January 9, 2012

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Chip Mellor of the Institute for Justice was the WSJ’s weekend interviewee.

The Republican presidential campaign is at full boil, and among the biggest players are so-called super PACs, political-action committees that can raise and spend as much money as they like. Mitt Romney’s version helped ruin Newt Gingrich in Iowa, for example. For that right to free speech (not the ads), you can thank or blame Chip Mellor, who runs the most influential legal shop that most people have never heard of.

Mr. Mellor is the 61-year-old chief of the Institute for Justice, which has been celebrating its 20th anniversary of guerrilla legal warfare on behalf of individual freedom. He’s worth getting to know because he and his fellow legal battlers are behind a larger campaign to restore some of the Constitution’s lost rights. And they’re often succeeding.

Take political speech. The Supreme Court’s January 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC restored the First Amendment rights of corporations and unions to assemble to influence elections. That was followed in March 2010 by SpeechNow v. FEC, in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that political committees may accept unlimited contributions for the purpose of independent political spending.

“That’s not to downplay the importance of Citizens United,” Mr. Mellor says, “but SpeechNow is the decision that lets people (and corporations and unions) pool their money in Super PACs.” Mr. Mellor’s outfit represented SpeechNow with the Center for Competitive Politics and IJ argued the case before the court.

The campaign finance reform lobby is going to fight relentlessly, Mr. Mellor says. “There continues to be the false premise that the problem in politics is too much money, when in fact the problem is too much government for sale.” Besides, he points out, “these campaign finance laws are really treating only a symptom, not the disease. Until you get to the root cause, which is too much government, you are really not doing anything productive and in many cases you are doing harm.” …

January 7, 2012

Jan8

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Here is Mark Steyn’s take down of Newt that appeared in the National Review in December.

I was wrong about Newt. Or, as Newt would say, I was fundamentally wrong. Fundamentally and profoundly wrong. I was as adverbially wrong about Newt as it’s possible to be. Back in the spring, during an analysis of the presidential field, I was asked by Sean Hannity what I thought of Gingrich. If memory serves, I guffawed. I suggested he was this season’s Alan Keyes — a guy running for president to boost his speaking fees but whose candidacy was otherwise irrelevant. I said I liked the cut of this Tim Pawlenty fellow, who promptly self-destructed. There would be a lot of that in the months ahead: Michele Bachmann ODing on Gardasil, Rick Perry floating the trial balloon of his candidacy all year long, only to puncture it with the jaunty swing of his spur ten minutes into the first debate. And when all the other Un-Romney of the Week candidates were gone, there was Newt, the last man standing, smirking, waddling to the debate podium. Unlike the niche candidates, he offers all the faults of his predecessors rolled into one: Like Michele Bachmann, his staffers quit; like Herman Cain, he spent the latter decades of the last century making anonymous women uncomfortable, mainly through being married to them; like Mitt Romney, he was a flip-flopper, being in favor of government mandates on health care before he was against them, and in favor of big-government climate-change “solutions” before he was against them, and in favor of putting giant mirrors in space to light American highways by night before he was agai . . . oh, wait, that one he may still be in favor of. So, if you live in the I-95 corridor, you might want to buy blackout curtains. …

Jennifer Rubin rounds out the Newt stuff for today.

It is symptomatic of Newt Gingrich’s ego and the distorted view of the world which accompanies it that he is convinced his woes are traceable to ideological enemies who lie and cheat to prevent his wonderfulness from becoming available to the American people. It was Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s fault he was brought up on ethics charges. It is the mainstream media that distorts his own words. And it is Mitt Romney who had the temerity to point out Gingrich’s own record and embarrass him, which has robbed him of his golden opportunity.

Sound farfetched? Well, if you saw his post-caucus speech, filled with venom, and watched his behavior thereafter you’ll come to see, I think, that he is now motivated purely by anger and spite. His ire is directed specifically at Romney (not Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.)) for reasons not entirely clear, although the notion of a viable candidate besting him for the nomination is probably too much for him to bear. …

Speaking of arrogant people, WSJ OpEd comments on the president’s latest stunt.

President Obama’s appointments of Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and of three new members of the National Labor Relations Board, are all unconstitutional.

Each of these jobs requires Senate confirmation. The president’s ability to fill them without that confirmation, using his constitutional power to “fill up vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate,” depends upon there actually being a recess. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are open for business. The new appointees can pocket their government paychecks, but all their official acts will be void as a matter of law and will likely be struck down by the courts in legal challenges that are certain to come. …

… The president has done his new appointees and the public no favors. Both the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are regulatory agencies with profound real-world impact. Those individuals and businesses subject to regulations and rulings adopted during the tenure of Mr. Obama’s recess appointees can challenge the legality of those measures in the courts, and they will very likely succeed.

Only two years ago in New Process Steel v. NLRB, the Supreme Court undercut hundreds of NLRB decisions by ruling that the board had not lawfully organized itself after the terms of two recess appointee members expired, leaving it without a quorum. Similar issues will arise when both the new financial bureau and the NLRB begin to act with members whose appointments are constitutionally insupportable.

The fact that the president has apparently triggered the constitutional crisis without really expecting to produce any lasting policy impact, and for no better reason than to bolster his claim of running against a “do-nothing” Congress (the key part of his re-election campaign), makes his behavior all the more reprehensible.

January 5, 2012

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The president went to Ohio yesterday and Andrew Malcolm caught something new. The hand-picked Dem crowd laughed at Obama. Not with him, at him. Warms Pickerhead’s heart.

… Before you get into the guts of the speech, the part about how much you care about the economy and creating jobs and protecting the middle class and how screwed up Washington is because of other people and their sadly chronic partisan ways, you set up the audience with some genuine sappiness.

It’s worked every time. Something seasonal that allows you to show, seemingly offhand, how regular you are and how dedicated to the job you are. And really caring.

“I want to wish everybody a happy New Year,” Obama told the Ohio crowd Wednesday afternoon. “2012 is going to be a good year. (Applause.) It’s going to be a good year.”

“And one of my New Year’s resolutions is to make sure that I get out of Washington and spend time with folks like you. (Applause.) Because folks here in Ohio and all across the country — I want you to know you’re the reason why I ran for this office in the first place. You remind me what we are still fighting for.”

Then, out of the blue Wednesday, came a tiny incident. A minute moment. There had been no signs of trouble, nothing to reveal that the Real Good Talker’s real good talking had lost his touch or control of his sitting subjects. The rest of the speech continued normally. Many there probably didn’t even notice.

