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Roger Simon wonders if the GOP is really the party of the rich.
… We live in an era — the worst economically since the Depression — when the daughter of the first couple of the Democratic Party has a multi-million dollar, Marie Antoinette-style wedding with port-a-potties almost as luxurious as a toilette in Baden Baden; its self-proclaimed environmental leader, the first global warming billionaire, sprouts “green” McMansions from Nashville to Montecito; and its already multi-billionaire senator from Massachusetts moors his yacht in another state to escape taxes we hoi polloi could only dream of paying. …
Jennifer Rubin thinks the Clintons are looking good – comparatively speaking.
… In polarized political times and with growing frustration with the Obama administration (liberals dismayed, conservatives gloating), there is something refreshing — and unifying – about the Clinton-watching these days. We can all agree that Clinton was/is a badly flawed character whose presidency fell victim to his own excesses and lack of discipline. And many Americans from the vantage point of the Obama era view the Clinton presidency (like that of George W. Bush’s) much more favorably. Frankly, Obama’s greatest accomplishment to date may be to improve his predecessors’ images and forge a new not-Obama coalition. Not exactly what he had in mind, I grant you.
Richard Epstein discourses on the four rotten policy planks of this administration.
Two recent developments, one economic and the other political, should raise no eyebrows. The first is the somber economic news that the U.S.’s halting recovery is already losing steam, without regaining the levels of production and employment that the economy had more two years ago. As against historical averages, the nation faces a double whammy: a later start and a weaker boost. The second point is not unrelated to the first: President Obama has decided not to go on the hustings to campaign for the re-election of members of the House and Senate. First-term House Democrats, in particular, know that a weak president will only remind the electorate that not all economic problems can be laid at the feet of the Republicans.
This sorry state should come as no surprise given that four weak planks are sufficient to sink the ship. …
Anne Applebaum reminds us of the free-spending GOP.
… Here is a more accurate assessment: “President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.” I didn’t write that; the astute libertarian economist Veronique de Rugy did. She also points out that during his eight years in office, Bush’s “anti-government” Republican administration increased the federal budget by an extraordinary 104 percent. By comparison, the increase under President Bill Clinton’s watch was a relatively measly 11 percent (a rate, I might add, lower than Ronald Reagan’s). In his last term in office, Bush increased discretionary spending—that means non-Medicare, non-Social Security—by 48.6 percent. In his final year in office, fiscal year 2009, he spent more than $32,000 per American, up from $17,216.68 in fiscal year 2001.
But Bush is not the only culprit. After all, the federal government usually spends money in response to state demands. Look, for example, at the demands made by Alaska, a state that produces a disproportionate quantity of anti-government rhetoric, which has had Republican governors since 2002, and which has a congressional delegation dominated by Republicans. Nevertheless, for the last decade, Alaska has been among the top three largest state recipients of federal funding, per capita. Usually, Alaska is far ahead—sometimes three times as far ahead—of most other states in the union.
Largely, this is because of one famous Alaskan, Sen. Ted Stevens—a Republican—who devoted himself to securing federal funding for his state during more than four decades in the Senate. Not only were his efforts extremely popular among his Republican constituents—he was re-elected multiple times—they won him many, many imitators. Timothy Noah has pointed out that Sarah Palin, when mayor of Wasilla, hired Stevens’ former chief of staff as a Washington lobbyist. As a result, the 6,700 inhabitants of Wasilla enjoyed $27 million in federal earmarks over a four-year period. …
Corner Post with good news from Michigan’s primary vote.
… Not even Detroit royalty was spared. The self-described Kennedys of Detroit lost their final officeholder — U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick — as voters decided that even the mother of convicted ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was too many Kilpatricks on the public payroll.
Michigan’s roar against the political class bodes well for November. Republicans are in the catbird’s seat to take back two, perhaps three, congressional districts as well as a swing-state governor’s mansion.
Investor’s Business Daily editors note how the bureaucracy will get amnesty by the back-door.
Polls show Democrats have decisively lost the debate over granting amnesty to illegals. But has that stopped them? Hardly. Using the federal bureaucracy as their agent, they plan to do it anyway.
This is what happens when big government becomes so powerful that those who run it feel they can do whatever they want — no matter what the Constitution allows or the people prefer.
Americans strongly oppose amnesty for those here illegally. Democrats have been frightened away from trying to pass an amnesty bill because they’re terrified of the political consequences.
