American Politics Archives

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, looking tan and vital on Fox News' Greta Van Susteren program, managed to move beyond the social issues agenda he has stressed in the campaign for the Iowa Presidential caucuses to point out why any extension of the payroll tax cut is unwarranted: the payroll tax is actually the support people pay for Social Security. "Cut" it and all you do is add to the increasing failure to hold down entitlement spending. Already the payroll tax doesn't cover Social Security expenditures; the "cut" only makes deficits worse. By intentionally increasing the Social Security system's deficit you also disconnect Social Security further from a retirement scheme and turn it into welfare.

Meanwhile, the drop from 6.2 to 4.2 percent in payroll tax is not noticed by people who benefit from it and and it does nothing directly to create new jobs. If the supposed idea is to stimulate spending, which supposedly boosts the economy, then why not cut the tax out altogether; wouldn't that "stimulate" the economy even more? And since the tax cut already has been in place for a year, where is the evidence that it has done any good so far?

Making sense on this issue, the indefatigable Santorum finally may draw enough attention to himself to start to rise in the serious consideration of Iowa voters. His chief competitors for the conservative Christian vote are probably Rep. Michelle Brachman and Gov. Rick Perry, and the endorsement of two leading conservative Christian leaders recently probably moves him ahead several points. Conservative Christian voters so far have been ineffective in Iowa this year because they are divided.

Dairy farmers are complaining that the current price support program of the Agriculture Department--subsidized by you, the taxpayers--is inadequate and what they need is guaranteed revenues. They can achieve this by law, though the guarantees will come in the form of higher milk and other dairy prices for consumers--guess what, that's you again! The U.S.G. "would have to get back into the business of managing the nation's milk supply," explains Scott Kilmana of the Wall Street Journal.

Why do dairy farmers need this change? Because, as Kilman learned from the National Milk Producers Association, "(T)he current price-support program...doesn't keep prices high enough to cover the surging cost of corn they feed their cows."

Unmentioned is the reality that corn costs are so high because the very same U.S.G. is articificially subsidizing ethanol production made with corn. In other words, the government subsidizes the creation of the problem, then it subsidizes the "solution", too, and at each point passes the bill to you.

Would any of the candidates for President want to respond to this Alice in Wonderland economic policy, say before the Iowa caucuses?

Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall, observed famously that history is "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." That on this Gibbon was wrong is evident all around us. Who would trade his life in 21st century America for one in the Roman Empire?

For much of our manifest progress in America, at least, we owe the brave men and women who put God above familiar comforts and dared to settle a hostile wilderness. Almost four centuries have passed since the Pilgrims celebrated their survival with thanksgiving. In my own lifetime the well-being of the average American gradually exceeded what the kings of the 17th century enjoyed in health, food and the comforts of home. The whole world in the past generation has made exponential gain in relative health and prosperity. More importantly, though challenged, we do enjoy great liberty thanks to our ancestors' courage and the vigilance of millions today.

Whenever I start to grouse about lack of diversity in intellectual life in America, I stop to think how much more civilized the West is, at least, when compared to the intolerant depredations of the past.

It is a sin to be ungrateful; it also spoils one's appetite as well as everyone else's mood. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Discovery Institute.

A flash mob robbery in Philadelphia

Shoplifters get away with it. That's the message from downtown shopping districts and malls where police are loathe to respond to shoplifting alerts and, store managers say, resent the time it takes to make out reports once the crimes are over. Stores need the police reports in order to collect from insurers. The insurance companies, in turn, pass the costs on the store chains and the chains pass the bill to....guess who? You and me, of course.

The latest wrinkle in shoplifting is the group theft--a variation on the "flash mob" that can be any group activity in public. In the case of the group theft, a team of thieves--amateur or pro--descend on a convenience store or other outlet where only a few employees are on hand. Some 50 thieves showed up a Maryland store recently, but the smaller operations are happening daily all over the country.

I have talked with the store manager at a Walgreens drug store who tries to catch the thieves in the act. If he succeeds he takes back the stolen merchandise and tells the thief not to come into the store again. That's it; that's the end of it. Until the thief reappears, reoffends and gets the same lax response. The reason, explains the store manager, is that the corporation does not want to deal with long drawn out court cases and is afraid, in addition, of counter-suits for supposed harassment or discrimination. As in so many areas of law these days, it is cheaper to put up with crime than to suffer high legal charges.

At a large mall, also in the Seattle area, the manager of a women's apparel store dreads the repeated attacks of groups of mature young women who surge into the store and take large quantities of goods, often several of each kind, stuffed openly into shopping bags as the understaffed clerk team try to restrain them. Security guards are not around, and police are not eager to hear about the whole thing. Again, the corporation has a no-questions-asked return policy that allows the thieves to take the goods from one store and return them for cash or gift cards (to be fenced at a discount elsewhere) at another store in the same chain. And again, the store mostly doesn't want any trouble, so prosecutions don't take place. Imagine: a woman walks into a store to "return" a half dozen expensive garments. She has no receipts. No problem. She gets cash or gift cards and goes on her way, until she does it again.

Guess what? As the word gets out, shoplifting is sure to become even more of a growth industry in urban America. Mayor Giuliani of New York solved such low-level crime problems by firm enforcement, because studies show that unpunished petty crimes lead to more serious crimes. Well, that was New York, and that was then.

Cities that tolerate crime are sure to have more and more of it. Happy holidays.

Ronald Reagan used to say, "The truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones."

That's where we are after collapse of the Congressional Super Committee on the deficit. We all know that the problem is a deficit with a built-in escalator. Europe is in even worse shape only because Social Democracy has advanced further and faster there. (You don't hear the U.S. left saying any more that we need to be "more like Europe," do you?)

Meanwhile, the Democrats' emphasis on "taxing the rich" is a distraction, since such tax increases would not make much of a dent in the deficit (or slow the escalator) while it would retard job creation by making entrepreneurship even harder. Wall Street deal makers wouldn't be hurt much; high tech startups, old people selling their business or farm would be.

Republicans are a bit more willing to identify the root problem: entitlement spending. The US government would not be borrowing 40 cents on each spent dollar without rising Medicare and Medicaid spending, as well as Social Security. This has been known for years, but political punishment is swift and sure for anyone saying so.

Looked at properly--that is, from the perspective of history--our entitlement problem mainly reflects the progress of medical care in the past eighty or so years. People lived to an average age of 61.7 when Social Security was passed in 1935; now it's 78. 1. This is very good news for the individual, but it is unaffordable for the federal budget. (It's the downside of personal savings for retirement, too!)

As an economy, we can't go on like this. You can't have job creation without economic growth. A deficit, if sometimes stimulative in a recession, is not stimulative now when indebtedness has reached the point that government is borrowing 40 percent of every dollar spent. The private sector for the past couple of years has beenshedding debt--paying it down--but the federal government is more than sopping up the difference in continued rises in spending. The new supposedly draconian cuts that follow collapse of the deficit committee are actually only reductions in the rate of growth of the deficit, they don't even kick in until 2013 and they probably will be repudiated by then, regardless of who wins the 2012 election.

The present presidential campaign format does not allow these issues to be discussed at any length. The educative role of the campaign, therefore, is deficient. My candidate would be Paul Ryan. I think he not only knows more about the subject than anyone else on the Hill, but he also is personable, articulate and honest. He is the classy guy who is also your friendly neighbor. He also--alas!--is not running for President.

Getty Images

by Matt Scholz

Arriving at Zuccotti Park from the 9/11 Memorial I was surprised to find out how small it is, both in geographic size and in the number of protesters. The park itself is only about 100ft wide and maybe 300ft long. Handfuls of protestors occupy it.

There were far more tourists and police around the periphery, hovering, looking in. Among the tourists a carnival atmosphere prevailed, with lots of food vendors amidst the middle aged businessmen posing for photos in front of the park, brandishing their Bank of America portfolios, no doubt to post on Facebook and amuse their friends back home and irritate their disaffected teenage children.

I entered the camp itself in a suit and tie and immediately was stopped by a guy who wanted to know what business I had inside. I was viewed with great suspicion and supervised closely. Someone was always nearby to alert others, not too subtly, that what they assumed was "a corporate person" was on hand.

What the protestors lack in numbers or purpose, they make up for in organization. OWS is like a tiny military base. There are tents set up for general information, for training and propaganda, for food and medical care. There were several souvenir stands (I don't think they probably would like that term and it was unclear if items like freshly spray-painted shirts could be acquired for money or trade). The hygiene and sanitation in the little camp was less than one would find in a military camp, certainly, but you get the idea.

I suspect there are more people at the "general meetings" and some of the more prominent marches but all in all it was a little disappointing. The literature and ethos seemed more fitting for a small commune than a nationally hyped political movement. Indeed, consider that in a metro area of nearly 19 million people there were fewer than 100 protestors present when I visited. I suspect there are more bankers that rightly should be incarcerated in the buildings surrounding the protests than there are protestors. One thing is certain though, these latter-day hippies aren¹t the 99%; they aren't even representative of one percent of the 99 percent. By the numbers, the protestors are the 0.001%.

The various "Occupy" camps around the country are flagging in participation and public support. So now the government sponsored colleges of metro USA are providing classes for the campers as a way to encourage them. It is showcased in Seattle, as the Associated Press describes, but is also happening elsewhere.

Who pays the salaries of the community college professors? You do.

Much is being said and written about the charges that Politico asserts were leveled against Cain by one, maybe two, women some twenty years ago. His behavior, the women supposedly alleged, was "inappropriate".

This kind of media attack actually may help Cain with conservative Republicans, most of whom have little patience for what they regard as biased, partisan and hyprocritical media. They might start by examining which of the current media accusers had a very different--and skeptical-- atittude about the charges against Bill Clinton in the 90s. Most of those charges actually were true, though some may have been exaggerated. Yet they perversely gave rise to an increase in popularity for the President. He had many new friends in Hollywood and Silicon Valley standing up for him as a result. A whole new political campaign group was born: MoveOn.org.

In Cain's case, it is hardly surprising that he might be sued. Almost everyone in positions of authority gets sued these days, for the good reason that the accusers get publicity and may get money. The heads of major businesses and groups like the American Restaurant Association are well advertised targets for sex discrimination and sex harrassment suits of various kinds. Anyone in media ought to recognize the dangers of adventitious lawsuits by employees looking for revenge or the Main Chance. Next to winning the lottery, a suit against an important person--if it has "Sex" in the first line--has public appeal. Many companies and even federal agencies find it cheaper to pay off the compainant--er, make a settlement--than to go through expensive, protracted litigation.

One of the most disingenuous tropes in American political life is that of the presidential candidate who flies around the country so that he or she can "listen to the ordinary people." That is what President Obama says he is doing. But if you ever have been around such a junket you know that the President or other candidate does little or no "listening" to anyone, especially ordinary people. The folks on a rope line or rally would be lucky to get to shake his hand. Even the kind of people who pony up $38,500 for dinner with him at a partisan fundraiser get, at most, a chance to have a personal picture taken with him in the VIP reception line.

Indeed, one of the problems of politics is that national candidates really don't get to know ordinary people. Everything is staged for media. If they didn't know them before getting elected, chances are, they won't get the opportunity. What they get, instead, are polls and as they travel brief exchanges--maybe--with local political leaders (formerly known as "bosses").

In addition, there is something peculiarly false about a candidate, like President Obama, going around the nation saying he finds the views of people in the country refreshing in contrast to those "back in Washington." As James Freeman noted on the Wall Street Journal politics blog today (subscription required), President Obama not only doesn't hear any local people's opinions on these trips--and rather spends his time telling them his opinions (via teleprompter)--but he also is the champion of concentrating more an more power in the very "Washington, DC" he claims to shun.

There are few national Republican candidates doing real retail politicking these days, either. One exception might be former Sen. Rick Santorum, roaming Iowa in a camper with some of his family, and nearly going door to door. There still is a chance is small town Iowa or New Hampshire to do that. Better funded candidates, meanwhile, still fly around from one staged event to another. They get a chance to speak to the people, not with them.

Rep. Rodgers

News of another European Union deal to bail out Greece was greeted with a huge stock market rally in many countries today. But is there a hidden barb in the deal for the United States?

Already dealing with our own financial problems, the US continues to supply one third of the funds for the International Monetary Fund, whence cometh the relief of European banks.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane, Vice Chairman of the Republican House Conference, has warned repeatedly of US exposure to European debt repayment plans. In a press release today, she noted, "Before today's agreement, the IMF had already committed $354 billion to bailing out European governments. After today's agreement was reached, IMF Director Christine Lagarde announced, 'I can assure you that the IMF will continue to play its part in supporting the efforts made today.' According to news reports, that means the IMF is poised for a 'bigger role.'"

"The U.S.," McMorris Rodgers says, "is the leading contributor to the IMF. In 2009, when the IMF substantially increased its SDR Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation, the U.S. provided one-third of the funding. According to IMF rules, the U.S. has the power to veto all bailout agreements."

The Congresswoman called for America to decline to finance European debt.

Prepare for the next big wave of protest--a week from Saturday!

The hints are at the Occupy Seattle website.

One of the problems of having a participatory democracy "assembly" is that the note-taker may spill the beans on the group's plans. That seems to be the case today.

One item discussed in yesterday's mass meeting of 25 people--and put online--was "Planning action for November 5 National Day of Divestment." The notetaker dutifully follows up with the importance of "Keeping quiet to avoid screwing it up," and then puts that admonition online, too. "Next week" the group will communicate with the media, say the notes. Get your TV camera crews ready, Mr. Ed!

Elsewhere on the Occupy website there is a note that the group is "working on (its) first possible demand," that the City of Seattle disinvest from Wells Fargo Bank." And the group also wants discussion of a new "national bank" (e.g., a government bank).

So, we'll watch to see if the Occupy Wall Street (Des Moines, Las Vegas, etc.) movement will cooperate nationally on a call for people to take their accounts out of banks (private banks are evil, after all). In their place, the Obama Administration should open a new, government bank. Talk about "too big to fail"!

