I hadn’t thought about it, but he’s right; whatever we know rationally, when we stop to think about it, the actual digits we see in the two numbers are very similar, and that has a subliminal effect.Also (and for those who might be skeptical about this), the mouseover on this one is classic: “And 0.002 dollars will NEVER equal 0.002 cents.”
Other Republican governors, such as Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, raised concerns about the “stimulus” bill just as Gov. Palin did, and announced their intention not to take all the money alloted to their states; and when the time came, they followed through on their promise not to take all the money, though they did take most of it. Gov. Palin, on the other hand, told the feds, “Sorry, but we only need about half of that.”Seriously.
Protesting federal “strings,” attached to stimulus funding, Gov. Sarah Palin said she doesn’t want nearly half the estimated $930 million Alaska is eligible for.”Will we chart our own course, or will Washington (D.C.) engineer it for us?” Palin said.She expected to file an appropriations bill this afternoon accepting about $251.5 million in stimulus funds, coupled with allocations of $262.6 million already requested for transportation and aviation projects for a total state take of about $514.1 million. . . .
The Anchorage Daily News had this quote from the governor explaining her reasoning:
We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government. We are not requesting more money for normal day to day operations of government as part of this economic stimulus package. In essence we say no to operating funds for more positions in government.
The written statement released by the governor’s office contains a pretty pointed critique of the “stimulus” bill and the reasoning behind it.
Governor Sarah Palin submitted her federal economic stimulus appropriation bill to legislators today to provide jobs and needed infrastructure improvements in Alaska under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Governor Palin is accepting just 55 percent of the available stimulus funds, all for capital projects. This amount includes the funds the state accepted last month for Department of Transportation projects.”We will request federal stimulus funds for capital projects that will create new jobs and expand the economy,” Governor Palin said. “We won’t be bound by federal strings in exchange for dollars, nor will we dig ourselves a deeper hole in two years when these federal funds are gone. For instance, in order to accept what look like attractive energy funds, our local communities would be required to adopt uniform building codes. Government would then be required to police those codes. These types of funds are not sensible for Alaska.”The legislation does not include funding requests for government operating programs. . . .”The law requires me to certify that the requests I forward for legislative approval will meet the requirements of the ARRA to create jobs and promote economic growth,” Governor Palin said. “Legitimately, I can only certify capital projects that are job-ready. Alaska has seen unprecedented increases in the level of state funding for education because that is our priority. I don’t want to automatically increase federal funding for education program growth, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, at a time when Alaska can’t afford to sustain that increase.””Simply expanding state government under this federal stimulus package creates an unrealistic expectation that the state will continue these programs when the federal funds are no longer available,” said Governor Palin. “Our nation is already over $11 trillion in debt; we can’t keep digging this hole.” . . .”Our desire is to foster a discussion about what is true stimulus and what is just more federal interference in Alaskans’ lives through the growth of government,” Governor Palin said. “We think stimulus items devoted to government agency growth and program expansion ought to be examined in light of the funding needs already being addressed with our pending budget requests.” . . .”We need to ensure that these stimulus dollars are used for job opportunities for Alaskans, while preserving the regular operating spending decisions through the normal budget process,” Governor Palin said.
Here’s video of her press conference:
For those who may have forgotten, since it’s been a while: that’s what conservative government looks like.Update: OK, there was another 14% of the money, allotted for Medicaid funding, which the state had already accepted; Gov. Palin’s actually only proposing to reject 31% of the “stimulus” money. The point holds.
This amendment provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009, which exempts the very AIG bonuses Obama is condemning every single chance he gets. The amendment is in the final version and is law.
And who’s responsible for that language being there? Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT):
Embedded video from CNN Video
Embedded video from CNN Video
Dodd lied. He spent a full day lying to the American people, and now he’s trying to shift blame to others. He and his pal Barney Frank want to publicly name the people who received the bonuses authorized by Congress and this administration in an attempt to deflect blame for their own actions.
And whose idea was it to add the language on the bonuses? The Obama administration’s.
Both Dodd and a Treasury Department official who asked not to be named told CNN the administration pushed for the language because they were afraid that the government would face numerous lawsuits without it.Dodd told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and “golden parachutes” at those companies.”The administration had expressed reservations,” Dodd said. “They asked for modifications. The alternative was losing the amendment entirely.”
