their debt problems.
In retrospect, it's clear that the modern Fed is particularly susceptible to precisely the sort of errors of which Spitznagel, citing Von Mises, writes. Only two Fed Chairmen in its long history are accorded almost unalloyed respect- William McChesney Martin and Paul Volcker. Both are revered for their ability to stand up to administrations and Congress, executing their office's responsibilities for long term US economic health, rather than short term credit demands.
Martin was responsible for the famed Korean War era Accord, by which the Fed was released from its obligation to fund Treasury debt and keep rates low as part of that accommodation. Though a senior Treasury official when he authored the Accord, Martin immediately became Fed chairman upon McCabe's resignation, which was triggered by the fallout from the Accord and Truman's Treasury Secretary's refusal to work any longer with McCabe.
In that linked source on the Accord's history, it is notable that there was an exchange between McCabe and a Senator regarding which had primacy, the Treasury or the Fed. The lack of clarity over this point, and the Fed's "bolted on" nature remains to this day, nearly 60 years later.
It would be asking a lot to now reverse course nearly 100 years after the Fed was created. But I truly fear that we are, as a nation, arriving at several "tipping points" simultaneously, and one of them is the Fed's continuing wrongheadedness with respect to interest rate and liquidity policies.
It has been a major cause of bad credit decisions in the US economy from the day that Alan Greenspan began easing monetary policy in the post-9/11 environment. While not by any means the only governmental actor nor agency which contributed to the real estate-based credit bubble, the bursting of which, in 2007 and 2008, wreaked such global economic havoc, the Fed certainly did more than its share to facilitate the mess.
Its current 0% rate policy seems to be repeating the Greenspan's error of 2001, with hardly a voice of dissent nor caution that we should have learned from the former's mistakes earlier this decade.
I believe Milton Friedman was right on both political as well as economic grounds when he argued for dissolving the Federal Reserve's role in monetary policy and, instead, setting a single annual growth rate for the nation's monetary base.
Such a law, passed by Congress, would certainly be Constitutional, whereas it seems there is absolutely no basis in the Constitution for the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Spitznagel's piece focuses on Austrian Ludwig Von Mises' predictions of credit problems in the 1930s, and his book, The Theory of Money and Credit.
The editorialist cited Von Mises' work as he noted the folly of current Fed interest rate policy,
"Government-imposed interest rates artificially below rates demanded by savers leads to increased borrowing and capital investment beyond what savers will provide. This causes temporarily higher employment, wages and consumption.
Ordinarily, any random spikes in credit would be quickly absorbed by the system- the pricing errors corrected, the half-baked investments liquidated, like a supple tree yielding to the wind and then returning. But when the government holds rates artificially low in order to feed ever higher capital investment in otherwise unsound, unsustainable businesses, it creates the conditions for a crash. Everyone looks smart for a while, but eventually the whole monstrosity collapses under its own weight through a credit contraction or, worse, a banking collapse.
The system is dramatically susceptible to errors, both on the policy side and the entrepreneurial side. Government expansion of credit takes a system otherwise capable of adjustment and resilience and transforms it into one with tremendous cyclical volatility."
With these passages in mind, I wondered aloud, over coffee, to a colleague this weekend whether the Federal Reserve Act was unconstitutional?
How could the income tax have required a constitutional amendment, whereas creating a central bank did not?
Surely, as you read the Constitution, you cannot find any basis on which Congress can simply create a central bank. There's not even a reference to the control of the US currency in the founding document.
From another Journal editorial last year, I know that the creation of the Federal Reserve System dates from the Progressive Era of about a century ago. It was a sop to the Populist movement which demanded free coinage of silver to inflate farmers out of their debt problems.
In retrospect, it's clear that the modern Fed is particularly susceptible to precisely the sort of errors of which Spitznagel, citing Von Mises, writes. Only two Fed Chairmen in its long history are accorded almost unalloyed respect- William McChesney Martin and Paul Volcker. Both are revered for their ability to stand up to administrations and Congress, executing their office's responsibilities for long term US economic health, rather than short term credit demands.