This idea seems to me like a definite dead end, a bridge too far, even for the left. If there is one thing people don't want to do it is take their money out of a bank and hand it to the government. Maybe some of the Occupy crowd, who get donations from public employees unions, would rather that money go to government employee credit unions as an option. The trouble is, some of these credit unions are complaining that they have more money than members' requests for loans these days. Prudent government employees, like folks in the private sector, are saving rather than spending, which is a drag on the economy. That's one reason your money isn't earning much interest at any bank.

One can only hope, however, that the Occupy crowd go through with their "demand" for a government bank. Imagine. Instead of dealing with a smiling bureaucrat at Chase or Bank of America, and waiting twenty minutes on their phone lines for service, you soon will be able to go to an unsmiling bureaucrat at a government-run bank and wait for days on their lines. Perhaps the new bank can be assigned as a new role for Fannie Mae. Are you excited yet?

Meanwhile, in Seattle, at least, there are knots of demonstrators back at Westlake Park downtown. One suspects that has something to do with the free food dispensed there.

Photo: Seattle Times

"And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
--Longfellow, The Day is Done

Autumnal showers glance off Westlake Park as I roll down my car window and take this snapshot. "The Occupation" is over, the occupiers who late struck revolutionary poses in their $300 Banana Republic pea coats have now struck their $500 REI tents, instead, and departed for a camp-out at City Hall. Since the "po po" moved into Westlake yesterday morning and, with fastidious delicacy, cleared the area, $170 Nikes no longer patrol the barricades of imagination, $450 "Enzo jackets" from North Face are back on their hooks at Starbucks and the University of Washington. Today the blue $88 worker shirts from J. Crew (so redolent of the Wobblies, though made in Thailand) are sloshing around Mom's washing machine.

The pathway to Nordstrom's and Macy's is clear again.

Sic Semper Inanis.

$31.99

A certain amount of political "populism" is spontaneous, but someone usually pays for professional coordination, common signage, PR agents, stages and porta-potties. In the series of anti-free-trade demonstrations that started with anti-WTO riots in Seattle in December, 1999 ("The Battle in Seattle"), a major funder behind the scenes was Douglas Thompkins, founder and seller of Esprit clothes and North Face. For galloping hypocrisy it would be hard to match Mr. Thompkins, a very rich man who was anti-rich, a free trade beneficiary who fought free trade, an antagonist of high technology whose minions made early use of cell phones and social media to organize.

The rich not only seem determined to ignore the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, leaving reactions up to the politicians, they also seem to be putting off the economy's future. A CNBC interview reveals that there are nearly 600 IPOs (initial public offerings) waiting in the pipeline, and some more in a "dark pipeline" that analysts don't even know about. The explanations seem highly contingent; e.g., what's going to happen to the EURO? But surely it all boils down to uncertainty about the future of the economy.

Failure to invest in new businesses is part of a downward spiral. No new jobs in new businesses is the problem. The President's $447 billion stimulus bill to preserve local and state government jobs for another year is not the solution to that problem, but an exacerbating factor.

It doesn't go with the familiar rhetoric, but it is a fact that most of the rich were Obama supporters in 2008 and so were the office-holders who put in place the mortgage regulations and banking rules under which we live today. If today Wall Street employees and partners are scared, and if people on Main Street are unhappy that they can't get loans for small businesses and if old people are finding that their life savings are producing nothing (e.g., .75 percent per year) that can even catch up with inflation, whose fault is that? Wall Street greed? Or government incompetence?

If you are hesitant in this economy, welcome to the club. From great to small, people are afraid to commit whatever funds they have. Is this the proper environment for a "Soak the Rich" campaign?

Those infuriating Tea Party activists, with their middle class smiles, middle aged bulges and Constitutional ideas, finally are being answered by a new movement of The People, "Occupy Wall Street," or (I suggest), the "Hemp Party" ("Help Employ Millions of Protestors"). Since the media are frolicking in this latest reunion of the various tie-dyed "Peace" marches of the Bush years--that was the time before, as you probably have noticed, wars completely ended in the Middle East and elsewhere under Barrack Obama--you can be sure that the Hemp Party will mobilize nation-wide, wherever a TV camera is found. The "real America" that emerged in Madison, Wisconsin to fight budget cuts is now showing itself in such other completely representative communities as Berkeley, Seattle, Boulder and Cambridge.

The "Wall Street" antagonism by itself is not broad enough, or intelligible enough, to suffice for a mass movement, of course. But if you add to "Eat the Rich" banners and class resentment themes (ignoring how the "rich" actually voted and donated in the 2008 elections), build on the overwhelming popular demand for government subsidies of wind power and solar energy, prevention of new nuclear power and oil drilling, ever more federal stimulus funds to prevent government workers from joining the private sector in the unemployment lines, and then throw in pot legalization and same sex marriage and you have the makings a true reply to the Tea Party at last.

Boy, will that show the powers in Washington, DC! The elite in the White House, the Senate, the media, academia, foundations, lobbying firms, law firms, non-profits, Big Labor and Big Business Pacs are finally going to hear from The People. Oh, wait! These "People" who are mobilizing are the same ones who supported the current power elite in Washington! Many are part of it.

Hmmm. How does this work? Oh, I got it; instead of "Throw the rascals out!", the slogan of "Occupy Wall Street"--and the Hemp Party--will be, "Keep the rascals in!"

Someone, quick, alert NPR.

Getty Images

Instead of just moralizing about big government spending, Concerned Women for America decided to satirize it--and the philosophy that rationaizes it. Just go to Spenditol.com.

Obama's aides ignore Obama. So, what else is new?

Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal writer, has a book out tomorrow from HarperCollins saying that White House and Treasury aides to President Obama frequently ignored or stalled implementation of his directives on economics. The book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, alleges that decisions Mr. Obama made were stonewalled or delayed by Larry Summers and Tim Geitner, among others.

The truth is, that kind of situation is not unknown. In the Reagan years Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Darman, whose job it was to implement the president's decisions, often took it upon himself to frustrate the decisions made. How did he get away with it?
The answer is that executives rely on their aides to such an extent that firing them may cause more disruption than allowing them to get away with what looks like insubordination.

Reagan often ignored a failure to implement a policy decision and simply reasserted it the next time the subject came up. For example, he agreed strongly with a plan to raise the personal exemption in the income tax (to double it) in order to help families raising children. Darman repeatedly took it out of the President's tax reform plan. Mr. Reagan had to put it back in three times before Darman gave up.

Such is infighting in the White House. According to Presidential historian Richard Neustadt, when former Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was elected President, former President Truman joked, ""He'll sit here, and he'll say, 'Do this! Do that!' And nothing will happen. Poor Ike--it won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating."

Reuters/Wikimedia Commons

Most of what President Obama proposes to do with his jobs plan puts money either in the hands of people who already have jobs or extends unemployment compensation for the jobless. It does little to create new jobs. Mr. Obama also wants to hire more public workers--a core political constituency--that also will do little spur economic growth.

On the other hand, the President's bill, if passed, likely would destroy jobs in the non-profit sector. The President proposes to pay for his program by removing deductions for "rich" people (those making $200,000 or more, or those couples making $250,000 or more). That would raise about $400 billion, largely by disallowing charitable deductions.

Some unknown percentage of donors are incentivized by a tax break to support charities. If the tax break disappears there will be billions of charitable contributions foregone. That's why when this sort of thing was opposed by the non-profit sector when it was first offered in 2009. NGO programs operate on small margins, so NGO leaders understood that a cut in donations could prove devastating.

But back in 2009 the Administration said, don't worry; this law won't take effect until 2011. Of course, back in 2009, even under a new Democratic president and his Democratic Congress, the proposal to end tax deductibility for donations by the wealthy failed. However, note that if it had been adopted back then it would be in effect now. Would that be helping the job picture today?

I suspect that NGO leaders today are quiet mainly because they sense, correctly, that Mr. Obama's plan is not going anywhere. But if the proposal somehow does gain traction, the voluntary sector will wake up with a start.

Nate Silver of the New York Times analyzes yesterday's Republican win of the New York-9 Congressional seat vacated by Rep. Anthony Weiner and concludes that "local" concerns played a major role. One of the "local" issues is that a large part of the district includes heavily Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn that, says Silver, may have been tipped by "Israeli issues." Among other things, Turner was helped by "local" rabbis and the "local" former Mayor Ed Koch.

"Israeli issues" are now "local"?

The Republican winner, Bob Turner, is a Catholic. His opponent, David Welpin, whom he beat by eight points, is an Orthodox Jew. Yet Turner won the votes of Jewish voters in the normally Democratic district.

Many Jews (and others) are upset with the Obama Administration's tepid support for Israel. If this is a "local" issue in Brooklyn, it may turn out to be local also to Israel supporters elsewhere in New York, New Jersey, Florida--and on and on.
The political subway train Turner caught would seem to be more an Express than a Local.

If the Obama Administration's spine suddenly stiffens at the United Nations this fall and vetoes endorsement of a Palestinian state (without a peace agreement with Israel) it may be the result of "local" considerations all over the country.

Wired

Karl Rove, former Presidential aide and "the architect" of G. W. Bush's victories, probably is one of the most savvy of poll data users. Yet, in his professional capacity the present-day analyst and pundit is warning, don't put much stock in polls today for an election fourteen months from now. He has many good historical examples.

Indeed, you can't even count on polls two weeks before an election (or Tom Dewey would have beat Harry Truman in 1948), or, in the case of the 2000 election, even the polls taken the night before an election.

I see at least one wild card in any hand the pollsters try to deal before an election: turnout. Many young people don't own land phone lines, so polls can't really measure them adequately, and their turnout can spike unpredictably as election excitement grows, as it did in 2008. Similarly, they and other supposed voting blocs (labor, Latinos, blacks) may vary widely in enthusiasm, dropping off (for example) greatly, as in 2010. Regardless, anticipating turnout over a year in advance is really risky.

Besides, polls don't tell you much about the complex weave of motivations that move voters--and decide elections.

See him on TV, read an article by or about him (such as economist Peter Ferrara's excellent online piece at American Spectator) or hear him speak, and one's respect for the mind and political imagination of Newt Gingrich is rekindled.

For example, the former Speaker--the man who forged a GOP House majority in 1994 that endured until 2006--has sage advice for today's Republican House Leaders: pass another jobs and growth bill now, and explain it to the public so that the strongest contrast can be drawn with the Obama Administration's cut and paste agenda of more spending, regulation and taxes. Show how past reforms--such as the welfare law passed when he was Speaker and that President Clinton signed--not only saved money, but also got poor people out of poverty and created jobs. Smart reform is the best "stimulus".

Newt, the public policy strategist, can't be beat. He is far ahead of any other candidate for President in this regard. Newt's problem, then, is not related to his ability to synthesize strategic themes; indeed, those are his greatest strengths. Unfortunately, you need more than bright ideas to get elected President.

The draft notice comes in the mail, not unlike the one from the 60s: "Jury Summons: You have been radomly selected to serve as a juror in King Country Superior Court. By order of the Court you are summoned to appear at King County Superior Court at....."

Several hundred persons, mostly middle class and white, show up on a Monday morning at 8 a.m. They are given a pep talk on an American's right to trial by a jury of his peers, then a film. Then they are advised that as jurors they will be paid ten dollars a day ("the same as in the Eisenhower Administration"), and immediately thereafter they are asked if they would like to donate that daily ten dollars to a fund to provide day care for the children of defendants on trial. In the moment, many prospective jurors, including yours truly, sign the form to make this donation.

Seven or so years ago, when I last was summoned to jury duty, the same request was made to provide funds to support day care for defendants. Sitting there in the jury room on a recent morning, I wondered, why has the Legistlature after all this time not provided for such purposes and why is there no fund to support day care for the children of impoverished jurors--the folks paid the measly $10 a day? Why are jurors, when they are feeling vulnerable, hit up for this purpose--hit up to help defendants just as they are being assembled for particular cases that happen to involve, after all, defendants?

If David Mamet (Wag the Dog) were to do a new satircial movie about politics, he could do worse than start his picture at the highly hyped "Iowa Straw Poll" held in Ames yesterday. The "poll" required people to pay $35 to take part; there was nothing official about it, even as an opinion survey. Many a voters' poll tax was paid by the campaigns of the candidates. How is that representative of anything? Nor was participation notable. The winner, Rep. Michelle Bachman, got a grand 4800 votes. Whooee!

There may have been more reporters and cameramen around than there were paying "voters".

Yet on the basis of this faux democratic test--five or six months before actual primary action, or even Iowa Caucus action--Gov. Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race for President because he came in only third. And at the state fairgronds where the "poll" was staged, Rep. Bachman exploded in gratitude as if she had won the Miss Iowa beauty contest instead of a rigged, phoney carnival game.

Are people crazy? Or only the media and the political class?

If the New York Times is right, the main consideration for Democrats regarding the economy is what approach will help them most politically in the 2012 election--not the well being of the American people in the intervening 14 months. If the Times is wrong (including the quotations it used from people in the White House and on the Hill), then maybe the Democrats should protest this story. If the story is true, maybe the Repubicans should talk about it.

President Obama addressed the nation about the S & P downgrade of U.S. credit, with the Dow already down at that hour by 426 points. It continued down even as he spoke, like some horrifying approval meter used to test audience reactions at a debate. A few hours later the Dow--definitely not inspired or encouraged by the Orator in Chief--was down 635 points.

President Obama talked down to the Markets, treating them like some political crowd at a fundraiser. People who invest money in U.S. equities, including many from overseas, are not partisans, nor are they uninformed. They have been following the economic news closely. When the President, who thinks he is the model of persuasion, tried again to blame others for the economy and offered almost nothing hopeful on his own behalf, he misjudged his audience. Investors didn't like what they heard and they didn't believe him.

The one thing that might have redeemed his talk was his promise to put forward a new budget proposal. But he even stepped on that line.

I don't know how many more confidence inspiring talks by President Obama the economy can stand.

Why should companies get to write off on their taxes their executives' use of corporate jets? President Obama talks about this incessantly as part of his class warfare pitch. Make those jet users pay more!

In due course, with such issues, some union leader or local manufacturer of corporate jets--a field in which the US is still the leader--will come forth and defend the tax break as thoroughly defensible. Fine.

