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For the most part, it’s good to ignore Ariana Huffington. She has been particularly ignorant lately. David Harsanyi is our guide.
Celebrated progressive doyenne Arianna Huffington recently penned a brilliantly absurd piece titled “Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism.”
Huffington argues, in effect, that communism and “laissez-faire” (minimal intervention) capitalism are equivalent ideological extremes.
Sure, one of these philosophies spurred the murder and misery of hundreds of millions worldwide; the other promotes liberty and innovation and welcomes foreigners to lounge around in expansive mansions paid for by their former oil-baron husbands.
So, we can agree, there is no such thing as a flawless ideology. …
Mark Steyn comments on the success of Obamanomics.
I was at the mall two days before Christmas, and it was strangely quiet. So quiet that, sadly, I was able to hear every word of Kelly Clarkson bellowing over the sound system “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” Don’t get me wrong – I love seasonal songs. “Winter Wonderland” – I dig it. “Rudolph” – man, he’s cool, albeit not as literally as Frosty. But “Grown-Up Christmas List” is one of those overwrought ballads of melismatic bombast made for the “American Idol” crowd. It’s all about how the singer now eschews asking Santa for materialist goodies – beribboned trinkets and gaudy novelties – in favor of selfless grown-up stuff like world peace.
Which is an odd sentiment to hear at a shopping mall.
But it seems to have done the trick. “Retail Sales Plummet,” read the Christmas headline in The Wall Street Journal. “Sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending.”
Hey, that’s great news, isn’t it? After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Sen. Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say, ‘You just go ahead, we’ll be fine.’”
And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nose-dived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Sen. Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these past few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-elect Barack Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the U.S. economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.
And how does the rest of the world, of whose tender sensibilities then-Sen. Obama was so mindful, feel about the collapse of American consumer excess? They’re aghast, they’re terrified, they’re on a one-way express elevator down the abyss with no hope of putting on the brakes unless the global economy can restore aggregate demand. …
Ann Coulter writes a wonderful piece on Sarah Palin’s pick as Human Events’ Conservative of the Year.
… Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President? She was running with John McCain! There was no chance that ticket was going to place her anywhere near the presidency. In fact, I can’t think of a better place to put someone you wanted to keep away from the White House than on a ticket with McCain.
Palin was a kick in the pants, she energized conservatives, and she made liberal heads explode. Other than his brave military service, introducing Sarah Palin to Americans is the greatest thing John McCain ever did for his country.
But unless Palin is going to be the perpetual running mate of “moderate” Republicans who need conservative bona fides, she will need to become wiser and better read. Even Reagan didn’t run for President in his 40s. (True Obama is in his 40s, but we are not Democrats.)
Perhaps Palin’s year is 2012, but I would recommend that she take a little more time to become older and wiser. She ought to spend the next decade being a good governor, tending to her children so none of them turn out like Ron Reagan Jr., and reading everything Phyllis Schlafly, Thomas Sowell, Ronald Reagan and “Publius” have ever written. (She also might keep in mind that HUMAN EVENTS was Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper!)
In time, HUMAN EVENTS’ 2008 Conservative of the Year will be ready to be our President and someday can sweep into office and dismantle all the heinous government programs Obama and the Democrats are about to foist on the nation. Who knows? She might even be able to run as the candidate of “hope” and “change.”
Speaking of Palin, Victor Davis Hanson compares the media treatment of her to that of Caroline Kennedy.
… But, no, the real embarrassment proves to be the media itself that apparently can’t see this weird unfolding self-incriminating morality tale: It is not just that Palin is conservative, Kennedy politically-correct (e.g., pro-abortion, gun control, gay marriage, etc), or Palin a newcomer to public attention, Kennedy a celebrity since childhood. Rather it is the aristocratic value system of most NY-DC journalists themselves who apparently still assume that old money, status, and an Ivy-League pedigree are reliable barometers of talent and sobriety, suggesting that the upper-East Side Kennedy’s public ineptness is an aberration, a bad day, a minor distraction, while Palin’s charisma and ease are superficial and a natural reflection of her Idaho sports journalism degree.
A few generations ago, Democrats would have opposed Palin but appreciated her blue-collar story, and applauded a working mom who out-politicked entrenched and richer male elites. But now the new aristocratic liberalism has adopted the values of the old silk-stocking Republicans of the 1950s—and so zombie-like worship rather than question entitlement.
You know, Caroline Kennedy gives a, you know, interview to the, you know, NY Daily News.