(Incidentally, speaking of bonuses from AIG, you know who else got over $100,000 from them? Barack Obama.) Dodd clearly bears considerable responsibility for this mess; but the president who proclaimed “a new era of responsibility” wants him to take all of it, in order to protect Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers (and possibly himself). I can’t think that’s going to go over well with the Congressional Democrats.As unpopular as it may be to say, though, hammering AIG and the folks who took the bonuses is unwise. There was actually some reason for these bonuses, for one thing—it may not have been sufficient, but this wasn’t just an attempt to fleece the taxpayer—and for another, the downside here is much greater than the upside, as Ruth Marcus points out:
In the short run, hammering the AIG employees to give back their bonuses risks costing the government more than honoring the contracts would. The worst malefactors at AIG are gone. The new top management isn’t taking bonuses. Those in the bonus pool are making sums that for most of us would be astronomical but that are significantly less than what they used to make. Driving away the very people who understand how to fix this complicated mess may make everyone else feel better, but it isn’t particularly cost-effective.In the longer term, having the government void existing contracts, directly or indirectly, as with the suggestions of a punitive tax on such bonuses, will make enterprises less likely to enter into arrangements with the government—even when that is in the national interest. This is similarly counterproductive.Remember, the contracts were negotiated long before the government put a cent into AIG. “The plan was implemented because there was a significant risk of departures among employees at [the company],” AIG wrote in a paper explaining the plan, “and given the $2.7 trillion of derivative positions at [the company] at that time, retention incentives appeared to be in the best interest of all of AIG’s stakeholders.” . . .”That was then and this is now” is not a valid legal principle. “We are a country of law,” Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers said Sunday. “There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.” He was right. . . .The administration argues that anger over the bonuses, among the public and members of Congress, was at such a level that the president needed to say something to show that he understood the fury. Perhaps, but there is a countervailing risk in stoking this populist rage—especially if the administration needs to come back to Congress for more money for the banks.Once the pitchforks are out, it’s awfully hard to convince the mob to put them down.
Truth to tell, though, I think Marcus has misunderstood the reason for President Obama’s faux-populist outrage; I think this is a deliberate attempt at misdirection. After all, firing up “the mob” may be risky, but it’s the easiest way to manipulate a lot of people at once. This whole scenario reminds me of the many mysteries I’ve read/watched in which the person who “discovered the body” actually turns out to be the killer. What better way to keep people from thinking that you’re the one who did the deed than to be the guy who rushes out into the street shouting “Murder!”—it’s classic sleight-of-hand. Blow outrage at the man who only took over after the disaster happened (and who at least has a plan to restructure AIG and repay the Treasury, which is more than we can say of anyone else) and at the big shots getting the big bonuses, you get folks made at all those “rich Republicans” (even if most of them actually voted Obama) and (you hope) keep them from looking for evidence of Democratic complicity.That complicity, by the way, goes beyond the White House or the Senate. Most people remember, vaguely, that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination to Commerce because he was under investigation in a pay-for-play scandal, but most folks don’t know anything about the nuts and bolts of that investigation, or about CDR Financial Products, the company on which it’s focused; unless you live in a county that’s staring at bankruptcy because of CDR’s “black box” deals, you probably don’t know that this scandal goes a long way beyond New Mexico. In particular, you probably aren’t aware that this scandal is connected to the whole mess with AIG, or that Democratic politicians are tied into it at all levels of government. The blog The 46 has been tracking this story for a while now; start with the post linked above and follow it out—the whole mess is complicated and will take some real focused attention if you aren’t a financial whiz, but it’s well worth your time. When you understand the ways in which CDR has been colluding with local companies and politicians to use municipal bond issues to line their own pockets at taxpayer expense, it will blow your mind.Finally, Larry Kudlow offers a note of hope in the midst of everything. He’s ticked over the way the government has mismanaged the takeover of AIG, calling it a “fiasco” and a “complete farce,” and concluding, “The government shouldn’t run anything, because it cannot run anything”; at the same time, though, he believes there’s reason for optimism:
This week’s decision by the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to allow cash-flow accounting rather than distressed last-trade mark-to-market accounting will go a long way toward solving the banking and toxic-asset problem.Many experts believe mortgage-backed securities and other toxic assets are being serviced in a timely cash-flow manner for at least 70 cents on the dollar. This is so important. Under mark-to-market, many of these assets were written down to 20 cents on the dollar, destroying bank profits and capital. But now banks can value these assets in economic terms based on positive cash flows, rather than in distressed markets that have virtually no meaning.Actually, when the FASB rules are adopted in the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see if a pro forma re-estimate of the last year reveals that banks have been far more profitable and have much more capital than this crazy mark-to-market accounting would have us believe.Sharp-eyed banking analyst Dick Bove has argued that most bank losses have been non-cash—i.e., mark-to-market write-downs. Take those fictitious write-downs away and you are left with a much healthier banking picture. This is huge in terms of solving the credit crisis.
