Libertarian Leanings

The System Worked

No, I'm not quoting Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who famously claimed, "The system worked," when it was actually other airline passengers who overpowered the Christmas Day bomber.   No, I'm talking about Charles Krauthammer responding to the progressive peanut gallery who've taken to chirping that America is ungovernable.

It's 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama's two signature initiatives -- cap-and-trade and health-care reform -- lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: "America the Ungovernable." So declared Newsweek. "Is America Ungovernable?" coyly asked the New Republic. Guess the answer. 

[...]

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: "Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama's (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . .But in this case there's a simpler explanation: Barack Obama's job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed."

He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise -- expanded coverage at lower cost -- led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections -- Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.

Gridlock in our American constitutional system of government is a feature, not a bug.

Big Trouble For Democrats

A CNN poll found 52% believe President Obama doesn't deserve to be re-elected!  The results are the same whether pollsters are asking all Americans or just registered voters.

An eye-opening result from the new CNN/Opinion Research survey:

6. Do you think Barack Obama deserves to be reelected, or not?

All Americans
Yes: 44%
No: 52%

Registered Voters
Yes: 44%
No: 52%

It's worse for congress.

The reelect numbers for members of both parties in Congress are slightly worse (41% yes, 56% no for Dems and GOP among registered voters), and the GOP leads the Democrats by 2 points in the generic congressional ballot, 48 to 46.

And there's even more bad news for congressional Democrats.  President Obama is planning a rescue mission.  He'll be hitting the campaign trail on their behalf.   Good luck with that.

With high-profile Democrats already bailing out of re-election campaigns - Sen. Evan Bayh's decision on Monday to drop out of the race in Indiana brings the number of retirees to five - Mr. Obama is putting his popularity and fundraising prowess on the line as he tries to help his party hold the majority in the Senate.

Local Republicans are salivating at the prospect of Mr. Obama dropping into town to campaign for their opponents.

President Obama campaigned for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts; Scott Brown won.  He campaigned for Jon Corzine in New Jersey; Chris Christie won.  He gave up on Creigh Deeds in Virginia when it became apparent that Deeds would be absolutely crushed by Bob McDonnell.  He made a pitch to Olympic Committee for a 2016 Chicago Summer Olympics; Rio de Janeiro will host those games.

Obama's help on the campaign trail is just what Republicans are hoping for. 

A Meaningless Distinction

Hillary Clinton says the Iranian theocratic dictatorship is being supplanted by a military dictatorship.

She said the Obama administration believes that the Guard is supplanting the government of Iran. "That is how we see it. We see that the government of Iran, the Supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," said Clinton, who arrived Sunday in Qatar, where she spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

Clinton expanded on her Iran remarks before the students as she flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday afternoon. She told reporters traveling with her that she believed the current civilian leadership was too "preoccupied" by the opposition protests to recognize the creeping coup by the guard, and it was unclear if the clerical and civilian leadership could "begin to reassert itself."

Among the signs of a military dictatorship that she saw, she said the current government "is a far cry from the Islamic Republic, which had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle. "

Right.  That's the same Iranian theocracy that called in the snipers when confronted with a differing point of view back in September.  What's really happened is that the Obama administration has finally awaken to the fact that trying to negotiate with Iran was always a useless exercise.  The "creeping coup" is a better explanation for Obama than admitting to the creeping realization that he was wrong from the start.

Right Wing Idiocy?

One Jeff Mussall can be found sermonizing on the subject of climate change in the Portland Liberal Examiner.  He wonders what is wrong with conservatives.

What is it about climate change that gets conservatives so riled up?  Why, despite mountains of evidence, do the deniers rail on, spouting idiotic rants about how much it snowed?  Is it because they are anti-science across the board?

It's apparently beyond question that conservatives are anti-science, according to Mr. Mussall.  The title of his essay is, "Global warming, climate change, weather, and right wing idiocy."  Mr. Mussall lectured on the important distinction between weather and climate, then in the next breath implied that our recent snowy weather is really evidence of climate change.  Then clinching his argument on conservative intolerance of science, he pointed to 2009 as the second warmest year on record.

First, let's dispense with the dreadfully obvious. One has to be a complete moron to not understand the difference between climate and weather. If we based climate change policy on what the weather happened to be that particular week, we wouldn't get anywhere. 

Anyone who has been in a cold climate for even a short while knows that it doesn't snow when it's very cold. And they should also be able to understand that a warmer overall climate will put more available moisture into the atmosphere.

Then all it takes is a change in the jet stream. There is a strong El Nino this year, which takes the jet stream normally in the Pacific Northwest far down the coast. That's why Southern California has seen so much rain. 

