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It is hard to look at this new administration with anything approaching equanimity. WSJ Editors write on the flip flop on proceeding against Bush officials in the interrogation debate.
Jan. 4th Pickings started with this;
… Seems like we will have chaos instead, since our new president is a rather unformed immature 46 years old. Is there any guiding thought or idea that lies behind his quest, other than narcissism and change? We are likely to see a president who agrees with the person who last spoke to him. …
Peter Wehner Corner post covers the kid’s course reversal.
Spengler looks at the Susan Boyle phenomenon and sees a metaphor for the West.
… Boyle’s stardom might prompt a closer look at the little Scottish town of Blackburn in West Lothian whence she hails, and, more generally, the state of the formerly industrial towns of Britain’s north. There is life after economic death, but it is not pleasant. Few places in the West are more disheartening. Young people have nothing to look forward to but a weekly Walpurgisnacht.
The local newspapers print thick advertising supplements about clubbing, which seems to be the mainstay of the local economy. On Friday or Saturday night, besotted boys and girls in extreme states of dishabille riot through whole quarters of ruined industrial towns. A good deal of Britain’s working class is unemployable at any price, too lazy to move to London to take the jobs waiting tables or driving buses that bring Spaniards or Frenchmen to the British capital.
A generation of Americans learned the wrong jobs: selling real estate, processing mortgages, and selling cheap imports from China at shopping malls. The cleverest among them got business degrees and learned to trade derivatives. Their services will no longer be required. On paper, it is obvious what America needs to do. Its economy went into free fall because everyone cut back spending at the same time in response to the crash of asset prices. The aging Baby Boomers need to save for their retirement, or retire later, now that their home equity has vanished along with the contents of their 401(k) plans. The only way for everyone to save at the same time without crashing the economy is to export, just as China does.
That works well enough on paper: but what are Americans to export? Not electric cars, it would appear. Warren Buffett isn’t buying General Motors these days, but he did put down over $200 million for a tenth of BYD, China’s contender in the electric-car sweepstakes. China requires nuclear power plants – it will install three a year for the next quarter-century – but America shut down its nuclear industry some time ago. There’s always Caterpillar, but the field of heavy earth-moving and construction equipment now is dominated by Japanese and German engineering, as a quick tour of the diggings for New York’s Second Avenue Subway make clear. America can’t even provide the capital equipment for its own infrastructure projects, let alone for China’s.
That Wall Street frat boys are in trouble is not a controversial statement. Top-of-the-market bubble behavior no longer is encouraged. Not long from now, they will be lucky to find employment getting coffee for a Chinese (or Indian) boss. The bubble accounted for so much of America’s employment down the food chain, though, that many millions of American jobs may vanish. This is particularly painful for prospective pensioners who find themselves in need of employment, for just the sort of jobs that suit older people – part-time retail work, for example, or real estate – are the first to disappear. America might find itself with millions of indigent elderly.
If BYD’s electric car takes the jackpot rather than General Motor’s much-heralded “Volt”, Detroit may never come back, and the American automobile industry may shrink to a skeletal remnant of itself, like Britain’s. A number of American rustbelt cities, including Detroit and Cleveland, have shrunk to less than half of their peak population, but the same might be true for the suburban sprawl of parts of the Sunbelt. …
Dorothy Rabinowitz comments on the apology tour.
The president of the United States has completed another outing abroad in his now standard form: as the un-Bush. At one stop after another — the latest in Latin America, where Hugo Chávez expressed wishes to be his friend — Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign vows to show the nations of the world that a new American leadership stood ready to atone for the transgressions of the old.
All went as expected in these travels, not counting certain unforeseen results of that triumphal European tour. The images of that trip, in which Mr. Obama dazzled ecstatic Europeans with citations of the offenses against international goodwill and humanity committed by the nation he leads, are now firmly imprinted on the minds of Americans. That this is so, and that it is not good news for him, is truth of a kind not quite fathomable to this president and his men. …
Nat Hentoff knows what the congressional black caucus missed during their Cuban vacation.