But why bother even to defend it? Discovery Sr. Fellow John Wohlstetter did a little research and discovered that the whole write off amounts to about $300 million a year ($3 billion a decade), a mere rounding figure in the federal budget, which is TRILLIONS in the hole. The President's fastening on this minor item is therefore mere demogogy.

Obviously, it polls well with people who don't know any better.

Jennifer Rubin borrows Wohlstetter's theme in the Washington Post today, and builds on it.

The bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office's figures contract the remarkable claim by President Obama today that the Bush tax cuts are responsible for our colossal deficits and debt. The President's attempt to blame the Prescription Drug program for seniors is amazing, especially since he voted for it, it was much less costly than even its opponents feared and the real balloon in our debt has come in the past two and a half years--his term, his programs. There's almost nothing to show it--not even infrastructure improvements.

The Administration's very language is untrustworthy. "Revenue" means tax increases. A realistic and long overdue reform in the formula for cost of living adjustments (COLAs) in Social Security, however, is a "cut". He deplores the
"partisanship"--in Congress.

"Why don't you join me for lunch?" said the Walrus to the oysters.

Facing this topsy-turvy world, a Republican consensus seems to be growing that Republicans cannot get any real cuts out of President Obama. Even if he agrees to them, they won't actually be implemented or they will be put off until "out years" when someone else is in office and (as always) the future authorities won't remember today's budget, anyhow. Any tax increases passed in the current term, however, definitely will be real. They also will disguise the fact that any deal that emerges with Obama's support will only drop a relative cup of money into the yawning hole Obama & Co. have dug.

Our sr. fellow John Wohlstetter just offered one version of how to proceed at The Daily Caller.

"We didn't get here overnight," the President says. Right. We were in bad shape when he took office. Now it's much worse.

The President has called a meeting on the debt limit increase, asking that the participants come with no "ultimatums" and that they leave their "rhetoric" at the door. Then--as the media reported without irony--he announced that a tax increase must be part of any deal--an ultimatum, right?

As for rhetoric, the President immediately launched into plenty of rhetoric of his own. He thinks he can talk one way and act another indefinitely, and maybe he's right.

None of this is auspicious for a solution, however.

It would be nice if the media would explain the gamesmanship to the public.

Brief mention must be made of Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, or whatever state will have him after redistricting, who recently went to Syria to get some headlines. Regardless of how his declarations are explained, they were inappropriate for someone in an official position. Here we have another American official who is at variance from U.S. foreign policy and is lending his credibility to an oppressive dictator. Plenty of American officials and celebrities are willing to do this kind of thing: think of the parade that visited Saddam Hussein before the two Iraq wars.

One difference is that Assad's people are in open revolt right now. They were being gunned down even as Kucinich enjoyed a personal, head of state type photo op with Bashar Assad.

Another difference is that we used to excoriate free lancers such as Kucinich. In a properly ordered political world, a stunt like his would terminate his hopes for any public office. At the least there would be public disavowals and shunning. Unfortunately, the exquisite sensitivity the media display toward celebrity wrongdoing tends to concentrate on gaffes in public utterances. It's not what you do that counts, but what you say, and especially how you say it.

Getty Images

Sec. George Schulz, President Reagan and Ed Meese review the "Misery Index"

The Misery Index is simply a combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Jimmy Carter coined it to attack Gerry Ford in 1976, when it served the Democrats as a good political weapon. But then under Carter the Misery Index went up again, this time because of high inflation.

One day in 1983, serving in the White House under Ronald Reagan, I thought to revisit the Misery Index. Sure enough, with inflation going down fast under Reagan, so did the Misery Index-- to 14.1, even though unemployment (a "lagging indicator") remained high for a long while.

At a Cabinet meeting Ed Meese presented the new and lower Misery Index to President Reagan, who sent me back a picture and note: "Thanks for your good work on the Misery Index chart. Now I'm feeling less miserable."

In subsequent boom days and low inflation the Misery Index dropped out of sight. Good news is no news. But now, my goodness! It's back. Continuing high recession level unemployment is being joined by a gradual ratcheting up of inflation--3.6 percent on an annualized basis.

So the Misery Index returns. At "12.7, it's higher than at any time since Ronald Reagan pulled us out of the '81-'83 recession. However, I don't think President Obama will appreciate anyone's pointing this out.

Vancouver anarchists, 2011

Vancouver, B.C. needs a little TLC about now. Locals are feeling embarrassed, even humiliated, by the rioting that followed the defeat of the Canucks in the Stanley Cup hockey finals two nights ago. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen in one of the world's most livable--and civilized--cities.

This Seattlite--who rooted for our neighbors' team in the Stanley Cup just as surely as some Nova Scotians apparently cheered for the Boston Bruins--remembers very well the disgrace my city experienced when the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December, 1999 was met by similar riotous behavior.

You can kibbitz about the police's tactics all you want, but the reality is that emotionally, as well as alcoholically, intoxicated youth do damage in mobs that they would never do by themselves. But there also was a trigger for the mobs in Vancouver, just as there was for the mobs in Seattle.

It seems there are organized anarchists in British Columbia and the Northwest US who are ideologically committed to destruction of civic order. They are ignorant and miseducated. They have been taught to vaunt their puerile self-righteousness. They combine stupidity with insolence.

In 1999 they organized in a camp in BC and in Eugene, Oregon to travel to Seattle and help trash the WTO meeting here. Most of the black clad romantics back then had no idea what the WTO was about, any more than the group that apparently organized to trash Vancouver after the Stanley Cup final--win or lose--knew anything but the frisson of destruction. They are heirs to a long tradition of spoiled brats in the liberal West.

Seattle anarchists, 1999

People with genuine grievances are demonstrating peacefully in Syria tonight. Let's save our sympathetic understanding for them.

Therefore, Canadian friends, please don't wallow in unnecessary self-examination, let alone self-recrimination. Just find the incendiary little jerks and prosecute them.

Photo: Seattle Times

Lets hear it for State Senator John Mulroe of Chicago who has come up with a way to bail out Illinois' broke state government: corporate ads on license plates. Instead of "Land of Lincoln," they now can read whatever a advertiser thinks appropriate. For example, "Land of Lincoln Towncars." Or maybe "Make Old Style Beer Your One for the Road."

Spendthrifts in Springfield have found their salvation. The Associate Press quotes Kim Drummond, spokeswoman for a firm called "My Plates", who says the auto messages would be "little billboards" along the prairie highways and byways.

Sen. Mulroe, you need to keep going on this one. Since Illinois has an income tax you could have various ads placed in the refund checks sent by the state tax authority: "Special Offer Today if You Spend Your Refund at Sears!"

State office buildings could get big bucks for commercial messages that would captivate riders on elevators and amuse attendees at trials in state courts.

"Have you reached a verdict, Jurors?"

"Yes, we have, Your Honor, but first a message from our sponsors...."

Think of the naming rights for state buildings: Bankers Life and Casualty State Prison, Sara Lee State Prison for Women, Caterpillar Inc. Toll Road, the Walgreens State Capitol, the University of Illinois Motorola Stadium. In fact, given the tax deals Gov. Pat Quinn has been cutting to favor special friends in big business, the state could change its name to Archer Daniels Midland. No problem finding that on a map.

Numbers are wonderful, and budget numbers seem almost magical. Just as the "miracle of compound interest" should be taught to all teenagers (liberally quoting from the experience of Benjamin Franklin), what might be called the "nightmare of falling revenue" should be taught to all office-holders.

Republicans know that you won't get prosperity by raising taxes in a recession, but some seem to think you can get there through budget cuts alone. This country needs drastic reductions in spending, such as the plan advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan. But the sad reality is that budget cuts are therapeutic only to the point that a crashing economy doesn't force expenses on you (such as unemployment) that cannot be significantly reduced. If a rising tide raises all boats, a record low tide leaves everybody stranded.

Just as you can't spend your way to prosperity, or cut your way there, lower taxes alone also won't assure growth. However, what the supply siders say is that economic growth must be your object for any policy. "Dynamic scoring" of an economy is required when considering taxes, spending, regulation and all other policies. Do changes cause the economy to grow or shrink? How do real people respond to incentives and disincentives?

What need to hear now are a coordinated plan that combines spending cuts and tax cuts, ditches Obmacare and curbs jobs-killing regulations.

It is time to reform the reforms. Two of the worst developments of the post-Watergate era were bans on political speech by corporations and limits on political parties' spending. Especially ludicrous was idea that political parties should not be able to actively support their own candidates. Eroding the power of parties has not led to better democracy but to empowerment of special interest groups that are unaccountable to anyone but their funders.

Fortunately, an opinion in the Ninth Circuit Court today, in a San Diego case, is finding these restrictions unconstitutional and effectively elaborates the earlier Supreme Court ruling on corporate independent expenditures in campaigns.

In a press release, James Bopp, Jr., counsel for the plaintiffs in the San Diego case, comments, "One of the important purposes of political parties is to elect their candidates to office. It is absurd to forbid them from giving money to support their candidates. The Ninth Circuit understood that the First Amendment gives citizens the right to band together in political parties, and that political parties have a First Amendment right to financially support their candidates." About the independent expenditure ruling, Mr. Bopp said, "The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no permissible reason for the government to limit independent expenditures themselves. This is true even when the expenditures are made by corporations. It naturally follows that if the expenditures cannot be limited, then money to groups making expenditures cannot be limited either, even when the money comes from associations and corporations."

Many Americans feel as if we're in a railroad car on a runaway train, the train being the Obama Administration's economic policies. The car is connected, it can't decouple, and yet we, the occupants, know there is a problem with the engineer.

Maybe we are wrong, but the columns and commentaries giving one opinion, then another, don't enable most people to get a clear idea of what's happening to our economy, let alone what to do about it.

In a parliamentary system, a full fledged campaign would be taking place about now, as it did recently in Canada. Given a chance to consider the issues at length, the Canadian electorate surprised the Left--that forced the election this winter--by giving the Conservatives a real majority in Ottawa. But under America's presidential system, the cathartic election we need is still a year and a half away.

In this country, however, public opinion can still change public policies. Right now the public is divided and confused. The best ways to educate and then mobilize the public are 1) to run a high profile debate in Washington, where facts and solutions are forced to the surface; and 2) to take that debate to the country.

The economies of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas grew faster than the rest of the country in April, accounting together for 82,000 net new jobs. The numbers suggest that Texas will continue to lead the rest of the country when May employment numbers come out for metro areas. In April, the Texas gains amounted to about 45 percent of the (revised) national gain of 177,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, announced today, the whole net employment gain nationally for May was only 38,000. The stock market, banks and economists are getting worried.

Texas has been hit by the national downturn, but has bounced back better. Most of its economic indicators are positive. Oil and gas have much to do with it, of course, but so do state fiscal policies under Governor Rick Perry that contain spending and regulation and hold down taxes. It has been a winning strategy in Texas and compares dramatically with the disastrous conditions in California and New York, Texas' rivals in size. Perry's policies also compare favorably with the Obama Administration on the national level.

Perry has a positive story to tell a nation longing for real "hope and change." His story versus Obama's story would set up the Texas governor for a strong presidential race. He's thinking about it.

In conversations in Washington one hears growing frustration among conservatives over the failure of Republican leadership--including the Republican National Committee--to answer emotive arguments on the budget by the Democrats with "Right Brain" arguments for the Ryan plan's efforts to cut spending and create jobs.

Republican leaders still seem to think that they can win the economic argument on logic and facts alone. They lost the recent New York 26th district election that way (at least in part) and they will collapse next year if they continue to imagine that a majority of the public is mainly, let alone exclusively, interested in budget discipline. Ronald Reagan, for example, was not elected on budget discipline alone.

The right talks a good game on alternative media and on effective branding, but they are still behind the Democrats. The criticism is so widespread now, however, that they probably will catch up, and when they do, they will be drawing on a much bigger public reserve of support.

Watch for Ross Perot-style "informercials", iPhone apps and e-manuals for organizing. But the key may be finding out first how voters react to the arguments already being heard. Observes Connie Marshner, an independent conservative consultant, "When Congressmen say 'The Ryan plan doesn't touch Medicare for anyone 55 or older,' what makes them think that the voters even believe them? What politicians say and voters hear often are different."

George Gilder, our institute's co-founder, is at his Harvard 50th Reunion this weekend. Poor soul. It is fitting to publish, therefore, Professor Harvey Mansfield's thoughts on Harvard and higher education in general, upon receiving the Bradley Foundation prize recently.

Let's put it succinctly. Once places like Harvard believed in "Veritas", and at the same time believed that people of good will could skillfully disagree on the subject. Today, Harvard and its co-religionists believe in relativity and doubt that anyone's opinion other than one's own is worth tolerating, let alone considering. In other words, it is intellectually degenerate.

As the Blue Book exams would say, "Discuss."

What do you do when your policy preferences are different from those established by law? If you are the Obama Administration you frequently try to twist the law around to your purpose. An excellent case is the Administration's insistence in conducting research on embryonic stem cells. The National Institutes of Health, under Francis Collins, leads the effort.

Discovery Sr. Fellow Wesley J. Smith takes up the issue today at First Things.

Crony capitalism--a form of soft economic fascism in which companies get ahead to the extent they play ball politically with the government in power--is becoming a troubling feature of American business and a threat to American democracy. It is seen in special deals for bailouts and "stimulus" at the federal level and in new White House plans to require businesses to report their contributions to politically related groups if they want to be considered for federal contracts. (This latter is offered up, shamelessly, as a "reform".)

It also is in active play in state governments. The state of Illinois is burdened with one of the nation's highest public debts. Its taxes are going up on business and individuals alike, and still there is little hope of meeting the spending appetite of the state government. Meanwhile, businesses that almost are identified with Illinois--such as Sears, founded in 1887, and Caterpillar--are threatening to leave.

An old saying, sometimes (mis)attributed to Otto von Bismark, goes that "There is a special Providence that watches over fools, children and the United States of America." This has been repeated often enough, and not said of other countries, that one begins to suspect it may be true.

The Soviets had access to copious information about the United States, not just that leaked unintentionally through diplomatic channels, but much ladled out by investigative units of the mainstream American press. Yet the Soviets must have been maddened by the realization that even with such good inside knowledge they couldn't keep up with us, let alone overcome us. The vulnerabilities of our open society were compensated by the strengths resident in America's enormously creative energy. Freedom takes risks. In the West's contest with the Soviets, those risks proved worthwhile.

