Here's what has to happen. Cerebus needs to sell Chrysler to somebody with cash and a need for access to the US market. India's Tata comes to mind.GM and Ford should be allowed to go through bankrupt reorganizations. Yes, there will be huge transaction costs. Yes, some of those costs will be borne by the taxpayers. The bankruptcy court's ability to remake contracts, however, will be critical. GM and Ford need to tear up their contracts with the unions, its retirees, and its dealers.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Professor Bainbridge: No Bailout for the Auto Industry
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Dick Armey: 'Compassionate' Conservatism Was a Mistake
Parties are all about getting people elected to political office; and the practice of politics too often takes the form of professional juvenile delinquency: short-sighted and self-centered.
This was certainly true of the Bush presidency. Too often the policy agenda was determined by short-sighted political considerations and an abiding fear that the public simply would not understand limited government and expanded individual freedoms. How else do we explain "compassionate conservatism," No Child Left Behind, the Medicare drug benefit and the most dramatic growth in federal spending since LBJ's Great Society?
In 1992, Republican backbenchers including Newt Gingrich, myself, Bob Walker and John Boehner rose up to challenge the Clinton administration's agenda on taxes, spending and government-run health care. But before we could beat the Democrats, we had to beat the old bulls of our own party who had forgotten their principles and had become very comfortable as a complacent minority. We captured control of Congress in 1994 because we had confidence in our principles, and in the American people's willingness to understand and reward a national vision based on lower taxes, less government and more freedom.
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Unbearable Lightness of Barney [Proposal to Cut Defense by 25%]
This is only a cursory analysis of the budget at its most superficial level, but it is enough to reveal that Barney Frank's desire to cut defense by 25 percent is either fantasy or lunacy--or a cynical attempt to play to the pacifist wing of his own party while distracting attention from his own culpability for the current financial crisis. In any case, Frank is very much alone in his desire to make such deep cuts in defense (though Obama makes noises of this sort from time to time, he is quick to backtrack). In fact, there is an emerging consensus that the U.S. must maintain its defense spending at close to its present levels for the foreseeable future.
The best way to understand what that means is defense as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Though it is commonly believed that defense spending is at unprecedented levels (it is, if one just counts dollars), relative to the size of our economy, we are only spending about 4 to 4.5 percent of GDP on defense. This compares to 11.7 percent during the Korean War, 9.8 percent during the Vietnam War, 6 percent during the Reagan defense buildup, and 4.6 percent during the first Gulf War. Despite fighting a war on two fronts for six years while simultaneously attempting to modernize our forces, despite spending more money on defense than ever before, our economic growth has outpaced the growth of the defense budget by a wide margin. From an historical perspective, current spending levels are both affordable and the minimum appropriate level, given the global security situation.
The real threat to the defense budget comes from what has been called "entitlement squeeze"; i.e., the growth of "entitlement programs" such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the like, which go up every year in response to inflation and new government mandates, without Congress even having to appropriate the money--it's just taken off the top, automatically. That leaves less and less room for "discretionary' funding--money which Congress has to appropriate and authorize every year. Defense constitutes the single largest pile of discretionary funds, and is also the one with the least domestic support, since its benefits are not visible (unless there is a war).
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Swing Voters Don't Want Big Government - WSJ.com
Barack Obama and congressional Democrats won big on Tuesday night, but they should not mistake their victory for a big-government mandate. The evidence tells a very different story.
A poll commissioned by the Club for Growth in 12 swing congressional districts over the past weekend shows that the voters who made the difference in this election still prefer less government -- lower taxes, less spending and less regulation -- to Sen. Obama's economic liberalism. Turns out, Americans didn't vote for Mr. Obama and Democratic congressional candidates because they support their redistributionist agenda, but because they are fed up with the Republican politicians in office. This was a classic "throw the bums out" election, rather than an embrace of the policy views of those who will replace them.