The president of the United States has said the next line so many times over these 1,080 days of his reign. He says it as a kind of democratic gesture, a compliment to a crowd of American citizens, a public obeisance that the most powerful man in the world is profoundly connected to them.

Obama said, “You inspire me.”

And you know how the members of that crowd in the most Democratic district of Ohio responded to that campaigning Democratic president’s professed sincerity this time?

They laughed at him.

“Okay,” Obama insisted, “you do.”

And the president, like a pro pol, continued with his speech, as if nothing had happened.

Writing in Bloomberg, Clive Crook says it is not a failure of capitalism in the West, but a failure of leadership.

With the world’s rich economies struggling and the leaders of the European Union intent on making things worse, the gravity of the economic crisis still confronting the West is hard to exaggerate. Nonetheless, it can be done.

According to what I read, we face not just the worst recession since the 1930s, but a challenge to the West’s entire economic order. The Great Recession exposes the poverty of orthodox economics. It constitutes an ideological crisis. It shows that capitalism itself is “fundamentally” flawed. If all this were true, I’d be a lot more worried about the coming year than I am — which is saying something.

A new year’s corrective is in order. Reports of the death of capitalism are greatly exaggerated.

What’s surprising is just how wrong those reports have been. Perhaps, as I write, the revolutionaries are organizing in secret, but I see no signs of a popular uprising. Please don’t say Occupy Wall Street, that risible stirring of the perpetually discontented whose principal goal seems to be “a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner” (not all at once, I assume). It is a movement, if you can call it that, without an agenda, and as soon as it tries to get one, if not before, it will sputter out.

Where, meanwhile, is the revival of the organized Left? America’s Democrats are not exactly riding a surge of support. They are worried that Republicans — who brought the country to the brink of default last summer, and whose contest for the presidential nomination has shown their party at its most shambolic — might regain control of the Senate and send Barack Obama packing. Recent Gallup polls show a fall to barely 41 percent in the number of Americans who see their county as divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” Some 64 percent of Americans — and 48 percent of Democrats — see “big government” as a greater threat to the country than “big business,” a number near record levels. …

Jennifer Rubin has words for Newt.

Their speeches last night could not have been more different. Rick Santorum was humble and high-minded. Newt Gingrich was snide and angry. Santorum talked about America. Gingrich talked about negative ads. Santorum’s message was aimed at working-class voters, social conservatives, disillusioned independents and hawks. In other words, it’s a broad-based message. Gingrich’s message was entirely negative: anti-Ron Paul and anti-Mitt Romney (asking if voters really wanted “a Massachusetts moderate”). Santorum was glowing and smiling. Gingrich was unsmiling.

Gingrich certainly appeared angry last night, as if he’d been denied something rightfully his. He had expected to win, and finishing behind a candidate who thinks we brought 9/11 on ourselves and wants to take us back to the gold standard must sting.

But conservatives who vouched for him and ignored his egomania are seeing what that entails. In search of personal vindication, Gingrich will stay in the race, making it that more difficult for Santorum to mount a challenge to Mitt Romney. The new Newt? Not remotely. It has always been and will always be only about Newt. …

The Obama administration is again beating on lenders to make sub-prime loans. John Lott has the story.

Just days before Christmas, the Obama administration gave Bank of America a big lump of coal, levying a hefty $335 million dollar fine on the company for discriminating against minorities in its lending practices.

Supposedly Countrywide, a mortgage company bought by Bank of America in 2008, had not given out enough low interest rate loans to minorities from 2004 to 2008.

What the large fine reveals is that President Obama hasn’t learned anything from the recent financial crisis.

What the president sees as discrimination in awarding a mortgage, lenders saw as wise business decisions.

If a borrower can’t afford a down payment, Obama appears to view charging a higher interest rate as discrimination. Lenders also think that they shouldn’t treat borrowers whose sole source of income is welfare or unemployment insurance, the same as those applicants who have a job. But Obama, again, appears to view this as discrimination.

There is obviously a problem with no down payments: if the price of the house falls so that it is worth less than the loan, people will default and walk away. Similarly, when unemployment insurance or welfare runs out, borrowers might find they can’t keep paying their mortgage.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act the Obama administration used to impose this fine was exactly what helped cause the mortgage crisis by forcing lenders to make risky loans that they didn’t want to make.

Yet, just last month, Obama put the blame for these risky loans going bad on banks for their “breathtaking greed” that “plunged our economy and the world into a crisis.” …

David Harsanyi is not sure he likes what Santorum represents.

Rick Santorum, like most Republican candidates, fashions himself the one true conservative running in 2012. If the thought of big, intrusive liberal government offends you, he might just be your man. And if you favor a big, intrusive Republican government, he’s unquestionably your candidate.

People are taking a look at Santorum. Important people. People in Iowa. Even New York Times columnist David Brooks recently celebrated his working-class appeal, newfound viability and economic populism, noting that the former Pennsylvania senator’s book “It Takes a Family“ was a ”broadside against Barry Goldwater-style conservatism” — or, in other words, a rejection of that Neanderthal fealty for liberty and free markets that has yet to be put down. Santorum’s book is crammed with an array of ideas for technocratic meddling; even the author acknowledges that some people “will reject” what he has to say “as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.”

Santorum grumbles about too many conservatives believing in unbridled “personal autonomy” and subscribing to the “idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do … that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom (and) we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.” …

New York’s rent control is about to get to the Supreme Court. Richard Epstein has the story.

People who don’t live in New York City probably haven’t confronted the market-distorting injustices of rent control and similar rent-stabilization laws. But they may recall their outrage in 2008 upon reading that New York Rep. Charles Rangel worked the system by paying a total of $3,894 a month for four rent-stabilized luxury apartments in Harlem, about half the market price.

Remarkably, a serious constitutional challenge to rent-control and stabilization laws may finally be in the works. The challenge arises from James and Jeanne Harmon, who own a town house on West 76th Street in New York City. The upper floors are occupied by tenants who are entrenched under New York’s rent-stabilization law, paying rents at only a fraction of the value of their units. Mr. Harmon, a most persistent man whom I have from time to time advised, is attempting to strike down this law.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals blew off his suit in March, but Mr. Harmon has filed petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court, and, miracles of miracles, the high court has asked New York City and the tenants to respond. His story has been sympathetically featured in the New York Times, the Daily News and the New York Post. Perhaps there is still some life in the challenge to rent controls. There darn well ought to be. …

Here is the NY Times rent control article mentioned by Epstein.