This follows on a piece he wrote last Friday in which he wrote,
Out of the blue, bank stocks mounted an impressive rally this week, jumping nearly 40 percent on the S&P financial list. One after another, big-bank CEOs like Vikram Pandit of Citi, Ken Lewis of BofA, and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan are telling investors they will turn a handsome profit in the first quarter, their best money gain since 2007. This is big news. And it triggered the first weekly stock gain for the Obama administration.But this anticipated-profits turnaround doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the TARP. It’s about something called the Treasury yield curve—a medical diagnostic chart for banks and the economy.When the Fed loosens money, and short-term rates are pulled well below long rates, banks profit enormously from the upward-sloping yield curve. This is principally because banks borrow short in order to lend long. If bankers can buy money for near zero cost, and loan it for 2, 3, or 4 percent, they’re in fat city. Their broker-dealer operations make money, as do all their lending divisions.So the upward-sloped yield curve is the real bailout for the banking system.Now, turn the clock back to 2006 and 2007. In those days the Treasury curve was upside down. Due to the Federal Reserve’s extremely tight credit policies, short-term rates moved well above long-term rates for an extended period, and that played a major role in producing the credit crunch. Since interest margins turned negative, the banks had to turn off the credit spigot, and all those exotic securities—like mortgage-backed bonds and various credit derivatives—could no longer be financed.The Fed’s long-lived credit-tightening also wreaked havoc on home prices and was directly responsible for the recession that began in late 2007. At the time, Fed head Ben Bernanke said the inverted yield curve wouldn’t matter. Gosh was he wrong.
In other words, Kudlow’s arguing (and the evidence seems to be with him) that the credit crash was caused by federal over-management of the economy, and that now that that particular form of over-management has ceased, things are starting to recover. He went on to argue in that column that “if somebody tells the banks they don’t have to sell these loans at distressed prices,” which is what the FASB’s rule change noted above has done,
the banks will enjoy plenty of breathing room to reap the benefits of the upward-sloping yield curve.Let the banks hold these investments over a long period, rather than force them to sell now. The economy will get better, as will housing and other impaired assets.
If his analysis is correct—and the evidence seems to be with him on this—then the recovery has already begun; we simply need to let it take the time it’s going to take. The one thing that seems to be clear is that further government attempts to manage the recovery will only make matters worse, since the government can’t manage its way out of a paper bag. That’s not a shot at Democrats, either, as it was no different when Republicans are running the show—the economy is simply too big to be managed. All you can really do is try to keep the rules as fair as possible and try to manage the inputs so as not to distort the market (since distortions create greater opportunity for bubbles and subsequent crashes). Here’s hoping our current government can at least resist the temptation to make matters worse.
My father-in-law is a sharp and perceptive chap, with a remarkable ability to think beyond what the conventional wisdom says is possible. I’ll sometimes joke about myself that one of the biggest things I have to offer is my crack-brained ideas—I just need someone else who can tell me which ones are worth keeping once cracked; my father-in-law is like that too, except that he’s less inhibited than I am. He started in February of last year trying to convince me that the first-term governor of Alaska was the best choice for #2 on the Republican ticket; by June, with John McCain the clear nominee for the top slot, he had me convinced. Since then, my support for Gov. Palin has only increased. Here are, I think, the most important posts I’ve put up about the GOP’s Great Northern Hope (updated through 5/20/09):Sarah Palin for VP
The post that started it allThe “I Am Sarah Palin” vote is mobilizing
For all my arguments for Gov. Palin on the ticket, this was one I didn’t see comingDisappointment is no argument against Gov. Palin
Defending her (and her daughter) against conservative complainersPalin rumors and Palin facts
Debunking the lies (and there have been many)British Palin envy
What some Brits realized that most Americans didn’tPositive feminist perspectives on Sarah Palin
Because those who were willing to see her for who she is were impressed, even as they disagree with her positionsThe speech they wouldn’t let Sarah Palin give
is a perspective on Iran that the current administration could useWhither Sarah Palin?
