Thursday, July 23, 2009

Gates', Obama's experiences not unique to black men

Depending on whom you believe, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s arrest was caused because he was either a black man standing up for himself, or, because he was disorderly to officers who responded to a call because a neighbor mistakenly believed that someone was trying to break into Gates' home (actually, Gates was trying to break into his own home).

Obviously, I wasn't there and won't comment on what may have actually happened. But President Obama weighed in on this matter (also acknowledging he wasn't there), saying that it was "stupid" for the Cambridge Police to arrest Gates. Undoubtedly, Obama was recalling his own similar experiences of being followed by security guards or stopped by police that he recounted in his book The Audacity of Hope.

Every black person in America needs to hear this: These experiences are not unique to blacks in America. As anyone can see by the photo next to this post, I am as white as they come. But, as a younger man, I had been pulled over while driving numerous times, for no apparent reason (I was never ticketed). I chalked it up to the fact that I was young, driving late at night.

Even today, if I enter an elevator alone with a woman, and I'm not either shaved or dressed as well as I could be, she almost always instinctively clutches at her purse. Again, this is not because I am black (I'm not), but bacause I'm a large man, who might not be dressed in a completely unthreatening manner.

Crime is an unfortunate fact in America. We should not have to apologize for our instinctive responses to protect ourselves and others (regardless of their race or gender).

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Healthcare Obama's Waterloo?

Senator Jim Demint said that health care would be Obama's "Waterloo" moment. Maybe. It's possible that should Obamacare (and for that matter, Cap and Trade) fail to pass, Obama would be so weakened and drained of credibility that he woud become ineffective through the rest of his term. Given the extreme efforts the White House is making to win this one, they apparently share this analysis.

But I think that by thwarting Obama's healthcare amitions, Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans may actually be saving Obama from himself. If Obamacare were to pass, voters would certainly hold the resulting catastrophe against him. People would clearly be unhappy with losing thier employer-sponsored health care plans because they were dumped into a "public- option" plan. Obama would suffer a further loss of credibility because what he promised would not happen would have come to pass. People would also be unhappy about rationed care and a resulting increase in health care costs and the deficit. Not to mention the fact that the alleged need for immediate action on health care (to fix the economy) would have been exposed as phony.

By sweeping Republicans into office in 1994 the American People saved Bill Clinton from himself and he went on to a largely successful presidency. But the permanent damage that would be caused by the current health care proposals are too terrible to permit, even if their passage did ultimately bring Obama to his Waterloo.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Health care reform a pretext for increasing dependence on government

Almost no one, Republicans and conservatives included, has a problem with making health care available to the uninsured.

But with each passing day, it appears that "Health Care Reform" is a pretext not for covering the uninsured, but increasing the government's reach over one-fifth of the economy, and into decisions that were until now, between a doctor and a patient (or a doctor, a patient and an HMO).

What Republicans, conservatives, Blue Dog Democrats and evidently, now a majority of the American People have a problem with is the government's total takeover of the nation's health care system, higher taxes, and increased spending. This is particularly true given that the economy shows no signs of immediate improvement.

What can be done? It wold be easy enough to provide vouchers for the poor so that they could simply just purchase the insurance (although this would still cost money, but not as much as the current proposal before Congress).

Americans enjoy the world's best health care, the problems are costs and access. To increase access, insurance companies should be allowed to cross state lines to sell policies to increase competition (and lower prices). Congress can also allow insurers to write policies that do not cover every conceivable malady. Is it better to go uninsured because you cannot afford a "gold-plated" policy that is required to cover, for example, HIV infection or precription costs for Viagra? Or would it be better to forego these things (particularly if you aren't at risk for HIV or think your plan shouldn't pay for Viagra should you need it)?

Further, any effort to artifically control costs (i.e., price controls), would result in either a healthcare black market, or inability to get healthcare because it would become scarce. Think
1970s era gas lines.

Agressive efforts to replace current employer's health care plans with health savings accounts would likely help control costs. With health savings accounts, employers take the same money that they would spend for insurance premiums, and use it for: (1) a less expensive major medical plan to cover only catistrophic costs; and (2) a savings account (for the remainder) that is used to pay for expenses not covered by the major medical insurance policy.