During their April visit to Cuba, members of the Congressional Black Caucus laid flowers at a Havana memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. Said Fidel Castro (CNN, April 8): “I value the gesture of this legislative group. The aura of Martin Luther King is accompanying them.” After meeting Castro, Congressman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., exclaimed: “This is the dawning of a new day! In my household, he (Castro) is known as the ultimate survivor.”
To others of us who honor King, there is a barely surviving black Cuban disciple of King (and Gandhi) whom the Caucus visitors did not meet because he has been in a Castro brothers’ cage for many years, and was off limits to them. He is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, and he is among those designated by Amnesty International as “prisoners of conscience” in Cuban gulags.
Another visiting Caucus member, Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, said (New York Post, April 11): “We’ve been led to believe that the Cuban people are not free, and they are repressed by a vicious dictator, and I saw nothing to match what we’ve been told.” A government tour can lead you to believe anything.
Cleaver also said of Raul Castro: “He’s one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever met.” (New York Post, April 11). The international human rights organizations — which have repeatedly pleaded with the Castros to release the blind physician — also find Biscet amazing in a vitally different sense.
Before he was arrested during Fidel’s 2003 mass crackdown of dissenters (an event infamously known as “Black Spring”) and sentenced to 25 years in prison, Biscet had been put away on occasion for planning to organize small groups in private homes to work nonviolently for democratic rights. …
Jackson Diehl in WaPo surveys the administration’s problems abroad.
New American presidents typically begin by behaving as if most of the world’s problems are the fault of their predecessors — and Barack Obama has been no exception. In his first three months he has quickly taken steps to correct the errors in George W. Bush’s foreign policy, as seen by Democrats. He has collected easy dividends from his base, U.S. allies in Europe and a global following for not being “unilateralist” or war-mongering or scornful of dialogue with enemies.
Now comes the interesting part: when it starts to become evident that Bush did not create rogue states, terrorist movements, Middle Eastern blood feuds or Russian belligerence — and that shake-ups in U.S. diplomacy, however enlightened, might not have much impact on them.
The first wake-up call has come from North Korea …
On Earth Day David Harsanyi says don’t forget to save the humans.
… What’s worse than the EPA grabbing power over CO2? Well, leading Luddite and Congressman Henry Waxman is worse. His proposal sets carbon reduction goals of 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050, and, with cap-and-trade, effectively nationalizes energy production.
This incremental destruction of prosperity is probably going to have to be modified as soon as citizens get a taste of reality. But how could any reasonable or responsible legislator suggest an 83 percent cut in emissions without any practical or wide-scale alternative to replace it, or any plan to pay for it all?
When people are on a crusade, I guess, logic rarely plays a part. …
John Stossel says it is drug prohibition that creates drug violence.
Visiting Mexico last week, President Obama said he will fight drug violence: “I will not pretend that this is Mexico’s responsibility alone. The demand for these drugs inside the United States is keeping these cartels in business”.
I don’t expect politicians to be sticklers for logic, but this is ridiculous. Americans also have a hefty demand for Mexican beer, but there are no “Mexican beer cartels.” When Obama visits France, he doesn’t consult with politicians about “wine violence.” What’s happening on the Mexican border is prohibition-caused violence.
A legal product is produced and traded openly, and is therefore subject to competition and civilizing custom. If two beer distributors have a disagreement or if a liquor retailer fails to pay his wholesaler, the wronged parties can go to court. There’s no need to take matters violently into their own hands. As a result, in legal industries the ability to commit mayhem is not a valued skill.
On the other hand, dealers in a prohibited product operate in the black market. Upstanding businesspeople stay away, relinquishing the trade to those without moral scruples. Black-market operators can’t resolve disputes in court, so being good at using force provides a competitive advantage.
Politicians gave us prohibition and created the conditions in which violence pays. …
HuffPo reports on bonuses for NY Times execs.
… On Tuesday, the Times disclosed a $74 million first quarter loss, 221 times larger than the $335,000 loss in the first quarter of 2008.
According to the New York Times proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, corporate president and CEO Janet L. Robinson received a total compensation package valued at $5.58 million in 2008, up well over a million from the $4.14 million she received in 2007, and the $4.4 million she received in 2006. …
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