Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Christopher Booker reacts to SOTU from Great Britain.
When I happened to wake up in the middle of the night last Wednesday and caught the BBC World Service’s live relay of President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress, two passages had me rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
The first came when, to applause, the President spoke about the banking crash which coincided with his barnstorming 2008 election campaign. “The house of cards collapsed,” he recalled. “We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.” He excoriated the banks which had “made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money”, while “regulators looked the other way and didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behaviour”. This, said Obama, “was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work.”
I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was this Act, above all, which let the US housing bubble blow up, …
James Pethokoukis posts on the Grabell piece we had yesterday from the NY Post.
Recall the original Obama economic team. It consisted of President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and White House economists Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer, Austan Goolsbee and Jared Bernstein. It was the Democrats’ Best and Brightest — but not one with a smidgen of executive experience in either the private of public sector. And into their hands was entrusted an $800 billion stimulus spending plan, a package whose details were fleshed out by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. What could go wrong?
Lots it turns out. And Michael Grabell, a reporter for ProPublica, documents the many failing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in “Money Well Spent? The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History,” out this week. Rather than focus on questionable Keynesian economics behind the stimulus, Grabell focuses on its execution and management. …
Jennifer Rubin writes about the most persecuted man in America.
The one incident from Newt Gingrich’s speakership that stands out in most people’s minds is the pout-a-thon concerning Air Force One. Howard Kurtz and Lois Romano recall:
“Newt Gingrich was walking out of Washington’s Sheraton-Carlton in the fall of 1995 when he turned to his press secretary and said, “I guess I’ve given you a problem for the rest of the day.”
Tony Blankley conceded that it would be “tricky” to defend him. After all, Gingrich had warned a roomful of reporters that his spokesman would kill him for voicing a complaint that the House speaker himself admitted was “petty.”
Gingrich and his fellow Republicans had just shut down the federal government in a dramatic spending showdown with Bill Clinton, and now he was carping that the president never talked to him during a 25-hour flight on Air Force One and had him “get off the plane by the back ramp .?.?. Where is their sense of manners?” The next morning, when New York’s Daily News depicted Gingrich as a bawling, diaper-clad baby, House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt arranged for a giant reproduction to be unveiled on the House floor. Republicans called an unprecedented vote that forced the Democrats to take the poster down — but they were furious with their leader for creating the distraction.”
This is quintessential Newt Gingrich — thin-skinned, self-absorbed, destructive and, yes, “petty.” He excels in converting his own missteps into tales of martyrdom. All of this has manifested itself in the campaign in big ways and small. …
Want to know one of the reasons college tuition keeps climbing? Marc Perry posts on costs at U. of Michigan.
From an open letter to President Obama on December 16, 2011 from University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman:
“Higher education is a public good currently lacking public support. There is no stronger trigger for rising costs at public universities and colleges than declining state support.”
According to the Washington Post, “President Barack Obama will announce a plan to shift some federal dollars away from colleges and universities that don’t control tuition costs and new competitions in higher education to encourage efficiency as part of an effort to contain soaring college costs. Obama will spell out his plans Friday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.”
One issue that will probably not receive a lot of attention today from either President Obama or President Coleman is the contribution of rising administrative positions and salaries to the rising cost of college tuition. For example:
1. According to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education (also available from IPEDS), the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor has 53% more full-time “administrators and professionals” (9,652) than full-time faculty (6,305), or a ratio of 1.53 administrative and professional positions for every full-time faculty member. Couldn’t those administrative/professional expenses have something to do with rising tuition?
Speaking of getting well by doing good, the Daily Mail, UK went to Haiti to see how the aid is getting thru to those in need.
… Ricardo lifts the faded sheet that serves as his front door. His three-week-old baby lies asleep on the single bed that fills the family’s home, while his two-year old son screams at the back entrance.
The heat under the plastic roof is so intense his wife Roseline, 27, drips with sweat as she describes living in such hell. She looks exhausted. If she is lucky, she says, she has one meal a day, but often goes two days without food, putting salt in water to keep her going.
Since giving birth she has passed out a number of times and does not produce enough breast milk to feed her new son. She shows me a small can of condensed milk she gives him; she cannot afford the baby formula he needs.
So had they seen any of the huge sums of aid donated to alleviate such hardship? They shake their heads — just one hygiene kit from the local Red Cross. ‘I have heard about this aid but never seen it,’ says Roseline. ‘I don’t think people like us stood a chance of getting any of it.’
Ricardo says it makes him angry. ‘If I looked back two years ago I would never have thought I would still be here in this camp. If the aid organisations really cared about our lives, they could have done something. But how can I have hope for my future, living like this?’
The family’s story shames all those international organisations that flocked to Haiti after the earthquake two years ago, which killed an estimated 225,000 people. It was one of the most devastating natural disasters of recent years — and the world responded in sympathy. The international community claimed to have given £6.5?billion to heal Haiti’s wounds, while donations poured in to charities.
Earlier this month, on the quake’s second anniversary, aid agencies pumped out press releases proclaiming their successes. Add up all the people they claim to have helped and the number exceeds the population of Haiti.
The reality is rather different — and shines a stark light on the assumptions, arrogance and deficiencies of the ever-growing global relief industry. …
Andrew Malcolm has late night humor.