Because the savings accounts are an asset that each person keeps should they remain healthy, there is an incentive for each person to be the guardian of his own costs. If an unnecessary trip to the emergency room or expensive diagnostic procedure would cause an account withdrawal, then people would be more careful not to purchase these services unless truly necessary. This of course, would reduce costs and further increase access.

This of course is not an exhaustive list of alternative proposals to Obamacare. But it is clear that insuring the uninsured is not the real goal, which is make the government the sole insurer and increase the public's dependence on the Democrats. Who you gonna call when there are no longer any insurers to provide affordable coverage?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Judge Sotomayor's dissembling

On at least 5 occasions over the past several years, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor uttered what are now being notoriously called the "32 words:"

I would hope that a wise latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn'tlived that life.
In the run up to the confirmation hearings, we seen variations on a number of trial balloons that the Democrats tried out to explain that the sentiments contained in the words aren't those that Sotomayor wished to express. One such explanation by Senator Diane Feinstein was that the statement was merely a hypothetical and that one could substitute, for example wise silver-haired man(referring to Senator John Cornyn who was sitting right next to her) in the comment which would make it nonobjectionable. The problem is while this would work for the first half of the comment, it doesn't make sense as to the second half of it.

Al Gore's former lawyer, David Boies, focused on the word "hope." But again, this only softens the comment, it doesn't explain it away for critics and those who rightfully fear that Judge Sotomayor would be a slave to identity politics once confirmed to the Court.

For a nominee to the Supreme Court, these words are indefensible, and from her explanation that they were a "rhetorical flourish that fell flat," Judge Sotomayor apparently knows it. She must of toyed with other explanations like those above, but found them less satisfactory than the one she gave yesterday.

The problem is, Judge Sotomayor's explanation is simply not credible. She would have us believe that she meant just the opposite. But if a reasonably intelligent person makes a statement that is misunderstood, or tells a joke that falls flat, they don't repeat it at least 4 or 5 more times. Who is she trying to kid?

I understand that the President is generally entitled to his choice of nominee. And I think that Judge Sotomayor will probably turn out to be not as activist as some other choices the President could have made. And she is not always wrong. For example, while I passionately believe that the Constitution protects an individual's rights to own firearms, the Second Circuit's gun casemay not have been wrongfully decided. By its terms, the Second Amendment is only a limitation against the federal government, not the states. This was one of the strategic reasons for selecting the D.C. gun case to go to the Supreme Court because the Second Amendment clearly applies to the District of Columbia.

After passage of the 14th Amendment which applies specifically to the states, the Supreme Court slowly incorporated under that Amendment's due process clause the rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments against the states. But if the Second Amendment is going to be incorporated by the 14th, then it will have to be the Supreme Court that does it.

But, I don't know that I agree that you can lie your ass off in the confirmation hearings and still rightfully expect to be confirmed.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Critical questions for global warming advocates

Here are three critical questions from yesterday's London Telegraph (which actually came from the Australian Government) that global warming advocates and scientists should be required to answer prior to any more legislative efforts to reorder the economy to combat "climate change:"

How, since temperatures have been dropping, can CO2 be blamed for them rising? What, if CO2 was the cause of recent warming, was the cause of temperatures rising higher in the past? Why, since the official computer models have been proved wrong, should we rely on them for future projections?
Clearly there is an emerging counter-consensus that global warming is a bunch of hooey (it's a real word, I looked it up), joined in part, by a recent EPA report questioning the premise of glogal warming that the Obama Administration quickly quashed.

For years, climate change activists have been painting their opponents as members of the "flat-earth society" that would have challenged the findings of Galleo because they contradicted church doctrine.