China and other countries today keep doing knock-off versions of our military weaponry--copies of stuff we seem to leave lying around. The latest souvenir is the tail of one of the of abnormally quiet US helicopters that attacked Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. The Pakistan government's intelligence officials, some of them perfidious and overly smart-by-half, may let the Chinese have it. But, chances are, by the time the Chinese make their version of our helicopter, we'll be on to a new one.

Some politicos and pundits on the right would like to find a way to forge a winning national alliance of fiscal conservatives and social moderates/liberals. It can't happen.

In advance of the 1984 re-election campaign the president's pollster, the late Richard Wirthlin, identified 16 percent of the electorate who were "Reagan Democrats." That group, he noted, supported Ronald Reagan largely because of abortion and similar issues--and that group was crucial to any Reagan victory.

Many in the White House Senior Staff--notably Richard Darman and Michael Deaver--wanted to humor the social issues conservatives, but essentially ignore them otherwise. In some ways, their strategy was followed. Deaver especially was fond of photo-ops that implied conservative social policies, but didn't commit to them. While President Reagan sent supportive messages to the annual pro-life march on Washington, he didn't appear there.

But in other--arguably, more crucial--ways the President lent social conservatives what they most needed; namely, conservative judicial appointees. (Thank you, Ed Meese and Kenneth Cribb.) It's a good thing, too. Without the "Reagan Democrats", Wirthlin would point out, there would be no Reagan victory.

A poll released by Rassmussen shows that the political realities of the 80s still obtain.

Tim Goeglein of Focus on the Family reports that 40% of all children in U.S. are born out of wedlock these days; 29% of whites, 52% of Hispanics, 73% of African Americans. Part of the problem is fathers not taking real responsibility for their children.

But even married fathers often seem so busy at work that they cannot relate well to their kids. Courageous, a new film on the subject, is beginning to get private screenings, and is slated to appear in late September.

W. James van Artle writes at American Spectator that the "Tea Party" constituency holds together well on domestic issues, but may fly apart on foreign affairs. His example is the contrasting views on Libya from freshmen senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.

In essence, Rand Paul, like his father, does not want America's president wandering into more international conflicts. He says the president is required by the Constitution to involve the Congress. Rubio, on the other hand, is worried about growing "isolationism" that refuses to become engaged overseas until late in the game--and then at high human and material cost.

But both points of view have merit. Presidents do need to involve Congress. And they also need sometimes need to engage American power, but only for the purpose of winning, not merely opening a permanent military campaign. In Libya we don't appear to have followed the advice of either gentleman. The President could have indicated that the problem did not rise to the level where US military action was warranted and/or was likely to succeed. He also could have asked for Congressional authorization for military action. On the other hand, now in, we don't seem able to press for a speedy conclusion.

Stay out or get in to win. Is that such a hard policy to defend?

The public, in polls, holds contradictory ideas. You either can blame the public for that or the politicians and media. Since economics is not a class taught in high school or taken by many in college, it is useless to assume a knowledge base that doesn't exist. Some down-to-earth explanations are needed.

Robert Samuelson's column is about as clear headed as one can get on this topic. He says that the President is being deceitful, talking budget cutting and the need for an "adult conversation" on the topic, while doing nothing to cut spending and attacking those who are trying to do so. As Samuelson says, he's "AWOL".

You can't have a one-sided debate. But Republicans could at least try to get air time--I have suggested repeatedly the use of "Special Orders" on the House floor that at least would get covered by C-SPAN--and lay out the whole truth for the people. A couple of infomercials also might help.

And the story is not only economic. The Republicans will lose the public's support if they don't explain why the budget deficit is a deeply moral issue. Just prattling about "leaving a huge burden for our children" explains nothing. Unless the consequences of present trends are described, the economy, in many eyes, will just be a matter of "creating more jobs," as if unemployment is the result of "greed" or insensitivity.

by David DeWolf

A decision issued today by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals at first seemed like a mostly unalloyed victory for free speech in academia. But it contained some bad news for Mike Adams along with the good. Adams is the controversial (because he is conservative and religious) University of North Carolina professor being squeezed by liberal faculty and administrators.

The good news was that the appeals court reversed that part of the trial court 's decision that held that Adams was not entitled to first amendment protections because he was a public employee. The trial court had relied upon Garcetti v. Ceballos, in which the Supreme Court rejected a first amendment claim by a prosecuting attorney that he had been punished for criticizing the issuance of a warrant in a criminal case. Garcetti limited the rights of public employees to speak their mind if they are speaking on behalf of the government. The trial court in Mike Adams' case thought that a similar rule applied to university professors. But the appeals court disagreed, finding that the scholarly publications of a faculty member are not subject to the limiting principle in Garcetti.

That was the good news. The bad news was that in reinstating Adams' case, the appeals court affirmed the findings by the trial court that Adams had not been the victim of religious discrimination or a violation of the equal protection clause. This leaves him to return to the district court to demonstrate that the committee that rejected his application for promotion engaged in viewpoint discrimination or retaliated against him because of his exercise of his first amendment rights. This will require the trial court to distinguish viewpoint discrimination (for example, treating people differently because they are conservative) from judging Adams' scholarship to be inadequate because it isn't sufficiently novel, or significant, or insightful. The appeals court seemed to adopt the traditionally deferential approach to tenure and promotion decisions by university committees, permitting them to be their own judges of what sorts of scholarship deserve recognition for purposes of promotion or tenure. It's fairly rare for a committee to leave a "smoking gun," such as was the recent case of the astronomer at the University of Kentucky.

(David DeWolf, a Discovery Institute senior fellow, teaches law at Gonzaga University.)

Be prepared for all out political demagoguery on Rep. Paul Ryan's proposed reform budget, and unfortunately it will be enabled by biased news coverage. In the New York Times, for example, you have to turn to David Brooks' column on the opinion page today to get a straight account of the issues involved.

Pete Wehner, former Bush aide, writes in Commentary online today about stilted coverage by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post. First Milbank wrote about the failure of Republicans to address the real source of funding imbalance, which is entitlement spending. But then, when the Republicans do address entitlements (as Democrats, including President Obama, have not), Milbank attacks them for their recklessness.

Implicit in all the "news" attacks is the supposed alternative of raising taxes on the rich to cover the huge spending gap. The trouble is, you could get the rich to pay an even higher proportion of income taxes--in fact you could wipe them out--and still not solve the massive deficit and debt problem. Former Democratic officials such as Alice Rivlin and Erskine Bowles, as well as Republicans, are warning that the entitlement problem cannot be blinked any longer. Entitlements have to be brought under control or our whole country's future is in peril.

Here is a suggestion on how to avoid continuous demagoguery on the Ryan proposals: stage a nationally televised debate between Paul Ryan and his House Democrat counterpart, Rep. Chris Van Hollen. The Maryland Democrat, who is ranking member of the House Budget Committee that Ryan heads, has been outspoken in opposing the reforms Ryan proposes. Let him put his criticism to the test of a suitable long public debate that can give ordinary citizens a chance to hear out the contending parties.

In fact, there is a nice, tried and true venue that used to hold debates of the kind I suggest, though it has been underused in recent years. That venue is called the floor of the House of Representatives. There is even at least one TV network that is sure to cover it live and in full: C-Span. Most the time the House floor is the scene of one and two minute exchanges and political feather preening. A real, two person debate would be a welcome and unusual treat.

Gentlemen of both parties: give the American people a two hour debate on this urgent national issue, and let us make up our own minds, unfiltered by reporters who think they know better what's in a proposal than its author does.

All the prospective Republican candidates for President have electoral problems of one kind or another. Two that may have the fewest are Rep. Paul Ryan, who is getting a lot of favorable attention on the top priority issue of budget reform, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the former Florida state legislative leader who won election to the U.S. Senate last fall.

Both of these men come off as likable, well-rounded and thoroughly conversant with a wide range of national policy issues.

When they appeared back to back on the Sean Hannity show the other night, one couldn't help thinking that together they would make a formidable ticket.

Commenting on Rubio's performance, Carl J. Kelm of the Wall Street Journal's online Political Diary took particular note of the freshman senator's rebuke of Obama Administration's confusion in Libya: "Keep in mind that with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, the ambassador to China, the GOP presidential field has an almost total lack of foreign policy experience. But someone, of course, will win the nomination. And when that person looks for a running mate, it isn't hard to imagine him or her being drawn to the rising star who can win Hispanic votes, crusaded against the debt and took leadership on a foreign policy issue on which the president has been accused of waffling."

Ryan, 41, is youthful, but not inexperienced, having served a dozen years in Congress. Upon assuming office, were he elected President in 2012 at age 42, Ryan would be a few months older thanTheodore Roosevelt was when he became President, and a few months older than JFK. Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Ryan was identified early as a man with a future. He has been examined carefully by friends and foes ever since and passed each test.

Rubio, who turns 40 in May, looks like a Latin soap opera star, until, that is, he opens his mouth, whereupon he turns into a really adroit, composed debater. He knows strategy, he knows details. Among colleagues he already gets high marks for hard work and solid "people skills."

The "inexperience" label still would be attached to either Ryan and Rubio, of course. Regardless, relative inexperience is probably the least incapacitating of the likely criticisms that will be made of the possible presidential nominees next year. Up against Barack Obama, Ryan's youth--and Rubio's--probably wouldn't matter. Policies, however, would matter. And unlike Joe Biden, voters would find that Rubio chooses his words carefully. Instead of saving Ryan and Rubio for 2016 Republicans may decide to go with their best team in 2012.

(Getty Images)

Our libertarian friend, Mark Skousen, has produced a wonderful spoof of those pharmaceutical ads you see on TV, only this one is for "Obamacare".

The way the Libya Kinetic Military Action is unfolding, President Obama at least is showing that he is not the Machiavellian many critics have charged.

Machiavelli had a number of suggestions for "princes".

One was, if you decide to attack the king, make sure you kill him and don't just wound him. Wounded kings are dangerous.

President Obama has ignored that advice all right. We are in Libya merely "to protect civilians" and, while saying, "Gaddafi must go," we are not planning to use force to get rid of him. Just wound him, as it were.

Another Machiavellian lesson is that undertakings for real change are difficult, because the people who don't want change will recognize the threat and resist with all their might, while those who stand to benefit will tend to be less motivated to action.

In Libya, we are undertaking real change--if not "Change You Can Believe In"--and that has fully mobilized Gaddafi and his forces, while not especially motivating us, apparently. The President apparently thought it was all going to be easy. We'll be there "days, not weeks," he said two weeks ago.

The third pertinent Machiavellian principle is that when you must choose between a majority and a minority, choose the majority, of course, unless the minority is more intensely committed than the majority; for in that case the intensity of feelings of the few often overcomes the advantages of numbers.

Here again, Mr. Obama has shown he is not Machiavellian. He has stirred up our enemies, who are a minority in the Libyan population, and left the majority of Libyans--who presumably support the rebels--to, well, arm themselves.

In domestic affairs, we get Chicago-style politics from Mr. Obama. In Libya we get United Nations resolutions.

Photo: Salon

The dithering is over, the U.N. Security Council has voted to permit the U.K., France, the U.S. and at least a couple of Gulf states to take on Gaddafi's air force and army. There is celebrating going on in Benghazi.

China, Russia and Germany abstained from the U.N. vote.

A 9.0 earthquake--the fifth worst on record--has devastated many communities in Japan and compromised countless health and commercial enterprises. We are seeing alarming coverage of the danger of nuclear plant damage. Nonetheless, every time the reporters get below the surface of the story they find that--so far--the actual nuclear contamination is small and limited. For one thing, since the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine in 1986, new nuclear plants (especially in Japan) have included elaborate containment and other safety provisions. Damage to nuclear power in Japan is likely to prove very expensive as a result of the quake and tsunami, but--relative to the rest of the quake and tsunami aftermath--not in lives lost.

Even in Chernobyl early predictions of thousands of deaths were soon discounted to 50, according the to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and most of those were from workers who went too close to the plant without adequate protection or, apparently, adequate knowledge.

The US House Homeland Security Committee hearing on radicalization of American Muslims burned up C-Span for four long hours. Some of the reporting has called it a "witch hunt", and at the hearing many, if not most, of the Democrats on the Committee used their five minutes question time each to assail the decision to hold the hearing and to demand hearings instead on other kinds of terrorist threats, such as the KKK. That kind of tendentious objection flavored many of the news stories as well.

The controversy, for some, is not properly the subject of how some young people in this country are radicalized and join Islamist terror groups. No, our concern should rather be whether having a hearing on that subject is politically correct.

The first problem facing the critics, however, was the presence of a panel of experts who in varying ways were all concerned with the reality of radicalization. The perpetually eruptive Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee thought it "ironic" to say that Muslims were not concerned enough about terrorism, when the panel itself, she noted, included Muslims who are concerned. It was ironic, all right, though not in the way the Gentlelady from Houston thought. Two panelists were Muslim, but they were there in eloquent agreement with the contention of Rep. Peter King, Committee Chairman that more needs to be done to counter subversive activities by agents of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Pour some tea and savor this amusing email interview of eminent physicist Freeman Dyson by the (UK) Independent's Steve Connor.

What I enjoy most is Dyson's description of how science is supposed to be open-minded and how many scientists have forgotten that. In the real world the enforced "consensus" of science is not harmless at all. For example: "(A)ll predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain. On the other hand, the remedies proposed by the experts are enormously costly and damaging, especially to China and other developing countries. On a smaller scale, we have seen great harm done to poor people around the world by the conversion of maize from a food crop to an energy crop. This harm resulted directly from the political alliance between American farmers and global-warming politicians. Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. If it happens that I am wrong and the climate experts are right, it is still true that the remedies are far worse than the disease that they claim to cure."

Photo: Tufts Journal

Rep. Pete King of New York, whose hearings on radical Islamist influence on American Muslims start tomorrow, is being attacked in the mainstream media for his long-past support of the IRA. What the critics really don't like is the hearings he's holding now. We are not supposed to notice the danger of radical Islamists. To do so, it is implied, is bigoted.