James D. Harmon Jr. learned the value of a house as a child, shoveling coal into the furnace of one of two Upper West Side buildings owned by his grandfather, a French immigrant who worked as a waiter. “Jimmy, you take care of your building and your building will take care of you,” his grandfather told him.

“But the word he used in French wasn’t building” Mr. Harmon recalled the other day. “The word he used in French was ‘maison,’ which means home.”

Now Mr. Harmon, 68, who grew up in one of those buildings — a bow-fronted town house on West 76th Street near Central Park — has gone to the United States Supreme Court contending that New York City’s rent laws constitute a “taking” of his property without just compensation, a violation of his constitutional rights.

The regulations are meant to support the government’s goal of maintaining affordable housing for its citizens. Instead, he says, the laws have forced him and his family to shoulder the government’s burden and extend what is essentially “privatized welfare” to rent-stabilized tenants who are paying rent 59 percent below market rates and who have rights of succession to their lodgings in his house.

“Put yourself in our position,” Mr. Harmon, a former federal prosecutor, said of himself and his wife, Jeanne. “Suppose somebody told you, you’ve got an extra bedroom, we’d like to put someone in there for as long as they want to stay, and you have to take care of them for the rest of their lives and the rest of your life. That’s really what this is like.” …

Andrew Malcolm with late-night humor.

Conan: Kobe Bryant’s wife could make as much as $75 million from their divorce. In other words, Kobe’s wife can now afford Lakers’ tickets.

Conan: Dunkin’ Donuts is opening all over the Mideast. That’s good news because one day the Israelis and Palestinians will be too fat to fight with each other.

January 4, 2012

Jan4

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In his first column for the new year, Mark Steyn wonders when the spending will stop.

… The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion – a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke – broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur – and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the past three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion and, eventually, 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks. …

Scott Adams of Dilbert decided at the beginning of 2011 to take more risks. The first was on a trip to Costa Rica with wife Shelly.

.. As 2011 approached, I wondered what would happen if, for the next 12 months, I said yes to any opportunity that was new or dangerous or embarrassing or unwise. I decided to find out.

Shelly quickly embraced my new attitude and booked us on a trip to Costa Rica. That country has a huge population of monkeys and no military whatsoever—an obvious recipe for disaster. But my immediate problem was surviving Shelly’s idea of fun. This, as it turned out, included zip lining (less scary than it looked), an ATV trek through a dangerous and muddy jungle (nearly lost a leg) and, finally, a whitewater excursion down a canyon river in the rain forest.

I should pause here to explain that though I have many rational fears in life—all the usual stuff—I have only one special fear: drowning. So for me, whitewater rafting pins the needle on the fear-o-meter. But this was my year to face my fears. I was all in.

The first sign of trouble came when the more experienced of the two guides said that Shelly would be with him in his two-person kayak and I would ride with the new guy. This worried me because most reports of accidental deaths include the words “and then the new guy….” The second red flag appeared as the guide explained that when we hit the rapids through the waterfalls, we civilians should hold our oars above our heads and let the guides do the steering. My follow-up question went something like this: “Waterfalls?”

Things went smoothly for Shelly and her expert river guide. I watched them slalom down an S-shaped, 12-foot drop. Shelly might have said something like “Wheeee!”

My experience differed. My guide (the new guy) steered my half of the kayak directly into the huge rock at the top of the water hazard. My next memory involves being at the bottom of a Costa Rican river wondering which direction was up and holding my breath while I waited for my life-preserver to sort things out—which it did. Somehow, my guide and I got back into the kayak, only to repeat the scenario at another rocky waterfall five minutes later. If you think this sort of thing gets more fun on the second try, you might be a bad guesser.

Our guides brought the kayaks to a resting area midway through the excursion. I crawled to shore like a rat that had been trapped in a washing machine. You know how people say you shouldn’t drink the local water in some places? Well, apparently you should also avoid snorting a gallon of bacteria-laden Costa Rican river water. I woke up the next morning hosting an exotic-microbe cage match in my stomach followed by an hour-long trip over winding jungle roads to the airport for home. I’ll summarize the two weeks that followed as “not good.” On the plus side, I didn’t gain weight on that vacation.

So far, my strategy of being more adventurous was producing mixed results. My life seemed richer and more interesting—but it also involved a lot more groaning, clutching my sides and intermittently praying for death.

It was time to dial back the risk-taking a notch. …

Houston econ prof, Paul Gregory, uses a NY Times article to illustrate how the left creates bias in the media.

The Democratic Party and their media enablers, such as the New York Times, slaughter the Republicans when it comes to economic reporting. The public discussion of social security taxes, unemployment benefits, and stimulus takes place in the language of Keynesian multipliers and stimulus counterfactuals. He who controls the language of debate has already won, no matter how inappropriate or ridiculous. (I cite as an example of the latter the discussion of unemployment benefits as a form of stimulus that will restore the economy to health).

The Democrats and their media enablers use a tried-and-true template to dominate the debate. I use the New York Times article, “Analysts Say Economic Recovery Might Suffer if Tax Break Is Allowed to Expire,” to illustrate how it works.

The article’s objective is to convince readers that all right-thinking people know that the economy will go down the toilet if there is no agreement on extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. They claim that “economists” or “analysts” agree on this. They then interview four economists/economic organizations that support this conclusion and they cite one senior White House official who warns of dire consequences. They then dismiss one skeptic, who makes a technical point the average reader will not understand.

Voila! “Economists” agree with the Democrat position.

There is no reason why two cannot tango.

I have taken the liberty to rewrite the Times article to prove the opposite case. I use four respected economists and one respected media outlet and cite only one supporter of the administration case.

Here is my version, new headline and all. I preserve as much of the original Times language as possible: …

American.com blog with an unbelievable statement from Barney Frank.

Soon-to-be former Congressman Barney Frank continues to try to defend his record on Fannie and Freddie by distorting, or simply reversing, the truth. Here he is in the TheAtlantic.com today on his history as he hopes we will remember it:

“In 2004, the administration of President George W. Bush began a conscious plan of trying to increase levels of homeownership as part of its ‘Ownership Society,’ raising affordable housing targets for Fannie and Freddie. I opposed this policy because I thought people could end up with mortgages they could not afford.”