But I am nonetheless not surprised that those responsible for the climate change hysteria are now in the position of squelching scientific evidence - simply because it inconveniently condradicts the offical Washington doctrine - that massive government intervention is required to prevent the earth's climate from rising a few degrees over the next century. Even if we could agree that is what was actually happening.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Response to Biden: Here's what I would (and would not) have done

Today, in a fit of rightous indignation, Vice President Joe Biden defending (or being defensive as to) the Administration's effrorts on the economy asked its critics "what would you have done?"

1. Involved the Republicans in the drafting of the "stimulus" bill so that most of the more outragous spending items (tunnels for turtles in Florida, studying pig odor in Iowa, a highway to nowhere in West Virgina, etc.) would have been weeded out. The primary beneficiary of this strategy would have been Obama, who would otherwise have more credibility with the American People if he needed to ask them for more money for a second round of stimulus spending.

2. Not made the stimulus package so large that it could not be spent quicky enough. Many Republicans suggested a stimulus package half as big as the one that ultimately passed. Again, preserving the Administration's credibility so that going back to voters for another round was politically feasible.

3. Again, to preserve credibility, not oversell the stimulus as cure for all that ails us. I would not have said that without that package unemployment would not rise above 8 percent. I would also not have told the American people that the projects paid for by the package would be "shovel ready" if the money was not going to be spent until next year. I would have been upfront about transfer payments to state and local governments as not being stimulative, even if I thought they were necessary.

4. Not use the economy and the need for a stimulus as a pretext to play Santa Clause and fill the wish lists of every Democratic legislator or special interest who had a pet project the wanted funded, regardless of how ridiculous it sounded, or whether it would have any real stimulitive effect.

5. Focus stimulus spending to stimulate the private economy, not merely as an excuse to grow government.

6. Keep my focus on the economy, and not try to saddle the American People with an onerous carbon tax during a recession, or seek to pass a public option health care plan that is conservatively estimated to cost as least 1 trillion. Contrary to the Administration's assertions, neither health care reform or cap and trade are presently necessary for the economy to improve (and may in fact be detrimental to the Administration's stimulus efforts).

7. Pledge to the American People that all returned TARP funds would be returned to the taxpayers (e.g., not use the monies repaid to finance new spending).

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Joker in the White House?

In November, 2008, with a severe economic crisis underway, the American people voted for Barrack Obama, largely because he was not a Republican like George W. Bush, whom they, in large part, blamed for the recession.

But clearly, almost no one expected under Obama, in a mere 6 months, a quadrupling of the debt, government takeover of large parts of the auto industry, onerous regulations on the financial service industries, and increasing unemployment now moving toward 10 percent with no immediate end in sight.

Neither could anyone reasonably expect a deeply flawed "stimulus" bill that was largely a liberal shopping list, and, if that weren't enough, a proposed carbon tax. Obama further proposes what would essentially end up being a government takeover of the health care industry that is conservatively expected to cost 1 trillion dollars. Obama's instinct to Bush's outrageous spending is to double down, expecting, like the definition of insantity, that you can contine to do the same thing and get a different result.

In The Dark Night, Alfred the Butler analyzing the Joker, tells Bruce Wayne:

"and in their desparation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand."

I guess when desparate, it's true poeple may turn to a clown who claims to have all the answers.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

This Fourth, Time to Reflect on Obama's "Transformation" of America

For many, this fourth of July, marking the 234th year of American independence from Britain, sees a sharp rise in anxiety and despair. Not because we are in a prolonged recession. The revolution, civil war, great depression and WWII show that we've faced, and weathered, tougher times.


The despair arises from the fact that we've seem to have collectively lost our way. In October, then-presidential candidate Obama said "we are . . . days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."


No lie there. But even the most strident of Obama's critics would have been surprised at the breathtaking scope of this "transformation."


Using the economic crisis as a pretext, Congress passed and Obama signed a "stimulus" package that is stimulative in name only. It was really little more than a liberal wish list of pork projects and transfer payments and projects that were anything but "shovel ready." Without stimulus, we were told, unemployment might go as high as 9 per cent, but with stimulus, would go no higher than 8. Unemployment is now at almost 10 per cent.


