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As advertised yesterday, David Brooks’ column on income inequality is up today.
… the Democratic campaign rhetoric is taking on a life of its own, and drifting further away from reality. Feeding off pessimism about the war and anger at
Washington, candidates now compete to tell dark, angry and conspiratorial stories about the economy.I doubt there’s much Republicans can do to salvage their fortunes by 2008. But over the long term a G.O.P. rebound can be built by capturing the Bill Clinton/Democratic Leadership Council ground that the Democrats are now abandoning. Whoever gets globalization right will have a bright future, and in the long run, the facts matter.
John Stossel’s weekly column could be a companion piece. Except, you’ll like it better. It’s a review of the book The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture by Brink Lindsey.
In political life today, you are considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.
But what’s compassionate about that? Compassionate is “live and let live.” …
… Lindsey, whose book is getting favorable attention in The New York Times, The Economist, Los Angeles Times, Times of London and National Review, is not the first to point this out, but he emphasizes that the “live and let live” ethic arose only when material security could be taken for granted. As people worried less about where their next meal would come from, they had time to contemplate and develop more enlightened attitudes.
“American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change,” he writes. “Condemned as mindless materialism, it has burst loose a flood tide of spiritual yearning. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health-care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a ‘creative class’ of ‘knowledge workers’ — all are the progeny of widespread prosperity.”
Great post from West Coast Pajamas Media.
After a six-year stint as an elementary school teacher in the tough LA neighborhood of
Watts, PJM’s Aaron Hanscom would like to know why wealthy Democrats like John Edwards don’t support charter schools or voucher programs. Is choice in education only acceptable to Edwards if parents have his kind of money?
The Captain posts on the non-union labor used for picketing.
Progressives used to argue that the workers had more moral standing than owners and other elites because they actually did the work than enriched the upper classes. The proletarian status of the working class found favor from Karl Marx to George Meaney, and inspired the modern labor movement. Now its heirs have decided on their own division of labor .. by outsourcing picket lines …
Roger Simon thinks Obama’s not ready for prime time.
Fred Dicker, top dog in
Albany for the NY Post, starts off three items on Eliot Spitzer’s trooper-gate problem. Pickerhead wishes Don Imus was around to cover this.
Gov. Spitzer suspended a top aide and reassigned another yesterday after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a bombshell report concluding they conspired with the State Police to damage Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno by cooking up a plot claiming he misused state aircraft.
Spitzer, who had recently insisted that neither his staff nor the State Police had acted improperly, said communications director Darren Dopp was suspended without pay for an “indefinite period” of at least 30 days.
William Howard, the governor’s assistant secretary for homeland security, will be reassigned to a position outside of the governor’s staff.
Cuomo’s report also recommended disciplinary action be considered against acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton, but none was taken.
The scathing, 53-page report detailed a months-long scheme in which Dopp, Howard, and Felton – at times with the partial knowledge of Spitzer chief of staff Richard Baum – used the State Police to gather and create misleading and inaccurate records on Bruno’s use of state aircraft to travel from Albany to Manhattan in hopes of showing he was using the flights strictly for political purposes, a possibly illegal action.
NY Post has an editorial today.
So now comes word that two key aides to Gov. Spitzer refused to be interviewed by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in connection with
Albany’s topsy-turvy Troopergate plot.Why so reticent?
Could it be that truthful testimony on their role in the scheme to frame state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno – exposed by Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker this month and confirmed by Cuomo on Monday – would be bad for their principal, Eliot Spitzer?
That candid answers to Cuomo’s question would shed too much light on what Spitzer knew – and when he knew it?
Let’s be frank.
Richard Baum and Darren Dopp – Spitzer’s chief of staff and chief spokesman – didn’t dummy up for no reason at all. …
Michael Goodwin in the Daily News today.
