Libertarian Leanings

Sarah

Mark Steyn on Sarah Palin's resignation:

'Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?'

Foreclosure Stats

According to liberal wisdom, unbridled capitalism is largely to blame for the current foreclosure mess.  It was those subprime lenders.  First, they made so many "liar loans," loans where lenders never bothered to do any income verification.  On top of that, those unscrupulous subprime lenders supposedly misled borrowers into taking out adjustable rate mortgages that they would never be able to afford when monthly payments inevitably went up.  

Not so, says Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University of Texas.

'But the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began -  the third quarter of 2006 -- during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)

[...[

What about upward resets in mortgage interest rates? I found that interest rate resets did not measurably increase foreclosures until the reset was greater than four percentage points. Only 8% of foreclosures had an interest rate increase of that much. Thus the overall impact of upward interest rate resets is much smaller than the impact from equity.'

The most important factor was the amount of homeowner equity in the house.  In other words, if forced to sell would the homeowner get enough from the sale of the house to pay off the existing mortgage.  When the answer is no, foreclosure is a likely result. 

How many homeowners have been forced to sell because they lost their jobs?  The solution to the foreclosure crisis is strong economic growth and job creation.  Unfortunately, the Obama administration has chosen to pursue policies aimed at income redistribution rather than economic growth.

Well, they're lying of course...

When it got out that the Washington Post was selling access to media and political elite, White House officials claimed that the administration had no idea what the Post was up to.

The Washington Post has long prided itself on its access to the capital's elite. Now, it appears, the paper is willing to sell that access.

In a flier circulated to Beltway lobbyists, the Post touted a "salon" program which gives "exclusive access" to "Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds" for between $25,000 and $250,000. (View an image of the flier.)

White House officials said privately Thursday that the administration had no idea that the Post was peddling access to its officials.

The first event, entitled "Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans" is scheduled for July 21, at the home of Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth.

"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No," the flier states. "The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it."

The Post denies the denies that it would ever refrain from confrontational questioning.

"We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable," Brauchli's e-mail states. "There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values."

Are they trying to tell us they don't participate in White House press conferences, or are those dog and pony shows their idea of being tough on Obama?  Nobody controls the media like Obama. 

Updated 4:10pm

Supremes Overturn Sotomayor

Ruling in favor of white New Haven firefighters, the Supreme Court reversed a decision by Obama Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor in Ricci v. DeStefano.  The firefighters were denied promotions when the city of New Haven threw out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics passed it.  The city of New Haven claimed it feared a lawsuit from minorities.

'The white firefighters filed suit, saying their rights had been violated under both the law and the Constitution's protections of due process.

District Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissed their suit before it went to trial. She said in her 47-page decision that the city was justified under the law in junking the test, even if it could not explain its flaws.

The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation. But instead of issuing a detailed and signed opinion, the panel said in a brief summary that, although it was "not unsympathetic" to the plight of the white firefighters, it unanimously affirmed the lower court's decision for "reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion."

Kennedy's opinion referred to the judgment of Sotomayor and the other judges only by noting the short opinion.

Kennedy said the standard for whether an employer may discard a test is whether there is a strong reason to the employer to believe that the test is flawed in a way that discriminates against minorities, not just by looking at the results.

In New Haven's case, "there is no evidence -- let alone the required strong basis in evidence -- that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city," Kennedy wrote.

The case has drawn considerable attention not just because of Sotomayor's role but because of the sympathetic nature of the claim brought by the firefighters, who said they were discriminated against simply because of the color of their skin.

The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is a veteran firefighter who said in sworn statements that he spent thousands of dollars in preparation and studied for months for the exam. Ricci said he is dyslexic, so he had tapes made of the test materials and listened to them on his commute to work.'

And now for the bad news.  

'On the last day on the bench for retiring Justice David H. Souter, the court failed to reach a decision on one of its most important cases of the term: whether a conservative group's production of a 90-minute film on Hillary Rodham Clinton amounted to a documentary, or merely a long commercial of the type restricted by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.

Instead, the court took the unusual action of scheduling new arguments on the case for Sept. 9, before the court's new term begins next October. The court wants new briefings on issues that could lead to the justices declaring unconstitutional that part of the act, formally called the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002.

The court's decision probably will lead Democrats to push efforts to have a vote on Sotomayor's confirmation so she can be in place before the September hearing, although it is unclear whether her replacement of Souter would affect the outcome of the case.'

So we'll have to wait until September to find out if the court will strike down the constitutional right liberals would like to have for limiting conservative speech.