But as the Associated Press reports, that doesn’t mean amnesty is dead. Far from it. Indeed, the White House and Congress have apparently decided on a policy of “backdoor amnesty” — giving the U.S.’ immigration bureaucracy the go-ahead to enforce an amnesty law that has never been passed. …
Robert Samuelson adds his thoughts to the good news about shale gas.
You probably have never heard of oilman George Mitchell, but more than anyone else, he has changed the global energy outlook. In 1981, Mitchell’s small petroleum company faced dwindling natural gas reserves. He proposed a radical idea: drill deeper in the company’s Texas fields to reach gas-bearing shale rock more than a mile down. Because the gas was tightly packed, most engineers believed it was too costly to extract profitably. But after nearly two decades of trying, Mitchell proved doubters wrong. The result: The world has far more available natural gas than anyone suspected.
The BP oil spill cast a cloud over almost all energy news. Well, shale gas is good news. Here’s why.
Until recently, scarce U.S. natural gas reserves suggested increasing dependence on expensive foreign supplies of liquefied natural gas. No more. Also, natural gas emits about 50 percent less carbon dioxide — the major greenhouse gas — than coal. Substituting gas for coal in electricity plants could temper emissions. Finally, shale gas in Europe and Asia has huge geopolitical implications. It could reduce dependence on Russian natural gas and frustrate any gas cartel mimicking OPEC. …
Jonah Goldberg, writing for USA Today, points out why Haiti’s poverty will probably always be with us.
A recent episode of NPR’s This American Life (quite possibly the best reportorial journalistic enterprise going today — an admission that might cost me my right-wing decoder ring) focused on the plight of Haiti. The island nation was a basket case long before last January’s horrific earthquake. Indeed, despite the fact that the country hosts some 10,000 aid groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it has gotten worse over the past half-century. Haitians on average make half as much as they did 50 years ago. Despite the best of intentions, aid agencies simply haven’t made the country better.
Why?
The usual answer from the left is a long indictment of America and the West’s legacy of racism, imperialism and slavery. But even if you concede all of that, it won’t get you very far in explaining why Haiti has only gotten worse as that legacy has faded further into the past and the West has grown in generosity. (Roughly half of all American households donated to earthquake relief.)
This American Life, hardly a capitalist hotbed, has a more constructive answer: Haiti’s problems in large part boil down to a culture of poverty. Haitians do not lack the desire to make their lives better, nor do they reject hard work. But what they sorely lack is a legal, social and intellectual culture that favors economic growth and entrepreneurialism. …
Jennifer Rubin suggests a Hirohito monument at Pearl Harbor.
The controversy over the mosque — all fifteen stories of it– planned for Ground Zero is one of those issues that divide ordinary Americans from elites. It is a debate that convinces average Americans that the governing and media elites are not cut from the same cloth as they. In fact, it strikes many as evidence that our “leaders” are stricken with a sort of political and cultural insanity, an obtuseness that defies explanation. …
Rubin posts that even Juan Williams had a moment of sanity.
On Fox News Sunday, the panelists discussed the Ground Zero mosque. Ceci Connolly supplied the standard liberal line: freedom of religion requires that we allow the mosque to be constructed on the site where the ashes of 3,000 Americans blew through the air like confetti. Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney took the opposite view; Cheney was most concerned about the shadowy funding and the imam’s connection to jihadists (”the same groups that attacked us on 9-11?), while Kristol urged that out of “decency and propriety,” we shouldn’t allow a mosque to “tower over” Ground Zero.
The real surprise in the discussion was Juan Williams, who one expected to take Connolly’s side. Williams, however, didn’t parrot the left’s “tolerance” line. Instead, like Cheney, he criticized the lack of “transparency” in funding. But he did not stop there. He called building the mosque a “thumb in the eye” of those who lost their lives and suffered trauma. He concluded that, contrary to the imam’s claimed intention, the construction is “not promoting dialogue or understanding; in fact it is polarizing.” …
The chilly little welfare state to our north, Canada, is running relatively tiny deficits, having engaged only in relatively sober stimulus measures. To no one’s great surprise, Canada’s freedom from heavy government debt and its comparatively liberal economic environment (the Heritage Foundation now ranks its economy as more free than that of the United States) have enabled a much stronger recovery — to the extent that Canada, which has about one-tenth as many people as the United States, added 10,000 more jobs in June: 93,200 to our 83,000. Canada has recovered 97 percent of the jobs lost in the recent economic turmoil. Say what you like about aping the European welfare states, the Canadians do a better job of it than do Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.