Meanwhile, however, the great many Muslims who are pro-American and hostile to the Islamist radicals are having a hard time being heard. The Daily Caller cites several reputable groups that have not been welcomed to the White House, though highly doubtful groups like CAIR--with ties to Hamas--are shown right in. The Daily Caller may be a conservative news site, but the quotations speak for themselves.

It is truly condescending to think that American Muslims, and, indeed, many Muslims around the world, are unable to appreciate the blessings of liberty that this country affords. After all, a number of them have put their lives on the line to stand up for democracy. And not just democracy, but the minority rights and freedom of opinion that make constitutional democracy feasible. A number of Muslims are very eager for constructive political dialogue, not only here, but in the Middle East. In fact, the existence of democracy in Iraq is a living demonstration of how America (through the efforts of the international institutes of the US Republican and Democratic parties) can help MIddle Eastern countries to adopt sound democratic institutions and customs.

Oddly, while there are some on the political right who want to tar all Muslims with the brush of extremism, it is mostly the left that seems to misrepresent Muslims most predictably.

The AP reports first that the 14 Democratic State Senators who are playing hooky in Illinois to avoid a vote back in Madison--and thereby are depriving the majority Republicans of a three-fifths quorum needed to conduct business on fiscal issues--wanted Governor Scott Walker to meet with them at the state line and negotiate. He rejected the offer as ridiculous. He's right.

People will have various opinions about collective bargaining for state workers. But the underlying constitutional issue should be given priority: Is it proper for a party that lost an election to use the trick of denying a quorum day after day once a legislative body meets? I say it's completely undemocratic and a challenge to constitutional government. Neither party has the ethical standing to stop the constitutional process of government decision-making. It's appalling that this precedent doesn't seem to disturb more Americans of all political stripes. (That there is a similar case in Indiana only shows that bad political tactics are contagious.)

In fact, the Wisconsin case is going to be a classic. If the Democratic senators are successful the tactic of truancy will come back repeatedly in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Voters will start asking candidates: If you are elected, and yet your party doesn't have a majority, how do we know you won't just leave the state?

The cheerful news that unemployment has dropped to 8.9 percent (from 9 percent) is leading to a bit of false optimism. The economy may be improving (or not), but the amount of damage from the recession/restructuring we have to overcome is greater than most people realize. Economist John Williams, (covered at World Net Daily) has the real unemployment rate--including discouraged workers--at more like 22 percent.

Elaine Chao, former Labor Secretary under G. W. Bush believes the figure is 16.7 percent ("see Table 6A of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report," she told me after a speech she gave in Florida recently), and the sad news is that many of "new jobs" of the past year have been in the public sector and do not reflect real economic growth.

Chao contends that the Obama Administration is impeding job growth, rather than stimulating it. Obama officials, she notes, "have never worked in the private sector" and and don't understand that all their new regulations, taxes and fees under Obamacare, statements demonizing business leaders and proposals for cap and trade lead companies to hold back on investments or to move overseas.

The Department of Labor "has over 400 lawyers," says Chao. "Essentially it is an AFL-CIO office." Already there are 104 new regulations of business in the labor field.

Add to all that the rising cost of oil, in part due to failure to develop sources in the US, and you have a low-growth, low-job creation economy.

Gov. Scott Walker appeared on Meet the Press today, finally getting a chance to explain some of the ways that collective bargaining at the state and municipal level in Wisconsin make long term budget balancing more difficult. As a former county executive (Milwaukee) Walker recalls the times when unions thwarted efforts to implement reforms that would lead to economies. He also pointed to the example of state teachers union decisions to require members to get their health insurance through a union-owned concern rather than through the regular state employee insurance system--at an added cost of $68 million to the taxpayers.

Wisconsin's Democratic state senators apparently have found loopholes in the state ethics laws that permit them to shirk their official responsibilities. If the 14 senators who have fled the state in order to deny Republicans a quorum to conduct business in the legislature are not stopped, disruptions of this sort are going to become widespread. Over time, similar stunts will be pulled, with variations, by both parties in states across the nation.

The truants from Madison would have appalled the leaders who wrote any American state constitution, including Wisconsin's. In days before fast travel by cars and airplanes, the chance of a hookey-playing senator seeking effective sanctuary in another state was not anticipated. Constitution writers considered that the authority to send the state police after such a legislative truant would suffice. Therefore, in Wisconsin and elsewhere state law must now be brought up to date if the aims of the state's founders are to be observed.

The Wisconsin senators' gambit was inspired by Texas Democratic legislators who, a decade ago, took off for Oklahoma to prevent enactment of a Republican redistricting plan. That rebellion failed in the end, but Wisconsin today has lots of media and other commentators chuckling and clucking approval of the "brave" Democratic senators. If the hookey-players were Republicans, however, the same folk would be demanding punitive action.

Instead, Democrats in Indiana already are joining the fun, fleeing unwelcome votes and seeking legal sanctuary in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln is even more buried in taxes and debt than Wisconsin, so maybe this is an indirect way for its helpful neighbors to stimulate its lagging economy. Their new theme songs are "On Wisconsin, to Chicago!" and "Back Home Again in Indiana--Not."

But back in Wisconsin and Indiana, legislative reform (by popular initiative, if necessary) might well start with a declaration that elected members of a legislative body who fail to appear for service may be deprived of salary, benefits and staff. Exceptions would be made, of course, for valid excused absences, such as for genuine illness. After that, a non-partisan panel could declare that the missing legislators had defaulted on their public obligations. The scofflaws' legislative seats would be considered vacant and subject to a new election at which the nominal incumbents would be ineligible to compete.

Protestors mobilized by public employee unions in Madison have waved printed signs saying, "The World is Watching." If so, the world is watching what happens when politicians are derelict in their duties, the most fundamental of which is to show up once elected. Consequences will flow from how this turns out.

A Rasmussen poll says that more Americans oppose the Wisconsin public employee unions (48%) than support them (38%). But even more opposition might develop--and more support grow for Gov. Scott Walker--if the general public fully understood the reason behind the proposal to remove collective bargaining power for state employees on non-pay issues. It's not just about the current budget, serious as that is, but future budgets. It is largely because of past, poorly reported agreements that arose from collective bargaining that the unions have managed to get pension and health care packages far more lucrative than those of the vast majority of other citizens--the folks that pay the taxes to support those benefits.

Simply put, the public employees unions in Wisconsin and in many other states represent the best funded, most determined and most wily advocates of constantly increased government spending. Knowing the ins and outs of government better than anyone, and knowing also how to work their political will on elected officials (their putative bosses), they have an unnatural advantage in obtaining increased benefits. That is especially so since negotiations on long term benefits are not always seen as part of the budget process reported in the yearly budget struggles.

The public employee unions not only are the part of the polity that has the most immediate and special interest in government, but they also are a uniquely powerful position to intimidate state office holders. Consider: what other group in Wisconsin, for example, could skip work and mobilize several scores of thousands of protestors day after day at the capital? That's power.

Discovery Institute's Presidents' Day Weekend gift to you is this fine article by our Sr. Fellow John R. Miller in the weekend issue of The Wall Street Journal.

by Keith Pennock

The headline for a Los Angeles Times editorial, ""Too deferential on defense," wants readers to believe that defense spending is to blame for the federal deficit. That is where we'll find the "big money," it says. The actual editorial, however, is really nothing more than a predictable attack on national defense spending that ignores the lion-share of the federal budget, entitlements.

The newspaper misleadingly reports that 61% of the annual appropriations bill goes to defense-a distortion of the budget picture since entitlements aren't considered annual appropriations, but rather "mandatory" spending. Nowhere does the editorial say how to cut entitlements.

When 40 cents out of every dollar of federal spending is borrowed, and when government leaders dissemble on the subject, a properly educated electorate will be outraged.

This quote from Thomas Jefferson is going around, and I am happy to keep it going:

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

In all the excellent publicity about Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, too little attention has been placed on the people he brought into government, both in Sacramento and in Washington. For example, John Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was a young lawyer in the White House in the 80s. I'll stop at that: there is no point in getting started on a list of notable Reagan alumni because it would take up many pages.

Regardless, the top of the list surely would be occupied by Ed Meese, Reagan's Chief of Staff as Governor, his Counselor in the White House and his highly influential Attorney General. No aide was closer to the President. Ed was Reagan's policy point man, the one who implemented Ronald Reagan's aims best because they shared the same political philosophy. Today, if you want to know what Ronald Reagan would think about some current issue, you couldn't do better than ask Ed Meese.

I'll never forget the day that Attorney General William French Smith called the White House to tell Ed, a confidant, that he was planning to resign. That "heads up" gave Ed a chance to go immediately to the President, inform him of the resignation and ask him on the spot for the chance to replace Smith as AG. Reagan trusted Meese completely and knew of his effectiveness--and his long background in law enforcement. They had been through a lot together. Reagan agreed.

Ronald Reagan is one of the few presidents who left office popular--and then become even more popular with the passage of time. He may have had one of the most successful presidencies of anyone in the past century--the 100 years since he was born.

I became a member of his team almost by accident. Had I not lost a race for governor of Washington in 1980 I would not have been looking for work in January of the next year. If I had not had a friend who happened to be a friend of Dick Wirthlin, Mr. Reagan's pollster in the presidential race, I would not have been suggested as someone to head the Census Bureau. That post brought me into the White House to brief the President on demographic trends, and that, in turn, provided an opportunity to serve on the President's own staff, working under Counselor Ed Meese. When Ed left to go to the Justice Department as Attorney General, he backed my bid to become Ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna. Over eight years, then, I served in three posts under President Reagan. Each day was memorable, many entailed work under pressure, and many also were great fun.

Tony Dolan, Ronald Reagan's peerless chief of the presidential speechwriting staff , has a fine remembrance of the President in today's RealClearPolitics.

It has some great lines of Reagan's.

National talk show host and Discovery Institute fellow Michael Medved argues in a column at AOL News that the "happy talk" about spending, health care and foreign policy that characterized the President's State of the Union talk only a few days ago is now visibly crumbling.

"The most revealing moment came," Medved reminds us, "in a brief passage intended to win the public with a folksy laugh line. Responding to calls for drastic cuts to shrink the deficit, the president warned: 'And let's make sure that what we're cutting is excess weight. Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't be long before you feel the impact.'

"The polite titters in the House chamber," Medved continues, "masked the shocking assumption behind the president's words: To Mr. Obama, federal spending constitutes the indispensable engine that keeps all of society aloft. Governmental expenditure, not private effort and enterprise, keeps America moving."

What are we getting for all this government's spending?

What next, knee breeches and powdered wigs?

For years in political discourse a resort to quoting the U.S. Constitution was treated as a gasp of musty air from an irrelevant past. People turned their faces away. Scholars at places like the Claremont Institute tried to rouse the few who would listen with readings of Federalist # 51 and published books for eager students gathered by groups like ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. But since the days of Prof. Woodrow Wilson, Ivy League universities taught that the Constitution should be interpreted as a "living document," which meant essentially that it had to change with the times. (And guess who got to decide what the "times" required?)

Then, about two years ago, ordinary people started reading the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and those hallowed old commentaries, the Federalist Papers. Talk show hosts like Glenn Beck, however eccentric and avuncular, started teaching about the Constitution on the air (are they allowed to do that?). Books about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who revered the Constitution, gained larger audiences. The Tea Partiers in 2010 started injecting the Constitution into everyday campaign speeches. Last month, the newly elected members of the House of Representatives opened its term with a serial reading of the Constitution--with members from both parties.

The best possible contemporary example of the law of unintended consequences is the federal policy (actually several policies) enforced since 1992 to expand home ownership through promotion of non-traditional, sub-prime mortgages. This policy, enforced to an extent not even known to the government at the time, let alone to the financial community, provoked a US housing bubble that grew for more than ten years--and then deflated as 27 million government-induced bad mortgages began to go under. A financial panic ensued and a recession soon followed. Trillions of dollars of public funds were spent. The repercussions were international.

The true story of the public policy blunders that created the housing and financial crisis has been sidestepped for two years now . A new Congressionally commissioned report out today would like to continue down the path of truth avoidance. But a courageous, well-researched and ultimately devastating report by a dissenting member of the Commission, Peter J. Wallison, a former Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, serves to expose the problem--and the Commission majority cover-up.

The majority (Democratic) report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission issued today seems to have been written to support preconceived opinions that the financial crisis was the product of Wall Street greed and under-regulation from Washington. That is an ideological fairy tale. The minority report of three of the Republican members, though better, mainly widens the responsibility for the financial crisis so far as to become nearly useless itself. It finds fault with so many public and private entities, and every conceivable exterior development and force short of global warming, that one is left feeling that, since everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. Neither report gives to the truth.

The Commission report therefore would be a one-day news story except for the explosive, factual revelations in the 98 page, dissenting report by Wallison. A lawyer who served in the Reagan Treasury before his White House stint, Wallison is one of the very few people who warned for years about the dangerous lowered loan standards being enforced, first on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government chartered agencies, and then the banking world.

Wallison provides evidence now of the determinative role of "NTM" (non-traditional mortgages) in the housing bubble and ensuing financial collapse.

The first part of President Obama's State of the Union address, to paraphrase Daniel J. Henninger's column this morning in the Wall Street Journal, sounded like a Ronald Reagan speech written by Discovery Sr. Fellow George Gilder. But then the address veered off into another wish list of new and expanded government programs that sounded unlike the Gipper and more like Jimmy Carter.

Why does this happen? How is it that even when Mr. Obama sings Reaganesque lyrics he can't carry the tune? He sounds instead like an uptight Episcopal priest trying to channel Elvis Presley.

One reason is that the current president has a liberal's prejudiced understanding of capitalism, business and wealth creation. He can't get past the left wing supposition that government action is responsible for the successes, if any, of business. When he is told that he is viewed as hostile by the business community he makes friends with the CEO of General Electric, commits the government to supporting GE projects and appoints the CEO of GE to a council on, of all things, "competitiveness." When he does try to embrace capitalism, he does not seem to get the difference between true capitalism and crony capitalism.

Deep down he does not seem to see the moral dimension to the free market. He thinks it mainly has to do with greed.

