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John Fund tells us why Obama wants to control the census.
President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to “restore science to its rightful place” in government. That’s a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn’t think it would mean having the director of next year’s Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. “There’s only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement,” a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. “And it’s called politics, not science.”
The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn’t be trusted to conduct a complete Census. …
More on the census from Jennifer Rubin.
Bruce Chapman, a former Census Director, calls foul on the White House claim that other census directors have reported to the political operatives in the White House:
[T]he White House and its Congressional allies are wrong in asserting that the Census in the past has reported directly to the president through his staff. Directors of the Bureau often brief presidents and their staffs, but, as a former director (under President Reagan), I don’t know of any cases where the conduct of the Bureau was directly under White House supervision. That includes Clinton in 2000, Bush 41 in 1990 and Carter in 1980.
The clash between Obama’s platitudes and his brazen attempt to control the system that counts the citizenry could not be more stark. …
Camille Paglia likes some of Obama’s first moves, but is mostly unstimulated.
Money by the barrelful, by the truckload. Mountains of money, heaped like gassy pyramids in the national dump. Scrounging packs of politicos, snapping, snarling and sending green bills flying sky-high as they root through the tangled mass with ragged claws. The stale hot air filled with cries of rage, the gnashing of teeth and dark prophecies of doom.
Yes, this grotesque scene, like a claustrophobic circle in Dante’s “Inferno,” was what the U.S. government has looked like for the past two weeks as it fights on over Barack Obama’s stimulus package — a mammoth, chaotic grab bag of treasures, toys and gimcracks. Could popular opinion of our feckless Congress sink any lower? You betcha!
Why in the cosmos would the new administration, smoothly sailing out of Obama’s classy inauguration, repeat the embarrassing blunders of Bill Clinton’s first term? By foolishly promising a complete overhaul of healthcare within 100 days (and by putting his secretive, ill-prepared wife in charge of it), Clinton made himself look naive and incompetent and set healthcare reform back for more than 15 years.
President Obama was ill-served by his advisors (shall we thump that checkered piñata, Rahm Emanuel?), who evidently did not help him to produce a strong, focused, coherent bill that he could have explained and defended to the nation before it was set upon by partisan wolves. To defer to the House of Representatives and let the bill be thrown together by cacophonous mob rule made the president seem passive and behind the curve. …
Claudia Rosett has a stimulus idea for Elkhart, Indiana. It also improves parking in NY.
President Obama picked Elkhart, Indiana to make a townhall-meeting pitch on Monday for the porker of an $800-billion-plus stimulus spending package — his rational being that “Elkhart is a place that has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America.”
Obama — this is his description, not mine — presented Elkhart as a place of bewildered, helpless people, wandering the ruins of a dying private sector, picking through the debris of tested-and-failed-and-junked capitalism, waiting for the only possible form of salvation to arrive in the form of torrents of government funding for roadworks, extended unemployment insurance, etc… people with “no idea what to do or who to turn to.” So there he was, to save the day.
But even accepting Obama’s vision (in which it is hard to recognize any vestige of America’s pre-change character), there is, for Elkhart, a much better solution:
Move the United Nations to Elkhart! …
John Stossel on the continued attempts at protectionism in the stimulus.
How do you make a dreadfully bad piece of legislation — the nearly $900-billion so-called “stimulus” bill — worse? Simple — add protectionism.
The “Buy American” provision of the stimulus bill, which mandates the use of domestic iron, steel and manufactured goods even if imports are cheaper, makes our trading partners nervous. That created a problem for President Obama: “I think it would be a mistake … at a time when worldwide trade is declining for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade,” he said.
But some members of his party were elected on protectionist platforms, and they are not about to blow this chance to reward their union and industrial constituencies. What was Obama to do?
He did what old-style politicians always do: tried to have it both ways by resorting to vague rhetoric. He said he’d “see what kind of language we can work on this issue.”
The Senate then added a line saying that the “Buy American” section must be “applied in a manner consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements.” …
Last week we had a short blog post defending Wal-Mart. The author expanded on the theme for Sunday’s NY Post.
…Considering this is a company that is helping families ride out the economic downturn, which is providing jobs and stimulus while Congress bickers, which had sales growth of 2% this last quarter while other companies struggled, you have to wonder why. At least, I wondered why. And in that spirit of curiosity, I applied for an entry-level position at my local Wal-Mart.
Getting hired turned out to be a challenge. The personnel manager told me she had received more than 100 applications during that month alone, chasing just a handful of jobs. Thus the mystery deepened. If Wal-Mart was such an exploiter of the working poor, why were the working poor so eager to be exploited? And after they were hired, why did they seem so happy to be there? Anytime I shopped at the store, blue-clad Walmartians encouraged me to “Have a nice day” with the sincerity of the pope issuing a benediction.
I found my first clue in the application screening process. A diabolically ingenious quiz probed for my slightest hesitation or uncertainty regarding four big no-nos of retailing: theft, insubordination, poor timekeeping and substance abuse. …
… A week later, I found myself in an elite group of 10 successful applicants convening for two (paid) days of training in the same claustrophobic, windowless room. As we introduced ourselves, I discovered that more than half had already worked at other Wal-Marts. Having relocated to this area, they were eager for more of the same.
Why? Gradually the answer became clear. Imagine that you are young and relatively unskilled, lacking academic qualifications. Which would you prefer: standing behind the register at a local gas station, or doing the same thing in the most aggressively successful retailer in the world, where ruthless expansion is a way of life, creating a constant demand for people to fill low-level managerial positions? A future at Wal-Mart may sound a less-than-stellar prospect, but it’s a whole lot better than no future at all. …
… After my two days of instruction I returned for the first real day of work. Inevitably, it was anticlimactic. The essence of life on the sales floor should be obvious to anyone: It is extremely boring.
I had chosen the pet department, which sells goldfish, cat food, dog food and accessories. As I patrolled the aisles, repositioning misplaced items and filling gaps in the shelves, I realized that Wal-Mart “guests” really are like guests. They are visitors who move things around and create a mess before they go home. Cleaning up after them was not very different from doing housework.
My amiable, laid-back department supervisor had been doing this kind of thing for 15 years. When I asked him why, he took a moment to process the question. He had to think back to other employers he’d worked for in the distant past. None of them, he said, had treated him so well.
What exactly did he mean by that?
His answer lay in the structure of the store. “It’s deceptive, because Wal-Mart isn’t divided into separate stores like a mall,” he said. “But really, that’s how it works. Each section is separate. This is – my pet store! No one comes here and tells me how to run it. I could go for weeks without a supervisor asking any questions.” Here was the unseen, unreported side of the corporate behemoth. Big as it was, it was smart enough to give employees a feeling of autonomy. …
International Herald Tribune says Sweden is reconsidering nuclear power plants.
Borowitz reports A-Rod backs stimulus.