The fact is, 2009 was the second warmest year on record, and part of the warmest decade on record. And things are just getting warmed up, pardon the pun. We are still in the early stages of climate change brought on by global warming.

The conservatives who so seem to hate the science might finally "believe" in climate change when Florida is the size of Rhode Island. Or maybe not. 

But back to the question, why does climate change seem like such an impossible concept for many conservatives to grasp?  [My emphasis above]

It's not the concept of climate change that's so difficult to grasp.  The problem conservatives have with climate change is the dubious proposition that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 have caused a recent dramatic and unprecedented rise in global temperatures.  It is a proposition that is designed to place impediments on any economy that runs on oil, like the U.S. economy.   

But it turns out there is some controversy over the supposedly unprecedented warming.  At the very center of this controversy is Professor Phil Jones who has was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit after those damaging emails were leaked.  In an interview with the BBC Professor Jones admitted that there has been no significant warming since 1995, and since 2002 there has actually been some cooling.

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant. [Emphasis in the original]

That by itself ought to shoot down the notion that CO2 levels are responsible for global warming.  There is no reason to doubt that CO2 levels have been increasing.  Shouldn't temperatures have been rising as well? 

An article in the Times of London reports on the reliability of the records from which those dramatically rising temperatures were calculated.  The Times quotes a former lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a formerlead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

It's not just that temperature collection stations have been compromised.  Professor Jones now claims he misplaced data.  It's nowhere to be found.

Now the academic has admitted he may have lost track of some of the data used to produce the famous “hockey stick” graph, which uses climate readings from worldwide weather stations to show a sharp rise in global temperatures.

The Climate Research Unit formerly headed by Prof Jones is responsible for analysing data from hundreds of weather stations to produce "evidence" of global warming which is used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Prof Jones also admitted that his own lack of organisation had contributed to his reluctance to share crucial data with climate change sceptics, but denied that he deliberately distorted the evidence.

Asked whether he had lost track of data, Prof Jones said: “There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

Having poor organizational skills is certainly the lesser sin when compared to distorting climate change evidence.  In fact, I can see where distorting the evidence could turn into a real problem for Professor Jones.  So far he's managed to rake in somewhere in the vicinity of $22 million as he promotes the cause of global warming.

Since 1990, Jones has received $22 million in grant funding. Of that, $19 million was just in the period from 2000 to 2006 – nearly $3 million per year. Most of the grants came from government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy and the European Union. [My emphasis above]

But according to the Jeff Mussalls of the world, questioning the likes of Professor Phil Jones is just right wing idiocy.  Perhaps what we need to factor into our understanding of Mr. Mussall's argument is the concept that greed is a uniquely right wing characteristic.  Left wing greed?  Why it's simply a contradiction in terms.  Actually, that concept is the entirety of his argument in support of anthropogenic global warming.

It Took A Bit Longer Than I Thought...

My November, 2008 prediction:

It's all over in Iraq, the war has been won, the Status of Forces Agreement has been accepted.  But for [Washington] Post editors it can't be a victory.  For Post editors it's denial.  Time to postpone the victory.

The Bush administration worked patiently and tirelessly to negotiate the new agreement, which will have the effect of removing Iraq from United Nations supervision on Jan. 1. Having all but destroyed his presidency through mismanagement of the war, Mr. Bush can now fairly argue as he leaves office that his successor will inherit an Iraqi mission that has been stabilized both militarily and politically. That's not the same thing as the "victory" Mr. Bush has often spoken of; Iraq could still unravel if its leaders or the Obama administration act unwisely.

Of course, this is Mr. Bush we're talking about, so it's not victory.  But it's close, so close that Post editors feel obliged to warn that Obama could still throw a wrench in it.  Perhaps a little patience would be in order.

There is now, however, a workable road map for winding down the U.S. troop presence in the country and for consolidating the new political system. Mr. Obama will receive this framework from the president and the Iraqi government he has spent the last two years campaigning against. Though we don't expect him to say so, Mr. Obama is fortunate that he was wrong, both about the surge and about the capacity of Iraq's leaders.

It can be safely admitted now.  Post editors concede that Obama was dead wrong about the surge, and wrong about Iraq's leaders.  But what was abysmally poor judgment during the campaign is good fortune now that the election is over.  The media propped this guy up all through the campaign, and apparently they're not done yet.  I'll boldly predict that among Obama's first presidential accomplishments will be the victory in Iraq that eluded President bush for the last five years.