A pretty categorical statement, right? Replete with context that makes it sound as though it actually happened. Unfortunately for him, there’s a written record—a letter to President Bush, dated June 28, 2004, that he authored for 76 colleagues, including minority leader Nancy Pelosi:

“We write as members of the House of Representatives who continually press the GSEs to do more in affordable housing. Until recently, we have been disappointed that the administration has not been more supportive of our efforts to press the GSEs to do more. We have been concerned that the administration’s legislative proposal regarding the GSEs would weaken affordable housing performance by the GSEs, by emphasizing only safety and soundness. While the GSEs’ affordable housing mission is not in any way incompatible with their safety and soundness, an exclusive focus on safety and soundness is likely to come, in practice, at the expense of affordable housing.

We have been led to conclude that the administration does not appreciate the importance of the GSE’s affordable housing mission, as evidenced by its refusal to work with the House and Senate on this important legislation. It now appears that, because Congress has not been willing to jeopardize the GSE’s mission, the administration has turned to attacking the GSEs publicly. We are very concerned that the administration would work to foster negative opinions in the financial markets regarding the GSEs, raising their cost of financing. If the intent is to get prohousing members of Congress to weaken their support of the GSEs’ mission, it is a mistaken strategy.

Our position is not based on institutional loyalty, but on concern for the GSE’s affordable housing function. We appeal to you to agree to work on legislative proposals that foster sound oversight and vigorous affordable housing efforts instead of mounting assaults in the press. We also ask you to support our efforts to push the GSEs to do more affordable housing.”

If Barney Frank has any credibility after this, it will only be with those who—for ideological reasons—support him in his efforts to distance himself from the government’s affordable housing requirements, which were so destructive to Fannie and Freddie and the financial system as a whole.

January 3, 2012

Jan3

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Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor says if “libertarian” is what Ron Paul is, then maybe he’d like to find something else to call himself.

In 1960 Hayek wrote an essay titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” In it, Hayek pondered the conundrum that many Americans like me have struggled with since: What should we call ourselves? This is not a problem in Europe: I would be a liberal. Adam Smith is the quintessential liberal, in the European sense. But as Schumpeter noted, in the US, those who supported big government and wanted to limit and control the free market started calling themselves liberal: ”[a]s a supreme, if unintended, compliment, the enemies of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.” So unhyphenated liberal means “progressive” or the like in the US, and that is definitely not an accurate label for a believer in a minimal state. Say “classical liberal” in the US and people just hear “liberal” and think “progressive”: confusion still reigns. ”Conservatives” in the European sense, as Hayek argued, are primarily traditionalists, and hostile to many economic, personal, and civil liberties.

So what is the alternative? By default, “libertarian”–a word that Hayek said “[f]or my taste . . . carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute”–is pretty much all that is left. Again quoting Hayek: “But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.” So libertarian has pretty much become the default term to describe someone in the US who is not a liberal/progressive, traditional conservative, socialist, communist, or what have you.

But the “libertarian” label has been claimed by myriad people whom Hayek, and Friedman, and Richard Epstein–and Adam Smith–would find repulsive and decidedly unliberal, in the classical sense. The most prominent of these today is presidential candidate Ron Paul. Another is Paul’s former chief of staff Lew Rockwell. Yet another is radio ranter Alex Jones. (Sort of working my way down the food chain here.)

As Paul has made a serious challenge in Iowa, he and these others, and his supporters, have attracted much more scrutiny. And what is revealed is not pretty. Actually, ugly would be the proper word. …

Mark Steyn in The Corner has Randy thoughts.

Like many chaps round these parts, my general line on Ron Paul was that, as much as I think he’s out of his gourd on Iran et al, he performs a useful role in the GOP line-up talking up the virtues of constitutional conservatism. But this Weekly Standard piece by John McCormack suggests Paul is a humbug even on his core domestic turf: The entitlement state is the single biggest deformation to the Founders’ republic, and it downgrades not only America’s finances but its citizenry. Yet Paul has no serious proposal for dealing with it, and indeed promises voters that we won’t have to as long as we cut “overseas spending”.

This is hooey. As I point out in my book, well before the end of this decade interest payments on the debt will consume more of the federal budget than military spending. …

Toby Harnden writes on the luck of Mitt Romney.

… Romney has certainly been fortunate with his opponents – and those who ducked the chance to take him on. On paper, Rick Perry should be the nominee. The longest-serving governor in Texas history, chief executive of a huge, job-creating state, an evangelical Christian with an easy charm and the looks of the Marlboro Man, Perry seemed to be everything a Republican nominee should be.

But Perry turned out to be an abysmal candidate. Whether handicapped by pain medicine for his bad back, a lack of fire in his belly or the fact that his luck finally ran out after a charmed political career in Texas, Perry was a dud – his “Oops” moment in a November debate a cruel epitaph for his candidacy.

Each time a new rival rose in the polls, they wilted under the fresh scrutiny and highlighted Romney’s strengths in the process. With Herman Cain gone and Michele Bachmann in the doldrums, in early December Romney found himself facing a resurgent Newt Gingrich.

If Romney could have invented a man he would like to duke it out for the nomination, he couldn’t have done better than Gingrich – a lobbyist in all but name, a creature of Washington, thrice-married and with no money or campaign structure. Gingrich’s policy apostasies, including an embrace of elements of Obamacare, innoculated Romney.

Throw into the mix the maverick libertarian Ron Paul – a man with no chance of winning the Republican nomination but a possible Iowa victor – and the scenarios got even better. A Paul win would do little to damage Romney but would stifle any chance of his rivals building momentum.

But the position Romney finds himself in is not accidental. He is a vastly improved candidate from the Romney of 2008. …

Peggy Noonan says Romney gets stronger in this years strange nomination process.

… The most memorable line of the first phase? There’s “9-9-9″ and “Oops,” but the best came from Mitt Romney when he was asked about the Gingrich campaign’s failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot. Mr. Gingrich had compared it to Pearl Harbor, a setback, but we’ll recover. Mr. Romney, breezily, to a reporter: “I think it’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory.”

It made people laugh. It made them want to repeat it, which is the best free media of all, the line people can’t resist saying in the office. And they laughed because it pinged off a truth: Gingrich is ad hoc, disorganized.

The put-down underscored Romney’s polite little zinger of a week before, that Mr. Gingrich was “zany.” And it was a multi-generationally effective: People who are 70-years-old remember “I Love Lucy,” but so do people who are 30 and grew up with its reruns. Mr. Romney’s known for being organized but not for being deft. This was deft. It’s an old commonplace in politics that if you’re explaining you’re losing, but it’s also true that if they’re laughing you’re losing. The campaign trail has been pretty much a wit-free zone. It’s odd that people who care so much about politics rarely use one of politics’ biggest tools, humor. Mr. Romney did and scored. More please, from everyone.