My $0.02 on the tack she should take for the next few yearsCamille Paglia on Sarah Palin
How to admire someone with whom you believe almost nothing in commonWhy America needs Sarah Palin
Her 2009 State of the State address is a model of conservative governing philosophy. . . and Sarah Palin’s biography matters, too
This links to an excellent biographical sketch of Gov. Palin’s life and its significance for her as a politician and executiveThe real meaning of the evangelical response to Bristol Palin
The Palin family as microcosmParading your ignorance and calling it “reality”
Correcting the misrepresentation of Gov. Palin’s position on sex education.We should have seen Sarah Palin coming
On why Gov. Palin is the candidate the Republican base has been looking for.Franklin Graham likes Sarah Palin’s coattails
Considering the significance of Samaritan’s Purse highlighting Gov. Palin in its fundraising.Political machines hate reformers
“That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of most of the news stories about Sarah Palin in recent months.”Mitt Romney, the Beltway GOP, and the meaning of Evansville
On the real significance of Gov. Palin’s appearance at the Vandenburgh County Right to Life banquet.Gov. Palin and the abortion shift
From the time of her appearance (and Trig’s!) on the national scene, support for abortion has declined significantly. Hmmm . . .
In the closing days of his Administration, President Bush removed gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list.Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, has decided to support President Bush’s position on the issue and leave the wolves off the list, prompting outrage from the eco-nuts in Obama’s base.How long before we see Ashley Judd attacking Obama in web ads?UPDATE: Steve Altman in the comments points out an interesting development: Only two days after his much-publicized lifting of a federal funding ban on research involving human embryos (therefore causing Christopher Reeve to walk again), he has signed into law essentially the exact same ban as part of the Omnibus Spending Bill. So he’s basically wasted everybody’s time with a bunch of posturing while accomplishing precisely nothing for his base.
Speaking as a former Coloradan who remembers when Secretary Salazar was Colorado Attorney General Salazar, I’m not at all surprised by his action; he represents a Western sensibility on the environment, one that seeks to balance environmental concerns with the needs of people, not the views of the East Coast elite. I don’t always agree with his positions, to be sure, but I expected him to chart a balanced, thoughtful course at Interior, and so far, I’ve seen nothing to make me think otherwise.As for the Obama administration’s sleight of hand on ESCR, that’s no vast surprise either; I wasn’t aware that that language was a standard part of the national budget, but since the whole thing combines passing the buck to Congress with a symbolic action that produces no practical effect, two things which we’ve seen over and over again during the first two months of this administration, there’s nothing startling here.
R. A. Mansour has a long post up today called “Who Is Sarah Palin?” It’s a fine piece of work drawing on all the major widely-available sources—the biographies by Kaylene Johnson and Lorenzo Benet, John Ziegler’s interview, Sally Jenkins’ Washington Post profile, and others—and drawing, I think, some fine conclusions. It’s an excellent biographical sketch, and I commend it to your reading. Even if you’re already a strong supporter of Gov. Palin, it will likely add to your understanding of her; if all you know of her is what the MSM told you during the campaign, then I strongly encourage you to take the time to find out more about who she really is, as opposed to what it was politically advantageous for the Democratic Party PR machine to say about her.