Martin was responsible for the famed Korean War era Accord, by which the Fed was released from its obligation to fund Treasury debt and keep rates low as part of that accommodation. Though a senior Treasury official when he authored the Accord, Martin immediately became Fed chairman upon McCabe's resignation, which was triggered by the fallout from the Accord and Truman's Treasury Secretary's refusal to work any longer with McCabe.
In that linked source on the Accord's history, it is notable that there was an exchange between McCabe and a Senator regarding which had primacy, the Treasury or the Fed. The lack of clarity over this point, and the Fed's "bolted on" nature remains to this day, nearly 60 years later.
It would be asking a lot to now reverse course nearly 100 years after the Fed was created. But I truly fear that we are, as a nation, arriving at several "tipping points" simultaneously, and one of them is the Fed's continuing wrongheadedness with respect to interest rate and liquidity policies.
It has been a major cause of bad credit decisions in the US economy from the day that Alan Greenspan began easing monetary policy in the post-9/11 environment. While not by any means the only governmental actor nor agency which contributed to the real estate-based credit bubble, the bursting of which, in 2007 and 2008, wreaked such global economic havoc, the Fed certainly did more than its share to facilitate the mess.
Its current 0% rate policy seems to be repeating the Greenspan's error of 2001, with hardly a voice of dissent nor caution that we should have learned from the former's mistakes earlier this decade.
I believe Milton Friedman was right on both political as well as economic grounds when he argued for dissolving the Federal Reserve's role in monetary policy and, instead, setting a single annual growth rate for the nation's monetary base.
Such a law, passed by Congress, would certainly be Constitutional, whereas it seems there is absolutely no basis in the Constitution for the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thomas Frank's Tilted Little Yard
There's an ultra-liberal columnist by the name of Thomas Frank whose writing appears on Wednesday's in the Wall Street Journal, just below Holman Jenkins' column.
I'm not sure just when Frank was added to the paper's slate of resident editorialists, but I suspect it has something to do with Murdoch's newly-installed publisher attempting to provide a similar "balance" to the Journal's editorial staff as is found on News Corporation's Fox News cable channel.
Frank is so liberal and, no pun intended, frankly wrong on so many issues that it actually makes me wish- despite the pain- for the return of one-time Journal writer Al Hunt.
And that is no small feat.
For over a year, one of my business colleagues and I have discussed some of Frank's more outrageous, ill-informed and out-of-touch with reality pieces. But this past Wednesday, Frank finally wrote something about which I apparently have more knowledge than him, and, is truly a total misrepresentation of reality.
The subject in question, to use Frank's own title, is "Glenn Beck's Hotline to Nowhere."
Frank's misinformation begins with the editorial's featured quote in the middle of the piece,
"The White House has no obligation to correct willful ignorance."
Perhaps true, but totally irrelevant to the piece's title. Frank starts off totally ignorant of the chain of events leading to Beck's 'hotline.'
Here's the back story Frank either doesn't know, or won't divulge.
Beginning a few months ago, Wonderboy's administration began to demonize Fox News in a sort of head fake to get the rest of the media, and many voters, distracted from its push for the health care bill.
It began with the administration's spokesperson, Robert Gibbs, solemnly declaring that Fox isn't really a news organization, and publishes untrue stories. No specific examples were forthcoming. I believe that Wonderboy's chief of staff got in on the act, as well. Administration member Anita Dunn apparently joined the pile-on.
In an interview, Wonderboy himself mused that Fox was mostly opinion shows, not a news organization. In the past, he's threatened NewsCorp, a publicly-held company, by name as being too powerful.
Following the public media assault on Fox News, the White House began to publish its alleged identification of lies on a website. To my recollection, the only one of note was that Beck referred to the wrong city when reporting on how much money had been lost by an Olympics host. But Beck noted that the White House had taken it upon itself to be a fact checker.
Frank missed this entirely, or is simply, as many liberals are wont to do, in denial about this truth.
Beck grabbed the opportunity to ask the White House to back up its allegations that Fox News reports lies as truth. He installed the red hotline, then sent its number to Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director.
Beck was quite clear about the setup. The White House had attacked Fox News for publishing lies, and begun a website on the topic. Beck provided an easy facility for Dunn to directly communicate lies which she or other administration officials had detected on Fox News.