Leftist Removed -- Obama Deeply Concerned

US President Barack Obama said he was deeply concerned after the Honduran military swooped in on elected President Manuel Zelaya's home and sent him off to Costa Rica and exile.  Hours later the Honduran Congress voted in an interim leader, Roberto Micheletti, who imposed a 48 hour curfew.  Obama was joined by his Venezuelan buddy Hugo Chavez in condemning the takeover.

'Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, also in the Nicaraguan capital, vowed to do "everything that is necessary in political, diplomatic, social and moral aspects to restore the government of Manuel Zelaya".

In Honduras however, Micheletti brushed off worldwide condemnation of the takeover.

He "had came to the presidency not by a coup d'etat but by a completely legal process as set out in our laws," he said. The curfew would end on Tuesday, he added.

[...]

Zelaya's overthrow was triggered by a standoff between the president and the military and legal institutions over his bid to secure a second term.

Congress said it had voted unanimously to remove the president from office for "apparent misconduct" and "repeated violations of the constitution and the law and disregard of orders and judgments of the institutions".

Micheletti was appointed to serve out the rest of the term, which ends in January. New general elections are planned for November 29.

Zelaya, elected to a non-renewable four-year term in 2005, had planned a vote Sunday asking Hondurans to sanction a referendum to allow him to stand again in the November polls.

The referendum had been ruled illegal by Honduras's top court and was opposed by the military, but Zelaya vowed to go ahead.  The Supreme Court said Sunday that it had ordered the president's ouster to protect law and order in the nation of some seven million people.'

Zelaya fired military chief, General Romeo Vasquez after military commanders refused to distribute ballot boxes for the referendum.  The Honduran Supreme Court turned around and voted unanimously to reinstate Vasquez.

Meanwhile Washington is working with other members of the Organization of American States on a consensus resolution to condemn the coup, but at the same time a senior U.S. State Department official warned that Honduras should not be "interfered with bilaterally by any country in the Americas".

Update:  The Wall Street Journal has more.  It seems Hillary Clinton is siding with the lefty.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

So, will the Obama administration will stand by its rhetorical campaign pledges about adhering to the rule of law?   It would appear the Honduran Supreme Court, Congress, Attorney General, and military all acted within Honduran law,  Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department doesn't care for the outcome.  If Hillary's actions are any indication, and they should be, the Obama administration would prefer the rise of a leftist dictator in Honduras.  What a sad state of affairs, should Obama decide that the hypothetical outcome of an illegal election that hasn't happened reflects "will of the Honduran people," and actively works to restore the aspiring dictator to power.

Weather Now Subject to Congressional Oversight

Jim Lindgren put it well.

'As you undoubtedly know by now, Congress voted on Friday to change the weather — or more accurately, the climate. The idea that a government of one country could appreciably change the world's climate over the next 40 years is the ultimate hubris.'

Less hubris than scam. it's a huge power grab intended to further entrench the political class.  Businesses and individuals to come hat in hand before the governing powers seeking permission to breath.  Lest we exceed our CO2 allotment.

The Strength of the Climate Change Argument

Australian Senator, Steve Fielding, decided to vote against his country's climate-change legislation. It seems a growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens have their doubts on the science of human-caused global warming. Fortunately, the number of skeptics in The U.S. is growing as well, and they include Joanne Simpson.

'The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief.'

Please note my emphasis in the excerpt above.  Once again we get a glimpse of the global warmists' argument.  Get with the program, or else.  I don't know what might have happened had she spoken out before her retirement, but whatever it was, Ms. Simpson didn't want to risk it.  Clearly, the science of global warming is the science of coersion.  The global warmists are thugs, and a vote in favor of any legislation to fight global warming is an invitation to more thuggery.

There are scientific arguments against human-caused global warming.

Michael Jackson

The immensely talented Michael Jackson has passed away at the early age of 50.  It was Diana Ross who first introduced Michael Jackson to the world as lead singer for the Jackson 5, and it was Ms. Ross who reintroduced him when he began his career as a solo star.  As I watched him on TV at that time I thought, what a great shortstop he'd be if ever decided to play baseball.  He was so incredibly graceful.   As it turned out, he did OK careerwise without having to take up the game. In fact I'd be greatly surprised if it ever comes out that he did get some chances play ball.  His entire life was spent as a celebrity superstar, carefully shielded from public view except for those times when he performed.  It's difficult to imagine what kind of childhood he was able to have, if any at all. Because of it, I never believed the accusations against him. I will always imagine Michael trying to enjoy the innocence of a childhood he never had.

Friends in Congress

As is pretty well known, Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad received very favorable mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial because of their "friendship" with former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California wants to know what other "Friends of Angelo" might be sitting in Congress.

