A "garbage" stimulus bill

Barack Obama gave his first news conference last night and spread the left's vision of doom-and-gloom, warning of a "lost decade" if we didn't act quickly to stem the faltering economy. Pointedly, he stated that the "Federal Government is the only remaining option to jolt the economy", and criticized Republicans for wanting to focus on tax cuts as a means of stimulating growth.  Just what you would expect a socialist to say.  Government is the answer -- the only answer -- to that which ills us...  And now comes some truth about the vaunted stimulus package, from the mouth of a Harvard economist with solid liberal credentials, Robert Barro (this excerpted from an interview in the Atlantic Magazine courtesy of the WSJ):

Barro: This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much.

Atlantic: Well, presumably Larry Summers is not an idiot.

Barro: [laughs] That is another conversation. I have known him for 25 years, and I have opinions about that.

Atlantic: Well, presumably Christina Romer is not an idiot if you're . . .

Barro: They've brought in some reasonable people in terms of economic advisers. I don't know what impact they're having, and I suppose they have different views on Keynesian macroeconomics than I have. But I'm giving you my opinion about it.

Obama hits the trail again

Polls show not all Americans are onboard for the President's stimulus bill, and reports are that folks like us who have flooded the hallowed halls of Congress with emails, faxes and phone calls in dissent surely have been a cause for concern. Mr. Obama is a president that seeks to be popular.  After all, he entered the Oval Office as an icon.  There remains not a rock star, professional athlete or Hollywood heart throb that can hold a candle to Mr. Obama's appeal. The rubber has hit the road and the real work of being president took an early toll.  Just days into the grind, he took some time of, claiming to be tired of being in the White House, and headed to a school to read to children.  Good thing a Republican isn't president!  Walking away from duties and needing time off so soon would have ignited outrage and days and days of humilitation and taunting from late night TV personalities and news anchors.  It sure pays to be a super hero; you don't have to be subjected to that kind of thing.

Yesterday Mr. Obama visited Elhart, IN., a community that has prospered due to the recreational vehicle and boat industries.  The Left has long looked down their noses at the big gas guzzling motorcoaches that lumber down our highways and byways.  They frown at man littering and destroying the environment by setting up campsites, running around on ATV's, supporting big business with the purchase of outdoor gear of any kind. Certain lakes and reserviors have banned motorized boats for a variety of reasons, but in some cases its because of they use fuel and pollute the waters, not to mention, put money in the pockets of Big Oil.  The point is, recreational vehicles of many kinds have fallen out of favor and when gas prices hovered at $4.00 this past summer and marine fuel was significantly more than that, sales fell sharply.  People in Elkhart lost a tremendous number of jobs.  Yesterday, their president came to town to tell them that when his stimulus bill is passed, he's going to right the ship in Elkhart.  Jobs will come and if people are concerned about how money is being spent, they can go to his website and report what they don't like. 

Mr. Obama is out doing town hall meetings already.  Apparently, there isn't enough important business on his desk right now, so getting out among the people, plying the best trick of his trade which is his eloquence and articulation, he launched his 2012 re-election campaign yesterday.  He will thrill the throngs with his speeches.  He'll dodge difficult questions and give everything except a direct answer.  This first stimulus package contains much to bring a smile to some of his special interest groups.  Meanwhile, back in Washington, his staff stealthily puts together plans to take over the census and redistricting process which will also be very helpful in moving toward a one-party political system for a very long time, if not permanently.  As the CEO of GE signs on to the economic advisory team, TV  (NBC)  networks get an even brighter green light to increase the intensity of pro-Obama programming of every kind. 

Just when we thought we had a break in campaign promises and fainting crowds and women revealing their fantasies, it appears we are already back in an election season.  I was expecting weekly televised fireside chats to start soon, but hadn't expected full fledged campaign stops, replete with hecklers drowning out voices that attempt to ask legitimate questions; at least not yet.

It probably makes good political sense to keep the folks distracted with the hope that the president might be stopping soon in our towns and cities. Normally in this environment, people still working wouldn't dare take a day off to go see a celebrity for fear of losing their job, and those not working and living in fear of what tomorrow will bring usually would spend their days looking for work. But, hope and change has come to America. The people voted for it. Now, when given the chance to see our leader, we go forth in joy, giving no thought to whether our job is in jeopardy, or whether a job was waiting for us that day but we failed to show up and apply.

The campaign slogan of Hope and Change has ironically been replaced recently with Fear and Things Are Going to Get Worse. Any day now we'll probably start seeing the '12 bumper stickers, and I wonder what the catch phrase will be this time around.

Spare us the righteous indignation

The President's announcement that he'll crack down on evil CEO's and executives who are abusing their power and making too much money might be a worthwhile expenditure of his time in other circumstances. He promises to cap compensation to $500,000 until all federal loans are paid up, and he's taking 'the air out of golden parachutes'.  When Mr. Obama came out swinging the other day, declaring an end to what he considers to be Wall Street greed, he received loud applause and his minions in the media gave three cheers to the whole concept that big business was finally getting their comeuppance.  His fiery words ignited passion across the airwaves as America felt at least a little better, knowing the fat cats were finally getting their due.  The problem is, this bold new policy is not retroactive, and the righteous indignation is hollow. 

