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Mark Steyn’s topic this week is the S&P downgade of our credit.
…The average individual attempts to insure against future uncertainty in a relatively small number of ways: You buy a house because that’s the surest way to preserve and increase wealth. “Safe as houses,” right? But Fannie/Freddie subprime mumbo-jumbo and other government interventions clobbered the housing market. You get an education because that way you’ll always have “something to fall back on.” But massive government-encouraged expansion of “college” led Americans to run up a trillion dollars’ worth of student debt to acquire ever more devalued ersatz sheepskin in worthless pseudo-disciplines. We’re not talking about the wilder shores of the stock market – Internet start-ups, South Sea bubbles and tulip mania – but two of the safest, dullest investments a modestly prudent person might make to protect himself against the vicissitudes of an unknown future. And we profoundly damaged both of them in pursuit of fictions.
I don’t claim absolute certainty about what the world will be like in 2023, but I know what our governing class is telling us. At Tufts University, Nancy Pelosi urged her “Republican friends” to “take back your party, so that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election – because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”
The last line attracted a bit of attention, but the “shared values” – i.e., the fetid bromides of conventional wisdom – are worth decoding, too: “Education of our children” means more spending on an abusive and wasteful unionized educrat monopoly; “growth of our economy” means more spending on stimulus funding for community-organizer grant applications; “how we defend our country” means more spending on defense welfare for wealthy allies; “our security and civil liberties” means more spending on legions of crack TSA crotch fondlers; “how we respect our seniors” means more spending on entitlements for an ever more dependent citizenry whose sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make any sense.
Nancy Pelosi fleshed out the Obama plan: More spending. More more. Now and forever. That’s what S&P understands. The road to hell is paved with stimulus funding. …
For Pickerhead, the most outrageous story for a long time is the NLRB complaint against Boeing’s decision to build a plant in South Carolina. Michael Barone points out how the administration works to manipulates big business for political gain.
So the Obama administration is now telling companies where they can build their factories. That’s the takeaway from the National Labor Relation Board’s action challenging Boeing’s ongoing plans to set up a plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, to build the 787 Dreamliner. The NLRB doesn’t like this because the plant won’t be unionized and won’t be subject to strikes—like the 58-day strike in 2008—which shut down Boeing plants in Washington state.
This reminds me of Barack Obama’s earlier order that General Motors executives keep their offices in the Renaissance Center in Detroit rather than in the GM Tech Center in suburban Dearborn.
Obama’s motives in both cases are clear. Keep tax money flowing into Detroit’s monstrously dysfunctional city government in a city that voted 94% Democratic in 2008. Keep the union dues money going into unions which contributed $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 cycle. …
The Chicago Tribune editors have more on the Boeing bullying by our gangster government.
…Boeing executives have acknowledged that they were reluctant to expand in Washington state because of the risk of a labor strike. Boeing’s workers in Washington belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Its plant in South Carolina would be nonunion.
…Seizing on the words of Boeing executives, the NLRB inferred that the decision to choose South Carolina was retaliation against the union. The labor board demands that Boeing open the second production line in Washington.
…Boeing says it will move forward with plans to begin assembly in South Carolina in July. The plant is ready for about 1,000 workers. The NLRB filed its complaint 18 months after Boeing announced it would expand in South Carolina.
The NLRB says Boeing is free to do business there — but its second production line has to run in Washington.
This is a gross intrusion by the NLRB. The disastrous, unintended message to a major U.S. employer: Keep your mouth shut and find another country to do business.
Jonah Goldberg highlights more commentary on the bureaucrat-dictators at the NLRB.
This is truly outrageous. The NLRB wants to simply order Boeing to build a factory in Washington State and not South Carolina. From the Examiner:
“Can federal bureaucrats tell a private company where to build a factory? Members of President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board think they can. In a decision that even the New York Times is describing as “highly unusual for the federal government,” Lafe Solomon, who was appointed to the board by Obama, filed a complaint on behalf of the NLRB on Wednesday seeking to force the Boeing Co. to build an assembly line in Washington state instead of South Carolina. The NLRB action stems from Boeing’s October 2009 decision to build a new factory for its new 787 Dreamliner airplane near Charleston, S.C. Boeing first sought to build the new plant near its existing facility in Puget Sound, but negotiations with the International Association of Machinists broke down when the union refused to agree to a long-term no-strike clause. The IAM had struck four times since 1989, costing Boeing at least $1.8 billion in revenue.
That’s when Boeing chose South Carolina, a right-to-work state where, unlike Washington, workers are not forced to join unions. As a result of this policy, only 6.2 percent of South Carolinians belong to unions. Construction of Boeing’s new Charleston factory is nearly complete, and the company has already hired more than 1,000 new employees, drawn mostly from within the immediate region. And back in Washington, Boeing has actually increased employment at its Puget Sound plant by 2,000 workers. But that isn’t good enough for the IAM or the Obama White House. After suffering major defeats in Wisconsin and Ohio, the labor movement is looking for a scalp. Obama’s NLRB is trying to turn Boeing into one.”