More on the poll:
Jonah Goldberg: Election questions no one ever asks
Of course, helping the infirm, the handicapped or soldiers overseas cast ballots makes sense. But do we really think the outcomes will be improved if we triple the turnout of the lazy and uninformed?
Apparently, the answer is yes, particularly judging by the virtual deification of "undecided" voters this year. I understand why campaigns care so much about the undecided voter in the last days of the election: They're kingmakers of a sort. But the press lionizes these people as geniuses and, judging from some of the focus groups we've been subjected to, these proudly indecisive and lazy voters actually believe all their good press.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley
It has been six years since Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the devastating accounting irregularities of Enron and WorldCom. While the intent of the law was to prevent corporate fraud, there is growing evidence that it has done more harm than good, and is undermining the venture-capital industry in Silicon Valley. Now, with signs that our economy is moving toward recession, Congress should take this opportunity to repeal the law.
The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.
Let me say this about President Bush. I think he's a good person, who loves his country. As a conservative, I was disappointed by his big government "compassion", but I never doubted his character or goodwill. After 9/11, President Bush deserves a lot of the credit for keeping us safe.
John Stossel : Who Will Run America?
"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good," Williams says.
The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.
Shelby Steele: Obama's post-racial promise
This worked politically for Obama because it tapped into a deep longing in American life -- the longing on the part of whites to escape the stigma of racism. In running for the presidency -- and presenting himself to a majority white nation -- Obama knew intuitively that he was dealing with a stigmatized people. He knew whites were stigmatized as being prejudiced, and that they hated this situation and literally longed for ways to disprove the stigma. [...]
So I don't think whites really want change from Obama as much as they want documentation of change that has already occurred. They want him in the White House first of all as evidence, certification and recognition.
But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer's ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.
Morrissey: Notes from the collapse
Using these numbers, we can see that Barack Obama succeeded in turning out his base much more effectively than McCain did his. How do we know that it's a base turnout rather than a tsunami of opinion to Democrats? For one thing, Dems didn't pick up a boatload of new seats in the House, and they may underperform expectations yet in the Senate. They did gain some strength with independents, but only gaining between 11-20 seats in the House tells us that they found votes in districts they already control, more than finding converts.
John McCain and the GOP didn't get their turnout in this race. They lost almost seven million voters from 2004, a rather stunning number. We'll be chewing on this for a while, but that's more than 10% of the Bush vote that got lost in this election. Did they stay home, or did significant numbers of them defect to Obama? I'm guessing the former. The GOP demoralized their base by acting like Democrats for too many years, and the winds of "change" proved too dispiriting this time around.
McCain & the Base [Rich Lowry]
If you believe the exit polls (I know, I know), Bush in 2004 got 84 percent of conservatives, 45 percent of moderates, and 13 percent of liberals. McCain lost ground among everyone. He got 78 percent of conservatives, 39 percent of moderates, and 10 percent of liberals. Also, the ideological composition of the electorate was almost exactly the same this year as in 2004—34 percent conservative, 44 percent moderate, 22 percent liberal. On party ID, the same story. McCain performed slightly worse than Bush across the board. Bush won 93 percent of Republicans, 48 percent of independents, and 11 percent of Democrats. McCain won 89 percent of Republicans, 44 percent of independents, and 10 percent of Democrats. Here, though, the composition of the electorate changed. In 2004, Republicans were 37 percent of voters, in 2008 32 percent.
Steyn on the Election
I'm not indulging in the same somewhat moist-eyed congratulations as some of our colleagues. I extend my congratulations mainly in the same sense that elderly British veterans of my acquaintance like to express their admiration of the marvelously innovative ways their Japanese captors found to torture them. The President-elect ran rings round our side, and found many novel ways to torture us.