I know his apologists in the media and elsewhere didn’t want people talking about Tony Rezko, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright III, Bill Ayers, Fr. Michael Pfleger, Rashad Khalidi, Nadhmi Auchi, James Johnson, and Franklin Raines; I remember many solemn asseverations that talking about these people was just a distraction from the real issues, and a cynical attempt on the part of Republicans to play politics to bring Sen. Obama down.Except, it wasn’t, because his associations did matter. Granted, the fact that Barack Obama did business with Tony Rezko doesn’t necessarily mean he’s crooked, nor does his friendship with Rashid Khalidi necessarily mean that he shares Khalidi’s views on the Near East; these conclusions are not inevitable, but debatable. Even given that, however, the pattern of his associations told us some important things about his judgment of people—most importantly, that his judgment of people is quite poor, which should have led to the conclusion that his personnel judgment in staffing the Executive Branch was likely to be quite poor.And so it has proven to be. Tim Geithner was approved for Treasury despite being exposed as a tax cheat because the Senate was convinced that he was the best person for the job; instead, his performance has been abysmal, he’s a millstone around the president’s neck, and Washington’s thousand little knives are already out for him. Of course, it would help if the administration didn’t keep losing nominees for the rest of the senior positions in the Treasury Department, and particularly for the #2 slot. Equally of course, tax problems haven’t just been for Treasury appointees, since failure to pay taxes was one of the things (though not the worst) that forced Tom Daschle to withdraw his nomination, and have caused problems for other appointments as well, including White House Counsel Greg Craig.Then there’s Vivek Kundra. Kundra was President Obama’s choice as Chief Information Officer for the administration; now he’s taking a leave of absence after the FBI raided his old office and arrested two people, including one of his former top aides, Yusuf Acar. According to the Washington Post,
the conspiracy, which operated for at least a year, worked like this:Acar approved work with a vendor, such as Bansal’s AITC, to arrange the purchase of goods such as software. The vendor ordered fewer items but billed the District for a larger amount. Bansal, Acar and others then split the proceeds, FBI officials said.Acar also approved fraudulent time sheets for nonexistent employees, [FBI agent Andrew] Sekela wrote. Acar and the others split the proceeds paid by the D.C. government, Sekela alleged.Authorities traced more than $200,000 in payments last year from Bansal’s firm to a private company, Circle Networks Inc. The firm is co-owned by Acar, even though he is prohibited from having an interest in any company doing business with the city, Sekela wrote. Circle Networks generated about $2.2 million in revenue through D.C. government contracts, the agent wrote.
Kundra himself hasn’t been implicated in wrongdoing, but it does raise the question of exactly what Kundra did as the head of DC’s technology office. Acar worked as Kundra’s aide, and at best one can say that Acar managed to run this ring right under Kundra’s nose. Kundra had to approve, explicitly or tacitly, the payroll for the agency, which employed less than 300 people. Any competent chief executive of a firm that size would know how many employees worked for him and how much they cost; in fact, it would be one of the primary issues on their agenda. . . .The best we can say about Vivek Kundra in this episode is that he’s incompetent as an executive.
And then there’s the saga of Chas Freeman: a paid apologist for the House of Sa’ud who’s changed his views on the Near East and Middle East for the sake of the Sa’udi oil money in his pockets; a man with financial ties to the Chinese government who defended the Tiananmen Square massacre—or more accurately, argued that the Chinese didn’t respond strongly enough to protestors. Matt Welch of Reason examined Freeman’s views and concluded,
This is the definition of clientitis; it exhibits not a “startling propensity to speak truth to power” but rather a startling propensity to lob bouquets at dictators.
As such, though Freeman’s trying to blame his withdrawal on the Israel lobby, there were far broader concerns about his appointment, raised by Democrats such as Charles Schumer and Jonathan Chait as well as Republicans, than just the anti-Israel views he evolved during his years on the Sa’udi payroll. Anyone willing to change his positions to suit foreign governments willing to pay him, whether liberal or conservative, is the wrong person to put in charge of writing the National Intelligence Estimates on which so much of our foreign policy is based.These aren’t the only problems with the administration’s appointment process, either—we’ve also seen the appointment and unappointment of Anthony Zinni, dubious nominations at Labor and Energy, and a press secretary who’s Scott McClellan redux and has done the administration no good coping with the blowback. All in all, it’s hard to argue with Billy Hollis’ summary of the situation:
Michael Ledeen summarizes it this way: “Obama told us he was going to use Congress to redistribute the wealth—explicitly. And he thinks it’s in the Constitution.”As a lolcat might put it:
“It” is the message Barack Obama delivered in a radio interview several years back, which is now embodied in his administration’s economic policy. The audio of that interview is below; as Wizbang blogger Steve Schippert summarized it last fall,
Obama laments in the interview that the Warren Supreme Court failed to reinterpret the Constitution to read into it what was not there: Redistribution of wealth for “political and economic justice in this society.” . . .For Obama, the redistribution of wealth is a civil right that the civil rights movement failed to attain. To Barack Obama, the redistribution of wealth is basic “political and economic justice,” and one segment of society has the basic right to the money of other segments of society. He’s very straight forward about this.And while in the interview he did not think wealth redistribution could be affected through the courts, he was confident that it could be attained “legislatively.”
President Obama’s intellectual foundation on this issue is the work of two liberal French economists (if that isn’t a redundancy) named Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Daniel Henninger describes their work and its influence on the Obama administration’s economic strategy here:
Barack Obama has written two famous, widely read books of autobiography—”Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.” Let me introduce his third, a book that will touch everyone’s life: “A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America’s Promise. The President’s Budget and Fiscal Preview” (Government Printing Office, 141 pages, $26; free on the Web). This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it’s a must read.Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused.