In contrast, The American, the online magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, today highlights an article by Discovery Sr. Fellow Jay Richards on the spiritual basis of wealth creation. In a list of top ten ingredients for wealth creation, nine either are immaterial or have a immaterial/spiritual dimension. Government's role in fostering wealth creation, in this (realistic) understanding is not to pick winners and losers, but to provide for "rule of law" that does not discriminate.

Whenever a new member of a legislative body rises to give his first speech it is always a poignant moment; even old heads turn to listen. The newest member of the Washington State House of Representatives, Hans Zeiger, is also possibly the youngest--24. He won his race from Puyallup after an exhaustive recount confirmed his winning margin of only about 20 votes.

Zeiger won election over a top ranking incumbent. He did it with shoe leather campaigning and hundreds of volunteers. But his serious, scholarly side also gives hope to those who are on the lookout for intelligent, informed and creative leadership in the next generation.

If you listen to his first speech--on Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights tradition of Washington State--you will see why he is stirring interest from many quarters. Consider how much he communicates in only four and a half minutes.

Non-profits now supposedly account for one tenth of the nation's employment. But what does that mean? Are non-profits an ornament of a successful capitalist economy, or have they also become a hidden engine of growth and economic stability? Does non-profits' growth provide economic growth overall?

Jeff Cain of Philanthropy Daily contends that the latter proposition is getting undeserved support in a new stuy on non-profits in Michigan by the C. S. Mott Foundation, assisted by the US Labor Department and the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. To read the Mott report, one would think that the non-profit sector in Michigan is a true silver lining in an otherwise cloudy economy. Non-profits, the report claims, have become "a major economic force" in Michigan, and presumably across the land.

The hyping of global warming was designed to get around public reluctance to let environmental/social engineers dictate energy policy and public spending. It hasn't completely worked out the way they would like. Now come the trial lawyers, seeing in climate policy the opportunity to sue for big stakes.

There really is a lot of trash floating in the sea. When it hits shore, we should pick it up. (Attention, Summer Interns!) But what if it is a vast "continent" (as most of us now have heard) in the middle of the ocean, coagulated in a "gyre," a kind of circling current? (I suspect the word "gyre" is inspired by Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, "'Twas Brilling" in Alice in Wonderland. "Gyre and gimble" is what the "slithey toves" did.)

Well, there is one particularly trashy area stuck in an oceanic gyre, but it's not quite the nightmare you've heard about. Discovery Sr. Fellow Jay Richards investigated for an article at The Enterprise Blog (hosted by American Enterprise Institute). The area where trash is more than usually common is only about one percent the size of Texas. (What is that, the size of Delaware?)

If a skeptical view of a trash "continent" is warranted, as Jay says, I tend to be skeptical as well that cleaning it up would take many times more energy than the plastic float represents. You wouldn't have to clean it all up to make a litter difference.

Nine years ago, The Boeing Company, founded in Seattle by Bill Boeing and long associated with the Puget Sound region, decided to move its corporate headquarters and its top staff to Chicago. The stated reasons were notions about the advantage of not collocating administrative headquarters with airplane production and the "strategic" worth of being in an central airport hub rather than in one corner of the country.

But, below the surface, it was plain to all that Boeing executives were frustrated by Washington State's corporate taxes and seemingly punitive policies that seemed to treat big companies as cash cows--making Boeing pay for an access road to a new plant in Everett, for example. Also, Chicago and Illinois officials were so welcoming.

Well, the great State of Illinois, following at least a decade of profligate spending, now has some of the highest corporate taxes and is raising them 50 percent under Gov. Pat Quinn. The state has a personal income tax and that is going up 67 percent (which those Boeing executives must appreciate). A state death tax is being enacted.

Illinois neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana are enjoying the discomfiture of the Illinois business community and trying to poach among them as fast as possible. But even those states have income taxes.

Meanwhile, back "home" in Washington State, the governor and legislature are dealing with the reality that voters last fall once, by a margin of two to one, once again defeated enactment of an income tax (even though it was one supposedly targeted only to the "rich"). Voters in the same election also removed some earlier taxes on soft drinks. As a result, the Democratic governor and legislature are taking a very different tack than their co-partisans in Illinois: cutting spending rather than raising taxes.

If there is an advantage--besides low crime rates, beautiful scenery and a highly educated work force--that distinguishes Washington from states like Illinois, it is the absence of a personal income tax.

If the highly taxed Boeing officers and board are looking for consolation, maybe it's the defeat of the Seahawks by the Bears last weekend. Now the Boeing crowd can go out to Soldiers Field this Sunday and watch the home team play the Packers. The weather prediction is 19 degrees Fahrenheit, and snow.

It already happened, in fact.....at the end of the Roman Empire. There is no word about whether the Emperor and Senate failed to control CO2 emissions. The London Telegraph has the story.

Re-reading A Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April, 1963) provides a glimpse into the mindset on all sides of the segregation issue, and, as such is a pleasant, if quaint, reminder of how far we have come. I heard Dr. King preach at Harvard's Memorial Church in 1962--the theme was doing all work, any work, "to the glory of God"--and George Gilder and I were able to hear his great oration at the Lincoln Memorial, the summer of '63--"I Have a Dream."

But there are many useful quotations from King that tend to surprise. In a "Letter" his most serious concern is the indifference of people who should be on his side. I like this one from "Letter," about the "white moderate":

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

Distracted all week by the terrible Arizona shootings, the Congress returns now to the long range problems of cutting the budget and the immediate fiscal crises in the states. But the nagging, murky saga of housing foreclosures also demands attention, because it is involved in all of our financial difficulties.

Peter J. Wallison, former Presidential Counsel to Ronald Reagan and a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, now at AEI, published a column in Monday's Wall Street Journal that deserves careful study. Wallison's perspective is deeply knowledgeable. The story he tells (it will surely become a book, I think) is complicated for laymen, but it is too important to be neglected.

Look: jobless claims are up again and housing foreclosures are volatile. We need careful, extensive, deliberative examination of the roots of the housing collapse (especially the roles of Fannie and Freddie) and the options for moving forward. The new House leadership should hear from Wallison soon.

Day after day, in editorials and columns, the way the New York Times and similar media organs attempt--against any evidence--to link the Jared Loughner murders in Tucson to political conservatives. It has become the kind of slander that even one of the few moderates at the Times, David Brooks, descries as "vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness." He was not naming his own paper, but his observation is so apt as to indicate that he will not be allowed on the op-ed page much longer if he continues in that vein.

Here is the Times editorial that sets the party line:

"It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats......

"That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of "the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country." . . .

"Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments." (Italics added.)

The Times editors and their like remind me of a satirical song (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, music by Mary Rodgers) from the 1960s, when lumpen revolutionaries were preaching "peace" in very unpeaceful ways. The difference between then and now is that then the vicious peaceniks were in the streets and now they are in editorial offices and faculty lounges.

Here is part of the "Hate Song".

We're gonna stamp out hate
That's our creed
Wipe out violence, intolerance and greed
We're gonna start right now
Tomorrow is too late
We're gonna stamp out hate.

We're gonna stamp out hate
Stamp it in the ground
And then take happiness and spread it all around
We'll put an end to grief
We can hardly wait
We're gonna stamp out hate.

We're gonna stamp out hate
Sock it in the eye
Shoot it in the stomach yelling, die, die, die!
We'll pull its insides out
And look at look at what it ate
We're gonna stamp out hate.

We're gonna stamp out hate
Lash it with a switch
Amputate its arms and legs and see how long they twitch
We'll put its toes on hooks
And dangle them for bait
We're gonna stamp out hate.

The wrong lessons, as usual, are being taken from the weekend attacks in Tucson, AZ.

The first reports on the shooting of some 18 people in Arizona--with six dead, including a federal judge, and the critical wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Tuscon--led almost at once to speculation that the shooter might have been someone influenced by the tea parties and by Sarah Palin, in particular. The fact that the Congresswoman was a Democrat who had been opposed by a tea party backed candidate in the last election gave rise to this assertion, but in no way justified it.

Now that we know that Jared Loughner, 22, was a mentally disturbed person with a grab bag of incoherent grievances about the government's supposed control of grammar and interference with consciousness, there obviously is no future in trying to blame conservatives for the killing spree. (The federal judge who was killed, in fact, was an appointee for Pres. George H. Bush). So, instead, there are mutterings about "hateful speech" in the media (meaning conservative talk radio, one guesses) that would inspire such an atrocity. The New York Times even hints that the controversy over federal funding of health care may be responsible.

That is exploitative, free-floating speculation. Promoting civility in public life is a great idea. But there is nothing at all to suggest that this deranged young man was motivated by anyone in or out of politics.

Here instead is the real question: what was such a sociopath doing on the loose? Why was he not in a mental institution? Let that question guide the investigation ahead. It's the best way to make sense of this and similar terrible incidents, and to prevent more of the same.

The most perverse message film of all time may have been One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975. Brilliantly scripted and acted, the movie that won five Oscars; however, as several reviewers noted at the time, it lent itself to political assumptions against mental hospitals that were overwrought, at the least. The film and other tales of wrongful incarceration of people whose only offense was harmless eccentricities, led to a spate of laws to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill and raise the bar even for compulsory incarceration of those who are potentially dangerous to society. As I said at the time, it forged an unholy alliance of politicians eager to save money and politicians eager to advance libertarian individualism.

In recent years I have seen examples of how good care can salvage the life of a mentally ill person who is, indeed, potentially dangerous. But such cases take attention and professional services. Unfortunately, since the 70s, neither political party has made mental illness a high priority. Yet who among us would disagree that Jared Loughner should have been in an institutional setting, not loose on the street?

Every time we have one of these "senseless killings", as they usually are called, it seems that an unbalanced person is involved. Every time there nonetheless are media voices trying to find some political explanation or demanding a ban on guns. Isn't it time to get serious about such killings and provide help for the mentally ill who are potential killers--and safety for the rest of society?

They are reading the whole Constitution on the floor of the US House today, and it seems to annoy the media and many Democrats. If these folks were smart, they would use the occasion to state their own views on the Constitution rather than protesting the "Constitution worship" with which they accuse Republicans. Instead, they have reacted as conservatives predicted, with attempted ridicule and petulance.

Conservatives are right to revere (they don't worship) the Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence. At a singularly propitious point in a new country of only three million people, a uniquely remarkable group of leaders came together to establish by reflection and consultation the finest guiding document in political history. It is principled and yet capable of amendment. It has lasted longer than any comparable document.

Unfortunately, since at least the Progressive Era, the Left that supposedly trusts the people has sought to avoid the amendment process as a way of modernizing the Constitution and to change the document's plain meaning by judicial decree and administrative fiat. Today the new House leaders are calling them on it. So, what it is the Left is really feeling today is not amusement or annoyance, but embarrassment. The more liberal (er, "progressive") critics carry on, the more they reveal their ignorance and bias. A lot of Americans accordingly are getting a bit of education in civics.

If you have insurance, America's health care is probably the best in the world. Even if you don't, it's up there with the second tier. What you also have is a certain amount of patient control, an ability for you and your family and your doctor to shape your care. At worst, if an insurance company refuses to pay for some procedure, you can pay for it yourself. In many socialized systems, you can't do that. In order to make the system work, private citizens are stripped of the option to buy their own health treatments.

That is why rationing is so feared by Americans. At some point, the government, lacking money for comprehensive coverage, decides who gets treatment and who doesn't. At an extreme, the government encourages old and very sick people to stop fighting the odds and make an end-of-life plan that eases a medical decision to cut off care--and save the government money. A "living will", sadly, seems to be sensible mainly when one signs it, but not necessarily so sensible (as my late mother found out) when emergency care is needed. In my mom's case, she was intubated after a heart attack, even though her living will said she shouldn't be. She was greatly relieved later that the living will had not been consulted; the oversight saved her life.

Wesley Smith, of our Center on Human Exceptionalism, blogs today at First Things about the latest decision of the Obama Administration to pull the plug on what seemed to be another try--administratively--to adopt what Sarah Palin dubbed "death panels."

by Wesley J. Smith (posted originally at National Review Online's "Corner")

Norman Ornstein had a piece in the Washington Post railing against "death panels" in Indiana and Arizona, both of which involved Medicaid budget limits. He omitted the death panel in Oregon -- perhaps because it is a liberal state? -- which has explicitly rationed care under Medicaid since being allowed to conduct rationing under the Clinton administration. In Oregon, Medicaid has a list of over 700 procedures, and will cover only the number permitted by their budget, usually in the low- to mid-600s. All those procedures on the wrong side of the line are not paid for by Medicaid.

The point of Oregon's experiment was to expand coverage at the expense of cutting off the sickest people. For example, double organ transplants have been refused. That hasn't worked, but the state has kept its rationing scheme anyway. As a consequence, many poor Oregonians have, over the years, been denied potentially life-extending treatments. In 2008, two late-stage cancer patients were denied chemotherapy that could have extended their lives by Medicaid -- but were offered payment for their assisted suicides!

What is the common thread that connects the death panels in these three states? Medicaid is a single-payer system in which budgets are limited. When the money runs out, people's options shrink. See also, the U.K.'s NHS and, increasingly, Canada's national health-care system, in which life-extending chemotherapy has also been restricted in some places.

Many Obamacare supporters see the ACA is a necessary step to the ultimate goal, a federal single-payer system. But those who are attracted to this option should learn from Indiana, Arizona, and Oregon: Government can get away with treatment restrictions that would never be countenanced within a market-based system in which regulators would be on the side of the patients, rather than the government funder. In other words, if you like death panels -- as Norm Ornstein points out, although he probably missed his own message -- single payer is the way to get them.

-- Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism

Before this year of economic hope and ideological change concludes, I would like to record World magazine's citation of two of 2010's literary accomplishments, Claire Berlinski's "There is No Alternative": Why Margaret Thatcher Matters and Ben Wiker's Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read.

Actually, Basic Books brought out the Thatcher book in 2008, but it is becoming more topical--and popular--daily in the aftermath of the Tea Party's success and Mr. Obama's failures. Regnery's publication of the Wiker work is newer, but timeless in its application.

Both authors, saluted by editor Marvin Olasky in the December 18 issue, are Discovery Institute fellows. But you probably knew that.