Newt Gingrich in the end will likely prove to be a gift to Mitt Romney. He was a heavyweight. This isn’t Herman Cain, this is a guy everyone on the ground in every primary state knows and has seen on TV and remembers from the past. But his emergence scared a lot of people—”Not him!’—and made some of them think, ‘OK, I guess I better get off the sidelines and make a decision. Compared to Newt, Romney looks pretty reasonable.”

Mr. Gingrich took some of the sting out of Romney-as-flip-flopper because he is a flip flopper too. He also, for a few weeks there, made Mr. Romney look like he might be over. He made Mr. Romney fight for it, not against an unknown businessman but against a serious political figure whose face and persona said: “I mean business.” In the end it will turn out he was a gift to the Romney campaign, a foe big enough that when you beat him it means something.

If it is Mitt, and if he wins, we’ll have our work cut out for us if he brings along advisors like John Sununu. Weekly Standard Blog has that thought.

As Jonathan Last pointed out, John H. Sununu, the former chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush and a top adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, recently told the New Hampshire Union Leader that “Iowans pick corn and New Hampshire picks Presidents.”

A friend of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and proud Hawkeye responded succinctly: “Yes, and Sununus pick Souters.” And another friend notes, for the record, that the last three presidents, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, all lost the New Hampshire primary. The last “first in the nation” primary winner to continue to the presidency was George H.W. Bush in 1988—whose presidency lasted only one term, thanks in part to…John H. Sununu. …

James Pethokoukis picks 2011′s Economic HEROS and zeros.

HEROS – 5. Erskine Bowles and Senator Alan Simpson. 4. Herman Cain. 3. Steve Jobs. 2. Scott Walker. 1. Paul Ryan.

zeros – 5. Lafe Solomon. 4. The Occupy movement. 3. Elizabeth Warren. 2. The White House. 1. Kim Jong-il.

Pethokoukis also blogs on the fact too many kids are going to college.

As I mentioned earlier, I am currently reading Real Education by Charles Murray. In the book, Murray makes four big points: a) Ability varies; b) half of the children are below average; c) too many people are going to college; and d) America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It’s the third point I am concerned about for the moment. Here is President Obama is his recent Osawatomie, Kansas, speech:

“But we need to meet the moment. We’ve got to up our game. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission — a national mission. Government and businesses, parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. And their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. Which means we shouldn’t be laying off good teachers right now — we should be hiring them. We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools –- we should be demanding more. We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college — we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn’t rack up $100,000 of debt just because they went.”

Obama’s words remind me of this passage in the book:

“The problem begins with the message sent to young people that they should aspire to college no matter what. Some politicians are among the most visible offenders, treating every failure to go to college as an injustice that can be remedied by increasing government help.”

Murray makes several points that dispute Obama: …

January 2, 2012

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Charles Krauthammer wonders if we are alone in the universe.

… And at just the right time. As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy — a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.

That silence is maddening. Not just because it compounds our feeling of cosmic isolation, but because it makes no sense. As we inevitably find more and more exo-planets where intelligent life can exist, why have we found no evidence — no signals, no radio waves — that intelligent life does exist?

It’s called the Fermi Paradox, after the great physicist who once asked, “Where is everybody?” Or as was once elaborated: “All our logic, all our anti- isocentrism, assures us that we are not unique — that they must be there. And yet we do not see them.” …

And WSJ Reviews a book claiming we are alone.

… Recent discoveries might seem to boost the likelihood of life elsewhere in the galaxy. We have confirmed the stunning ubiquity of extrasolar planets in other star systems, the latest a possible Earth-analog orbiting right in the habitable sweet spot—not too close, not too far—from its central sun. Biologists have encountered bacteria underneath a mile of Antarctic ice and nestled within rocks in a Yellowstone geyser; it’s only a modest stretch to imagine that the next generation of robotic spacecraft might find simple biota in equally hostile havens on Mars or on one of Jupiter’s moons.

But as John Gribbin points out in his grimly plausible book, “Alone in the Universe,” there is a world of difference between habitable planets and inhabited planets. Mr. Gribbin’s narrative reduces the vision of Disney’s documentary into the counterfactual fever-dream it really is. The author’s conclusion: Earth is the sole abode of intelligent life in the galaxy, the product of a profoundly improbable sequence of cosmic, geologic and climatic events—some thoroughly documented, some inferable from fragmentary evidence—that allowed our planet to become a unique refuge where life could develop to its full potential.

Chief among these, paradoxically, was a near-cataclysmic planetary collision during Earth’s infancy, which gave birth to the moon. Such encounters were relatively common in the harum-scarum chaos of an early solar system that teemed with veering planets and asteroids. In its suicidal blow against our world, the Mars-size impactor generated enough heat to liquefy both itself and Earth’s exterior. Its dense, metallic core plunged inward to join our planet’s existing metallic center, while the rest swept up part of the fiery terrestrial shell to form the moon. …

Karl Rove makes predictions.

As New Year’s approaches, here are a baker’s dozen predictions for 2012.

• Republicans will keep the U.S. House, albeit with their 25-seat majority slightly reduced. In the 10 presidential re-elections since 1936, the party in control of the White House has added House seats in seven contests and lost them in three. The average gain has been 12 seats. The largest pickup was 24 seats in 1944—but President Barack Obama is no FDR, despite what he said in his recent “60 Minutes” interview.

• Republicans will take the U.S. Senate. Of the 23 Democratic seats up in 2012, there are at least five vulnerable incumbents (Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania): The GOP takes two or three of these. With the announcement on Tuesday that Nebraska’s Ben Nelson will retire, there are now seven open Democratic seats (Connecticut, Hawaii, North Dakota, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin): The GOP takes three or four. Even if Republicans lose one of the 10 seats they have up, they will have a net pickup of four to six seats, for a majority of 51 to 53.

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid or both will leave the Democratic leadership by the end of 2012. Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell will continue directing the GOP in their respective chambers.

• This will be the fourth presidential election in a row in which turnout increases. This has happened just once since 1828, from 1928 through 1940. …

Jennifer Rubin lists the year’s disasters for the president.

President Obama has had the worst year of his presidency. Or, to be more precise, his performance this year has been the worst of his presidency. Pundits and pollsters will say that his “numbers are up,” but let’s look at what he’s done or not done.

If you can recall, back in February his State of the Union address was a bore-a-thon stocked with spending ideas (on everything from light rail to salmon), with only glancing reference to the debt. His grand proposal: Freeze discretionary spending at the astronomically high level he had presided over in his first two years.

