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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (2202)	12/9/2003 10:58:10 PM
From: DavesM	Respond to of 90947

You forget..."racist white southerners - who joined the Republican Party, because of Nixon's Southern Strategy". Inferring, that now, the only white racists in the Democratic Party, live in the Midwest, Northeast, and West? :o)

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (2202)	12/9/2003 11:27:39 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

The Bush Haters How the Left views the current president. — Michael Novak, an NRO contributing editor, holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. This piece first ran in Domino Forum in Slovakia, in which he writes a weekly column. <font size=4> Did you know that the Democratic party in the U.S. relies more heavily upon large donations from millionaires for its finances than the Republicans? The Republican party takes in a much larger proportion of its funds from small and modest donations, because its backbone is formed by the small businessmen and "sole proprietors" (barbers, shopkeepers, plumbers, etc.) of the American heartland. The Democratic party gets its strength from the millionaires in the communications industry, Hollywood, and other new technological elites. These underreported facts do not serve the mythology of the American Left. The Left imagines that it is the populist party. But most journalists, professors, and other commentators on public affairs are considerably to the left of the American people. And wealthier, and highly educated — in short, privileged. The "voice" of the Democratic party seems much more like the glitzy people "uptown" and in Hollywood than like the workers and middle class of Midland, Texas. <font size=3> That is why, under the leadership of George W. Bush, the Republicans have gained control of not only the White House, but also the Senate, the House of Representatives, 29 of the 50 governorships (having won three out of four elections last month), and (for the first time in ages) a majority of the legislators in the 59 states. So it is no wonder that a big story in the United States these days is "Bush-hating." The Democrats seem to be spinning crazily in pure fury at the president. Time magazine describes the president as a "polarizing figure." A small majority of Americans love him, Time says, but those on the leftmost side of the Democratic party positively hate him. <font size=4> Why do they hate him?<font size=3> Some say he irritates them because he is a Yale elitist and a Connecticut plutocrat, others say because he is an unsophisticated lower-class Texas boob. Some say he is a clever schemer and liar, and others that he is a moron. Some say all these inconsistent things at once. The point is, they hate him and who cares exactly why? <font size=4> Yet, I can see two reasons why leftists might really hate him. Bush has stolen two things which the Democrats believe they own by right: the presidency, and the future. Having finished on top in the Florida election by a small margin, the Bush team prevented the Democrats from stealing the election in the recount. But winning elections in a recount is a maneuver at which Democrats have been incomparably accomplished for generations. In most urban centers, the Democratic party controls the local workers who do the bulk of the counting and vote storage. Therefore, Democrats felt the bitter loss in Florida with exquisite pain. The Republicans beat them on the streets, in the counting houses, and in the courts. That election belonged to them, Democrats think, and they have continued to cry out against a cosmic injustice. After the election, each of the independent recounts of all the Florida votes showed that Bush had in fact won, with virtually the same margin as the election-night returns. But Democrats still feel they should have won, by a kind of cosmic right. The second thing the Democrats think they own, by a kind of Hegelian dialectic, is the future. The Left has long believed that the Left defines the future, and points out the path of progress.<font size=3> In the past, moderate Republicans tended to respect this leftist claim, protesting only timidly, "Not so fast, not so much, not just yet." The Democrats got used to facing an essentially compliant, "me-too" opposition. They thought President Bush would be the same. He isn't. <font size=4> That's why some Democrats call Bush "the most radical president in history," "the worst president [from their point of view] in a hundred years," a "disaster," and other such names. It would take another column to show how Bush has cut off the future that the Democrats thought they owned, and how he dared to put the world (not just the U.S.) on an entirely new progressive path, both in domestic and in foreign policy. If he succeeds, the Democrats will be caught thinking in outmoded terms. In tax policy, in welfare policy, in medical care, and in support for democratic reforms rather than mere "stability" overseas, the very meaning of "progressive" will have been defined afresh. Failed Democratic programs will be revised, new directions will be set. Of course, they hate him! He is the greatest threat to them in 100 years. <font size=3> nationalreview.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (2202)	12/9/2003 11:35:43 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 90947

Would someone who Lizzie doesn't have on ignore please point out this article to her? <ggg> The Great American Job Machine December 09, 2003, 8:38 a.m. — Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years. NRO The American economy is destroying jobs, and that's a good thing. It is in destroying jobs that the economy improves and makes it possible for the standard of living of all Americans to increase. This constant churning means that even a "stagnant" American job market is extremely dynamic, and that the ranks of the unemployed are not necessarily the dispossessed of the earth, as Democrats tend to portray them. Keep this in mind as Congress gears up for a debate on whether unemployment benefits should be extended beyond their normal six-month term for the fourth time in the past two years. Democrats will attack anyone opposing this extension as a heartless extremist attempting to trample on the poor. But an extension of benefits might, perversely, prolong unemployment, and it will serve to dampen the dynamism of the American economy, which is its greatest asset. In any given year, roughly 10 percent of all jobs in the American economy are destroyed, while an equal number rises up to take their place, according to the latest Economic Report of the President. The trick, of course, is to create more jobs than are lost. Since 1980, according to Michael Cox of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, "Americans have filed 106 million initial claims for unemployment benefits, each representing a lost job." But during the past decade, the economy has still added a net 40 million new jobs. Even when the economy isn't creating net new jobs, as has been the case recently, it's creating new jobs. Payroll employment was stagnant last year. But between 3.5 million and 5 million workers entered new jobs each month in 2002. Even during a "jobless recovery," the majority of workers looking for jobs in any given month is different from those workers seeking jobs the next month. Since 1970, the median duration of unemployment has been 6.6 weeks when the economy is growing, and 8.2 weeks immediately following a recession. In roughly 40 percent of cases, the period of unemployment is five weeks or less. So the unemployed aren't a single class of people, but a group constantly changing as people cycle in and out. In many cases, job turnover — although painful — is a very good thing. It is by switching jobs that people learn new skills and find a better match for the skills they already have, thus earning higher wages. A typical young worker has seven jobs during his first ten years in the job market. A third of that worker's wage growth will occur when leaving one job for another. Public policy should be leery of anything that discourages this churning in the job market. (Otherwise, four out of 10 of all Americans would still be working on a farm, as we were a century ago.) Because unemployment benefits essentially subsidize unemployment, they can have this effect, encouraging people to stay unemployed instead of jumping back into the job market. One study shows that each additional week of unemployment benefits increases the time a person spends unemployed by a day. Indeed, the unemployed are twice as likely to find a job in the week before their benefits expire than in the weeks prior. Makes you go, "huh," doesn't it? People respond to incentives. Experiments in a few states have shown that giving a re-employment bonus to the unemployed speeds up the time it takes them to find a new job by roughly a week. Europe has longer and more generous unemployment benefits than the United States — and also chronically higher rates of unemployment. So, as the economy begins to purr and the unemployment rate dips, the last thing the government should do is give people a disincentive to join in the great roiling American job market. Opposing an extension of unemployment benefits isn't heartless, but an act of well-placed faith — in the dynamism of the American economy and in the resourcefulness of its workers. nationalreview.com