Yes, you're right. Acorn is still a disgusting organization and Obama's fundraising fraud is still outrageous. But nobody wants to hear that now. The problem for us is more basic - the Dems control the language on such issues ("count every vote", etc), and they're much better at demonizing. Why did McCain talk about Ayers but not even mention Wright? Because he was terrified someone would point a finger and cry "Racist!" And in four years' time the Democrats' media-cultural-organizational advantage on such subjects will likely be even greater. The salient feature of Ron Jones' brief appearance on TV yesterday is not that Mr Jones voted "a couple of times" in Philadelphia nor even that he was entirely comfortable about admitting as much on TV, but that CNN's Brian Todd beamed indulgently and said, "I think that's against the law but it's okay." That's the way large numbers of the American people feel about Acorn, the Undocumented Auntie, foreign donations and much else: it may be against the law but it's okay.
So I think our energies would be better focused on examining where we went wrong than in objecting to where the other guys went right. We need to rediscover a coherent conservatism and find someone who can pitch it to sufficient numbers of people. We didn't have either in this campaign.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Fred Barnes: To Know Her Is To Respect Her
The difference of opinion here, between those who know Palin and those who don't, is unusual. The criticism of Palin is personal. Normally in politics, campaign operatives are called on to make excuses for a dull and uninspiring candidate. Invariably, they explain that in private, especially face-to-face with a small group of voters, the candidate is dazzlingly likable and enormously persuasive.
With Palin, it's the opposite. No one questions her ability to excite a crowd. Simply by stepping on stage at rallies, Palin rouses audiences, and her speeches are frequently interrupted by chants of "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah."
It's the private Palin, the person--who she is, what she knows, her lack of experience--that has provoked both the strongest criticism and most legitimate doubts about her readiness to be first in the line of succession if the president dies or is incapacitated.
In judging Palin, it comes down to who is more credible. Is it those who've worked with her, or know her, or have at least met and talked with her? Or those who haven't? The answer is a no-brainer. Okay, I may be biased on the subject of Palin, having been impressed after spending nearly two hours with her on one occasion and an hour on another.
Candidate denies he's a vegetarian
HELENA - Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown this week accused Democrats of spreading a false rumor that he is a vegetarian in this meat-loving state.
"I am not and have never been a vegetarian," Brown said.
"I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian and that my personal eating habits should somehow be construed as opposed to the economic interests of Montana's livestock industry."
I wouldn't be surprised if the incumbent Democrat, Schweitzer, is a closet thespian.
Catholics probe aid directed to ACORN
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hired forensic accounting specialists to investigate more than $1 million in church funding to voter-registration group ACORN, fearing the money may have been spent in partisan or fraudulent ways that could jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status.The investigation is "thorough, serious and ongoing," according to a July 11 letter to more than 200 bishops from New Orleans Bishop Robert Morin, chairman of the committee that oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
The CCHD sent $1,037,000 to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 2007, including a $40,000 grant to an ACORN affiliate in Las Vegas that was raided last month by the Nevada attorney general's office in a voter-fraud probe.
The Catholic aid agency has given more than $7.3 million to ACORN over the past decade for about 320 projects, according to the Catholic News Service.
In June, the Catholic Church froze a $1.2 million grant for 38 ACORN chapters after the community-organizing group was accused of voter fraud in 15 states.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Instapundit advocates year-round Daylight Saving Time
DST lovers probably believe that if Obama gets elected, he'll spread the sunshine around. Balderdash, I say!
YouTube - Spread The Wealth Around
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Only good thing I've ever heard about Daylight Saving Time
Back in 1999, terrorists on the daylight-saving West Bank built several time bombs, delivered to co-conspirators in Israel and scheduled to explode at a set time. Problem was, Israel had just switched back to standard time, so the only people injured were the terrorists themselves when the bomb detonated an hour earlier than they expected and killed them all.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Instapundit quoting Heinlein
Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
AP: Obama aunt from Kenya living in US illegally
Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.
If John McCain is elected president, I'm sure Aunti Zeituni will get to stay in America. It's harder to tell what Obama would do about illegal immigrants.
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