The phone, of course, has never rung. But it was only for the White House, and only in response to Wonderboy's team's accusation of Fox News for publishing lies, and then going so far as to start a website devoted to 'fact checking.'
Further, about a week into the hotline watch, Beck noticed that someone in the administration emailed MSNBC within an hour of some story, correcting what it believed was an untruth.
Beck again jumped on this, observing that the administration clearly felt it worthwhile to communicate directly with some media outlets, such as its favorite, left-leaning cable channel, MSNBC. True, fewer people watch MSNBC than almost any other cable channel. But Beck never the less seized on the event to point out how hypocritical and cowardly Wonderboy and his minions are behaving.
None of this relevant information appears in Frank's one-sided lambaste of Beck. Instead, he writes,
"On Monday I wrote to an old friend, Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois who has been a frequent target of Mr. Beck in recent weeks for his left-wing views and also for co-founding Free Press, an advocacy group on media policy. Did Mr. McChesney get a chance to respond on the red phone or any other way? No. "He never asked me or Free Press to call the red phone," Mr. McChesney wrote me.
Then I emailed Mark Lloyd, the Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Beck has attacked Mr. Lloyd numerous times in recent weeks, repeatedly airing video clips in which he appears to hold noxious views. Did Mr. Lloyd get a chance to call the red phone? "No, no one gave me a phone number to call Beck."
Nor should Mr. Beck require a phone call from the White House to understand that lots of people, including conservatives, have cited Mao and Lenin and other such demonic figures in all sorts of contexts, and that they aren't always careful, when so citing, to point out what bad people these were. "
You can see that Frank doesn't understand, or doesn't want to understand, that Beck's hotline is only relevant for and directed at the White House, and with good reason. These other people have nothing to do with it.
Frank went on to assert,
"Consider a few of the other grand assertions tossed out by the panic-peddling host last week: that the cause of last year's financial crisis was pressure exerted by Acorn and "the people in Washington" on otherwise-reluctant mortgage lenders; that the cause of the inflation of the 1970s was President Jimmy Carter's quest for a "socialist utopia." "
This is actually true, despite Frank's desire that it not be. For proof, check yesterday's post on my business blog, in which I discuss Charlie Gasparino's new book on the topic. Gasparino is clear on assigning responsibility to government officials, including Andrew Cuomo and Barney Frank.
These are postulates that it is only possible to believe after you have utterly closed yourself off to conventional ways of knowing, after you have decided that the reporting and analysis and scholarship on these subjects are not worth reading, and that you will choose ideological fairy tales over reality until the day a magical phone call comes from on high."
Totally untrue, as you will understand by reading about Gasparino's book and numerous Journal editorials over the past year. You can even find a post on this blog devoted to quotes by liberal government officials demanding that Freddie and Fannie increase their securitization of low-income, poor-quality mortgages. ACORN and Congressionally-mandated CRA mortgage lending requirements figured large in this mess.
Frank concludes with these passages,
What Mr. Beck's silent phone really symbolizes is a new kind of ignorance, a coming high-tech dark age in which people can choose to blow off professional standards of inquiry; in which they can wall themselves off with cable TV and friendly Web sites, dismiss what displeases as liberal bias, and demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself.
Why not let Mr. Beck and his viewers have their fun? Because ideas have consequences. Maybe, as many believe, Glenn Beck is indeed the future of the conservative movement. From tea parties to town-hall meetings, thousands are signing up and fitting themselves out with their very own hotline to nowhere. "
Thomas Frank is probably a pretty good indicator of just how clueless the liberal Democrats in this country are to the coming storm of rage from millions of centrist, independent voters, along with a conservative core of the Republican party. It's not about random hotlines. Or dismissing what, if Keith Olberman were doing it, Frank would consider to be 'investigative journalism.'
Rather than walling themselves off from anything, Beck's viewers are learning more about what conventional, liberally-biased media outlets won't investigate. Socialist members of Wonderboy's administration. Selective persecution of balanced media outlets by a fearful, cowardly White House.
Frank is on display in his recent editorial as being clueless, biased, and in denial about reality on so many levels. Not to mention having failed in his own 'investigative' piece, to learn the actual background of the story which he attempts to lampoon.