Mark Steyn comments on Jonah Goldberg’s piece.
Jonah, you got everything right but the title. It’s national fiat*: There’s nothing “federal” in any meaningful sense of the word in an ever more centralized government ordering a private company to build in a state that suits the national government’s priorities rather than a state that suits the company’s.
…PS On the other hand, Federal-Fiat would make a good corporate name for the new Chrysler.
[*UPDATE: On reflection, I think I'll go with "central fiat", which has the appropriate whiff of Soviet planning about it.]
Karl Rove offers some advice to Republicans on the upcoming debt ceiling debate.
…For this fight, President Barack Obama’s strategy is three-fold. First, warn of catastrophic consequences if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by early July when the Treasury Department runs out of fiscal tricks to keep from breaching the limit. Second, demand a “clean” debt ceiling increase, unencumbered by the tough spending and deficit caps that some congressional Republicans want to strap on the measure. Finally, blame the GOP for holding our economy hostage as often as possible.
…The GOP needs to push back now—thoughtfully and aggressively. …
…If congressional Republicans wait until June to offer their proposal, they’ll have fallen into the Democratic trap. Mr. Obama will beat them like a drum, blaming them for any hiccups in the markets and every bit of bad economic news, all while demanding a clean debt ceiling.
…Settling on a fiscally responsible package soon would put Democrats on the defensive. It would define the fight in terms favorable to Republicans and increase tensions inside the Obama administration, which is split into two camps. …
Claudia Rosett remarks on the strange barter system we have developed with North Korea. Naturally is involves the village idiot from Plains, GA.
…In 2009, when Pyongyang was haggling over terms for the release of two Al Gore employees who had moseyed onto North Korean turf, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, North Korean officials turned down a potential rescue mission by Jimmy Carter. In a memoir about her months as a prisoner in North Korea, Ling records that North Korean officials were infuriated by her suggestion that Carter be enlisted as the high-profile American to come retrieve her. They viewed Carter as washed-up and out of office for too long — a retread unfit to grace a photo-op dignifying Kim Jong Il. “Carter, Carter, Carter!” one official told her. “You have upset many people by asking for Carter.” They held out instead for the bigger prize of a visit by Bill Clinton.
Last summer, having captured another American, Aijalon Gomes, North Korea did agree to let Jimmy Carter come get him. But Kim Jong Il didn’t bother to stick around for the visit. Carter had to make do with a reception by North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan.
This time around, with North Korea reportedly holding yet another American in custody, there’s speculation that this latest prisoner will be released to Carter — as part of what’s becoming a hostage-politics routine in which North Korea’s regime turns over American detainees, like door prizes, to visiting American ex-presidents. …
In the National Review, Conrad Black writes about liberal bias in the media.
…By complete accident, I have seen this program a number of times in the last few weeks, and it is always the same: Eliot Spitzer is a loud, fast-talking, overbearing know-it-all, who has rehearsed his arguments and unleashes himself on guests, or directly at the camera, in a torrent of imperious blowhardism. He is even more irritating than Bill O’Reilly, because he is just as strident and ear-splitting, but more sinister. He has more than a desire to win an argument, like O’Reilly has; Spitzer has a will to dominate, to bulldoze his interlocutor. O’Reilly is opinionated, but Spitzer is belligerent. I normally move to the classical-music channel after a few minutes of either of them. But this self-adjudicated moot court Spitzer conducted about his own fairness and balance put me in mind of other recent outrages of liberal-media partisanship.
The left-wing media played up the showdown in Wisconsin over the governor’s reining in of the public-service unions with even greater ardor than the media of the Right, most of them associated with News Corp. As long as the betting was that the issue would be decided by the election of a pro-union judge, the Left touted the escalating battle as if it were a domestic Cuban Missile Crisis. When the liberal judge claimed victory by 200 votes, this was widely portrayed as the most heartwarming election since John F. Kennedy supposedly defeated Richard Nixon (with, as he put it himself, the help of “a few honest crooks”). When it emerged that a whole, largely Republican town had not been counted, and that in fact the more conservative candidate won safely enough, the story died. Only the most determined and meticulous scourers of the liberal media could find the dénouement, which was the principal reason I surmised that the conservative candidate had won after all. …
Scott Adams, if Dilbert fame, likes Trump.
It has come to my attention that there are still a few people in the world that I have not offended. I’d like to fix that by endorsing Donald Trump for president. But not for the reasons you might think.
This morning I read a news item saying that some folks at NBC think Trump might be pretending to run for president to boost ratings. The story noted that ratings for his TV show are up 20% lately. I laughed out loud because sometimes I forget that at least half the country doesn’t realize he’s just screwing with the media.
…Trump is smart enough to never admit that his presidential aspirations are no more than marketing. To admit the trick would damage his brand. But he has no need to ever expose the prank. …The people who are in on the joke find it entertaining. The people who will never know it’s a joke have raised their opinion of him so much that he’s the leading Republican presidential contender. And his TV ratings are up, so from a marketing standpoint it’s working. …