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John Stossel was so good today, he gets to go first. He takes exception to a David Brooks column. Pickerhead likes internecine warfare on the right.
… In the true Hamiltonian spirit, Brooks also doesn’t trust the market — which means he doesn’t trust free, peaceful individuals and private property. He writes, “We Hamiltonians disagree with the limited government conservatives [I assume Brooks has libertarians like me in mind] because, on its own, the market is failing to supply enough human capital.”
Now David Brooks is a bright guy, so I wonder how he can blame the free market for failing in this way. He continues, “Despite all the incentives, 30 percent of kids drop out of high school and the college graduation rate has been flat for a generation.”
Excuse me, but why is that the market’s fault? Government dominates education in America. K-12 education is a coercive, often rigidly unionized government virtual monopoly that fights every attempt to experiment with free-market competition. …
Amity Shlaes of Bloomberg News, who appears here often, has written a book on the New Deal. The WSJ had an op-ed from her on the subject.
The late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was a true liberal — a man who welcomed debate. Just before he died this winter, he wrote, quoting someone else, that history is an argument without end. That, Schlesinger added, “is why we love it so.”
Yet concerning Schlesinger’s own period of study, the 1930s, there has been curiously little argument. The American consensus is Schlesinger’s consensus: that FDR saved democracy from fascism by co-opting the left and far right with his alphabet programs. Certainly, an observer might criticize various aspects of the period, but scrutiny of the New Deal edifice in its entirety is something that ought to be postponed for another era — or so we learned long ago. Indeed, to take a skeptical look at the New Deal as a whole has been considered downright immoral.
The real question about the 1930s is not whether it is wrong to scrutinize the New Deal. Rather, the question is why it has taken us all so long. Roosevelt did famously well by one measure, the political poll. He flunked by two other meters that we today know are critically important: the unemployment rate and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt spoke of a primary goal: “to put people to work.” Unemployment stood at 20% in 1937, five years into the New Deal. As for the Dow, it did not come back to its 1929 level until the 1950s. …
Greg Mankiw has bits of John Updike’s New Yorker piece slamming Shlaes’ book.
During the day a few Iraq items showed up that give comfort to the brave souls hoping for success there.
IBD editorializes on the body count.
Day after day, Americans are treated to a never-ending, mind-numbing parade of statistics about the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what about the terrorists.
One way the media distort Americans’ view of the ongoing war against terrorists is by focusing on just one side in the conflict: ours. Whether it’s the daily body count or alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, the public could be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is not only losing the war, but behaving badly in doing so.
But neither is true. This year, for instance, the U.S. has killed roughly 650 terrorists a month, according to published reports and Defense Department estimates. That compares with about 37 U.S. combat deaths per month, through May. …
VDH points out some of the things going our way in the Middle East.
Rich Lowry has a Corner post on Fred Kagan’s surge testimony today.
… Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not allocate the majority of the new combat power they received to Baghdad. Only 2 of the additional Army brigades went into the city. The other 3 Army brigades and the equivalent of a Marine regiment were deployed into the areas around Baghdad that our generals call the “Baghdad belts,” including Baqubah in Diyala province. The purpose of this deployment was not to clear-and-hold those areas, but to make possible the second phase of the operation that began on June 15. The purpose of this operation—Phantom Thunder—is to disrupt terrorist and militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in these belt areas …
Andrew Sullivan posts on Christianity and socialism.
He links to an item at Cato.
USA Today reports on a new study showing that charitable contributions are at an all-time high in America. Most interesting, the report also revealed that Americans are far more generous than supposedly compassionate Europeans. Indeed, no nation gives even half as much (as a share of income) as the United States. The French are among the worst misers, giving less than one-twelfth of what Americans donate, though it is unclear whether this is because they are taxed so much that there is no money left in their wallets or whether they assume that it is now the role of government to solve every social problem: …
Daily Telegraph, UK notes the dem fear of Fred Thompson.
Speaking of Thompson, his ideas of a federalist approach to malpractice reform are refreshing.
NY Times writes on Bernanke. Amazing how well the moron is doing. Roberts, Alito, Hank Paulson, Tony Snow, and now the pick for the Fed is looking inspired.
ALMOST nobody said it publicly, but when Ben S. Bernanke took over as chairman of the Federal Reserve a little more than one year ago, there was an undercurrent of speculation that he might be a little green. …
… financial markets have stopped second-guessing the Fed’s outlook. The federal funds futures market now indicates that investors are not expecting the Fed to cut rates this year. That is consistent with what Fed officials have been implying for quite a long time now.
“The markets have repriced to an economic and monetary policy outlook that is very much aligned with the Fed’s thinking,†said Richard Berner, North American economist at Morgan Stanley.
It is always possible that both the Fed and the markets are wrong; agreement is not the same thing as being right. But if nothing else, it suggests that Mr. Bernanke has attained his Street credibility.
New Editor noticed seven 40-year-old pitchers were scheduled to start today.