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In Contentions, Jonathan Tobin comments on how Obama has ruined his chances at brokering peace in the Middle East.
From the beginning of the Obama presidency, the Palestinian Authority has shown that it will never allow itself to accept less than whatever the United States has demanded on its behalf. Thus, when the administration asked Israel for a settlement freeze that became a Palestinian precondition for talking with Israel. When the president decided that building in existing Jewish neighborhoods within Jerusalem was an “insult” to the United States, a freeze in Israel’s capital became another Palestinian precondition.
Now in the wake of President Obama’s decision to demand that the 1967 lines be the starting point for future Middle East negotiations, the Palestinians have adopted that point as their latest precondition for talks. Earlier this week, PA “negotiator” Saeb Erekat stated that they would only return to the talks with Israel that they have largely boycotted for three years, if Netanyahu accepts Obama’s dictat.
…While Obama may have though that each time he sought to impose conditions on Israel without making similar demands on the Palestinians he was jumpstarting the peace process, he has done the exact opposite. It isn’t clear whether the Palestinians will ever recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders may be drawn. But they will never do so long as they think the Americans will do their negotiating for them. Every Obama statement about what Israel should give up has become an ironclad Palestinian demand. One would have thought that Obama would have learned his lesson during his first two disastrous forays into Middle East peace processing but that was not the case. American diplomats are fond of discussing what they believe to be the prime obstacles to peace. But this latest exchange proves that there is no greater obstacle to negotiations, if not peace, than the foolishness of Barack Obama.
In the NY Post, Michael Walsh discusses the government cancer that is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy.
…The government racked up $5.3 trillion in new fiscal obligations last year alone — bringing the current unfunded tab for future expenses on things like Medicare, Social Security and military medical and retirement programs to a whopping $61.6 trillion, or $534,000 per American household. Then there’s today’s bills: We’re borrowing $125 billion a month that we have no hope of ever paying back on our current course.
…And now Obama says he’s not worried about a double-dip recession. Easy for him to say: For Americans not feeding at the government trough, the first recession never ended. We are witnessing the total failure of academic Keynesian economics, with its heavy emphasis on high taxes and exorbitant government spending. Yet Obama sails blithely on, already in full campaign mode and still blaming George W. Bush and the Republicans (admittedly no models of fiscal restraint or responsibility) for everything.
Worse, the what-me-worry president continues to insist that the ongoing hard times are just a “bump in the road” — that if we can just get the “fortunate” rich to “pay a little more” everything will be just fine. Never mind that most of the “rich” got their own money by inventing a product or providing a service in the private sector. That they invested an enormous amount of their own capital and sweat equity before it paid off. …
…The truth is, the only jobs the government can “create” are more government jobs. That’s why real-estate values in DC are booming even as they’ve plunged everywhere else. …
Craig Pirrong reports on a recent world-wide Tim Geithner smackdown.
…Timmy! lectured—or should I say hectored—the world on derivatives, saying, for all intents and purposes, our way or the highway.
To say this went over like the proverbial, uhm, lead balloon would be the understatement of the year. The Singapore Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Monetary authority took umbrage at Geithner’s implication that they were lax regulators. The CEO of the Futures and Options Association, Anthony Belchambers, was quite biting in his reply:
‘US Secretary Geithner’s comments do not appear to take any account of the fact that the SEC, arguably, was an equally tragic failure – and by a regulatory authority that was notably “heavy touch” but also in some areas “no touch”!’
Ouch! Can you say “Bernie Madoff”? I knew you could. …
Craig Pirrong has more on the smackdown.
I cannot recall a situation where a US Secretary of the Treasury, or any cabinet member, for that matter, has been the subject of such scathing rebuttals as Timothy Geithner. The disdain that his lectures on derivatives regulation unleashed is pretty amazing. It was not respectful disagreement. It was disrespectful disagreement. And not from anonymous sources, but from named representatives of government and industry bodies. Nor is this a new thing. The Chinese and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, to name but two, have been brutal in their criticisms of Geithner.
This makes it all the more curious to read in the WaPo piece that I linked to yesterday that Geithner has a very close relationship with Obama, arguably the closest relationship of all the cabinet members. But perhaps that’s not so curious after all: for all his rhetoric about rebuilding relationships with other nations, Obama apparently has a very poor relationship with the leaders of most other countries–worse relationships than Bush. This suggests that Obama, a notoriously aloof individual, doesn’t really care about what them furriners think. And as the foreign criticism of Geithner demonstrates, I think those feelings are reciprocated.
Peter Schiff says the economy is only going to get worse.
…Although I have made these comparisons before, the parallel between drug addiction and the reliance on economic stimulus is just too strong to ignore. And as with drug addiction, an economy builds up a tolerance. Each time the government successively stimulates with printed money or deficit spending, ever larger doses are needed to achieve the same result. Lest we forget, coming into the Crash of 2008, the economy had been on the receiving end of years of over stimulus. President Bush and Alan Greenspan never fully weaned the economy of their shock treatments that followed the dot.com crash and the shock of September 11th.
This time around, the stimulus-fueled recovery is so mild that the economy is already relapsing into recession before the Fed has even begun to tighten. This puts Bernanke in a very difficult position. He either follows through on his loudly trumpeted plans to end quantitative easing this summer, or abandon those plans in favor of more stimulus. Both choices are unappealing.
…The government needs to admit its mistakes and write a completely different script. This time the story line must allow for a real restructuring. Real estate prices must fall further, and many financial institutions holding bad mortgages must fail. This means investors, creditors, and depositors will lose money. Labor and capital must be re-allocated away from services into goods production. That means jobs must be lost in government, retail sales, finance, health care, and education; and jobs must be created in technology, manufacturing, textiles, mining, energy, and agriculture. This guarantees major short-term pain. But breaking an addiction is not easy. Those who say it is are living in a fool’s paradise.