Bride of Rove summarizes Piketty-Saez thusly:
From what I gather they have been pulling together tax returns, tracking the rich and have determined that the rich have been getting richer faster than the poor have been getting unpoorer not so fast. Ok. I agree. It does take awhile to build that financial base and it tends to grow exponentially once you put that money to work. So if you have a lot, you make a lot proportionally. If you’ve got squat, you don’t tend to make much on nothing. You have to get a HS diploma, work hard, save and make good decisions. Sometimes you have to take a few risks. Eventually, if you keep at it, you will move up the scale faster and faster—except for now. But, yeah. There are poor people who never get ahead for a myriad of reasons and there are rich people who do better every year.Piketty and Saez believe that this is not fair.
They are making, as Henninger puts it, “a moral argument for raising taxes on the rich.” As a consequence of President Obama’s belief in that argument,
Mr. Obama made clear in the campaign his intention to raise taxes on this income class by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. What is becoming clearer as his presidency unfolds is that something deeper is underway here than merely using higher taxes to fund his policy goals in health, education and energy.The “top 1%” isn’t just going to pay for these policies. Many of them would assent to that. The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to “pay for” the fact of their wealth—no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit.The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of “wealth” from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget’s “Top One Percent of Earners” chart.The White House says its goal is simple “fairness.” That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood. This presidency is going to be an act of retribution. In the words of the third book from Mr. Obama, “it is our duty to change it.”
In other words, the first thing you need to understand about this administration’s economic policy is that it’s not really about the economy. It’s not about prosperity or economic growth or even helping the poor in absolute terms. It’s about reducing the gap between the poor and the rich. And what’s the fastest way to do that? Make the rich poorer.In my book, this sort of thing boils down to letting the sin of envy drive economic policy—and envy is a deadly sin for a reason. It will probably accomplish its purpose; but it will probably also make everyone worse off in the process. That’s a high price to pay for seeing the proud humbled. It may well be God’s judgment on the proud of this nation, but even if so, I don’t think that justifies those who bring it about.
Back when I was still officially a Washington resident, I had and took a couple opportunities to vote against Patty Murray for Senate, and if I had another chance I still wouldn’t vote for her; but I have to give her credit for this one. As you may have seen (since it’s all over the Web; emphasis mine),
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said.Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget. . . .Currently, veterans’ private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.Charging for service-related injuries would violate “a sacred trust,” Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis said. Davis said the move would risk private health care for veterans and their families by potentially maxing out benefits paying for costly war injury treatments.
That’s just disreputable—especially coming from the Secretary for Veterans’ Affairs, the guy who’s supposed to be the advocate for veterans in the administration. Kudos to Sen. Murray and her colleagues for telling the administration to forget about it.Update: Jon Stewart absolutely trashed the administration over this (transcript here):
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Yesterday I quoted G. K. Chesterton, from one of his short stories, on the importance of the theories we hold about life, the universe, and everything; Chesterton, speaking there through the character Gabriel Gale, declares (correctly) that “most men are what their theories make them.” The economist and columnist Thomas Sowell understands this well, as you can see in this interview (video below) he gave Peter Robinson last fall for Robinson’s program “Uncommon Knowledge.” As Sinistar of C4P sums it up,
In the interview . . . Sowell talks about his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions and the 2008 Presidential Election. . . .Sowell states that “visions . . . are the implicit assumptions by which people operate” and that with regards to politics, these visions can be divided into two camps—a constrained view and unconstrained view. To put things another way, these visions are your “gut feeling” or views on how the world works, and they will color your views of how you approach many political and social issues.The unconstrained vision suggests that human nature is changeable and that society’s and the world’s problems can be solved if rational plans are enacted. The constrained vision, on the other hand, banks on the concept that human nature is static and flawed, and that there are limitations to what can be done.
Of particular interest to those of us who are supporters of Sarah Palin,
[Dr. Sowell] briefly mentions the smears against Gov. Palin and how it relates to the concepts discussed in “A Conflict of Visions”. . . . It is a very enlightening interview, and I encourage people to watch the whole thing. However, if you just want to hear Sowell briefly talk about the smears against Gov. Palin and how these conflicting visions relate, you can fast forward to the 30 minute mark. (I suggest starting 28 minutes in for the lead-in to the discussion.)