'A March report by Congressman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) highlighted internal Countrywide emails in which executives debated whether the mayor of Billings, Montana, was influential enough to warrant a waiving of his mortgage insurance premium. The company ultimately decided that he was. We can only imagine what Countrywide's internal emails might say about the benefits of "friendship" with Mr. Dodd, who chairs the Banking Committee of the U.S. Senate, or about others who benefited from the program.

Mr. Issa doesn't want to imagine; he wants to discover the facts. He's asked Rep. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to subpoena records of the "Friends of Angelo" loan program from Bank of America, which bought the failed subprime lender last year. So far, Mr. Towns is noncommittal, and perhaps he is hoping that the issue will fade into the background during the long August recess.'

This was supposed to be the most ethical Congress in history, if we take Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi at her word.  Unfortunately, she has never shown any appetite for investigating corruption among Democrats, and since she has the final say in the matter subpoenas, we can expect she will do what she can to make this issue fade away.

Behind The Curve

Edward N. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the writing is on the wall for Iran's hardline Islamic regime.

'At this point, only the short-term future of Iran's clerical regime remains in doubt. The current protests could be repressed, but the unelected institutions of priestly rule have been fatally undermined. Though each aspect of the Islamic Republic has its own dynamic, this is not a regime that can last many more years.'

Although somewhat late to the party, Obama has finally come around to putting his oratorical support behind the Iranian people instead of continuing his disgraceful suck up to the Ayatollahs in the futile hope that he will persuade them to swear off nuclear weapons.

'WASHINGTON – Dramatically hardening the U.S. reaction to Iran's disputed elections and bloody aftermath, President Barack Obama condemned the violence against protesters Tuesday and lent his strongest support yet to their accusations the hardline victory was a fraud.

Obama, who has been accused by some Republicans of being too timid in his response to events in Iran, declared himself "appalled and outraged" by the deaths and intimidation in Tehran's streets — and scoffed at suggestions he was toughening his rhetoric in response to the criticism.

He suggested Iran's leaders will face consequences if they continue "the threats, the beatings and imprisonments" against protesters. But he repeatedly declined to say what actions the U.S. might take, retaining — for now — the option of pursuing diplomatic engagement with Iran's leaders over its suspected nuclear weapons program.'

Obama is clearly not in the driver's seat.  Sure, he talks tough about consequences, but it's nearly impossible to imagine what consequences he would be willing to impose upon Iran's Islamic regime, so doggedly he pursues engagement with the hardliners.  But Neda Agha-Soltan's death on the street in Tehran has forced Obama to change his message.

'On Tuesday, President Obama called the images of Miss Agha-Soltan's death "heartbreaking."

"We have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history," he said at a press conference.'

As Mr. Luttwak's Wall Street Journal column points out, the Iranian people are driving events in Tehran.  Obama tries to figure out where.

'What's clear is that after years of humiliating social repression and gross economic mismanagement, the more educated and the more productive citizens of Iran have mostly turned their backs on the regime. Even if personally religious, they now reject the entire post-1979 structure of politicized Shiite Islam with its powerful ayatollahs, officious priests, strutting Revolutionary Guards and low-life Basij militiamen. Many Iranians once inclined to respect clerics now view them as generally corrupt -- including the Ahmadinejad supporters who applauded his attacks on Mr. Rafsanjani.

[...]

Therefore, even if he remains in office, Ahmadinejad cannot really function as president. For one thing, the parliament is unlikely to confirm his ministerial appointments, and he cannot govern without them. If Khamenei is not removed by the Assembly of Experts and Ahmadinejad is not removed by Khamenei, the government will continue to be paralyzed.'

A paralyzed Iranian government would leave Obama with no one to talk to.  Once again Obama is behind the curve.  At the start of the Iranian protests he moved cautiously, working to stay positioned for the big breakthrough negotiation, the foreign policy coup.  Events are getting in the way, though. 

It's not as if he has no idea about where he wants to take the country.  He's just wrong almost all of the time.  So he constantly backtracks, "refining" his positions until he is polar opposite of what he originally promised.  It comes as no surprise that his stimulus hasn't stimulated a damned thing except the lobbyists, so that now he's forced to concede that unemployment will go above 10%.  Close Guantanamo, "end" the war in Iraq, shut down those military tribunals.  The list goes on.

And so it goes with Iran.  Now that he's sure which way the parade is headed, he's belatedly running around to the front.  Meanwhile his adoring media gush about how well he's leading it.

Bad Ideas

Andrew Klavan's column in today's Wall Street Journal might be putting the cart before the horse.  It's a great column except for one thing.  One might get the impression from it that leftists' inevitable inclination to promote really bad ideas is some sort of misguided intellectual exercise that is ultimately aimed at finding a truth. 