I'm not sure just when Frank was added to the paper's slate of resident editorialists, but I suspect it has something to do with Murdoch's newly-installed publisher attempting to provide a similar "balance" to the Journal's editorial staff as is found on News Corporation's Fox News cable channel.
Frank is so liberal and, no pun intended, frankly wrong on so many issues that it actually makes me wish- despite the pain- for the return of one-time Journal writer Al Hunt.
And that is no small feat.
For over a year, one of my business colleagues and I have discussed some of Frank's more outrageous, ill-informed and out-of-touch with reality pieces. But this past Wednesday, Frank finally wrote something about which I apparently have more knowledge than him, and, is truly a total misrepresentation of reality.
The subject in question, to use Frank's own title, is "Glenn Beck's Hotline to Nowhere."
Frank's misinformation begins with the editorial's featured quote in the middle of the piece,
"The White House has no obligation to correct willful ignorance."
Perhaps true, but totally irrelevant to the piece's title. Frank starts off totally ignorant of the chain of events leading to Beck's 'hotline.'
Here's the back story Frank either doesn't know, or won't divulge.
Beginning a few months ago, Wonderboy's administration began to demonize Fox News in a sort of head fake to get the rest of the media, and many voters, distracted from its push for the health care bill.
It began with the administration's spokesperson, Robert Gibbs, solemnly declaring that Fox isn't really a news organization, and publishes untrue stories. No specific examples were forthcoming. I believe that Wonderboy's chief of staff got in on the act, as well. Administration member Anita Dunn apparently joined the pile-on.
In an interview, Wonderboy himself mused that Fox was mostly opinion shows, not a news organization. In the past, he's threatened NewsCorp, a publicly-held company, by name as being too powerful.
Following the public media assault on Fox News, the White House began to publish its alleged identification of lies on a website. To my recollection, the only one of note was that Beck referred to the wrong city when reporting on how much money had been lost by an Olympics host. But Beck noted that the White House had taken it upon itself to be a fact checker.
Frank missed this entirely, or is simply, as many liberals are wont to do, in denial about this truth.
Beck grabbed the opportunity to ask the White House to back up its allegations that Fox News reports lies as truth. He installed the red hotline, then sent its number to Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director.
Beck was quite clear about the setup. The White House had attacked Fox News for publishing lies, and begun a website on the topic. Beck provided an easy facility for Dunn to directly communicate lies which she or other administration officials had detected on Fox News.
The phone, of course, has never rung. But it was only for the White House, and only in response to Wonderboy's team's accusation of Fox News for publishing lies, and then going so far as to start a website devoted to 'fact checking.'
Further, about a week into the hotline watch, Beck noticed that someone in the administration emailed MSNBC within an hour of some story, correcting what it believed was an untruth.
Beck again jumped on this, observing that the administration clearly felt it worthwhile to communicate directly with some media outlets, such as its favorite, left-leaning cable channel, MSNBC. True, fewer people watch MSNBC than almost any other cable channel. But Beck never the less seized on the event to point out how hypocritical and cowardly Wonderboy and his minions are behaving.
None of this relevant information appears in Frank's one-sided lambaste of Beck. Instead, he writes,
"On Monday I wrote to an old friend, Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois who has been a frequent target of Mr. Beck in recent weeks for his left-wing views and also for co-founding Free Press, an advocacy group on media policy. Did Mr. McChesney get a chance to respond on the red phone or any other way? No. "He never asked me or Free Press to call the red phone," Mr. McChesney wrote me.
Then I emailed Mark Lloyd, the Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Beck has attacked Mr. Lloyd numerous times in recent weeks, repeatedly airing video clips in which he appears to hold noxious views. Did Mr. Lloyd get a chance to call the red phone? "No, no one gave me a phone number to call Beck."
Nor should Mr. Beck require a phone call from the White House to understand that lots of people, including conservatives, have cited Mao and Lenin and other such demonic figures in all sorts of contexts, and that they aren't always careful, when so citing, to point out what bad people these were. "
You can see that Frank doesn't understand, or doesn't want to understand, that Beck's hotline is only relevant for and directed at the White House, and with good reason. These other people have nothing to do with it.