The Obama administration also quadrupled an already alarmingly high national debt in a mere 6 months, engineered the takeover the auto industry, foisted new onerous regulations on the financial service industries, and now seeks a ruinous carbon tax aimed at Americans' standard of living (oh, to be a poor person in Phoenix in the summer without air conditioning).

Add to that the attempted takeover of the health care industry, which is 20 percent of the economy. With the ultimate benefit of insuring only a marginally higher number of Americans and destroying an otherwise excellent health care system whose only real fault is access. If the Administration was really serious about insuring the uninsured, they would simply give the uninsured vouchers to buy insurance. (Clearly that could not cost any more money than they are already proposing to spend). But this, apparantly, would be insufficiently transformative. It seems we are on a one-way road to socialism that has already been discredited in Europe. Do we really want to follow Britain down this path?


Abroad, Obama has openly dimissed American exceptionalism (all countries are exceptional in their own way), went on a world-wide "American apology tour," sought to "engage" a sociopathic theocracy bent on obtaining nuclear weapons, and has beat a unilateral retreat in dealing with Russian agression against its neighbors by having his Secretary of State say he was going to "reset" its relationship with Russia. And his thanks, North Korea has launched two missles today, clearly to defy an American President Kim Jong Il regards as pusillanimous.


This I think is caused by naivete born out of arrogance. Obama apparantly believes that he has such a magnetic personality, (Newsweek said he was "sort of God") that if he were just put in a room with the Mullahs, Kim Jong Il, or the kleptocrats in the Kremlin, he would solve nuclear proliferation, and territorial issues with Russia.


The President also openly cavorts with dictators like Hugo Chavez, bows to the King of Saudi Arabia, and only reluctantly calls the Mullahs on the carpet (sort of) for stealing an election and then supressing protests with violence and murder (which White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs disgracefully called "robust debate.")


But the President does not hesitate to call the Honduran miliatary out on its ouster (pursuant to Supreme Court order) of a left-wing, would-be president-for-life who was seeking to extend his rule indefinitely. Or to "meddle" in Israeli affairs by criticizing settlements in the West Bank.


I'm sure I left something out, but the point here is that we appear to have a President who at his core is unamerican, or at least stands against everything that I believe is uniquely, and irretrievably, American. Like public policy based on common sense, protection of private property, the preservation of a capitalist system, the protection of individual rights against government encroachment, the rule of law, and freedom from excessive taxation. Abroad, Obama apparantly believes that America is not a "shining city on a hill," and is no more important to the world than either Greece or Britain, and coddles left-wing dictators and abandons those who shed thier blood for only the slightest incremental increase in freedom.


Yes, time to despair, but still cling to hope that America has the resources and resillience to correct itself before we are forever transformed in ways we and the world will forever ultimately regret.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Jesse Jackson's "Greater Good"

Jesse Jackson, without even a hint of irony, writes in Tuesday's Chicago Sun Times that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in the Ricci case (regarding discrimination against white and Hispanic firefighters in New Haven, CT) that the "High court ignores the greater good."



It is the job of elected legislators to seek the greater good. The job of the Supreme Court, he apparently must be reminded, it not to aribtrate the "greater good", but to protect certain rights of individuals against legislative excess by putting those issues out of reach of the electoral process. (E.g., we cannot vote whether to reenslave blacks (or any other racial group)) by appeals to the greater good.



Jackson writes "[The Court's] reasoning depends on a hyperindividualistic interpretation of American Rights. Blacks were enslaved as a group. They were subjugated as a group. They were held in economnic and political subjugation in the South for decades following Reconstruction as a group."



So, does Jackson suggest that we take turns being subjugated? The problem with that idea is that it will always be someone else turn next. Only by making the rights against race discrimination "hyperindividualistic" do we guarantee that the principle that race discrimination is to be strictly prohibited remains in the law to the lasting benefit of all.



BTW - it was appeals to the greater good, made by legislative majorities in the South (e.g., slaverly is actually good for blacks), that permitted the institution of slaverly to take root and endure as long as it did.



Clearly, the thing about principles is that they should apply uniformly even when they are not convenient, not simply used as a sword when the an opportunistic impulse strikes.