The next few months were spent bashing the only man to author a serious budget plan and put real Medicare reform on the table. He not only rebuffed Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposals but invited him to a speech, put him in the first row and then delivered a hyper-partisan attack, accusing the Republicans of taking Pell grants from college kids so fat cats could get a break on corporate jets.

Throughout the spring and summer the president failed to present his own entitlement reform plans. …

Here’s a myth that is a delight to have debunked; by a translator who was on the scene, no less. Media Myth Alert blog has the story.

The nod for the most notable debunking of 2011 goes to retired U.S. diplomat Charles W. (Chas) Freeman Jr. for puncturing the popular tale about Zhou Enlai’s remark in 1972 that it was “too early to say” what the effects would be of the French Revolution.

Freeman told a panel in Washington, D.C., in June that the Chinese premier was referring to the turmoil in France in 1968, not the years of revolutionary upheaval that began in 1789.

His remarks debunking the Zhou misinterpretation were first published by London’s Financial Times.

Zhou’s “too early” comment was made during President Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972. Freeman, then 28-years-old, was the president’s interpreter on the trip and heard Zhou’s remark.

Freeman said during the panel discussion in June that the misinterpretation “was too delightful to set straight” at the time.

In a subsequent interview with me, Freeman said it was “absolutely clear” from the context of the conversation that Zhou’s comment was a reference to the turmoil of 1968.

Freeman described Zhou’s remark as “a classic of the genre of a constantly repeated misunderstanding that has taken on a life of its own.”

January 1, 2012

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Dave Barry rings out the old year.

It was the kind of year that made a person look back fondly on the gulf oil spill. …

January saw a change of power in the House of Representatives, as outgoing Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi hands the gavel over to Republican John Boehner, who, in the new spirit of Washington bipartisanship, has it checked for explosives. …

February a massive snowstorm paralyzes the Midwest, forcing a shutdown of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after more than a dozen planes are attacked by yetis. President Obama responds with a nationally televised speech pointing out that the storm was caused by a weather system inherited from a previous administration. …

March On the national political front, Newt Gingrich, responding to a groundswell of encouragement from the voices in his head, reveals that he is considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination. He quickly gains the support of the voter who had been leaning toward Ross Perot. …

April a major crisis is barely avoided when Congress, after frantic negotiations, reaches a last-minute agreement on the federal budget, thereby averting a government shutdown that would have had a devastating effect on the ability of Congress to continue spending insanely more money than it actually has. …

May As the month draws to a close, a Twitter account belonging to Anthony Weiner — a feisty, ambitious Democratic up-and-comer who managed to get elected to Congress despite looking like a nocturnal rodent that somehow got a full-body wax and acquired a gym membership — tweets a link to a photograph of a pair of briefs containing what appears to be a congressional member rarin’ to filibuster, if you catch my drift. This member immediately captivates the nation, although, surprisingly, President Obama fails to deliver a nationally televised address about it. …

June the Republican field does in fact continue to grow as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum,Mitt Romney, the late Sonny Bono and somebody calling himself “Jon Huntsman” all enter the race, bringing the Republican contender total to roughly 125. …

July Speaking of drama: In Washington, as the deadline for raising the federal debt limit nears, Congress and the Obama administration work themselves into a frenzy trying to figure out what to do about the fact that the government is spending insanely more money than it actually has. After hours of intense negotiations, several walkouts, countless press releases and of course a nationally televised address by the president, the Democrats and the Republicans are finally able to announce, at the last possible minute, that they have hammered out a historic agreement under which the government will continue to spend insanely more money than it actually has while a very special congressional committee — A SUPER committee! — comes up with a plan, by a later date, that will solve this pesky problem once and for all. Everybody involved heaves a sigh of relief and basks in the feeling of satisfaction that comes from handling yet another crisis, Washington-style. …

August With the stock market in a steep nosedive, economic growth stagnant and unemployment relentlessly high, the White House, moving swiftly to prevent panic, reassures a worried nation that President Obama will once again be vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, where he will recharge his batteries in preparation for what White House press secretary Jay Carney promises will be “a real humdinger of a nationally televised address.” …

September In domestic news, President Obama returns from his Martha’s Vineyard getaway refreshed and ready to tackle the job he was elected by the American people to do: seek reelection. Focusing on unemployment, the president delivers a nationally televised address laying out his plan for creating jobs, which consists of traveling around the nation tirelessly delivering job-creation addresses until it’s time for another presidential getaway. …

October On the domestic protest front, Occupy Wall Street spreads to many more cities, its initially vague goals now replaced by a clear sense of purpose as occupiers focus on the single issue that is most important to the 99 percent:bathrooms. Some cities seek to shut down the protests, but the occupiers vow to remain until there is a reawakening of the national consciousness. Or, winter. …

November the congressional Supercommittee, after months of pondering what to do about the fact that the federal government is spending insanely more money than it actually has, announces that, in the true “can-do” bipartisan Washington spirit, it is giving up. This means the government will continue spending insanely more money than it actually has until 2013, at which time there are supposed to be automatic spending cuts, except Congress would never let that happen, and even if it did happen, the federal government would still be spending insanely more money than it actually has. …

December The economic outlook is also brighter in Washington, where congressional leaders, still working night and day to find a solution to the problem of the federal government spending insanely more money than it actually has, announce that they have a bold new plan: They will form another committee. But this one will be even better than the Supercommittee, because it will be a SuperDUPERcommittee, and it will possess what House and Senate leaders describe, in a joint statement, as “magical powers.”

December 29, 2011

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James Pethokoukis with seven graphs that sum up the record of this administration.

My Magnificent Seven. Some bust myths. Others highlight a reality the media is ignoring. Enjoy!

1. The overly optimistic unemployment forecast of the Obama White House. This may be the most infamous economic prediction in U.S. political history (helpfully updated by The Right Sphere). For the original January 2009 chart from White House economic advisers Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, see here.

2. The real unemployment rate. The official (U-3) unemployment rate is 8.6 percent. But the labor force has been shrinking as discouraged workers have been disappeared by government statisticians rather than counted as unemployed. But what if they weren’t? What if the Labor Department added those folks back into the numbers? Well, you would get this: …

Jennifer Rubin cites the worst 12 political moves of the past year.

In 2011 we saw some impressive political moves. For example, Rep.Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) figured out how to make himself as the House Budget Committee chairman the chief opponent to President Obama on fiscal issues. But there were also some boneheaded plays. In the spirit of the holiday, I have 12 that stand out.

1. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) decides not to run for president. He would certainly be the front-runner by now and could very likely have galvanized disparate elements of the GOP.

2. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) decides to run for president.Lacking preparation, policy ideas and verbal skill, he soon crashed and burned as a candidate. Barring a miraculous comeback, he will have permanently harmed his political stature.

3. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich decides to attack Mitt Romney on his Bain Capital experience. This may have been the key turning point in the race, when Gingrich lost support of many on the right and Romney stood up for free market capitalism. …

OK, so what do left-liberals think of the administration? Two Washington Post writers come up with a scathing report on the administration’s green investments.

Linda Sterio remembers the excitement when President Obama arrived at Solyndra last year and described how his administration’s financial support for the plant was helping create hundreds of jobs. The company’s prospects appeared unlimited as Solyndra executives described the backlog of orders for its solar panels.

Then came the August morning when Sterio heard a newscaster announce that more than a thousand Solyndra employees were out of work. Only recently did she learn that, within the Obama administration, the company’s potential collapse had long been discussed.

“It’s not about the people; it’s politics,” said Sterio, who remains jobless and at risk of losing her home. “We all feel betrayed.”

Since the failure of the company, Obama’s entire $80 billion clean-technology program has begun to look like a political liability for an administration about to enter a bruising reelection campaign.

Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.

The records, some previously unreported, show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.

The documents reviewed by The Post, which began examining the clean-technology program a year ago, provide a detailed look inside the day-to-day workings of the upper levels of the Obama administration. They also give an unprecedented glimpse into high-level maneuvering by politically connected clean-technology investors.

They show that as Solyndra tottered, officials discussed the political fallout from its troubles, the “optics” in Washington and the impact that the company’s failure could have on the president’s prospects for a second term. Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-energy technology.

“What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse. What they are talking about is ‘How are we going to manage this politically?’” …

And David Brooks thinks they need better historians.

The members of the Obama administration have many fine talents, but making adept historical analogies may not be among them.

When the administration came to office in the depths of the financial crisis, many of its leading figures concluded that the moment was analogous to the Great Depression. They read books about the New Deal and sought to learn from F.D.R.

But, in the 1930s, people genuinely looked to government to ease their fears and restore their confidence. Today, Americans are more likely to fear government than be reassured by it.

According to a Gallup survey, 64 percent of Americans polled said they believed that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only 26 percent believed that big business is the biggest threat. As a result, the public has reacted to Obama’s activism with fear and anxiety. The Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 elections.

Members of the administration have now dropped the New Deal parallels. But they have started making analogies between this era and the progressive era around the turn of the 20th century.

Again, there are superficial similarities. Then, as now, we are seeing great concentrations of wealth, especially at the top. Then, as now, the professional class of lawyers, teachers and journalists seems to feel as if it has the upper hand in its status war against the business class of executives and financiers.

But these superficial similarities are outweighed by vast differences. …

Alana Goodman posts on Canada’s pipeline warnings.

The Obama administration has spent three years reviewing the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Canadian government is understandably frustrated that the decision has been kicked further down the road. After the White House insinuated earlier this week that it might reject the pipeline, Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened to take the oil elsewhere (via HotAir):

Canada could sell its oil to China and other overseas markets with or without approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the United States, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In a year-end television interview, Harper indicated he had doubts the $7-billion pipeline would receive political approval from U.S. President Barack Obama, and that Canada should be looking outside the United States for markets.

“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that,” Harper said in the Monday interview with CTV National News?.

Right now, there’s no avenue for Canada to get the oil to the Pacific for shipping, so any deal with China would be far down the road.

Proposals to build a pipeline extension to reach Canada’s West Coast are also likely to get major pushback from environmentalists. But it is possible. At Huffington Post Canada, Christopher Sands explains:

Canada’s best move now would be to quietly build the pipeline to the West Coast, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. 2012 elections or the progress of Keystone XL construction. Canada needs real options to avoid being repeatedly held captive to American political caprice. To earn U.S. respect and stop the bullying by environmental groups and politicians, Canada must turn its Keystone threats into credible promises, and act on them when necessary.

This would be a major disappointment, but it would be hard to blame Canada for taking that route. Let’s say Obama gets reelected, and the Keystone XL decision comes due in 2013. There’s a good chance Obama will approve the pipeline once he’s free of reelection constraints, but it’s far from certain. Who knows what the political dynamic will be like in a year?

Robert Bradley in Forbes writes about the unlimited energy potential of North America. If only we had leadership in DC that would take advantage of it.

The fossil-fuel energy era is not waning. Quite the opposite; it is still young.

For decades, activists have been trying to convince the American people that declining resources would forever make us dependent on expensive foreign oil. But according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) on North America’s energy resources, that line of thinking is flat-out false. Based on the latest official statistics, domestic oil, natural gas, and coal deposits are much more extensive than commonly realized.

The real problem is that much of our resources are not being developed because of antiquated, heavy-handed government regulations. As a consequence, the American economy is being deprived of significant job creation and new investments.

Consider this. Total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels, which is more oil than the entire world has used over the last 150 years. And that amount alone could meet the energy needs of the United States for the next 250 years.

An estimated 1.4 trillion of those barrels are buried under American soil. For some perspective: the total proven reserves in Saudi Arabia is just about 260 billion barrels.

And even that 1.4 trillion figure might be an underestimation. Future technological innovation may well lead to improved detection techniques, helping us locate oil deposits currently uncovered. Or innovation could improve extraction techniques, enabling us to tap into reserves previously thought unreachable. …

December 28, 2011

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Corner post from Mark Steyn.

On this Christmas Eve, one of the great unreported stories throughout what we used to call Christendom is the persecution of Christians around the world. In Egypt, the “Arab Spring” is going so swimmingly that Copts are already fleeing Egypt and, for those Christians that remain, Midnight Mass has to be held in the daylight for security reasons. In Iraq, midnight services have been canceled entirely for fear of bloodshed, part of the remorseless de-Christianizing that has been going on, quite shamefully, under an American imperium.

Not merely the media but Christian leaders in the west seem to be embarrassed by behavior that doesn’t conform to their dimwitted sappiness about “Facebook Revolutions”. It took a Jew to deliver this line:

When Lord Sacks, chief rabbi in England, rose in the House of Lords to speak about the persecution of Christians, he quoted Martin Luther King. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

December 27, 2011

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Mark Steyn wants the West to have some kids.

… The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency – “America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,” etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren – i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social democratic state where workers in “hazardous” professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again.