'The tragedy of bad ideas unfolds from a moral flaw in a worldview or philosophy as inevitably as classical tragedy unfolds from a flaw in individual character. Tragedies of bad ideas are the most common, pervasive and destructive man-made mass disasters. Yet our thinking class has become powerless to oppose them or even recognize them for what they are.

The reason is that too many of our intellectuals are themselves ensnared in a bad idea. That idea is multiculturalism -- the notion that no system or government is inherently better than any other, that the rules of morality are just a doctrine written by history's winners. Thus there are no enduring human truths, only "narratives" by which almost any beastliness can be explained away if committed by a people with a claim to having been victimized by a dominant culture.'

Lefties are interested in power.  Individual liberty is at odds with power.  The individual is empowered at the expense of leftist governing classes.  On the other hand, the individual is lost in the multicultural tug of war.  There is no such thing as an individual in lefty parlance.  With lefties it's all about group rights, and when the individual can be crushed on behalf of a favored group, power has been achieved.

Lefties always have rotten ideas because those ideas have only one purpose -- to disenfranchise the individual.  As Iranian citizens are murdered in the streets of Tehran, where are the lefties?  Why they're busy praising Obama's restraint, until they can't anymore.  Here is E.J. Dionne trying to figure out how to keep gushing over Obama's contortions.

'In fact, Obama was right to exercise caution, both because the United States should not imply false promises to the regime's opponents that we won't be able to keep and because our embrace could, indeed, hurt them. And, paradoxically, European political leaders have been outspoken in criticizing the Iranian government's abuses precisely because Obama's restraint gave them room to act independently.

But if Obama, as the leader of the U.S. government, has to exercise great care in calculating his moves, rank-and-file progressives and liberals outside the government should be unwavering and unabashed in championing the Iranian push for freedom. Writing last week in the New Republic about how to deal with Iran's repressive ruling class, political philosopher Michael Walzer nicely summarized the proper division of labor: "For liberals and leftists -- opposition and nothing else; for state diplomats -- handshakes and negotiation."'

As always, the liberal media is there to offer cover.  Obama will be free to extent the open hand of diplomacy because liberal and leftist sycophants pretend outrage on his behalf at the crushing of dissent in Tehran. 

'Obama's initial caution served the interests of freedom by making clear that the revolt against Iran's flawed election is homegrown. As the struggle continues, we cannot pretend that we are indifferent to its outcome.

It's not easy to walk the progressive path. But Obama has always said that he knows how to deal with complexity. This is his chance to prove it.'

Yes, there are complexities to walking the progressive walk.  How does one maintain an aura of infallibility when events force so many reversals in position?  Actually, Obama's been working on that very thing for the last two years.  It comes natural to him.

Obama Goes Negative

For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama's Rasmussen approval index has dipped into negative territory.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That’s the President’s lowest rating to date and the first time the Presidential Approval Index has fallen below zero for Obama (see trends).

The Health Care Horse

So the White House says it's ruled out the single payer plan for health care reform.  Oh really?  If you think so, please take the time to watch this video. 

Dr. Gratzer, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who also happens to be a physician, recently described some single payer realities for the Wall Street Journal.

Not long ago, I would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

Such stories are common. For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist.

Interestingly enough, Dr. Gratzer points out in his column that liberal Democrats are driving the U.S. toward a single payer plan at the same time that Canada is inching away from theirs. 

So let's be realistic.  Progressives, as leftists like to call themselves, know all this about the single payer systems.  They just won't admit it.  Why is that?  One of the single payer shining stars in the video above is Yale Political Science Professor Jacob Hacker.  He is very candid about the underlying rationale for promoting a public option for health insurance.  It inevitably leads to a single payer system.

'Someone once said to me that this is a Trojan Horse for a single payer.  Well, it's not a Trojan Horse, right?  It's just right there.'

[...]

'One of the virtues of it is that you can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and private sectors.'

Another who makes her appearance in the video is Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat from Illinois.  A strong proponent of the single payer model, she is even more open about there being another agenda.  To the cheers of her single payer audience she says,

'This is not a principled fight.  This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will.'

Ah, but where is "there?"  Just as the public option can be seen as a Trojan Horse for getting to a single payer plan, health care reform itself is a strategy. Barack Obama is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  The goal is an enduring progressive majority in congress, and the progressive strategy for achieving it has always been to encourage more people to rely on government.  When people depend upon government they will vote for those who favor more of it.  Health care reform is vote buying on a massive scale.  And the beauty of it is that Democratic votes are bought with federal tax dollars.

Think about it for a moment.  When health care reform finally passes and we all depend on Uncle Sam to cure our ills, what will be the more beneficial to progressive politicians?  A health care system that works?  Or one that requires constant attention from our progressive champions in Washington?