This transition does not require any positive action from government. All it needs to do is simply get out of the way. That does not mean there is nothing the government can do to help the process. It can remove as many regulations and taxes as possible that inhibit market forces from working their magic. But this requires a completely different mindset among our elected officials. They will need the courage and knowledge to level with the American people, and do what is in our nation’s economic interests, not simply what is in their own political interest. …
David Harsanyi talks Obamacare.
…That’s not to say there aren’t people out there who really need support. The president has generously handed out nearly 1,400 Obamacare waivers to the neediest among us. About 20 percent of them have been awarded to an upmarket district in San Francisco that, by pure chance, is represented by Nancy Pelosi. Others, such as the AARP and local unions, had demanded we pass Obamacare so they could not take part in it immediately.
We’ll also soon be hearing more about the lawsuits challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate. Randy Barnett, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center, recently asked, “If Congress can impose this economic mandate on the people, what can’t it mandate the people to buy?” …
And let’s not forget it was Obama, the newfound holy savior of Medicare, who pinned the key cost control component of health care reform on Medicare through his Independent Payment Advisory Board, or what bitter righties call a rationing board.
Rationing boards. Political favors. Lies. Coercion. Broken promises. Precedents that can force us to buy about anything. It might not be socialism, technically speaking. But really, what’s not to like?
George Will wades into another constitutional swamp, brought to us by the politicians who voted for Obamacare: the entrenchment of a bureaucratic panel that rations healthcare.
…Diane Cohen, the institute’s senior attorney, demonstrates that the IPAB is doubly anti-constitutional. It derogates the powers of Congress. And it ignores the principle of separation of powers: It is an executive agency, its members appointed by the president, exercising legislative powers over which neither Congress nor the judiciary can exercise proper control.
Unfortunately, the IPAB may not be unconstitutional. This is because the Supreme Court, having slight interest in policing Congress’s incontinent desire to give to others the power to make difficult decisions, has become excessively permissive about delegation. Cohen notes this from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a 1989 case wherein the Supreme Court affirmed the power of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to set “guidelines” that, being binding, have the effect of statutes:
“I anticipate that Congress will find delegation of its lawmaking powers much more attractive in the future. .?.?. I foresee all manner of ‘expert’ bodies, insulated from the political process, to which Congress will delegate various portions of its lawmaking responsibility. How tempting to create an expert Medical Commission .?.?. to dispose of such thorny, ‘no-win’ political issues as the withholding of life-support systems in federally funded hospitals.”…
Robert Samuelson looks at current Medicare issues and what Representative Ryan’s plan may bring.
…few doubt that today’s health-care system has much waste: medical care that does no good; high overhead costs. In a paper, Cutler documented some evidence. In one survey, 20 percent of patients reported that doctors repeated tests because records were unavailable; the health-care sector has twice as many clerical workers as nurses and nine times as many as doctors; care of patients with chronic conditions is often slapdash, so that, for example, only 43 percent of diabetics receive recommended treatment.
Fee-for-service is open-ended reimbursement; the government’s main tool to control Medicare’s costs is to hold down reimbursement rates. Doctors and hospitals respond by ordering more services to offset the rate limits. For all its flaws, say Ryan’s critics, this system beats his. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that in 2022, Ryan’s plan would be more than a third costlier than the status quo, because Medicare’s size makes it more effective at restraining reimbursement rates.
If the CBO is correct, Ryan’s plan fails; beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs would roughly double to cover the added expense. But the CBO may be wrong. When a voucher system was adopted for Medicare’s new drug benefit, the CBO overestimated its costs by a third; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ overestimate was 42 percent. When fundamental changes are made to a program, the green-eyeshade types can’t easily predict the results. Moreover, as health expert James Capretta notes, “managed care” plans in the Medicare Advantage program in 2010 did not have higher costs than Medicare’s fee-for-service for similar coverage. …
Karl Rove points out that Obama is not only shirking presidential duties, but he is breaking the law.
…Mr. Obama has ignored a law requiring he send Congress a plan to strengthen Medicare’s finances—even though members of his own cabinet have reminded him in writing of his duty to do so.
Medicare was originally designed to be paid for mostly by special dedicated taxes. Yet it has become increasingly dependent on general revenues as expenses have far outrun both projections and Medicare tax receipts. By 2024, according to the annual report of the Medicare trustees, the hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted.
To force Washington to take action before Medicare overwhelms the federal budget, fiscal experts wrote a presidential obligation into the Medicare Reform Act of 2003. Under that provision, if Medicare’s trustees forecast that general revenues will be required for 45% or more of the program’s outlays within a seven-year period, then the president must propose legislation to correct the problem within 15 days of his next budget submission. Congress then has to give the proposal expedited consideration. …
In Bloomberg News, Virginia Postrel takes a dim view of compact fluorescent light bulbs.
…By the end of last year, CFLs had managed to capture only 25 percent of the general-purpose light-bulb market — a decent business, sure, but hardly the radical transformation evangelists were going for. Most Americans, for most purposes, have stuck to traditional incandescents.
So the activists offended by the public’s presumed wastefulness took a more direct approach. They joined forces with the big bulb producers, who had an interest in replacing low-margin commodities with high-margin specialty wares, and, with help from Congress and President George W. Bush, banned the bulbs people prefer.
It was an inside job. Neither ordinary consumers nor even organized interior designers had a say. Lawmakers buried the ban in the 300-plus pages of the 2007 energy bill, and very few talked about it in public. It was crony capitalism with a touch of green.
Of such deals are Tea Parties born. …