Well, it's a little bit later than I expected, but as Jake Tapper reports, a couple of nights ago on Larry King Live Joe Biden  took credit for victory in Iraq on Obama's behalf.

On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq "could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."

[...]

At the briefing today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Biden calling Iraq one of the great potential achievements of the Obama administration given that Biden had previously advocated that the country should be divided into thirds and split among Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, and then-Sen. Obama opposing the surge of US troops that many experts argue helped bring stability that allowed the reconciliation process to continue.

In fact, in January 2007 then-Sen. Obama said that he was "not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Gibbs said the achievement was "putting what was broken back together and getting our troops home, which we intend to do in August of this year."

A reporter pointed out that the Status of Forces Agreement to bring troops home was signed before the president took office.

Gibbs called that agreement "something I think that the political pressure that the president, as a then-candidate, helped to bring about."

My emphasis above.  This comes by way of Ace of Spades, Mudville Gazette, and Instapundit.

Admittedly, They Don't Know Much

According to Rasmussen, Democrats and the Political Class have more confidence in President Obama than they do in themselves when it comes to economic matters.

But 77% of unaffiliated voters – and 79% of Republicans – trust their own economic judgment more than Obama’s. Most Democrats (53%) have more confidence in the current president’s economic wisdom.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the Political Class also think the president knows best.

It explains why Bush continues to get the blame for our current economic problems more than a year into the Obama presidency.  What else would you expect from people who have more confidence in a guy who takes his teleprompter to a grammar school photo op than they do in themselves.

The Incoherence Intensifies

Lefty positions have always been exercises in logical contortion, but Obama has raised such reason defying politics to an art form.  In an interview with the perky little Katie Couric, the president defended his war on terror decision making, explaining that he was merely continuing Bush administration practices.

"I think that the most important thing for the public to understand," he told Ms. Couric, "is we're not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11." Mr. Obama went on to add that "190 folks"—folks presumably just like the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks—had been tried and convicted in civilian court during Mr. Bush's tenure.

Leave aside, for just a moment, the substance. Far more arresting is that Mr. Obama now defends himself by invoking a man he has spent the past year blaming for al Qaeda's growth. You know—all those Niebuhrian speeches about how America had gone "off course," "shown arrogance and been dismissive," and "made decisions based on fear rather than foresight," thus handing al Qaeda a valuable recruiting tool.

Others have happily piled on. John Brennan, a career CIA holdover, used his first public appearance last August as Mr. Obama's counterterrorism chief to declare a new dawn. No longer would America's policies serve as "a recruitment bonanza for terrorists." No longer would we be "defining and indeed distorting our entire national security apparatus" because of terrorism. Henceforth, Mr. Obama would abandon the "global war" mindset, and take care not to "validate al Qaeda's twisted worldview."

Isn't it sad that our "watch dog" press went to such great lengths to cast doubt on Sarah Palin's readiness for the vice presidency, while at the same time promoting Barack Obama's experience on the presidential campaign trail as proof of his fitness to be Commander-in-Chief in a time of war.  Our mainstream media have been utterly pathetic, borderline incompetent, and dishonest to boot.  They're trying so hard to disguise the fact the we have an OJT president, and unfortunately, as Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said, he's a slow learner.

Proof of the Pudding...

Proof of the pudding is in the eating so they say.  Proof of the recent dramatic drop in Obama's Disapproval Index is in his message.  My Presidential Disapproval Index is merely the negative of Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index, which today stands at -15.  A few short days ago the index stood at -4, at which time pundits explained that the president's rise from the depths in the opinion polls was in response to that impeccable delivery of his State to the Union address.

I don't think so.  The State of the Union gave us nothing new.  In fact pundits on both sides were in agreement.  Obama "doubled down" on his health care plan in spite of a crystal clear message from the voters of Massachusetts. 

No, the bounce came about because the president accepted an invitation from House Republicans to address them at their annual retreat.  In fact it was the only thing in recent months that Obama appeared to do right.  That is, he did a much better job on that occasion of pretending to be bipartisan.  So much so, that he offered to try it again, this time with Senate Republicans.

The White House has suggested that it would like Obama to address the Senate GOP Conference, with TV cameras present. Obama administration officials are eager for voters to see Obama operate in a format he relishes — and handle his former Senate colleagues the same way he did last week to House Republicans at their annual retreat. 

Asked about the White House invitation to Senate Republicans, Cornyn said: “For what purpose? Was it for photo op or is it serious? The president can invite Mitch McConnell, John Boehner or anybody he wants for a serious talk about issues.”

Does anybody really think Obama is interested in a serious policy discussion?   Only if the discussion involves everybody agreeing with Obama.

