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Charles Krauthammer has more on social security.
Last week, President Obama’s budget chief, Jack Lew, took to his White House blog to repeat his claim that the Social Security trust fund is solvent through 2037. And to chide me for suggesting otherwise. I had argued in my last column that the trust fund is empty, indeed fictional.
If Lew’s claim were just wrong, that would be one thing. But it provides the intellectual justification for precisely the kind of debt denial and entitlement complacency that his boss is now engaged in. Therefore, once more unto the breach.
Lew acknowledges that the Social Security surpluses of the last decades were siphoned off to the Treasury Department and spent. He also agrees that Treasury then deposited corresponding IOUs — called “special issue” bonds — in the Social Security trust fund. These have real value, claims Lew. After all, “these Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government in the same way that all other U.S. Treasury bonds are.”
Really? If these trust fund bonds represent anything real, why is it that in calculating national indebtedness they are not even included? …
Kimberley Strassel writes on President ‘Present’.
One knock on Barack Obama in the 2008 election was his record as an Illinois state senator, where he repeatedly ducked tough issues by voting “present.” It seems old habits die hard.
If you’d like to know where the leader of the free world stands on those NCAA rankings, just turn on ESPN. (“I think Kansas has more firepower,” he explained as he filled out his bracket.) Wondering what the commander in chief thinks about gun laws? Don’t worry—he’s in favor of those already on the books, according to a recent op-ed.
If, however, you are curious about where the most powerful man in the universe stands on Libya, radiation, a possible government shutdown, the future of Social Security, or rising oil prices, don’t look to the White House. Those issues are tough. Those issues risk mistakes. Those issues might mean unhappy voters. And right now, it’s approval ratings the White House cares about. …
Jennifer Rubin says Hillary and her friends are getting the excuses in gear.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has presided over a foreign policy racked by timidity, inconsistency and indecision. And, if this account from The Daily is to be believed, she knows it:
‘ “Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”
He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretaries of State — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”
Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya. ‘
Jay Cost takes a look at polls for the 2012 race.
The invisible phase of the presidential campaign is upon us, as prospective GOP nominees are traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, meeting with donors, and of course making appearances on Sunday news programs to deny that they have any interest in the party nomination. And with all this nonsense (for which we can pin much of the blame on George McGovern!), we are also now getting a stream of election polling. Right now, it is but a stream, but soon it will turn into a raging river — with multiple polls coming out every day telling us which Republican is up, which is down, and which has been left for dead.
Before we get to that point, we’d better learn how to navigate those treacherous waters, and so today’s Morning Jay is meant as an initial primer on the 2012 polls.
To get us started, let’s flash back in time, to the Spring of 1967. The Monkees are at the top of the charts, Gilligan’s Island is ending its run (spoiler alert: they don’t make it home), and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller has quietly thrown his support (and his money) to Michigan governor George Romney, who has already announced the exploratory phase of a campaign to seek the GOP nomination. In May of that year, Gallup dutifully conducted a poll asking Americans whom they would support — Romney or incumbent Lyndon Johnson. Romney had a slight edge — 46 percent to 42 percent.
Can you imagine how that result would have set all the tongues wagging back then if 1967 had the kind of political class that we have today? My goodness! The chitter chatter of the talking heads on the cable news would have been nonstop! As it turned out, neither Romney nor LBJ ended up as nominees …
We thought she had finally disappeared, but Helen Thomas has raised her increasingly ugly head.
Veteran reporter Helen Thomas turned up in Playboy magazine this month (fully clothed, don’t worry) as part of her ongoing anti-Semitic publicity tour.
The former “dean” of the White House Press Corps sat down for an interview (link is to the Sun Herald’s summary) about her recent controversy. First she weighed in on the aftermath of her remarks about Israel last May (“I went into self-imposed house arrest”) and her views on the situation in the Palestinian territories (“the Palestinians have been shortchanged in every way”). But then the interview took an uglier turn. …
Forbes tells us how things are going with sales of Chevy’s Volt.
… Volt sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February. GM announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years. Who is going to buy all these cars?
Another reason they aren’t exactly flying off the lots is because, well, they have some problems. In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)
It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt’s 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.
Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.
Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama’s Economic Advisory Board? …
The Wall Street Journal tells us how the government has ruined clothes washers.
It might not have been the most stylish, but for decades the top-loading laundry machine was the most affordable and dependable. Now it’s ruined—and Americans have politics to thank.
In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.”
How’s that for progress?
The culprit is the federal government’s obsession with energy efficiency. Efficiency standards for washing machines aren’t as well-known as those for light bulbs, which will effectively prohibit 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year. Nor are they the butt of jokes as low-flow toilets are. But in their quiet destruction of a highly affordable, perfectly satisfactory appliance, washer standards demonstrate the harmfulness of the ever-growing body of efficiency mandates. …