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Charles Krauthammer looks at the current Republican field.
…The 2010 Democratic shellacking had the distinction of being the most ideological election in 30 years. It was driven by one central argument in its several parts: the size and reach of government, spending and debt, and, most fundamentally, the nature of the American social contract. 2010 was a referendum on the Obama experiment in hyper-liberalism. It lost resoundingly.
Of course, presidential elections are not arguments in the abstract but arguments with a face. Hence, Axiom Two: The less attention the Republican candidate draws to him/herself, the better the chances of winning. To the extent that 2012 is about ideas, about the case for smaller government, Republicans have a decided edge. If it’s a referendum on the fitness and soundness of the Republican candidate — advantage Obama.
Which suggests Axiom Three: No baggage and no need for flash. Having tried charisma in 2008, the electorate is not looking for a thrill up the leg in 2012. It’s looking for solid, stable, sober and, above all, not scary.
Given these Euclidean truths, here’s the early line. (Remember: This is analysis, not advocacy.)…
From The Corner, an interesting story about Krauthammer and Trump.
On Special Report tonight, Charles Krauthammer revealed that Donald Trump placed a call to him after Krauthammer had repeatedly slammed the celebrity developer, as the Republican Al Sharpton among other things. When he learned who was on the other end of the line, Krauthammer said he felt he’d have to put on “a helmet and a flak jacket.” But Trump was “very courteous” and “made his case,” arguing that “I’m a serious business man, a serious man, a serious candidate.” The two had a full and frank exchange of views, including on Trump’s birtherism. But “the tone was no worse than Juan and me” every night, according to Krauthammer. ”At the end,” Krauthammer said, “I felt I ought to tell him my column was going to be even worse than what I said about him on television.” Krauthammer concluded that Trump is “absolutely” running for president: “I give him credit for his sincerity.”
Daniel Henninger thinks acting unpresidential will cost votes.
…The Obama migration from the high road to the low road is evident even in nonpolitical settings. Here he is last weekend talking about the White House phone system: “You know the Oval Office always thought I was going to have like real cool phones and stuff. I’m like ‘come on guys, I’m the president of the United States.’ Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff, and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.”
I’m like? Real cool phones and stuff? Would Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy ever have affected whatever their generational equivalent was of “Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff?”
…What voters like is the memory of the historic Obama they voted into the office of the presidency. The person they voted for in 2008 is different than the person who kicked off his presidential campaign last week by personally stomping his opposition. …
In the National Journal, Ronald Brownstein comments on federal spending.
…Since the 1970s, federal spending has averaged about 21 percent of the nation’s economic output, and federal revenue has averaged about 18 percent, with deficits making up the difference. Ryan intends to lock in revenue at about 19 percent of the economy. Meanwhile, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, his plan would initially stabilize spending at around 21 percent but eventually squeeze it to 19 percent in 2040 and to less than 15 percent in 2050. Federal spending as a share of the economy hasn’t been that low since 1951, before not only Medicare and Medicaid but even the interstate-highway system existed.
…To reduce total federal spending amid those pressures requires Ryan to massively shift costs from government to seniors (through his Medicare voucher plan) and to roll back discretionary domestic and defense outlays to less than half of the lowest spending level as a share of the economy that the U.S. has seen in any year since World War II. So a serious debate over Ryan’s plan could compel voters to examine how many government services they would surrender to maintain low taxes.
A serious debate over Obama’s vision would pose the opposite question. The president’s 2012 budget envisions federal spending receding from its current elevated levels but then settling in around 23 percent of the economy. Given the demographic pressures, some increase above the modern average spending level is probably a more realistic assumption than Ryan’s. Hitting even Obama’s target would require significant spending reductions.
But Obama can’t plausibly pay for that government while upholding his promise to raise taxes on only those earning $250,000 or more. “If you want a government that is providing even close to the level of services we’ve become used to, you’re going to need more revenue than you get just … from high-income people,” Burman says. …
Mark Steyn takes a different perspective.
…The government of the United States is currently borrowing about $4 billion a day. The Republicans recently secured an alleged landmark victory over Democrats that cut 38-point-something billion dollars from the budget. How many weeks of clenched-teeth high-stakes brinkmanship did it take to negotiate ten days’ worth of cuts?
Did I say ten days’ worth? Oh, wait. That was on Friday night. By the following Tuesday afternoon, over half of the $38.5 billion had been exposed as various meaningless sleights of hand of which government, unlike Walmart, can avail itself very easily — for example, counting money in the Justice Department’s crime victims’ reserve fund that was never scheduled to be spent this year as a “savings” of $4.9 billion. Real savings — that’s to say, the kind that would pass muster according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles — were around $14 billion — or, in other words, less than the U.S. government borrowed in the four days between the announcing of the “historic cuts” and their exposure as utterly fraudulent.
…And so as the ship fills up with water we congratulate ourselves on agreeing to pass out the thimbles. …
In Forbes, Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren from the Cato Institute teach us how to tell if speculators are affecting the price of gas.
…If the price for crude oil tomorrow–thanks to the speculators–is higher than the cost of crude oil today plus the cost of storage, then everyone (investors, refineries, your Uncle Phil) could make money by buying crude in the spot market, storing it somewhere, and guaranteeing its higher selling price through the purchase of a futures contract. This would reduce current supply and increase current price while increasing future supply and decreasing future price.
If this is going on we would expect to see some sort of inventory buildup. While crude inventories in the U.S. are increasing, they always increase at this time of year, and this year’s increase is well within the normal range. More important, gasoline inventories are decreasing and decreasing much more rapidly than normal. Hence, there’s no evidence that speculators are reducing the supply of crude or gasoline through increased storage.
…More formal statistical tests (known as “Granger-causality tests” to economists) examine the impact of traders’ behavior on prices within futures markets. Do futures prices follow the bets taken by market participants or do those bets follow prices? A federal interagency task force undertook one such econometric analysis in 2008 and found that futures price changes from January 2000 to June 2008 preceded net position changes by any group of traders. …
Axel Bojanowski writes about the UN’s latest unfounded global climate scare tactic, in Der Spiegel.
…In October 2005, UNU said: “Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee.’”
…Scientists have been claiming for years that some 25 million people have already been displaced by adverse environmental conditions. Drought, storms and floods have always plagued parts of the world’s population. The environmentalist Norman Myers, a professor at Oxford University, has been particularly bold in his forecasts. At a conference in Prague in 2005, he predicted there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.
…But Myers’ forecasts are controversial in scientific circles. Stephen Castles of the International Migration Institute at Oxford University contradicted the horror scenarios in an interview with SPIEGEL in 2007. Myers and other scientists were simply looking at climate change forecasts and counting the number of people living in areas at risk of flooding, said Castles, author of the “The Age of Migration.” That made them arrive at huge refugee numbers.
Castles said people usually don’t respond to environmental disasters, war or poverty by emigrating abroad. …
…Meanwhile a new forecast is doing the rounds. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February, Cristina Tirado, an environment researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, warned of 50 million environmental refugees in the future. That figure was a UN projection she said — for 2020.
From The Washington Times we learn one business owner is beating speed cameras.
Will Foreman has beaten the speed cameras.
Five times and counting before three different judges, the Prince George’s County business owner has used a computer and a calculation to cast reasonable doubt on the reliability of the soulless traffic enforcers.
After a judge threw out two of his tickets Wednesday, Mr. Foreman said he is confident he has exposed systemic inaccuracies in the systems that generate millions of dollars a year for town, city and county governments.
…The method?…