The Obama Administration is trying on several fronts (FCC, EPA) to accomplish by bureaucratic executive fiat what Congress would not approve. And they are doing it during Christmas holidays, probably to prevent a bigger public--and Congressional--outcry. The latest example is the institution of end-of-life advice for senior citizens. Discovery Sr. Fellow, Wesley J. Smith, points out at National Review's "Corner" that having doctors seek directives of elderly patients on end-of-life or emergency care is innocuous on its own, but sets the stage for the kind of "death panels" and care rationing that Sarah Palin vividly described.

It is not enough that the State of California is nearly insolvent and headed into inevitable crisis; the state may be on the verge of another multi-billion dollar boondoggle that has nothing to do with serving the normal and necessary functions of state government and everything to do with runaway ambition, wishful thinking and waste. Wesley J. Smith, Discovery Sr. Fellow on Human Exceptionalism, writes about it in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Discovery Sr. Fellow John Wohlstetter has a smart, tidy analysis of the impact of two conservative victories in Congress as the folks prepare to go home. It's in The Daily Caller.

The conservative failure on other matters--notably, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell bill and the SMART treaty (presumably)--are relatively less important than the success in continuing the current tax rates and the defeat of the omnibus budget.

We may be in for a mini-ice age. Some say it is the perverse responsibility of climate change (aka, "global warming"). The more you heat your house, the colder the climate. Make sense?

Meanwhile some say it is really the fault of the sun. As a result, many are figuring out how to ban the sun. Or sue it. Or regulate it. Has anyone contacted the EPA? The ACLU?

Former Presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is now running for Mayor of Chicago. Assuming he is able to establish residency, is his election something to be savored--by Rahm himself?

Chicago is overwhelmingly in debt. Mayor Richard E. Daley has left a huge, inevitable debt for coming years and has used up the resources he supposedly husbanded for the future. Chicago suddenly is in very bad shape.

Can the state of Illinois help? Nope. It is in terrible shape, too. Illinois is spending about 35 percent more than it is taking in. Its bond rating is the second worst in the country.

A hearing in Chicago was held today to decide whether Emanuel is even eligible to run for mayor, his having lived in Washington, DC rather than the Windy City the past couple of years. Given Chicago's financial prospects, he may hope that the ruling--expected next week--will not be favorable.

It is hard to believe that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi could damage the reputation of Congress further, but they are proving it's possible. The President's leadership is lacking, too, and his popularity sinking further. This Congress is America's rival to the infamous Long Parliament of England.

It's time to eliminate or legally curtail the authority of Lame Duck legislative sessions. What is happening now in Washington, DC shows that the repudiated majority in the House and the reduced majority in the Senate cannot handle the few things the public needs to have done and wants to have done before they leave and instead are trying to ram through legislation they couldn't pass earlier (when the voters had them in their sights).

Not only should these lame ducks fly home, this kind of abuse of public trust should be procedurally constrained in the future by a more reform-minded Congress.

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith , among his other credentials, is an attorney with a long background in public policy law. As such, he is capable of a keen interpretation of the recent ruling against the Obamacare provision requiring each private citizen (adult) to purchase health care insurance. He has, indeed, provided such an interpretation at the online version of the journal First Things. Other websites are picking it up, too. The reasoning is fascinating. In sum, the legal issues are a lot more consequential than the mainstream media are suggesting.

President Obama's olive branch to Republicans over taxes is going through a huge change in Congress. It is swelling and morphing into a familiar seasonal object, the legislative Christmas Tree. Its boughs now are hung with new treats for various constituencies--from ethanol subsidies to Samoan economic development. These baubles have little to do with taxes, of course, and they run up the cost of the bill so much that some Republicans now may vote no. The GOP could do better with a retroactive bill in January that preserved the original Obama-McConnell deal.

The Pelosi-crats in the House are ill-disposed to the tax compromise, anyhow, and media commentators are speculating on whether they will demand changes in order to allow passage. Actually, this has turned out to be a perfect time to do the lame duckery that Republicans have feared all along, engorging an already swollen budget deficit. Faced with defections from special interests (like Sen. Grassley of corn-rich Iowa), the Senate Minority Leader McConnell may find his filibuster numbers easily falling below 40.

The Republican National Committee is asking the US Supreme Court to support greater coordination between political parties and party candidates' campaign committees. The case is from a 2008 campaign by Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao who was the party candidate for Congress in New Orleans. He won, but then was defeated in 2010. The issue is not really about him, but about whether a political party has the right to work with its own candidates. In this case, the "coordination" was only about the timing of a TV ad. Nonetheless, the principle is vitally important.

Our country's political system is founded on the principle of representative democracy. Within a few years of the Founding, political parties came into being as a natural means to express public will and to ally candidates. By the late 19th Century parties had become corrupt and in some cases tyrannous. In the past 120 years much has been done to correct the abuses of political parties, but now we are at the ridiculous point where candidates sometimes cannot even coordinate with their own parties. Before the whole electoral system implodes with silliness, the Supreme Court should look favorably on the request before it.

Remember, with political parties you can see what you get and the candidates of the party are responsible at least to the Republicans or Democrats. With ad hoc arrangements and specialized groups doing their own separate campaigning, accountability is vitiated. "Reform" these days means strengthening parties, not weakening them further.

Last year it was snowdrifts in Copenhagen, at this year's climate conclave in Cancun it is decidedly un-tropical temperatures in the low 50s. They're calling it the "Gore effect."

The sweeping tax deal worked out by President Obama and (mainly, it appears) the Republican leaders in Congress is the first fruit of the 2010 GOP victories in the House and, to a lesser degree in the Senate. Without those victories, no deal.

There is some question whether the Democrats led by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are going to go along. (Many liberal groups are livid.) Democrats in Congress really are stuck now. If they don't pass this deal, they spoil any chance for any other Lame Duck session legislation and will be blamed when the deal is enacted later--and with great disruptions--in the new Congressional session that begins in less than a month.

But this is certain: the decision to make only a two year extension in tax rates and the 35 percent tax cap on estates over $5 million (the "death tax") guarantees that these issues will be right back in the 2012 election debate. Maybe the White House thinks the public will back tax increases then, decoupled as they apparently will be from general tax rates. If so, President Obama, as a candidate (presumably), will benefit. But it may be that the public really don't want any tax increases, which seemed to be their mood in last month's election. If that is the case, it was a bad mistake for the President to arrange for the whole debate to get kicked into the next election cycle.

We have so many economic problems that stem from reckless federal government spending that financial problems in the states are getting relatively less attention. But the state problems--especially in big problem states, led by California--may be even worse than those in Washington, DC.

In the other Washington, the state, the voters last month defeated any attempt to raise taxes. So the governor and legislature are forced to choose now between cutting government salaries and pensions--which is very hard--or cutting basic government services--also very hard. Spending went up fast in the "fat years" and the only way to reduce it now may be to go back to the spending levels of several years ago.

The dominant Democrats are beholden to the public employee unions that supply much of the effective voter outreach in campaigns these days, so, in the end, rather than face their wrath, majority legislators may find it less painful (though horrible) to savage social programs for school children, the handicapped, the ill and prisoners. Regardless, the choices are grim. And Washington State is not at all atypical.

In fact, problems are much worse in California, Illinois and a few other notoriously spendthrift states. In California and Illinois the range of legislative choices will be greater, however. In addition to the options of salary and pension cuts and program cuts the option of still higher taxes will be very tempting. Democrats control Illinois and California, so expect to see the tax route followed in those cases. Unfortunately, higher taxes will not solve the problems of the biggest spending states, only damage the private economies that provide revenue in the first place.

Regardless, a bright light is going to be shown on completely unsustainable state and local salaries and pensions. The crisis developing in this sector is not unlike the mortgage bubble. And you know how that resulted.

Was it only 12 months ago that we were chuckling over the plight of attendees at the world climate change (aka, "global warming") conference in Copenhagen? Remember how most world leaders fled early because of an impending blizzard? The US President had put his prestige on the line, imagining that his famous charisma would break the diplomatic ice and produce a treaty. It did not. The ice held.

Now, with much less publicity coming out of this year's conference in Cancun, it seems that the swell computer models that predicted a spectacularly warm 2010 have failed once again. So, of course, did the hurricane predictions for the 2010, but then, those unfulfilled predictions are becoming predictable. But the global warming predictions are more consequential, leading to untold billions in government spending and truckloads of new regulations. Now, David Rose reports for the Daily Mail in London, it seems that the temperature has not materially warmed for fifteen (not just ten) years.

The Daily Mail concludes, "The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?"

Here's another question: When do journalists start to realize that computer models often are completely unreliable in science? Why have people forgotten the very oldest maxim about computers: "Garbage in, garbage out"?

When World War I was over the French built an impregnable Maginot Line to keep out any future German invasion. In World War II the Germans simply went around the Maginot Line to attack France--successfully.

The airport security we employ and endure today is the Maginot Line of the War Against Terrorism, the constantly updated effort to protect against the 9/11 terrorists' tactics, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber. Our colleague John Wohlstetter explains the well-meaning futility of this strategy.

The purpose of terrorism is not to inflict casualties on enemy combatants, but to terrorize the civilian population. That aim succeeded after 9/11 when our stock market tanked and Americans undertook increasingly invasive searches at our airports before ticketed passengers board planes.

Meanwhile, what prevents terrorists from blowing up hundreds of passengers at the departure counters before they ever board?

Nothing more than prevents some Somali fanatic from blowing up the Christmas tree lighting crowd in Portland, Oregon; namely, FBI detective work. THe terrorists aren't stupid. They eventually will find their way to vulnerable football games in Nebraska, shoppers at Macy's and faith gatherings in American cathedrals. What stands in their way is not metal detectors or pat downs, but advance police work.

Memo to the incoming Congress. Ask the old 9/11 Commission: how are we doing?

The City of San Francisco and its suburbs are considered unusually left wing when compared to the rest of California, let alone when compared to the rest of the country. Yet, as a result of the recent election the state electorate apparently decided to be governed in its top leadership almost exclusively by San Franciscans.

The newly recycled governor, Jerry Brown, is a former San Fran dweller who served a while recently as Mayor of Oakland. The Lt. Governor, Gavin Newsom, is stepping up from Mayor of San Francisco. Kamala Harris of San Francisco won a close race for Attorney General.

Retiring US House Speaker, soon to be Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, is San Francisco through and through. So is re-elected US Sen. Barbara Boxer and the senior senator, Diane Feinstein, another former Mayor.

In my childhood, Baghdad by the Bay, as the late columnist Herb Caen called it, actually had a Republican mayor, George Christopher (1956-64). Then the mayors started moving progressively left. Frank Jordan, a Democrat ex-Chief of Police, was elected in 1992, but he was replaced four years later by the more liberal Willie Brown, who was replaced by Gavin Newsom in 2004, who moved the ideology meter further seaward. Newsom's successor is likely to be the still further leeward State Assemblyman (from San Francisco) Tom Ammiano.

If San Francisco moves any more left, it will fall into the Pacific, pulling the state into the drink with it.

"They're going to have to grow a lot of medical marijuana out there," George Gilder says on Fox News Business today. At some point his warnings about California's suicidal state fiscal policies are going to have to be heeded.

Excuse me if I seem cynical, but the new SEC scandal about hedge funds reminds me a bit of the legal festivities of ambitious former New York A.G., later Governor, then "Client No. 9", Eliot Spitzer. The Wall Street Journal news story today (subscription may be required) suggests that the purposes of the "insider trading" investigations may include breaking new prosecutorial ground to "shake up stock research" customs. Call it "reform by other means."

It's sounds great: 250 coyotes with radio collars are on the prowl in downtown Chicago to catch mice and rats. The City says they are "shy" and "no danger". They will provide someone with a good research experiment, which is probably the most likely motivation for their being loose.

However, the coyotes may not know that they are limited to such kill as rodents. They have been known to catch pets, especially cats. In packs they can chase down and kill a big dog. One can forsee the news story when one or more take Fifi the toy poodle away from her Grand Dame owner on North Michigan Avenue. The Grand Dame will call Da Mayor--and her lawyer, and The Chicago Tribune.

So it should be an interesting human experiment, too.

Cartoon credit: Chuck Jones Enterprises

The excuses for huge federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol are running out. Now Al Gore has admitted that his original endorsement (and casting the key Senate vote in 1994 when he was Vice President) was a mistake. Not a political mistake; it benefitted him back then. Just a policy mistake.

In 2010, however, the environmental community is finding the ethanol program an embarrassment.

Corn ethanol cannot be supported by the market; it costs too much to produce. It doesn't help the environment. It doesn't really free us from overseas oil and has much less potential than other biomass products. Moreover, federal subsidies have driven up the cost of food, especially since corn is used in so many different food products.

Finally, the farmers whose votes are at stake (many of them Republicans) in key states like Iowa--where the presidential caucuses for 2012 will take place only 14 months from now--are getting good corn prices these days. They don't need the subsidy. If getting rid of corn ethanol subsidies is part of a broad range of budget cuts across the country and across varied occupations, it probably will be accepted in the farm belt.

So let's see: corn ethanol is not a wise source of alternative energy, it is hugely wasteful of taxpayer dollars at a time when the country is deeply in debt, it raises food costs and doesn't particularly help the farmer. All it has going for it is a lobby of fadied-green lobbyists who profit from the subsidies. Can we find a little courage in Congress to cut it?

Photo credit: planetware

A number of political observers think that the new Republican majority will ignore social issues because of the high priority everyone attaches to economic issues. That's misleading, however.

First, one of the easiest votes for conservatives next year will be to defund organizations like Planned Parenthood that conduct abortions in this country or overseas. That's one reason NARAL was so active in the political races this fall.

Says Iowa Congressman Steve King, ""I think that we're going to start this Congress out, it will be about debt, deficit, jobs and the economy, but part of that is un-funding Planned Parenthood through the appropriations process," he said. "I think that would satisfy a lot of social conservatives. If we ended public funding for abortion in America, that would be a huge step in the right direction."

This doesn't mean that the effort to defund NARAL will succeed, only that the effort will get pretty united Republican support, especially in the House.