The stimulus package that Democrats will likely push through in the next few days does not provide for the bail out of any major corporations, banks or businesses.  I have not read the entire bill because my computer freezes up when I try to scroll through it (that may be why many legislators have failed to read it in it's entirely, as well).  Had the president imposed his policy retroactively to the banks and companies bailed out last fall, it would have had some viability.  Right now, he's talking about what will happen in the future.  He's apparently going to get tough at some point, but what has happened in the past is not important.

We learned yesterday that $78 billion of our hard-earned tax money used to bail out banks in October has been wasted.  The Treasury bought up stocks in failing banks and paid prices far above the value of those stocks and thus, the American taxpayer got taken to the cleaners. At the time, polls revealed approximately 70% of Americans were against bailing out any failed organization. Our voices were ignored.  Our new Secy of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, apparently was involved in the entire bail out process, working hand in glove with Henry Paulson. We've been told he must be confirmed for his new position because no one else is qualified.  I think we expected someone with requisite qualifications to correct our problems, not make them worse and create more waste and debt.  Still, we are asked to have the utmost confidence in the direction our leadership is moving on economic matters.

The President is talking about applying his compensation rules from this point forward, so that must mean he has plans to do more bailing out of banks and major business that he hasn't told us about yet.  Is $500,000 now the standard for a year's worth of hard work? If so, will other hard working Americans get their pay raised to that level? What method was used to arrive at this amount? Will it go up when the economy improves or down if it doesn't improve? Will the salaries of other employees working for bailed out companies be mandated by the federal government, as well? Why didn't the president go back to the executives of the bailed out banks, insurance companies and automakers and require them to turn over any 2008 earnings above $500,000 to the Treasury Department in repayment?  We learned not to ask questions during the campaign, so I'm not expecting clarification any time soon.

Goldman-Sachs has apparently decided to back out of the socialist trend of our government taking over the financial sector and claims they will pay back all the money they received from the government.  Some are criticizing them, saying they just want to be able to pay their executives whatever they choose.  That's possible, but perhaps they also want to turn back a portion of the tidal wave of government take-over of every aspect of our lives.

Tax, spend and waste with fearmongering and class warfare as a political agenda. Righteous indignation, indeed.

Iraq: good news means no news

Iraq has now taken another huge step toward stable democratic rule and no one seems to have noticed. While headlines this week followed Obama's every utterance and his cabinet's growing tax evasion problems, a story of historic proportions was unfolding in a nation that has dominated American politics for the past five years. Some 140,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Iraq, and over 4500 Americans have paid the ultimate price to create the conditions in which national elections could be held and a democratic government could peacefully take power. Just such an election occurred in Iraq this past week.

And it hardly made the news.

What a difference a year or two makes. Throughout 2007 and 2008, the debate that raged in Washington and among the pundits in the press was to whether Iraq was a "lost cause". Though evidence of the success of the "surge" being implemented by David Patreaus was clear to those who chose to see it, the media was having none of it. During the early days of the 2008 primary season, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both gave endless stump speeches decrying the war and the need to "bring the troops home now". Obama was convinced that the surge would fail, and continued to tout his "wisdom" in being the only candidate in both parties to be "against the war from the beginning". Even in the face of evidence that the surge was working, with U.S. combat deaths declining precipitously and security (and commerce) returning to areas of Iraq that were once uninhabitable, Obama never budged: Iraq was a failure, a mistake in judgment and the surge "too little, too late".

I'm sure the Iraqis who voted this past week would beg to differ. As Frederick and Kimberly Kagan wrote today in the Wall Street Journal, the Iraqi election not only reaffirmed democracy itself, but showed that voters are increasingly choosing secular candidates over religious ideologues:

Iraqi voters chose nationalist, secularist parties over religious parties by a wide margin. In the mostly Shiite south, candidates associated with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party appear to have gained significantly. This outcome is noteworthy because Dawa came to power in the 2005 elections with virtually no grass-roots support or organization. Few would have predicted Mr. Maliki's electoral success even a year ago.

In addition, the Kagans note that the influence of Moqtada al-Sadr has continued to wane. The former scourge of U.S. forces that lead the insurrection in 2006 following the bombing of the Samarra Mosque in Baghdad -- the spark that lit the sectarian tensions that threatened to subsume Iraq into Civil War. al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia ran roughshod over Iraq until the forces of the Bush/Patreaus surge prompted Sadr to disarm.