Via Joust the Facts.

The Health Care Free Lunch

Gene Lyons insists that Democrats should pass comprehensive health care reform with or without Republican input.  Says he:

'In a column for Politico.com, our bipartisan friend Sen. Grassley recently wrote that, should it be enacted, "As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan." That, in turn, would "put America on the path toward a completely government-run healthcare system ... Eventually, the government plan would overtake the entire market."

Translation: The public plan must be stopped because it'd be too good.'

Too good?  There's a pipe dream for you.  Be that as it may, Mr. Lyons clearly favors the single payer model. 

'Meanwhile, never mind that the White House has completely ruled out a British- or Canadian-style "single payer" plan, recognizing that many Americans are more comfortable with the private coverage they already have. Atlantic Monthly blogger Matt Yglesias wondered what British conservatives say about that country's National Health Service.

So here's the Tory position: "The NHS embodies something which is truly great about Britain. That something is equity: the spirit of fairness for all and the equal right of everyone regardless of age, background or circumstance to get the healthcare they need. It really is one of the most precious gifts we enjoy as British citizens ... That is why the Conservative Party has made [improving] the NHS its number one priority."'

So I thought it very timely when an email update from Canon Andrew White arrived in my inbox.  Canon Andrew White is President of The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East and Rector of St George's Churchin Baghdad.  I get these updates from him from time to time because I once made a contribution to FRRME which was involved in efforts aimed at reconciliation among Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.  Those efforts were going on at a time when sectarian violence in Iraq was at its height.

Back then updates he sent out described the progress toward reconciliation.  Now they have a different message.  Canon White suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.  He has been receiving stem cell treatments to mitigate the effects of his disease, and he gives periodic updates as to how they are going.  Here is what he said in his last one.

'Well, greetings from Baghdad! I am pleased to say that yesterday I had my 4th Stem Cell Treatment for MS, as usual with my own stem cells. This time I had the injection in my neck, this was to try and deal with my balance problems. The fact is, since I started this treatment in Iraq I have improved by about 70%.

Every time I drive through the squalor here and then arrive in the modern, yet basic hospital, I am amazed that I can have this treatment here in Baghdad. The doctors are outstanding and perform this treatment to a very high standard. Yesterday, the injection was in the cervical vertebrae. I will have a further treatment on Sunday with the cultivated stem cells. I was the first person to have this stem cell treatment here. Since then, another 21 MS patients have had the treatment; all have radically improved. They have also treated a person with Motor Neurone Disease and several people with spinal cord injuries. Once again, these people have also improved. I cannot deny that the more I have this treatment and the more I make improvement, I become increasingly frustrated by the lack of treatment in the UK.'

On a side note, I think it's worth emphasizing that Canon White's stem cell treatment did not involve use of embryonic stem cells.  They were his own. 

But to the topic at hand, as a priest and a Brit, Canon White would be an unlikely proponent of free market health care systems.  In fact he takes a swipe at capitalism and the profit motive, implying that they are to blame for the treatment shortcomings in the UK. 

'All that is on offer are expensive drugs that make me feel very, very ill. The fact is, this [stem cell] treatment is cheap and makes nothing for the drug companies.'

So there he is in Baghdad getting his stem cell treatments in a modern but basic hospital.  I think it's safe to say it was a private, for-profit hospital.  I sent a response to Canon White's update, asking him to confirm my suspicion.  At this point he has not had time to reply. 

In the meantime I looked for confirmation in an article written this past March by Dahr Jamail which describes the rise of a privately run health care system running side be side with the government system in Iraq.

'Government hospitals are short of doctors. A small increase in pay over the last three years has lured some doctors back, but what they pay cannot match income in the private sector.

On average, a general practitioner in a government hospital earns about 300 dollars a month; a private hospital pays twice or three times that much. More and more doctors are shifting away from government hospitals.

“I and my family were unable to live on the pay I earned at a government hospital,” says Dr. Kubayir Abbas, 34, an anaesthetist. “So I decided to come over to the private sector instead, and now it is much better.”

Dr. Shakir Mahmood Al-Robaei, another anaesthetist, said “it’s better for us to work here than in the public sector. We earn more money, it is safer, and we don’t have to worry about having the right equipment and supplies. When I worked in the public sector, we were short of everything most of the time.”

And so government hospitals continue to run short of doctors, while some private hospitals have a surplus. What has improved since 2007 is that violence against doctors, and even against patients who attend certain hospitals, has dropped notably.

Government hospitals also lack basic supplies such as gauze, rubber gloves, clean needles, surgical instruments and drugs for anaesthesia. Non-medical basics such as clean bedding, disinfectants and air-conditioning are often lacking, even in the largest medical complex in the country, the Baghdad Medical City. Iraqis have for years had to buy their own medicines and even oxygen supplies on the expensive black market.

