Category Archives: Barack Obama

One thumb up, one thumb down

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I’ve been meaning to post on the recent pirate attack on the Maersk Alabama and its aftermath, for a couple reasons.  First, President Obama deserves credit for giving the go-ahead for military action; I believe the appropriate response to pirates, terrorists, and anyone else who would hold innocent lives in pawn for their own benefit is best illustrated by the Israeli raid on Entebbe:  no mercy, no quarter, no hesitation.

But second, that requires one other thing:  no negotiation.  Here, in my opinion, is a major black mark on this administration; to first offer to negotiate and then strike was a deeply problematic move, for reasons that Cornell’s William Jacobson lays out:

There are two choices when negotiating with hostage takers/pirates. One is the Israeli model of no negotiation. The only thing to be negotiated is the life of the hostage taker. Money, free passage, and other benefits are not on the table. The purpose of this approach is to deter further hostage takers, even if it means the death of the hostage.

The other model is the model of negotiating over almost any benefit, as long as the hostage is freed safely. This is the model Obama initially appeared to follow with the pirates. But if one believes the spin coming out of the White House, then negotiation was a ruse to buy time.

The problem is not in this case, which ended successfully, but in the next hostage taking situation. If one is going to follow a negotiation approach, the trust of the hostage takers in the negotiation process is key. If hostage takers believe negotiation is a ruse, then the hostage is in more danger. Words cannot be just words in a negotiation.

So negotiating as a ruse is the worst of all alternatives. It does not have the deterrent effect of the Israeli approach, or the hostage-safety effect of the negotiation approach.

This point was actually illustrated quite nicely on last Friday’s episode of NUMB3RS, for those who follow that show.  The likely result of this approach by the administration will be what the pirates are already threatening:  escalation.  This tactic worked, this time, but it won’t work again—and as a consequence of its use, the pirates are much more likely to preemptively kill any Americans they take.

The ironic thing about this is that, all in all, the pirates are probably the best allies we have in the Horn of Africa.

Piracy is not a strategic threat to the US, it is a big problem for Europe and Asia but not for us. It wasn’t until Asia and Europe realized we weren’t going to solve this problem for them that they stepped up themselves.

Terrorism in Somalia has long driven Navy operations off that coast. On one side, we have a high visibility piracy problem that does not threaten the interests of the United States directly, at all, and our only current national interest regarding the piracy issue is one man with 4 guys in an orange boat 200 yards off the bow of the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96). There is a national economic interest, but the impact to date has not risen to a level that has created a serious concern among global leaders to the point they are willing to commit serious resources toward solving the problem.

On the other side of the Somalia problem, we have the terror problem no one else in the world is interested in doing anything about. And in the middle is the reality that while both the pirates and terrorists are operating in the same black market space, the pirates and terror groups don’t like each other.

Then there is another problem. What if we support a government strong enough to remove piracy, but too weak to do anything about the terrorism cells? Piracy is what has the international community involved in the problems of Somalia right now, if that goes away, we are left with the bigger threat to our national interests and no one internationally to help.

In other words, the pirates aren’t hurting us that much, but they are hurting the Somali terrorists that are a much bigger threat to us.  I don’t like the idea that we might be better off working with them than fighting them—allying ourselves with thugs has never worked out all that well in the past—but from a Realpolitik point of view, it actually makes a lot of sense.  Really, who else is there?  That being the case, even if we leave that aside (as, morally, I believe we should), it does still suggest that our focus in Somalia should continue to be where it has been:  not on fighting pirates, but on stopping terrorists.

HT (for the last article quoted):  Smitty

Is the Obama administration leading us to . . . fascism?

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It sounds startling, especially with all the voices calling him a socialist—but in one way, at least, that’s actually correct, as Thomas Sowell points out:

Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television.

It’s a great piece; Dr. Sowell covers a number of topics in his inimitable way, putting his own spin on the standard “notes” column, and it’s well worth your time to read the whole thing.  Here’s another excerpt to encourage you to do so:

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover’s policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR’s policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain’s policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent. . . .

Barack Obama’s favorable reception during his tour in Europe may be the most enthusiastic international acclaim for a democratic government leader since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, proclaiming “peace in our time.”

Frightening thought, that.

What our gaffes reveal about our character

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The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaks.—Luke 6:45 (ESV)Michael Kinsley somewhere defined a gaffe as “what happens when the spin breaks down.”  It’s a wry observation that captures a real truth about why gaffes matter:  because they reveal something about a given politician that said politician doesn’t want us to see.  They’re the places where the mask slips.  That may not always be true, and the real meaning of a particular gaffe may not always be the one that first comes to mind, but in general, these are meaningful moments that tell us more about our politicians than our politicians will usually tell us about themselves.The highest-profile gaffe of recent weeks, of course, is the president’s “Special Olympics” quip on The Tonight Show, which (much to the administration’s chagrin) turned out to be the rimshot heard ’round the world, despite the best efforts of his sycophants to wave it away as meaningless.  We know better than that, these days; we know gaffes are meaningful, and so by and large, we haven’t bought that line.  At the same time, though, what I haven’t seen is much thoughtful reflection on what Barack Obama’s gaffe does mean—most of the commentary has only been interested in its political significance (and on increasing or decreasing that significance, as it suits the one offering the comment).An exception to that is John Stackhouse’s recent post, probably because it’s not just about the president—it’s also a reflection on his own gaffes:

We have to cut each other a little slack: people under stress sometimes do inexplicable things, including making tasteless jokes or using inappropriate language.But I’m not inclined to let myself entirely off the hook, however forgiving I might feel toward President Obama or any other public figure. I recall the words of Jesus: “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).That joke came from somewhere. That word came from somewhere. . . .Yes, we live in a sarcastic and vulgar culture . . . It is part of the air we breathe and the toxins enter us whether we like them or not.Again, recognizing that kind of constant cultural influence should help me be more understanding and forgiving of others who screw up in public.Nonetheless, it is simply true that sometimes I really do mean what I say. Sigmund Freud was prone to overstatement, but there is more than a grain of truth in his dictum, “There is no such thing as a joke.” And as I search my heart for the attitudes expressed in this joke or that word choice, I confess I am sometimes dismayed at what I find. . . .Sometimes, alas, the way you really do think about things and the way you really do talk about things—that is, the way you think and talk when you think no one can hear or no one will be offended—really does come out in public.Kyrie eleison—Lord, have mercy.And may we attend to what we have inadvertently exposed in our gaffes. It’s good to get forgiveness. It’s better to get healed.

I believe we’re right to ask what the president’s wisecrack tells us about the abundance of his heart; but as we do so, we’d best not get too cocky; we’d best proceed with all due humility, and ask ourselves what we’d let slip about our own hearts if we were in his shoes.  And perhaps we’d also do well to bear in mind the counsel of the book of James:Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.—James 3:1 (ESV)

Joe Biden, Comedian-in-Chief

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For all the flap about President Obama stiffing the Gridiron Club and sending Vice President Biden in his stead, I have to think that from an entertainment perspective, Joe Biden was a better choice; it certainly sounds like he put on a good show.  Here’s a partial transcript of his remarks, courtesy of the “Playbook” at Politico:

Axelrod really wanted me to do this on teleprompter—but I told him I’m much better when I wing it. . . . I know these evenings run long, so I’m going to be brief. Talk about the audacity of hope. . . . President Obama does send his greetings, though. He can’t be here tonight—because he’s busy getting ready for Easter. [Whisper] He thinks it’s about him. . . .I know that no president has missed his first Gridiron since Grover Cleveland. Of course, President Cleveland really did have better things to do on a Saturday night. When he was in the White House—he was married to a 21 year old woman. . . . I understand these are dark days for the newspaper business, but I hate it when people say that newspapers are obsolete. That’s totally untrue. I know from firsthand experience. I recently got a puppy, and you can’t housebreak a puppy on the Internet.Now let’s see: we have a Republican speaker who was born in Austria, and tonight’s Democratic speaker was born in Canada. Folks, this is Lou Dobbs’ worst nightmare. . . We are now two months into the Obama-Biden administration and the President and I have become extremely close. To give you an idea of how close we are, he told me that next year—maybe, just maybe—he’s going to give me his Blackberry e-mail address. . . . But the Obama Administration really is a good team. I am the experienced veteran. Rahm can be an enforcer. And Tim Geithner is always there when you need to borrow money, no questions asked.You know, I never realized just how much power Dick Cheney had until my first day on the job. I walked into my office, and you know how the outgoing president always leaves the incoming president a note in his desk? I opened my drawer and Dick Cheney had left me Barack Obama’s birth certificate. . . . I now realize that we have to be extra careful when we annunciate new policy ideas to make sure they don’t look like they’re personally motivated. For example, the other day there were a whole bunch of stories about the President’s hair going gray; the next day there’s a story about a Vice President who’s trying to grow new hair, and then the day after that, the two of us come out in favor of stem cell research. That looked bad.I’d like to address some of the things I said: Like when I said that “JOBS” is a three-letter word. I did say that. But I didn’t mean it literally. It’s like how, right now, most people think AIG is a four-letter word. . . . Or when I announced our stimulus package website, I was asked how you get to it: All I said was I didn’t know the website number. What I really meant to say was, “Ted Stevens didn’t tell me what tube the website is in.”

The Not-So-Great Communicator

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You know you’re not having a good week when you build your reputation on your speaking ability and then you start getting headlines like this:Obama struggles as communicatorThe Note, 3/20/2009: So Special—Obama loses a week, as a great communicator doesn’t communicateBarack Obama Is a Terrible BoreBut that was the week that was, for President Obama—the week in which he took a pounding for closing a press award ceremony to the press.  I think Ed Morissey’s crack on his Special Olympics gaffe captures the spirit of his week as well as anything can:

You know how you can tell when a President has a bad day?  When his comparison of an American corporation to terrorists is the second-stupidest thing he said.

He’ll bounce back, I’m sure; every scorer has games where they just can’t put the ball in the hole.  But no question, the president was in a real shooting slump this week, and the shine is starting to wear off with the press—they’re actually starting to notice these things.  He’d best get back on his game in a hurry, or it’ll hurt him.

Notes on the AIG story

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Make This One Go Viral: Obama’s Stimulus Bill Explicitly Grants AIG the Legal Right to Hand Out Unlimited Bonuses (Update)

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.

Yes, Barack Obama’s associations mattered

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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.

As Ed Morrissey notes,

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:

An economic Trojan horse

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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.