Frank went on to assert,
"Consider a few of the other grand assertions tossed out by the panic-peddling host last week: that the cause of last year's financial crisis was pressure exerted by Acorn and "the people in Washington" on otherwise-reluctant mortgage lenders; that the cause of the inflation of the 1970s was President Jimmy Carter's quest for a "socialist utopia." "
This is actually true, despite Frank's desire that it not be. For proof, check yesterday's post on my business blog, in which I discuss Charlie Gasparino's new book on the topic. Gasparino is clear on assigning responsibility to government officials, including Andrew Cuomo and Barney Frank.
These are postulates that it is only possible to believe after you have utterly closed yourself off to conventional ways of knowing, after you have decided that the reporting and analysis and scholarship on these subjects are not worth reading, and that you will choose ideological fairy tales over reality until the day a magical phone call comes from on high."
Totally untrue, as you will understand by reading about Gasparino's book and numerous Journal editorials over the past year. You can even find a post on this blog devoted to quotes by liberal government officials demanding that Freddie and Fannie increase their securitization of low-income, poor-quality mortgages. ACORN and Congressionally-mandated CRA mortgage lending requirements figured large in this mess.
Frank concludes with these passages,
What Mr. Beck's silent phone really symbolizes is a new kind of ignorance, a coming high-tech dark age in which people can choose to blow off professional standards of inquiry; in which they can wall themselves off with cable TV and friendly Web sites, dismiss what displeases as liberal bias, and demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself.
Why not let Mr. Beck and his viewers have their fun? Because ideas have consequences. Maybe, as many believe, Glenn Beck is indeed the future of the conservative movement. From tea parties to town-hall meetings, thousands are signing up and fitting themselves out with their very own hotline to nowhere. "
Thomas Frank is probably a pretty good indicator of just how clueless the liberal Democrats in this country are to the coming storm of rage from millions of centrist, independent voters, along with a conservative core of the Republican party. It's not about random hotlines. Or dismissing what, if Keith Olberman were doing it, Frank would consider to be 'investigative journalism.'
Rather than walling themselves off from anything, Beck's viewers are learning more about what conventional, liberally-biased media outlets won't investigate. Socialist members of Wonderboy's administration. Selective persecution of balanced media outlets by a fearful, cowardly White House.
Frank is on display in his recent editorial as being clueless, biased, and in denial about reality on so many levels. Not to mention having failed in his own 'investigative' piece, to learn the actual background of the story which he attempts to lampoon.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Glenn Beck & PETA On Al Gore's Hypocrisy
Al Gore's hypocrisy is beginning to become more apparent.
First it was Bjorn Lomborg's challenges to many claims in Warm-Boy Al's (liberal) prize-winning documentary. Al has been ducking a direct confrontation with the esteemed researcher for years.
Next, it was the subtle change from 'global warming' to 'climate change,' because, well, the earth hasn't actually been uniformly warming according to Al's schedule.
Then it became more well-known that Al has made well over $100MM from investments which benefited from his false cries of coming environmental destruction.
Now, PETA is after the Warm One to go vegetarian. Glenn Beck provides an interview with the head of PETA in this hilarious clip on YouTube.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
But I think the PETA head is on target in labeling Al a hypocrite for ignoring what would be a simple and easy lifestyle change in keeping with his alleged concern for the environment.
How's that for an "inconvenient truth?"
First it was Bjorn Lomborg's challenges to many claims in Warm-Boy Al's (liberal) prize-winning documentary. Al has been ducking a direct confrontation with the esteemed researcher for years.
Next, it was the subtle change from 'global warming' to 'climate change,' because, well, the earth hasn't actually been uniformly warming according to Al's schedule.
Then it became more well-known that Al has made well over $100MM from investments which benefited from his false cries of coming environmental destruction.
Now, PETA is after the Warm One to go vegetarian. Glenn Beck provides an interview with the head of PETA in this hilarious clip on YouTube.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
But I think the PETA head is on target in labeling Al a hypocrite for ignoring what would be a simple and easy lifestyle change in keeping with his alleged concern for the environment.