Corruption within the Ministry of Health, and the near total lack of reconstruction that was promised by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in the first year of the occupation have left Iraq’s healthcare system depleted of resources.

A report ‘Rehabilitation Under Fire’ released last year by the health organisation Medcat said Iraq has only around 9,000 doctors, after most fled the country. That gives a ratio of six doctors for every 10,000 people. The ratio in Britain is 23 to 10,000.

Given the crisis in government medical care, the business of private hospitals is booming. Raphael hospital, which currently has 35 beds and sees on average over 1,000 patients a day, will soon expand to 90 beds and increase its staff.

Dr. Rhamis Mukhtar, the only surgeon for morbid obesity in Iraq, has been working at this private hospital since 2000, while also working at a state hospital. “I’m thinking of moving here full time,” he said. “There are much better supplies, services, and overall care for the patient. This centre is the best for laproscopic surgery in the country.”

For complicated emergency cases, government hospitals are still the best, Dr. Mukhtar said. They have special equipment most smaller private hospitals lack. It has to get very bad for someone before they can hope to get the best out of a government hospital.'

It is typical that government run health care systems ration care because it is the only way they can contain costs.  We see it time and again, where visitors come to the U.S. to get the care they can't get in their own countries' single payer systems.  Either they can't get treatment at all, or they can't get it in time, waiting lists being so long.

Mr. Lyons, Mr. Yglesias, and others on the left deny that rationing even happens, but at the same time they seem to believe rationing is really a good thing.  It's a fairness thing.  If everybody can't get the kind of treatment Canon White can get in Baghdad, then nobody should get it.  And when nobody gets treatment, it'll be the drug companies who get the blame.  It's the fairest thing. 

Updated 6/24/09.  Canon White's reply:

Dear Tom, 
 
Thank you for the email. My treatment is in the Government Hospital. I only pay for my Drugs the MRI is in a private clinic. I pay for my drugs as I'm not Iraqi. 
 
AW

Machiavellian

A liberal relative of mine recently told me I ought to read Machiavelli's The Prince, explaining that the parallels to today are scary.  I asked him if it would be describing Obama.  His face registered an expression of shock, shock that I could suggest such a thing.  But he quickly recovered and said no, no of course not, The Prince is really cut throat.  As if to say, that Obama is not.

So this morning in a very roundabout way, I found my way to this essay by Jim Geraghty that raised a very similar parallel.  Mr. Geraghty wrote his essay about a month ago, and the parallel was not between Obama and The Prince, but Obama to Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.

'After Obama took office, the pundit class found itself debating the ideology and sensibility of the new president — an indication of how scarcely the media had bothered to examine him beforehand. But after 100 days, few observers can say that Obama hasn’t surprised them with at least one call. Gays wonder why Obama won’t take a stand on gay marriage when state legislatures will. Union bosses wonder what happened to the man who sounded more protectionist than Hillary Clinton in the primary. Some liberals have been stunned by the serial about-faces on extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention without trial, military-tribunal trials, the state-secrets doctrine, and other policies they associate with the Bush administration. Former supporters of Obama, including David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Jim Cramer, and Warren Buffett, have expressed varying degrees of criticism of his early moves, surprised that he is more hostile to the free market than they had thought.

Obama’s defenders would no doubt insist this is a reflection of his pragmatism, his willingness to eschew ideology to focus on what solutions work best. This view assumes that nominating Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, running up a $1.8 trillion deficit, approving the AIG bonuses, signing 9,000 earmarks into law, adopting Senator McCain’s idea of taxing health benefits, and giving U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown 25 DVDs that don’t work in Britain constitute “what works best.” Obama is a pragmatist, but a pragmatist as understood by Alinsky: One who applies pragmatism to achieving and keeping power.'

That last sentence pretty well captures Obama.  He is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  It is the common thread to all of his policy pronouncements, and it explains the ease with which he glides from one "deeply held" position right over to the opposite side of it.

'During the campaign, Obama’s critics laughed and marveled at how quickly the candidate threw inconvenient friends, allies, and supporters under the bus once they became political liabilities. Over on the Campaign Spot, it’s been easy to compile a list of quickly forgotten promises. But it is unlikely that Obama would consider any of this a character flaw; instead, it is evidence of his adaptability and gift for seeing the big picture.

Alinsky sneered at those who would accept defeat rather than break their principles: “It’s true I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.” He assured his students that no one would remember their flip-flops, scoffing, “The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.” If you win, no one really cares how you did it.'