In the fall of 1998, Eliot Spitzer was winning the race for attorney general. I was the Daily News Editorial Page editor, and my colleagues and I had pressed Spitzer about the source of millions of dollars he was spending on the race. He told us, as he told election officials, that he had taken out personal bank loans. Days before the election, Spitzer confessed to another newspaper that his father really was the source of the money.
Soon after I got to my office that day, the phone rang. It was Spitzer, calling to explain. “Eliot,” I said, “you lied to us.”
His response was prompt and certain: “I had to,” he said, adding his father didn’t want his role known.
“I had to” is an excuse I will never forget. As Spitzer collected scalps on Wall Street and built a reputation as a crusading reformer, the memory tempered my applause. “I had to” wouldn’t let go. Even as he swept to a landslide election as governor and said the right things about changing
Albany, Spitzer’s past flashed a yellow caution light about his character.That light now has turned red, which is why we need to know much more about “Eliot Mess.” This story can’t be a one-day wonder that ends with the mere suspension of one aide and the transfer of another. …
… Two patterns suggest Spitzer was directly involved. First, volcanic anger at targets, followed by leaks to the media, both of which happened here, was standard operating procedure for Spitzer as attorney general. Virtually every Wall Street case he brought was first previewed in newspapers, often with evidence such as key e-mails released by anonymous sources. Notwithstanding that the evidence was often damning, the tactics were more thuggish than professional.
The second argument for Spitzer’s involvement is that he is a micromanager. The notion that his A team – his chief of staff, his communications director, the deputy head of homeland security, the head of the state police – conspired to target the powerful Bruno without Spitzer’s knowledge defies belief. Had the target been a minor critic from Podunk, maybe. But Bruno is Public Enemy No. 1 to Spitzer, and no way would underlings dare go after him without the governor’s knowledge.
But we won’t know the whole truth until a prosecutor summons the spine to find it. If the
Albany district attorney won’t, then a federal prosecutor must. Either way, we have to know what Spitzer knew and did. Only then can
Albany return to its routine scandals.
Robert Samuelson tells us about Prius Politics. Prius hybrids. The ones driven around in a cloud of smug.
… Prius politics promises to conquer global warming without public displeasure. Gains will occur invisibly through business mandates, regulations and subsidies. That’s why higher fuel economy standards are acceptable. They seem painless. It sounds too good to be true — and it is. Costs are disguised. Mandates and subsidies will give rise to protected markets. Companies (utilities, auto companies, investment banks) will manipulate rules for competitive advantage. There will be more opportunity for private profit than public gain.
The government’s support for ethanol is instructive. In 2006, 20 percent of the
U.S. corn crop went for ethanol; the share is rising. Driven by demand for feed and fuel, corn prices have soared. With food costs increasing, inflation has worsened. The program is mostly an income transfer from consumers to producers and ethanol refiners. Americans’ oil use and greenhouse gas output haven’t declined.Deep reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases might someday occur if both plug-in hybrid vehicles and underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants become commercially viable. Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.
Don Boudreaux writes on the politics of prohibition.
… if the history of alcohol prohibition is a guide, drug prohibition will not end merely because there are many sound, sensible and humane reasons to end it. Instead, it will end only if and when Congress gets desperate for another revenue source.
That’s the sorry logic of politics and Prohibition.
Tony Blankley today is in the humor section because he wrote about the last debate.
… in Edwards’ only memorable comment of the night, he rather put his foot into it. Each of the candidates was asked to describe something he or she approves of and something he or she disapproves of regarding the candidate to the left. Sen. Hillary Clinton was to Edwards’ left, and he expressed disapproval of her pink (or, perhaps, coral) sweater. The questioner was clearly looking for policy disagreements, so Edward’s reflexive comment on her appearance rather reminded the audience of his reputation for excessive concern with matters of grooming. It also was suggestive of his inner sexism (despite his wife’s claim that her husband is better than Hillary for the fairer sex) as he would hardly have commented on a male candidate’s suit jacket.