How's that for an "inconvenient truth?"
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Usual Excuses & Lies From The Usual Liberal Suspects
It's official.
Republican governors won in blue state New Jersey and 'purple,' slowly returning to red state Virginia. In Virginia, the rest of the GOP slate swept in with Governor McDonnell.
In the upstate NY 23rd District, the Democrat squeaked by the Conservative candidate, benefiting from the bizarre endorsement by the withdrawing GOP candidate. This situation was so strange as to provide no national reading.
Of course, various Democratic pundits began excusing these losses by the middle of yesterday evening. On Fox News, Howard Dean's ex-campaign manager claimed that neither gubernatorial loss meant anything significant for Wonderboy or the greater liberal Democratic regime in Congress. If anything, he claimed, it meant trouble for all incumbents when challenged by their parties' fringes.
This morning, on CNBC, liberal apologist and businessman Don Peebles, a prominent black supporter of the country's first black president, crowed about how nothing had changed for Wonderboy. His agenda, declared Peebles, ignoring the election results, was now more important than ever, and any delays due to minor issues like free speech and opposing views were inexcusable. Health care must be passed because our First Rookie says so.
On the failure of Wonderboy's five- count 'em- trips to the Garden State on loser Corzine's behalf, Peebles excused and explained it by saying there was absolutely no credibility on the line. Presidents always must and do support their party's governors.
A lie, but Peebles has drunk so much Kool-Aid now that he can't tell the difference anymore. And, besides, he's no politician. Just a fund raiser who is probably hoping to ride somebody's political coattails.
I believe Karl Rove and Brit Hume got it right when they opined that, with health care passage stretching into 2010, these two GOP victories will quite possibly and probably immobilize the 40+ Democratic Representatives with seats in districts won by McCain last year.
Contrary to popular conceptions, an analysis of the House and Senate revealed that only a 2 seat change in the latter chamber will remove the ability of Harry Reid to prevent cloture, thus delaying votes on bills to who knows when? The House, by contrast, would need to see a 40 seat shift to give a Republican the Speaker's gavel.
Personally, I believe that 40 seat move is quite possible. If the GOP had removed the perennially, eerily tan Boehner from a leadership position, it would be a slam dunk.
But, back to last night.
There's no doubt that, had either gubernatorial race, or the rest of the Virginia contests, gone the other way, Wonderboy and his team would be crowing about the electorate re-validating his win last November. And how this reinforced the need to inject more government into every sector of American life.
Instead, they are silent and will try hard to spin the results as meaningless.
As several Fox News and CNBC guest pundits noted, the big news for all Democratic candidates next year is that Wonderboy couldn't get his personal, energized motley crew of voters out for other candidates from his party.
Bad news if you are a Democratic House blue dog, or simply worried about how much more debt and spending your district's adult, as opposed to Wonderboy's kiddie voters, will tolerate.
Republican governors won in blue state New Jersey and 'purple,' slowly returning to red state Virginia. In Virginia, the rest of the GOP slate swept in with Governor McDonnell.
In the upstate NY 23rd District, the Democrat squeaked by the Conservative candidate, benefiting from the bizarre endorsement by the withdrawing GOP candidate. This situation was so strange as to provide no national reading.
Of course, various Democratic pundits began excusing these losses by the middle of yesterday evening. On Fox News, Howard Dean's ex-campaign manager claimed that neither gubernatorial loss meant anything significant for Wonderboy or the greater liberal Democratic regime in Congress. If anything, he claimed, it meant trouble for all incumbents when challenged by their parties' fringes.
This morning, on CNBC, liberal apologist and businessman Don Peebles, a prominent black supporter of the country's first black president, crowed about how nothing had changed for Wonderboy. His agenda, declared Peebles, ignoring the election results, was now more important than ever, and any delays due to minor issues like free speech and opposing views were inexcusable. Health care must be passed because our First Rookie says so.
On the failure of Wonderboy's five- count 'em- trips to the Garden State on loser Corzine's behalf, Peebles excused and explained it by saying there was absolutely no credibility on the line. Presidents always must and do support their party's governors.