In Obama the true face of liberalism begins to stand out, and it just may be that some Democrats who recognize what they see in it, will become disenchanted, put off, although I expect my liberal relative will not be among them. 

Proceed leftward along the political spectrum and the further you go the more you find acceptance, and even approval, that liberalism is a con job.  Those in the know, those in the in crowd, accept that the rubes have to be fooled into what's good for them.  Liberal "truths" are just so much pap for the rubes.

'It’s not about liberalism. It’s about power. Obama will jettison anything that costs him power, and do anything that enhances it — including invite Rick Warren to give the benediction at his inauguration, dine with conservative columnists, and dismiss an appointee at the White House Military Office to ensure the perception of accountability.

Alinsky’s influence goes well beyond Obama, obviously. There are many wonderful Democrats in this world, but evidence suggests that rising in that party’s political hierarchy requires some adoption of a variation of the Alinsky philosophy: Power comes first. Few Democrats are expressing outrage over Nancy Pelosi’s ever-shifting explanation of what she knew about waterboarding. Those who screamed bloody murder about Jack Abramoff’s crimes avert their eyes from John Murtha. The anti-war movement that opposed the surge in Iraq remains silent about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Obama will never get as much grief for his gay-marriage views as Miss California.'

It's all about the power.  No doubt there are lefties galore who believe fervently in Obama's power to do good, and their own as well.  But what happens when Obama uses his power for something that is clearly not good. 

The video below describes the kind of power we can expect President Obama to exercise.  Gerald Walpin is the AmeriCorps Inspector General who was fired for investigating Kevin Johnson, a friend and supporter of Obama.  Watch the whole thing.

So how long will the moderate Democrats make allowances for this kind of abuse of power?  It's corruption pure and simple.  Can they believe there is some greater good to be achieved by it?  The liberal true believers can, and they can also be reliably blind to to the abuse, believing it unimaginable that they would ever be in disagreement with the One.  But what about the moderates?  How many are willing to jettison principles in order to avoid being the next Gerald Walpin?  And when our Democratic congress has acquiesced, ceded power to this Democratic White House precedent will have been set, putting even the true believers at risk.  It means they must never relinquish power. 

Another Expiration Date

Barack Obama now admits that unemployment will hit 10% before the end of the year.

'June 16 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the U.S. unemployment rate will reach 10 percent this year, even as the economy begins to emerge from the recession.

“You’re starting to see the engines of the economy turn,” Obama said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the White House. “It’s going to take a long time -- we had a huge de-leveraging that took place.”

Obama acknowledged that unemployment lines may keep growing despite government efforts to boost economic growth, saying he’s confident an expansion will begin “shortly.” His outlook mirrors the forecasts of private economists who predict a jobless rate of 10 percent -- a level unseen since 1983 -- by the final three months of the year.'

I guess that means earlier projections as illustrated in this graph, where unemployment never gets above 8%, have expired.

"Certainly the worst I've ever seen..."

Canola farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba are seeing the worst June frosts in recent memory.

In Manitoba, the frost is the worst in memory for its frequency and area covered, said Derwyn Hammond, the province's senior agronomy specialist for the Canola Council.

"Certainly (it's) the worst year I've seen," said Hammond, who has worked for the Canola Council for 15 years.

With deadlines for full canola crop insurance ranging between June 10 and 20 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Hammond said he expects most farmers will choose not to reseed.

Cool weather may have actually saved some of the new crop that was at such an early growing stage that it wasn't yet vulnerable to frost, said Doon Pauly, crop specialist for the government of the western province of Alberta.

"It's the equivalent to a frost in the second or third week of May," Pauly said. "That's the bright side."

Whether or not actual weather conditions will rescue us from the global warming police remains to be seen.  They continue gearing up to save the earth from the non-existent threat from carbon dioxide which global warmists say is the cause of a "greenhouse effect" and is responsible for rising worldwide temperatures.   

'In fact, a pair of German math and physics professors claim the proof is on the other side of the argument.  Professor Gerhard Gerlich, who teaches Mathematical and Physics at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Germany, and his colleague, ProfessorRalf D. Tscheuschner published a paper that thoroughly discredits the theory.  Their paper is entitled, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics.  

'The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarifed. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet...'

For those of us who are not physicists, the professors offer common sense explanations along with their mathematical arguments. 

'However, as this heat transmission is less important compared to the convection, nothing remains of the absorption and reflection properties of glass for infrared radiation to explain the physical greenhouse effect. Neither the absorption nor the reflection coefficient of glass for the infrared light is relevant for this explanation of the physical greenhouse effect, but only the movement of air, hindered by the panes of glass.'

