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Pickerhead’s been waiting for a Frederic Bastiat “teachable moment” to come out of the clunker program. Jonah Goldberg does the honors.
… That Washington is shocked by the news that Americans like getting free money shows how thick the Beltway bubble really is.
Like the drunk who only looks for his car keys where the light is good, Washington can only see the economic activity it has created, not the activity it has destroyed.
For starters, who says the smartest thing for people with working cars is to buy new ones? Personal debt is supposed to be a problem, so why not look at this as bribing consumers into taking out car loans they don’t need? Even with the $4,500 subsidy, not all of these customers are going to be paying cash for their new cars. So they’ll be swapping serviceable-but-paid-for cars for nicer cars that are owned by banks.
Besides, maybe some people would be smarter to buy a savings bond or max out their kid’s college fund or — here’s a crazy thought — buy health insurance. But instead they’ve been seduced into spending the equivalent of their six francs on a car they don’t really need.
But, you might say, some buyers surely do need a new car. True. But if they needed a new car, they’d get one anyway, eventually. Indeed, they might already have gotten it, but rationally opted to wait for the program to kick in. …
Jonah’s readers respond.
Radley Balko in The Agitator Blog has more.
… Last night, (Jon) Stewart mentioned the “Cash for Clunkers” program, and credulously and uncritically repeated the Obama administration’s line that the program as been an unqualified success. Now maybe the show has taken some real shots at Cash for Clunkers in prior episodes. I don’t watch regularly any more. Seems to me, though, there’s quite a bit of TDS sarcastic humor to be mined from all of this. You mean the government is offering people free money . . . and they’re taking it? And they’re measuring the program’s success by how many people . . . are willing to take free money? Shocker that it’s been so successful, huh? …
Jennifer Rubin chronicles alarming events at the Justice Department.
In the litany of criticisms leveled at President George W. Bush none was repeated more often than the accusation that he had “politicized the administration of justice.” In endless television show appearances and congressional hearings, Democratic lawmakers like Senator Chuck Schumer railed against the politicization of the Justice Department, lecturing all who would listen about how Justice “is different than any other department. In every other department, the chief cabinet officer is supposed to follow the president’s orders, requests, without exception. But the Justice Department has a higher responsibility: rule of law and the Constitution.”
Democrats loved to berate the often hapless Alberto Gonzales, who they claimed failed to uphold this standard as attorney general. Although the alleged offenses occurred primarily on the watch of Gonzales (who served only two and a half of Bush’s eight years), the criticism stuck and lingered long after Gonzales departed. Inspector general investigations and oversight hearings maintained the drumbeat of accusations. And when the distinguished federal judge Michael Mukasey was nominated to replace Gonzales, he was peppered by Senators Joe Biden, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, among others, with questions about just how badly the department had been “politicized.” The average American couldn’t help but conclude that something had gone terribly awry.
It is therefore surprising that in the first seven months of the Obama administration, a series of hyper-partisan decisions, questionable appointments, and the inexplicable dismissal of a high-profile voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther party have once again fanned suspicions that the Justice Department is a pawn in partisan political battles.
Both in Congress and among a number of current and former Justice Department employees is a growing concern that the Obama administration is politicizing the department in ways the Bush team never imagined. A former Justice employee cautions that every administration has the right and the obligation to set policy. “Elections have consequences,” he affirms. But he thinks that the Obama administration has gone beyond policy reversals and is interfering with prosecutorial decisions, staffing the department with unqualified personnel, and invoking privilege to thwart proper congressional oversight and public scrutiny.
Sitting in his Capitol Hill office, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, speaks in careful, clipped sentences, rephrasing at times to convey precisely what he means. His irritation is apparent. “The whole concern here is an administration that would not politicize the Department of Justice. That was a major campaign rallying cry,” he says. “If it was isolated you’d think it was an exception to the rule. But where you see three or four examples then you really worry whether they themselves are verging on violating the law or the oath of office.” …
… Take the case of Mary Smith, a Native-American Chicago lawyer and Obama supporter. She has been nominated as assistant attorney general in the tax division. While she did serve in the Clinton administration, she has no expertise in tax matters and has not spoken on the topic or taken professional education courses in tax law. She did, however, work on three successive Democratic campaigns (including Obama’s). A former Justice Department official asks of Smith, “This was the best they could do?”
At her confirmation hearing, Senator Sessions voiced his grave displeasure. “Tax law is very specialized and it’s certainly not an area where you learn on the job.” He continued, “You should not put people in a job they’re not prepared to handle.” While the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm her not a single Democrat spoke in her defense. Lamar Smith says, “It is obviously being done for political reasons. It is not supposed to be a reward for politics back home. It is a violation of trust and a disservice to the American people.” One current Justice Department attorney remarks that placing a political supporter in charge of the tax division “sounds like Nixon.”
