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David Warren says it’s nice the Dems are in power, they have to act like grownups.
One of the advantages of having Barack Obama as president of the hyperpower, is that it puts his great mass of fans, in America and abroad, in the position of having to think about real problems. It turns out the solution to each of them was more complicated than “get rid of Bush.” The world does not spontaneously change when the president changes.
North Korea, Iran, and a seriously unstable Pakistan continue to present plausible and pressing nuclear threats. Islamist terrorists continue to seek soft targets right around the world; and the fanatic Islamist ideology continues to win adherents, even in New York prison cells. For that matter, problems of disease, poverty, petty tyranny and oppression, with or without war, continue to afflict our species, regardless of who comes and goes from an office in Washington. America’s allies become no more likely to pull their weight, and no less apt to strike self-serving rhetorical postures.
The banking problems, the environmental and other notional issues, must be seen in a new light. It is no use just inventing bogeymen, and accusing them of imaginary crimes. Suddenly the facts matter, and the advantages of pretending disappear. …
A WSJ editorial that could have been in the revenue shortfall section from two days ago.
… Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”
One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000 …
Michael Barone grew up in Detroit so his comments on the auto bailouts can have special poignancy.
… “The volumes need to be big for Chrysler to survive,” [market analyst Tracy Handler] said. “Will they be? I have doubts about that.”
See also this BBC article (“it’s madness”). Pathetically, Chrysler hopes that even if they don’t save the company the new small cars will “[b]urnish the environmental image of Chrysler brands,” says Automotive News.
My question: How many cars does burnishing a firm’s environmental image actually sell?
Barone noted our “gangster government” favoring unions will make it hard for unionized companies to sell bonds. David Indiviglio of The Atlantic has come to the same conclusion saying investors “can’t afford to lend to unionized companies.” Actually, they will, but the rates will be higher.
… Bond investors literally can’t afford to lend to unionized companies because it’s clear that current power in Washington will take the unions’ side, despite past bankruptcy law precedents that favor senior creditors. That means Washington’s actions in pushing for these bankruptcy verdicts to come out in favor of the unions will probably hurt unionized companies in the long run. As a result, it might be wise for Washington to reconsider the precedents it’s setting for unionized companies undergoing bankruptcy.
Mark Steyn on Britain’s expense scandal.
… For their constituents, the scandal is a rare glimpse of a central truth about politics in an advanced Western democracy: A lifetime in “public service” is a lifetime of getting serviced at public expense. The salaries are small but the perks are unlimited. A few weeks back, while the home secretary was away, her poor husband whiled away an evening by purchasing two pay-per-view pornographic movies — By Special Request and Raw Meat 3 — which, upon her return, his missus promptly billed to the government. Most of us, whether we land a job at the local feed store, the dental practice, or National Review, expect to have to pay for our own moats, toilet seats, chocolate Santas, and screenings of Raw Meat 3. But being in “public service” means never having to say, “Hey, this one’s on me.”
There are local variations, of course. In the U.S., I don’t believe you can claim for repairs to the toilet seat at your second home, but then again your second home might have come your way, like Chris Dodd’s Irish “cottage,” at an exceptionally favorable price. A senator gets between $2.3 million and $3.7 million for the costs of running his office. Tom Daschle’s plea in mitigation for his tax irregularities can stand for an entire political culture: It never occurred to him, suddenly returned to private life and working his Rolodex for a little light consulting and speechifying, that things like chauffeurs and limousines were taxable benefits members of the non-legislating class are supposed to declare to the Treasury. After all, in Congress, that stuff is just the way it is: Declaring your driver would be as silly as declaring the air or the grass.
Do you remember the anthrax scare just after 9/11? I remember how shocked I was when I heard on the radio that 34 of Senator Daschle’s staffers had come down with anthrax poisoning. Not shocked that they’d been poisoned, but shocked that Senator Daschle had 34 staffers. Why? …
Tony Blankley goes back to Frederic Bastiat to show the folly of “five million green jobs.”