… “I’m really coming into this as somebody who isn’t, you know, part of the system, who obviously, you know, stands for the values of, you know, the Democratic Party,” Kennedy told the Daily News Saturday during a wide-ranging interview.
“I know how important it is to, you know, to be my own person. And, you know, and that would be obviously true with my relationship with the mayor.” …
Karl Rove writes on W’s reading habits. Pickerhead thinks some of this is a stretch. But, Rove has good credibility so we include it.
… In the 35 years I’ve known George W. Bush, he’s always had a book nearby. He plays up being a good ol’ boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don’t make it through either unless you are a reader.
There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one. Like so many caricatures of the past eight years, this one is not only wrong, but also the opposite of the truth and evidence that bitterness can devour a small-minded critic. Mr. Bush loves books, learns from them, and is intellectually engaged by them.
For two terms in the White House, Mr. Bush has been in the arena, keeping America safe and facing down enormous challenges, all the while acting with dignity. And when on Jan. 20 he flies from Washington to Texas one last time, he will do so as he arrived — with friends and a book nearby.
Fred Barnes on the weaknesses in Obama’s economic knowledge.
Barack Obama is an awfully good politician but not much of an economist. His model for lifting America out of its economic slump is President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The trouble with FDR’s policy, however, is that it didn’t come close to reviving the economy and restoring it to pre-Depression vigor. But FDR did use the New Deal quite successfully in another regard: to build a coalition that kept Democrats in the majority for a half century.
Obama’s plan for invigorating the economy, as he describes it, consists almost entirely of government spending “to spur demand and create new jobs.” His aim is to generate 2.5 million jobs, funded by a $750 billion to $1 trillion “stimulus” package. He favors tax cuts for the middle class and tax rebates for the tens of millions who pay no federal income tax.
Those tax cuts aren’t designed to promote investment. If Obama also wants tax incentives for private investment, he’s kept that a secret. But there’s no reason to think he does. He rarely mentions the private sector. And investment incentives would involve tax cuts for the wealthy, a no-no in the ideology of liberal Democrats like Obama.
As president-elect, Obama has talked frequently about the economy but practically never in the language of free markets. Incentives? He’s mentioned “incentives for fuel-efficient cars” and “economic incentives that would be helpful” to Iran to improve relations, but not for capital investment. “Across-the-board tax cuts” or “corporate tax cuts” or “tax cuts to increase investment”? Those phrases haven’t crossed Obama’s lips.
The contrast here–and not only in language–is with President Reagan’s economic stimulus in 1981. To generate investment, Reagan relied on a 25 percent, across-the-board tax cut on individual income–including the income of the rich–and accelerated depreciation for business. It worked, aided by monetary easing by the Federal Reserve. By early 1983, both the economy and employment were growing rapidly.
The difference between Reagan’s and Obama’s policies is striking. Reagan stressed private investment. With Obama, as with FDR, it’s public investment. Reagan cut spending in the worst days of the recession in 1981. Obama favors radically increased spending. Reagan sought to boost employment in general. Obama has particular jobs in mind. …
Amity Shlaes on how wage inflexibility may have been one of the factors putting the “great” in the great depression.
The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job; depression is when I lose mine.
These days recession is starting to feel like depression to a lot of people. Recession starts to feel like depression every night at General Motors Corp. when they turn off the escalators and turn down the lights in the faint hope that one more person will get to keep his wage and benefits one more day.
Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers union, knows that worker packages, which cost carmakers $74 an hour in wages and benefits, are way out of line with deflationary reality. But most of Gettelfinger’s proposals aren’t about slashing those packages. Instead, Gettelfinger is emphasizing plans for federal assistance to manufacturers, or federal cash to improve terms of auto loans.
These latter approaches aim to fortify the overall economy. In a recovered economy, the logic runs, worker pay won’t seem so egregious. Behind Gettelfinger stand economists who argue that bringing down wages isn’t right or possible, even in a troubled period. Wages, economists says, may move up, but they are “sticky downward.”
These economists cite the U.K.’s John Maynard Keynes. They also often cite one of the parents of modern economics, Irving Fisher of Yale. Around World War I, Fisher wrote up a then-novel plan: index wages to the growth of the economy so that raises are automatic.
But in recent years scholars have been making a different argument. Lee Ohanian and Harold Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles, say that the high-wage method of fending off economic depression can make a depression more likely. …
More on John Holdren, Obama’s fool as science advisor. This time from Ross Douthat in the Atlantic.