Look at it another way: Banks are a mechanism by which old people with capital lend to young people with energy and ideas. The Western world has now inverted the concept. If 100 geezers run up a bazillion dollars’ worth of debt, is it likely that 42 youngsters will ever be able to pay it off? As Angela Merkel pointed out in 2009, for Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. The Continent’s economic “powerhouse” has the highest proportion of childless women in Europe: one in three fräulein have checked out of the motherhood business entirely. “Germany’s working-age population is likely to decrease 30 percent over the next few decades,” says Steffen Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. “Rural areas will see a massive population decline, and some villages will simply disappear.” …

Andrew Malcolm hopes Iraq’s leaders don’t work like ours.

The politicians in Baghdad have in their own way been working hard at this democracy business, especially hard now that most U.S. troops are gone.

Iraq’s leaders have no doubt been monitoring CNN International in recent days as the needless payroll tax extension fight in that exotic place called Washington was settled, fell apart and now both houses of Congress have packed up without any agreement. As if another legislative month off was more important than the nation’s struggling economy.

They see this Democrat Harry Reid fellow saying no, absolutely no way will he name Senate conferees to work together with Republicans on a year-long tax cut extension, which he really wants, until the House passes a two-month extension, which Reid only says he wants. So, Reid the petulant politician closes the Senate.

And Iraqi leaders see the U.S. House not even voting on the two-month extension because its newest members want a year-long extension like everybody else and they also feel like needling their own sect leader a bit. So, they waste a vote demanding that the other chamber do what everyone knows it’s not going to do.

And they see the president of the United States, who wanted a year-long extension until he thought he got Republicans in a PR bind over two months, jabbering only at the GOP about its extraneous demands. …

AutoBlog tells how some union thugs got jailed.

Danny Douglas and Jay Campbell, have been sentenced to 18 months and 12 months plus one day, respectively, after being convicted of extortion. It seems the two former United Auto Workers officials agreed to end an 87-day strike at a GM plant in Pontiac, MI back in 1997 – but only after General Motors agreed to hire Campbell’s son and the son of another UAW official for high-paying jobs they were evidently not qualified for.

It’s been a rather long and winding road for Douglas and Campbell. According to the Detroit Free Press, the case first went to trial in 2002, and in 2003, the charges were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds. Shortly thereafter, a trio of judges from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and reinstated the charges.

The maximum penalty allowed for the pair of law breakers – both are now 70 years old – was up to 30 years in prison and fines of $750,000. Judge Edmunds, however, sentenced them much less strictly, with six months of house arrest and two years of probation. Both Douglas and Campbell appealed the ruling, and the case went back to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

That was apparently a bad move on their part. Their convictions were upheld and the Sixth Circuit actually sent the case back to Judge Edmunds, ruling that her sentences were too lenient. So now, it’s off to prison for Douglas and Campbell.

OC Register editorial with a good example of why California is headed to the dumps.

Democratic reaction to the news that Waste Connections, a $3.6-billion company and major Sacramento-area employer, is headed to Houston to seek a friendlier business climate tells other businesses all they need to know about the attitudes of those who run California’s government.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gave these clueless and snarky remarks in response to the news: “In this instance you have a company that is, in fact, profitable, making significant revenue gains in 2011 and 2010. That doesn’t speak to a bad business climate here in California when a good company is able to thrive in that way. So whatever Mr. Middelstaedt’s (company CEO) reasons are to leave the great state of California, I know I’m pushing back.”

Steinberg claims to have worked on improving the state’s business climate, but from what we see in Sacramento, Steinberg and the party he helps lead have been pushing hard mainly for additional regulations and much higher taxes. The California Democratic Party’s attitude long has been that businesses are basically trying to rip off the public, and the source of all wealth and advancement can be found in the public sector, When businesses leave. Steinberg and Co. show little sympathy. …

Joel Kotkin says the rest of the sun belt is doing just fine.

Along with the oft-pronounced, desperately wished for death of the suburbs, no demographic narrative thrills the mainstream news media more than the decline of the Sun Belt, the country’s southern rim extending from the Carolinas to California. Since the housing bubble collapse in 2007, commentators have heralded “the end of the Sun Belt boom.”

Yet this assertion is largely exaggerated, particularly since the big brass buckle in the middle of the Sun Belt, Texas, has thrived throughout the recession. California, of course, has done far worse, but its slow population growth and harsh regulatory environment align it more with the Northeast than with its sunny neighbors.

Moreover, the Sun Belt is poised for a recovery, according to the most recent economic and demographic data. Even such hard-hit states as Arizona appear to be making an unexpected, and largely unheralded, recovery.

Take Florida. The Sunshine State may have experienced rapid population loss during 2008 and 2009, but the just-released 2011 Census estimates show a remarkable turnaround, with the state adding 119,000 domestic migrants last year. This may be less than half the gains in 2004 and 2005, when the in-migration reached nearly 250,000, but it is close to levels enjoyed a decade ago.

The big winners in terms of growth were in the South, with Texas, Florida and North Carolina as the leading in-migration states. Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia also ranked in the top 10. …

WSJ Editors say the SEC case against Fannie and Freddie execs provides some interesting and timely information.

Democrats have spent years arguing that private lenders created the housing boom and bust, and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac merely came along for the ride. This was always a politically convenient fiction, and now thanks to the unlikely source of the Securities and Exchange Commission we have a trail of evidence showing how the failed mortgage giants turbocharged the crisis.

That’s the story revealed Friday by the SEC’s civil lawsuits against six former Fannie and Freddie executives, including a pair of CEOs. The SEC says the companies defrauded investors because they “knew and approved of misleading statements” about Fan and Fred’s exposure to subprime loans, and it chronicles their push to expand the business.

The executives deny the charges, and we hope they don’t settle. The case deserves to play out in court, so Americans can see in detail how Fan and Fred were central to the bubble. The lawsuits themselves, combined with information admitted as true by Fan and Fred in civil nonprosecution agreements with the SEC, are certainly illuminating.

The Beltway story of the crisis claims that Congress’s affordable housing mandates had nothing to do with it. But the SEC’s lawsuit shows that Fannie degraded its underwriting standards to increase its market share in subprime loans. According to the SEC suit, for instance, in 2006 Fannie Mae adjusted its widely used automated underwriting system, “Desktop Underwriter.” Fannie did so as part of its “Say Yes” strategy to “provide more ‘approve’ messages . . . for larger volumes of loans with lower FICO [credit] scores and higher LTVs [loan-to-value] than previously permitted.” …

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