In 1845, the French economist Frederic Bastiat published a satirical petition from the “Manufacturers of Candles” to the French Chamber of Deputies that ridiculed the arguments made on behalf of inefficient industries to protect them from more efficient producers.
“We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us….
“We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds – in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country. . . .”
This famous put-down highlights the problem of claiming that protecting inefficient producers creates good jobs. Obviously, the money the French would waste on unneeded candles could be spent on needed products and services – to the increased prosperity of the French economy. …
Not to mention Bush’s folly ethanol. A piece from American.com. It gets a little technical here, but it’s worth wading through.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently released its analysis of the renewable fuel standard enacted by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The standard requires 11.1 billion gallons of renewable fuel to displace petroleum fuel in 2009, ratcheting up each year until reaching 36.0 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. There are separate volume requirements for advanced biofuels, cellulosic, and biodiesel.
Forcing the market to produce large amounts of renewable fuel will harm consumers in two ways: it will increase prices at the pump, because biofuels are more costly than gasoline, and it will drive up the price of food, because it diverts crops into fuel. The impact of food price inflation will weigh most heavily in developing countries where food purchases comprise larger shares of consumption. Food expenditures account for as much as 70 percent of household consumption among lower income groups in the developing world.
What can justify a policy that deliberately increases the price of food and fuel? Calling passage of the bill the “shot heard ‘round the world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it would improve the “health of our children.” But this is questionable at best. While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis suggests that the switch toward renewables will decrease ammonia, carbon monoxide, and benzene, it also predicts “significant increases in ethanol and acetaldehyde emissions” and “more modest increases in nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, particulate matter, hydrocarbons, acrolein, and sulfur dioxide.” Citing time constraints, the EPA did not do a full analysis of the net health effects of these emission profiles, but a reasonable assumption is that the detrimental health impacts from increased particulate matter will at least offset the health improvements from the predicted reductions in the other pollutants. …
Karl Rove thinks the GOP should go ahead and oppose Sotomayor on principle.
… The Sotomayor nomination also provides Republicans with some advantages. They can stress their support for judges who strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written. A majority of the public is with the GOP on opposing liberal activist judges. There is something in our political DNA that wants impartial umpires who apply the rules, regardless of who thereby wins or loses.
Mr. Obama understands the danger of heralding Judge Sotomayor as the liberal activist she is, so his spinners are intent on selling her as a moderate. The problem is that she described herself as liberal before becoming a judge, and fair-minded observers find her on the left of the federal bench.
Republicans also get a nominee who likes showing off and whose YouTube moments and Google insights cause people to wince. There are likely to be more revelations like Stuart Taylor’s find last Saturday of this Sotomayor gem in a speech at Berkeley: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Invert the placement of “Latina woman” and “white male” and have a conservative say it: A career would be finished. …
A securities law blog, Lots Stocks and Gavel posts on another foolish Sotomayor decision.
… When the case came to her, Judge Sotomayor took the opinion that the law did not bar standing for all lawsuits in connection with the sale or purchase of securities, even though the act specifically said it did bar standing. Citing a 30 year-old case, written long before the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards act, she opined that the law still allowed for class action law suits to be filled by those who suffered direct loss due to the purchase or sale of securities. Blue Chip Stamps v Manor Drug Stores, 421 US 723 (1975).
In other words, she took an activist position in favor of an interpretation that would have allowed the suit to go forward, in spite of specific language in the law that would have barred it.
Her ruling was overturned unanimously with the Supreme Courts opinion being authored by one of the most liberal Justices on the Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens.
WaPo’s Dana Milbank is back on the Sotomayor case.
In her years on the bench, Sonia Sotomayor has produced millions of words. Opponents of her Supreme Court nomination are particularly interested in 32 of them:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said in a 2001 speech. …
David Harsanyi ponders our changing abortion attitudes.
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