Moqtada al-Sadr, by contrast, relied on grass-roots support for his movement and seemed poised to dominate elections in the south a year ago. But he lost much of his popular support when Iraqi Security Forces defeated his militias in Basra, Baghdad and Maysan in June 2008. The door was open for the well-organized Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council (ISCI), the clerically dominated party that had controlled many important provincial governorships and councils in the south. Yet Iraqis voted instead for Mr. Maliki's coalition or for the secular Shiite coalition of former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

The Iraqi elections thus seem to have ushered in a new era of secular democracy, and provide the latest proof that the Iraq which George Bush has bequethed to the Obama Administration is well on its way to becoming a stable, functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East. More importantly, these latest election results are a further blow to the efforts of Iran to destabilize that Maliki government in favor of an Islamic state:

The big loser in this election was Iran. Iranian agents spent a lot of money trying to influence the outcome of the elections in the south, and they largely failed. Iran's favored parties did poorly. The Iranians had hoped to persuade Iraqi voters to punish Mr. Maliki for signing the security agreement with the United States. Instead, these elections proved to be a powerful vote of confidence for the prime minister and his policies, including that agreement.

All of which puts Barack Obama in a great position to advance American interests in the region -- should he choose not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The continued presence of American troops -- as honest brokers in the on-going negotiations between factions and as a bulwark against the return of Al Qaeda -- is essential to cementing this fragile democracy into a steady and reliable member of the international community.

The presence of a stable Iraq with a democratically elected government is a gift to the world from George W. Bush. Pray now that Barack Obama doesn't follow the self-loathing instincts of those in the media and within his party who wish to isolate us from the world, and abandon this important and noble effort before it is finished.

Dems' thinly disguised power grab

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” said Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff. One look at the so-called “Stimulus Package” that doesn’t stimulate but is the biggest aggregation of special interest pork in the history of the Republic tells you exactly what he means. Consider two facts: One, the amount of money this bill would shovel out the front door of the Treasury is- adjusted for inflation- Five times the total amount of money spent by FDR in his first three years in office.

Two, given that all this money must be borrowed, and hoping that the Chinese and others will continue to purchase U.S. debt, the rarely mentioned interest payments alone-347 billion dollars- are the largest single budgetary line item in our history.

The tipoff on what the Democrats are up to is revealed in the way they (aided by the media echo chamber) relentlessly describe the country’s economic condition as the “Worst since the Great Depression”.

The truth however is very different. Our economy while certainly bad is only the “Worst since the Carter Administration”. In that period unemployment touched double digits, inflation hit 12%, interest rates an astonishing 21 %, and gasoline prices-adjusted for inflation- were higher even than the recent four dollars per gallon. Today these key indicators of economic hardship are nowhere near as bad as the Carter years.

So, why are Democrats desperately determined to utterly ignore the Golden Age of Jimmy and rush all the way back to the Great Depression as the proper benchmark for today’s economic crisis?

There are two reasons. First, using the Great Depression as a comparative allows Democrats to cast George Bush in the villainous role of Herbert Hoover, and even better lets Obama masquerade as the Second Coming of the liberal God FDR.

Now for Democrats it just wouldn’t do to describe Bush as merely “the worst President since Carter”, particularly since that would get people thinking that maybe Barack Obama is the new Ronald Reagan.

The second, and far more ominous reason is that by invoking the “Great Depression” and the economic horror stories associated with it (e.g. 25% unemployment) the Democrats hope to create a climate of fear and anxiety among our citizens that will in turn facilitate their radical agenda of a massive power transfer that will transform all the major sectors of our economy- education, environment, energy, health care, labor relations etc. Only by persuading the public that the economic crisis is truly calamitous and catastrophic in scope can the Democrats justify and sell the sweeping, even revolutionary changes they have in mind.

Needless to say, these sweeping changes are not talked about openly. Democrats long ago learned the imperative of a “stealth strategy” (i.e. say one thing while planning to do another).

In broad stroke the true liberal goal is the transformation of America into a statist social welfare society along European lines. Remember, these are the people who tried to impose Hillary Care, still praise the rationed Canadian health care system, and even find good things in Fidel Castro’s approach to public health.

The means of achieving this Brave New World are simply put, redistribution of wealth and income. Remember Barack Obama’s unguarded remark to Joe the Plumber: ”Aren’t things better for everybody when you spread the wealth around?”

Up until now these Democratic goals have been hidden behind vague promises-e.g. affordable health care for all, tax cuts for 95% of us. Now, with the “stimulus” the Democrats have been compelled to put in writing for the first time a list of specifics. The result is an appalling compendium of “good ideas” put together by Nancy Pelosi and friends,that is only a down payment on the even bigger and better ideas that will soon follow.

Now if the economic crisis is as catastrophic as the Democrats would have us believe, then it logically follows that these good ideas must be signed into law real fast, at least fast enough to insure that the public has no real chance to look at them, and Congress has no chance to debate or significantly alter the most expensive piece of legislation in history.

There will however be ample time-one day- for our grandchildren to ask us incredulously: “What were you thinking”?

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Baltimore Sun.