Andrew Cuomo Demonstrates The Liberal Way

The Wall Street Journal outlines New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's impact on the financial crisis through his role in the housing market bubble.  Remember, it was those mortgage backed securities, whose value had eroded in successive waves of foreclosures, that clogged the credit markets precipitating our unprecedented bailout mania.

HUD's Web visitors learn that in 1999 "Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. The historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low- and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42 percent of their total purchases to a new high of 50 percent - a 19 percent increase—in the year 2001."

Fannie and Freddie's purchases of subprime loans skyrocketed. The problem wasn't merely that the Cuomo HUD was raising the volume of loans for which taxpayers would be on the hook. It was also encouraging a dangerous decline in underwriting standards at these government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Says former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Edward Pinto, "HUD commissioned much research aimed at forcing the adoption of more flexible lending standards by the GSEs."

In 1999, the Urban Institute published a HUD-commissioned study of Fannie and Freddie's credit guidelines. Among its findings: "Almost all the informants said their opinion of the GSEs has changed for the better since both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made substantive alterations to their guidelines and developed new affordable loan products with more flexible underwriting guidelines."

Mr. Cuomo's drive to pump up the volume on taxpayer-backed mortgages didn't stop at Fannie and Freddie. In 2008, Wayne Barrett wrote in the leftist Village Voice about the changes Mr. Cuomo wrought at the Federal Housing Administration, encouraging bigger loans with smaller down payments.

In American liberalism it's common for politicians like Cuomo to create a crisis through misguided liberal policies and then ride to the supposed rescue, often proposing and implementing more misguided liberal policies.  Back in September of 2008 Charles W. Calomiris and Peter J. Wallison explained that the housing bubble was a created crisis.

How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse.

It is important to understand that, as GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were viewed in the capital markets as government-backed buyers (a belief that has now been reduced to fact). Thus they were able to borrow as much as they wanted for the purpose of buying mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Their buying patterns and interests were followed closely in the markets. If Fannie and Freddie wanted subprime or Alt-A loans, the mortgage markets would produce them. By late 2004, Fannie and Freddie very much wanted subprime and Alt-A loans. Their accounting had just been revealed as fraudulent, and they were under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that they deserved their considerable privileges. Among other problems, economists at the Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office had begun to study them in detail, and found that -- despite their subsidized borrowing rates -- they did not significantly reduce mortgage interest rates. In the wake of Freddie's 2003 accounting scandal, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan became a powerful opponent, and began to call for stricter regulation of the GSEs and limitations on the growth of their highly profitable, but risky, retained portfolios.

If they were not making mortgages cheaper and were creating risks for the taxpayers and the economy, what value were they providing? The answer was their affordable-housing mission. So it was that, beginning in 2004, their portfolios of subprime and Alt-A loans and securities began to grow. Subprime and Alt-A originations in the U.S. rose from less than 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to over 20% in 2006. During this period the quality of subprime loans also declined, going from fixed rate, long-term amortizing loans to loans with low down payments and low (but adjustable) initial rates, indicating that originators were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find product for buyers like the GSEs.

Rather than rein in Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac, Obama has given them each a blank check in order that they can continue pumping money into risky mortgage loans.  Meanwhile, he and Cuomo demonize the banking industry for what?  Trying to satisfy the appetites of Fannie and Freddie?  Obama will regulate.  Cuomo will prosecute.

The Housing and Urban Development web page to which The Journal refers is here.

A Lesson In Socialism

I got an email with a story in it.  The sender introduced the story this way:

Got this from a friend and wanted to pass it on.  I wish they would teach this lesson in our public schools, real eye opener.

Here's the story:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's spread-the-wealth socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.  After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.  The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. 

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

It's interesting and a little depressing that that we seem to have a growing number of people can find this story to be an “eye opener”.  But then, I suppose it's an indictment of our system of higher education which manages to churn out hoards of working adults who have no idea what socialism does to incentives and what that costs society.

The lesson applies to taxes.  It's a lesson Obama and the Democrats haven't learned as they push for higher taxes on the rich and on the banks and on anything or anybody that they’ve decided is getting more than their “fair share”.  Doing this at a time when the economy is in the toilet and unemployment is high will slow our recovery and keep unemployment high, because it discourages risk taking and investment.  Jobs and the economy rely on investment.

Obama and the Democrats will continue trying to blame everything on George W. Bush, and the legacy media will pull out all the stops trying to promote that message, but too many people get their news elsewhere.  Autumn 2010 in America may turn out to be just as exciting as January 2010 was in Massachusetts.  They're still smiling in Massachusetts.