Attention has also focused on Jennifer Daskal, a former Human Rights Watch lawyer with no prosecutorial background but rather a record of aggressive advocacy on behalf of Guantánamo detainees (e.g., questioning the guilt of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, objecting to the incarceration of a 15-year-old who killed Marines). Her new job, remarkably enough, is on the Guantánamo task force that will make recommendations on detainee policy. She is now free to pursue her agenda from inside the Justice Department.
Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to head OLC quickly became controversial given her record of rabid criticism of the Bush administration, her extreme views on national security and abortion (she once wrote that limits on abortion would be tantamount to “slavery” under the Thirteenth Amendment), and her insistence that the Justice Department should pursue novel legal theories based on “economic justice.” Threatening a “make-over” of OLC, she appeared to be precisely the sort of extreme partisan whom Holder had suggested would be unwelcome in his department. Her nomination has now stalled, with a number of Democratic senators unwilling to support her nomination.
Then there is Les Jin, who was chief of staff to the controversial former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry, who engaged in such regular political stunts as attempting to prevent the seating of George W. Bush’s lawful nominee to the commission. Jin is now in a senior counselor spot at Justice. Another opening has been staffed by Julie Fernandes, an attorney who, prior to joining the department, worked for a left-wing civil rights organization and routinely weighed in on pending cases. Mark Kappelhoff who was chief of the criminal section of the civil rights division at Justice (and who took the position, while serving in the criminal section, that a campaign mailer reminding voters they must be citizens to cast a ballot was illegal “voter intimidation”) maxed out as an Obama donor and has been boosted to principal deputy attorney general for civil rights. …
Michael Ledeen comments on Iran policy. More on this in Pickings tomorrow.
… It’s worse than Jimmy Carter. It’s all appeasement, all the time, from South America to Central Europe, from the Middle East to South Asia. And it’s a guarantee of greater violence, bigger crises, and more American dead. …
Tunku Varadarajan has fun with the beer summit, then makes some serious points.
…Obama didn’t so much misspeak–in saying that Sergeant Crowley had “acted stupidly” in arresting Prof. Gates–as miscalculate his speech. For a man who measures out his words in coffee spoons, his intervention in the affair was heavy-handed. Suddenly, everyone became acutely interested in the following question: How real is Obama when he speaks to the nation? What does he really think? How much of his true beliefs do we get when he talks to us, and how much of it is speech that has been measured, tailored and tallied beforehand for value and impact? America, suddenly, wants to know. As Shelby Steele wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, “We should hold Mr. Obama to his post-racialism, and he should get to know himself well enough to tell us what he really means by it.” …
Stephen L. Carter explains the importance of profits.
…To the country, profit is a benefit. Record profit means record taxes paid. But put that aside. When profits are high, firms are able to reinvest, expand and hire. And profits accrue to the benefit of those who own stocks: overwhelmingly, pension funds and mutual funds. In other words, high corporate profits today signal better retirements tomorrow.
Another reason to celebrate profit is the incentive it creates. When profits can be made, entrepreneurs provide more of needed goods and services. Consider an example common to the first-year contracts course in every law school: Suppose that the state of Quinnipiac suffers a devastating hurricane. Power is out over thousands of square miles. An entrepreneur from another state, seeing the problem, buys a few dozen portable generators at $500 each, rents a truck and drives them to Quinnipiac, where he posts them for sale at $2,000 each — a 300 percent markup.
Based on recent experience, it is likely the media will respond with fury and the attorney general of Quinnipiac will open an investigation into price-gouging. The result? When the next hurricane arrives, the entrepreneur will stay put, and three dozen homeowners who were willing to pay for power will not have it. There will be fewer portable generators in Quinnipiac than there would have been if the seller were left alone.
When political anger over profit reduces the willingness of investors to take risks, the nation suffers. According to news reports, one reason the Obama administration has had so much trouble finding buyers for the toxic assets it hopes to remove from financial institutions’ balance sheets is a concern by financiers that should they go along with the plan and make rather than lose money, they will be hauled before Congress to explain themselves.
And although it is easy to be dismayed by excess, trying to regulate profit makes things worse. Capital flows to places where returns are highest. The more exercised our political leaders become when profits rise, the more investment capital will remain abroad. …
Alexis Madrigal, for Wired, reports on the mysterious Atlantic coast high tides this summer.
From Maine to Florida, the Atlantic seaboard has experienced higher tides than expected this summer. At their peak in mid-June, the tides at some locations outstripped predictions by two feet.
The change has come too fast to be attributed to melting ice sheets or anything quite that dramatic, and it’s a puzzle for scientists who’ve never seen anything quite like it.
“The ocean is dynamic. It’s not uncommon to have anomalies like this but the breadth and the intensity and duration were unique,” said Mike Szabados, director of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s tide and current program. …
Seems some folks don’t like the Barack the Joker poster.