In other words, a glass greenhouse traps heat by preventing the air inside from circulating higher into the atmosphere where it cools down.  "Greenhouse gases" do nothing to inhibit the circulation of air, nothing to prevent cooling by convection.  For the sake of convenience to their argument, the global warmists ignore the effect of convection altogether.  What choice do they have, really?  It makes their settled science look pretty unsettled.'

For my money I'd say sunspot activity will turn out to be the better predicter of rising or falling global temperatures.

INFLATION

Arthur Laffer predicts inflation.  It's all about the money supply.

'About eight months ago, starting in early September 2008, the Bernanke Fed did an abrupt about-face and radically increased the monetary base -- which is comprised of currency in circulation, member bank reserves held at the Fed, and vault cash -- by a little less than $1 trillion. The Fed controls the monetary base 100% and does so by purchasing and selling assets in the open market. By such a radical move, the Fed signaled a 180-degree shift in its focus from an anti-inflation position to an anti-deflation position. The percentage increase in the monetary base is the largest increase in the past 50 years by a factor of 10 (see chart nearby). It is so far outside the realm of our prior experiential base that historical comparisons are rendered difficult if not meaningless. The currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base -- which prior to the expansion had comprised 95% of the monetary base -- has risen by a little less than 10%, while bank reserves have increased almost 20-fold. Now the currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base is a smidgen less than 50% of the monetary base. Yikes! [...] It's difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed's actions because, frankly, we haven't ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what's happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits.'

If the chart above is a true indication I don't see how we're going to avoid inflation.  According to Mr. Laffer the big jump in the money supply is from a huge increase in bank reserves which he says are "excess reserves."   That means those reserves won't languish in bank vaults but will hit the street as loans, increasing the currency-in-circulation.  The impact is likely to be huge. Update: Russia may unload some U.S. Treasuries from its reserves and replace them with International Monetary Fund bonds. Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said some reserves may be moved from Treasuries into IMF debt, reiterating comments made last month by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Ulyukayev’s remarks were confirmed by a Bank Rossii official who declined to be named, citing bank policy. Treasuries fell, pushing 10-year yields toward the highest level in seven months, in response to Ulyukayev’s statement. The dollar fell against the euro on speculation that Russia will reduce its holdings of U.S. debt. The government is going to pay higher interest rates in order to finance Obama's unprecedented yet planned massive deficit spending.

Updated Unemployment Graph

Via Hot Air, Here's another flavor of the unemployment graph accompanied by a video presentation showing Obama's stimulus has done more harm than good.  I don't know how much more "rescue" we can stand from this guy.

What The Tea Parties Are All About

According to Charles R. Kesler Obama's prime goal is to build an enduring Democratic majority that will impose a more socialized democracy upon America.  In the course of achieving it, Obama has made unprecedented intrusions into the free market.  Coupled with his wild "stimulus" spending, this will very likely hamstring the American economy for years to come.  A struggling economy, however, is the least of our worries.

'What Obama hopes for is a similar breakthrough for the forces of liberalism in this generation.

An enduring Democratic majority is not out of the question. The wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn may well leave America with a politically controlled economy that would corrupt the relationship between citizens and the federal government – sapping entrepreneurship and encouraging new forms of dependence on the state, as in much of Europe. That would be consistent with the more socialized democracy that liberalism has been striving for ever since the Progressive Era.

Obama likes to emphasize that America is more like the world than we realize, and must become still more like it if the US is to remain the world's leader. Despite his summoning oratory, his sense of American exceptionalism thus is far less lofty, far more constrained, than Reagan's or FDR's. The greatest stumbling block to Obama's ambition is likely to be the inability of this exceptional president to persuade Americans to follow him into so unexceptional a future.'

I would take issue with Mr. Kesler's characterization of our crisis as a "wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn."   There is certainly a wild scramble but the objective is not to stop the downturn.  The downturn itself serves Obama's purpose.  It provides cover for much more government intrusion for the ostensible purpose of creating social justice.  The real danger we face will come if he continues to be successful legitimizing the destruction of personal and economic freedoms which are the source of American power.

As with the GM bailout, which is less a bailout of GM than of the United Auto Workers, the Obama administration will continue to make the best of this crisis.  A continuing downturn provides opportunity to spend massively on the Democrats' favored constituencies.  According to Kevin Hassett, it's not just failing firms like GM and Chrysler that Obama plans to rescue.  He plans to rescue the successful ones as well.

'I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.'

Economics 101 students already understand that the policies Obama advocates won't revive the economy.  Why would he do that?  What will assuredly be a bust for the economy will be a boon for the Democrats who yearn for more complete control.  The tea parties are grass roots protests that hope to prevent that from happening, hope to preserve our liberty.

Charles R. Kesler is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Bloomberg News columnist, and an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election.