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

To: mph who wrote (69317)	2/6/2009 4:59:13 PM
From: TimF	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

SORRY, O: 'I WON' WON'T COVER THIS Rich Lowry Faith-based economy policy? BARACK Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won. That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid "jolt" to the economy. As far as political arguments go, "I won" has its power - provided it's made on behalf of an agenda ratified by the American electorate. But Obama didn't campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan. If he had pledged in October to double federal domestic discretionary spending in a matter of weeks - including increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by a third, spending hundreds of millions more on federal buildings and throwing tens of billions on every traditional liberal priority from job training to Pell Grants - he'd have been hard-pressed to win at all. The president should read the transcript of the third presidential debate. He claimed his program represented "a net spending cut." He called himself "a strong proponent of pay-as-you-go. Every dollar that I've proposed, I've proposed an additional cut so that it matches." He added, "We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don't work." Now, no president can adhere to every jot and tittle from his campaign, but the "I won" argument only works if the campaign program matches the governing program. Obama himself seems confused on what exactly "I won" means. In a meeting with Republicans, he brandished "I won" as a defense of his version of tax relief. But he later used "I won" to push back against an excessive reliance on tax cuts, claiming that it had been repudiated during the campaign even though he talked every day on the trail of cutting taxes for "95 percent of working people" and never once mentioned a commitment to extreme deficit spending. Obama has to make a case for the bill on the merits, a surpassingly difficult forensic task. In a Washington Post op-ed, Obama called for "swift, bold and wise" action, but it's possible to have at most two of those things at once. The current legislation is swift and bold (indeed, shameless) but not remotely wise. The bill came out of the House with a price tag of $819 billion. It would spend more in 2011 alone than in this year, and more in 2012 and beyond than in this year. Why far-off spending priorities have to be set in a rush now is something no one can explain - except that congressional Democrats want to toss bulging sacks of cash out the door. Obama writes that the bill "is more than a prescription for short-term spending - it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity." Fine. A long-term strategy deserves long-term deliberation, the hearings and other processes meant to exercise a check on legislating in a panic. The Congressional Budget Office notes that "large fiscal stimulus is rarely attempted" and its effects "are very uncertain." The bill is basically a $1 trillion bet on an utterly unproven theory - that scattershot government spending is a magic elixir for an economy in the grips of a financial crisis. When Barack Obama ran last year, he didn't say he'd engage in faith-based economy policy on a grand scale. He didn't say he'd toss aside the normal processes of governing. He didn't say he'd quickly act to add waste to the federal budget. And he didn't say he'd try to brush away criticism with the mere assertion of his victory. On the stimulus, when Obama says "I won," he's out of better arguments. nypost.com

To: mph who wrote (69317)	2/7/2009 6:18:18 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Anger management Mark Steyn The Corner Commissar Frank says we need to take the glorious people's revolution to the next stage: <<< Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said. “There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today. He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies. >>> But rental income on Charlie Rangel's vacation dacha will still be tax-free. corner.nationalreview.com

To: mph who wrote (69317)	2/7/2009 7:02:35 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. The Fierce Urgency of Pork By Charles Krauthammer Friday, February 6, 2009; Page A17 "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." -- President Obama, Feb. 4. Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill. And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent. The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years. He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence. At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend. And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination. It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction. It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said. Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance. The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive. After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone. I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks. washingtonpost.com

To: mph who wrote (69317)	2/9/2009 8:05:19 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Krugman on the Bully Pulpit by Will Wilkinson on February 7, 2009 Paul Zrimsek in the comments below offers us this gem: "Last but perhaps not least among causes of the consumer funk is the administration’s own determined pessimism. Mr. Bush has a bully pulpit, and he is using it to preach economic alarm. This adds powerfully to the chorus of doomsaying. And when it comes to short-term economics, believing can sometimes make it so." –Paul Krugman, 2/21/01 Oh snap! willwilkinson.net