A lie, but Peebles has drunk so much Kool-Aid now that he can't tell the difference anymore. And, besides, he's no politician. Just a fund raiser who is probably hoping to ride somebody's political coattails.
I believe Karl Rove and Brit Hume got it right when they opined that, with health care passage stretching into 2010, these two GOP victories will quite possibly and probably immobilize the 40+ Democratic Representatives with seats in districts won by McCain last year.
Contrary to popular conceptions, an analysis of the House and Senate revealed that only a 2 seat change in the latter chamber will remove the ability of Harry Reid to prevent cloture, thus delaying votes on bills to who knows when? The House, by contrast, would need to see a 40 seat shift to give a Republican the Speaker's gavel.
Personally, I believe that 40 seat move is quite possible. If the GOP had removed the perennially, eerily tan Boehner from a leadership position, it would be a slam dunk.
But, back to last night.
There's no doubt that, had either gubernatorial race, or the rest of the Virginia contests, gone the other way, Wonderboy and his team would be crowing about the electorate re-validating his win last November. And how this reinforced the need to inject more government into every sector of American life.
Instead, they are silent and will try hard to spin the results as meaningless.
As several Fox News and CNBC guest pundits noted, the big news for all Democratic candidates next year is that Wonderboy couldn't get his personal, energized motley crew of voters out for other candidates from his party.
Bad news if you are a Democratic House blue dog, or simply worried about how much more debt and spending your district's adult, as opposed to Wonderboy's kiddie voters, will tolerate.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Kim Strassel On HarryCare's Public Option
Kim Strassel wrote an interesting piece in last Friday's Wall Street Journal regarding the reason Harry Reid added the infamous "public option" to his HarryCare bill.
It may be cynical, but Strassel thinks he added it as a diversion, so people would sort of forget the bigger, simpler issue of just not wanting the basic HarryCare bill at all.
Specifically, the idea that, in order to allow US consumers to spend less on health care, you don't need to: reform tort law, allow interstate purchase/marketing of health insurance, or level the tax-preference basis of health insurance between those who receive health insurance as a pre-tax benefit, and those who purchase it with after-tax dollars.
Instead, HarryCare will ignore all of that, and offer the dubious claim that his bill will 'fix' health care, with or without the public option.
Very reasonably, and not alone, Strassel argues that Reid can now say he tried for the uber-liberal goodie, the public option, and thus shed responsibility for whatever happens next. At moderates, if it passes, he can thumb his nose, while, if it doesn't, he can explain it was never his idea anyway. Liberals pushed him to it.
But as Strassel points out, Harry has now gotten everyone squabbling over this frill, and perhaps they'll forget the big elephant to which it is attached.
She notes that he's Senate Majority leader for a reason, and it's not because he's stupid.
Perhaps so.
Perhaps today's two gubernatorial and the special upstate NY Congressional elections will give liberals pause.
Or it may make them accelerate the damage they can do before they lose the House next November and end the Reign of Wonderboy for good.
It may be cynical, but Strassel thinks he added it as a diversion, so people would sort of forget the bigger, simpler issue of just not wanting the basic HarryCare bill at all.
Specifically, the idea that, in order to allow US consumers to spend less on health care, you don't need to: reform tort law, allow interstate purchase/marketing of health insurance, or level the tax-preference basis of health insurance between those who receive health insurance as a pre-tax benefit, and those who purchase it with after-tax dollars.
Instead, HarryCare will ignore all of that, and offer the dubious claim that his bill will 'fix' health care, with or without the public option.
Very reasonably, and not alone, Strassel argues that Reid can now say he tried for the uber-liberal goodie, the public option, and thus shed responsibility for whatever happens next. At moderates, if it passes, he can thumb his nose, while, if it doesn't, he can explain it was never his idea anyway. Liberals pushed him to it.
But as Strassel points out, Harry has now gotten everyone squabbling over this frill, and perhaps they'll forget the big elephant to which it is attached.
She notes that he's Senate Majority leader for a reason, and it's not because he's stupid.
Perhaps so.
Perhaps today's two gubernatorial and the special upstate NY Congressional elections will give liberals pause.
Or it may make them accelerate the damage they can do before they lose the House next November and end the Reign of Wonderboy for good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