Second, in a real sense, the financial issues facing America also are moral issues--social issues, if you will. That's much of the motivation behind the Tea Party movement. When a government debauches its own currency and runs deficits that cannot realistically be repaid short of confiscatory taxes, the morale of the public is assaulted. People are discouraged from thinking long term. Self-reliance withers. Trust in others erodes. Thrift is undermined.

All of this constitutes a moral issue, and a big one.

Unfunded pension commitments in the state of California are so big that even officials differ on what they represent. Is it $200 billion? 300? 500? Regardless, it is coming due and Calpers, the state pension system, is counting on what seem like unreasonable returns on its investments.

Much is based on Calpers' decision to invest heavily in "green technology" that requires federal subsidies.

Israelis are even bigger targets for terrorists than Americans, but they haven't had airplane bombings or hijacks in decades. Why not? Because they "profile" in the sense that they use all the information available from their intelligence agency, provide psychological training for airport screeners and actually interview each passenger. It doesn't take long; in fact, security lines move faster than in most US airports.

In the US we cannot tolerate any kind of profiling, at least, not officially. So we now are reduced to full body scans of an undignified kind that are not permitted anywhere else outside the privacy of a doctor's office. We have children in tears, old ladies confused, attractive young people humiliated. Why? For the sake of security or for the sake of political correctness?

The riot of jokes going around (this is a family blog, so I won't indulge) may be the new custom's undoing. Meanwhile, the process is not funny for most people and not really relished either by the TSA folk who have been ordered to perform it.

Fire Homeland Security. Hire the Israelis.

French cartoonist Frederick Deligne's take in the newspaper Nice-Matin

You might wonder how the newly elected House majority members have time to read, but of course busy people often read the most. So it is that George Gilder's The Israel Test and Claire Berlinski's Why Margaret Thatcher Matters are named in an article today by Tevi Troy at National Review Online. (Hat tip to Alex Lykken.)

If you are going to someone's house for Thanksgiving you might want to bring them one of those books ("It's what they are reading now on The Hill") instead of a bottle of wine or flowers. Or consider God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards and just published by Discovery Institute Press, especially if you have a misguided relative who thinks Darwinism is compatible with orthodox Christian or Jewish faith. Guaranteed to keep the table talk lively.

Ground was broken today for the George W. Bush Presidential Library that will grace Southern Methodist University, opening in 2013. People seemed to be in a good humor as the work began, except for publicity seeking protesters who don't want the library on their campus. George and Laura were there, so were Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and former President Uribe of Colombia (testifying to Bush's role in helping defeat the Marxist rebels in his country).

Writes the Wall Street Journal for Wednesday's edition, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who used a cane to climb to the dais, made a dig at the Obama administration, calling the presidential center 'the only shovel-ready project in America,' drawing laughs."

Our Sr. Fellow George Gilder commands the "most read" space on the Wall Street Journal opinion page today with his article, "California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby". The information adds nails to the coffin that voters in the Golden State have fashioned for themselves. It has been a familiar theme for this space, Discovery News, for several weeks now.

You might think that the California calamity opens opportunities for other states, notably nearby Washington, where voters just turned down an income tax on the wealthy (e.g., entrepreneurs, small businesses, investors in new jobs) and where the next state legislative session is not about new taxes, but major surgery on spending. Washington has energy for power-hungry computer companies and it has an outstanding employee base. Texas is another state that would seem likely to benefit from the follies in California.

However, in the last analysis, we all are damaged by the bad judgement of California politicians, high tech leaders and, yes, voters. Gilder spells it out, but it's only "Chapter 1." There is more to come.

Romantics are in charge in the energy field in California now. They have equally romantic friends in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. They need a course in realism and they are going to have to take it. So are we all, unfortunately.

Getty Images

Construction on the Erie Canal, 1817.

The outrageous abuse of earmarks in recent years has led to proposals to ban earmarks altogether. It was a promise on the lips of every Tea Party candidate and many others. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader in the Senate, today signed onto the idea, reversing his previous position.

There is a reason for earmarks and it is one you have not seen described much in the media or in campaign addresses. It is that when elected officials pass laws on subjects that affect their constituencies--say, Kentucky, Mitch McConnell's state--there is no assurance that the bureaucrats who manage the subsequent program or law will pay any attention to what the legislators intended. What counts later is the language of the legislation and the amount of money allocated to it.

It would be nice to consign Californians to their own selected (and elected) fate. But the numbers coming out of that state are so horrible that they threaten not only California, but also the rest of us. Here is the report from the California Legislative Analyst's Office that describes the $6 billion that the state will be short this year, and the $19.3 billion it will be short next year.

Where will they get the money?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many, if not most, non-profit organizations--from colleges and universities to church run charities--are populated by political liberals who support tax increases for the well to do (often described as annual income of over $200,000). One wonders how many of them have considered the link between high taxes and philanthropy. A Merrill Lynch study just out suggests at least that a bad market means cuts in charitable giving.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the damage may be worse than is being reported. If the number of semi-desperate appeals I receive from non-profits in the mail and by email are an indication, the long economic slump is biting harder as time goes by.

Raising taxes at this point not only would hurt small businesses and entrepreneurs, but also, indirectly, non-profits. The added money that goes to the government, in many cases, would stop going to charities. Instead of toying with new taxes, officials would be better advised to urge all folks with good jobs to give more to favorite charities.

One reason public employee unions spent so much money on the this year's campaigns was to prevent state legislators from looking to state and local pension systems as places to cut. Having failed to help their candidates win in a number of big states--Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, etc.--the union leaders probably will realize their fears come budgetary sessions in January.

Even in solid blue states like California, Illinois and Massachusetts, the prevailing Democrats themselves are going to face alternatives of cuts to services or cuts to the growth of pensions and salaries. In Illinois, where Gov. Quinn, a Democrat who won a narrow election to a full term advocating tax increases, the issue of pensions will prove daunting once the public sees their sacrifices increasing in order that state employees don't have to sacrifice.

Today the Christian Science Monitor editorialized in favor of pension cuts. "Few politicians, even Democrats backed by the public-worker unions," declares the Monitor, "could afford not to propose reforms for these retirement benefits that are often abused, underfunded, and usually far more generous than those in private business."

The Monitor is a kind of canary in mine shaft of media opinion, so watch for more public pressure on pension costs once the alternatives become clearer. You won't wait long.

(Photo courtesy of The Guardian)

It's a week after the election supposedly was concluded, yet Washington State is still counting in a big way. Several close races remain undecided, as has become commonplace since the all-mail ballot was adopted statewide (except in Pierce County--Tacoma).

There is no other state that I know of where political operatives seem to become busiest after the returns start coming in. On election day in Washington, come 8 p.m., PDT, the non-existent "polls" close and the first results pour forth on computer and TV screens. At that point, the candidates and parties start really bustling, calling "their" people who did not vote and urging them to do so.

In various close races, campaign callers offer to come to a person's home to pick up the ballot and, presumably, even put a stamp on it and deliver it to one of the post office outlets that stay open until midnight. (After all, if a person was too lazy to vote before the polls closed, you can't count on his rushing out later to a post office.) Only after midnight--four hours into the vote count--do ballots no longer qualify for the election day postmark that makes the ballot legal. Get it? Uniquely in Washington State you can legally go out and get more votes if your candidate is behind in the early returns.

Syndicated radio host Dennis Prager, who lives in Orange County, asks, what is the difference between Californians and the passengers on the Titanic? The answer:

"The passengers on the Titanic didn't vote to hit the iceberg."

I have my own question: How can the United States recover from the slump when California, home to Silicon Valley and representing one-tenth of the nation's population, is bent on destroying its economy? Voters in California, as noted before, have voted to give themselves a huge hike in energy costs for the dubious honor of combatting global warming and have elected the same governor, Jerry Brown, who in the 70s opened the door to collective bargaining for state workers, even though the government now has $500 billion in unfunded pensions and already is unable to pay its bills. They have passed an initiative sponsored by the teachers union that will make it easier for the Legislature to increase spending and taxes.

The Census count for 2010 is expected to show that for the first time in its history, California is not growing enough to add a new House seat. It soon may be showing a substantial outflow of middle class voters. What's left are those too rich to care about taxes and those to poor to care. Ah, but the real tax base is in the vast middle, and that is about to shrink.

The states that will benefit most are Texas, Arizona and Washington.

This ran last summer in the Manitoba Herald, but is getting wide circulation now, for obvious reasons.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS OUT OF CONTROL
by Clive Runnels
The Manitoba Herald, Canada
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party are prompting an exodus among left-leaning U.S. citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

Two newly elected Congressional Republicans who are black--from Florida and South Carolina--are rather sure to end the bogus campaign charge that The Tea Party was racist. Allen West, elected to the US House from a long time Democratic seat in Boca Raton, Florida, had fun with Sean Hannity on the subject. Speaking of leftist tactics, West, a former Army Colonel, said, "(T)he No.1 thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist."

So true. But that truth has more clout when the speaker is both black and a big supporter of the Tea Party himself.

West points out that the "Tea" in Tea Party stands for "Taxed Enough Already." The transparent purpose of the movement was to elect officials who would stop runaway federal spending, prevent tax increases and support Constitutional government. Making out such people to be racists was a sign of desperation on the part of their foes.

If, as the previous post notes, there has been a small uptick in hiring nationwide, there is one precinct in the country where hiring suddenly is red-hot: Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Of course, as a result of Tuesday's election unemployment rates there also are high. The turnover in the House is greater than after any election in sixty some years. As a result, Republican Members are encountering a dearth of seasoned talent, unless they want to hire Democratic staffers on their way out. Some old Republican staff veterans of the Hill who retired years ago are fluffing up their resumes and sending them in. Experience may not count much any more in elections, but it still does in staffing Hill offices.

Meanwhile a similar picture is emerging in state capitols, where the GOP picked up some 680 new seats around the country, a bigger shift than any since the 1920s. The staffing needs are less than in a Congressional office, and some cover only the Legislative sessions that typically start in January next year and end three months later.

In the past--under Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 and Bush 43--Republican strategists believed that some curse afflicted them when it came to the timing announcements for unemployment and jobs figures. It seemed that just after any campaign wherein the Republican president and his party were attacked for high unemployment rates the picture would improve almost immediately after the election. That was frustrating.

Now the curse seems to have settled on the Democrats. Today's jobs report shows 151,000 new jobs created in October, the greatest gain since April. Had the numbers come out last week there would have been quite a lot of partisan crowing. The "summer of recovery" finally would have arrived, albeit a couple of months late. Instead, there has to be some gnashed teeth at the White House and the Democratic National Committee. Of course, skeptics might point out that the unemployment rate remains stubbornly at 9.6 percent.

The employment/unemployment numbers are collected each month by the Census Bureau (in two forms, based on business' unemployment figures and on self-reported figures by individuals). Then they are analyzed and publicly announced by the Labor Department. No peaking allowed at the White House, which is probably a good thing if you want people to believe in the objective of our statistical services.

Republicans disappointed that their gubernatorial and senatorial candidates lost in California have been writing off the future of the Golden State as far as two-party competition is concerned. Among other things, in comparison to the country as a whole, the political identification of voters going into the polls in California Tuesday was far more Democratic--by 13 points. Seen that way, it's surprising that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina did as well as they did.

Moreover, once in the voting booth, Californians voted this year to end the budgetary restraint that exists now and allow a simple majority, rather than two thirds, of the Legislature to approve a budget. It seemed like a harmless vote, a way to end gridlock, but effectively it assures runaway spending, followed by higher and higher taxes. The voters also voted against Proposition 23 that would have delayed implementation of California's severe new anti-global warming law until unemployment dropped to five percent.

In order to get the post-election agenda right, it is important that the election itself be understood. It was about issues: spending, jobs, taxes, over-regulation. William Galston's article, "It's the Ideology, Stupid," gets that right at the liberal New Republic. Others are trying to rationalize the outcome; people were confused, the White House didn't do a good enough job communicating, etc. The best path ahead for Democrats is to come to terms with reality.

The old legislative rubric is, if you have the votes, vote; if you don't, talk. In this election the rubric was, if you have the issues, campaign on the issues; if not, throw sand in the voters' eyes.

The economy needs investors to get back to investing. They have demurred out of fear of tax rate increases and a general uncertainty about the government's intentions. A short term (e.g., two year) extension, as the Administration, post-election, seems prepared to grant, will not work well. It is urgent to settle the Bush tax cuts as normative until at least after the next election, as our senior fellow, John Wohlstetter, points out in his Letter from Washington:

"The outlines of a compromise tax bill are being suggested by pols & pundits alike.  Essentially, the compromise under consideration would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for those below a certain income ceiling ($250K is Obama's number, $1M is Chuck Schumer's number), while extending the tax cuts for those above the ceiling for two years.  GOP leaders may support this idea.

"Here is the trap: Tax cuts only increase incentives to invest if they are sufficiently long-term to induce investors to increase investment.  Ideally the reductions would all be permanent, maximizing incentives to invest.  Tax rebates (such as those signed by President Bush 43) do not change incentives, and thus to not stimulate economic activity.  Permanent tax cuts (e.g., President Reagan's 1982 cut & the 1978 & 1998 capital gains tax cuts) increase government revenue (capital gains historically increase in the first year the new rates take effect).

America is becoming a more heterogeneous society, with growing percentages of people from other countries and cultures, especially Latin Americans. The election of 2008 was thought to be the watershed moment when the old stock white Americans, who tended to vote for people like John McCain, were overcome in influence and votes by the new Obama coalition that included blacks, Latinos, urban progressives and "mind workers", blue collar workers, gays, and youth. James Carville wrote a book called "Forty More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation," that limned this theory.

There is something to it, but the obvious hole in it is the same that is seen in all theories of social determinism--the assumption that the future will be a direct line projection of the present. Once upon a time, for example, "Irish Americans" voted Democratic and, as their numbers grew, it was thought, so too would their role in expanding the Democratic party. Trouble was, starting with Eisenhower in 1952, voters of Irish ancestry started swinging to the Republicans. Something similar may happen to Latinos, who are not a monolithic group even now. Likewise blacks. Several Republicans with Latino background were elected this Tuesday, including two governors (Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Brian Sandoval in Nevada), at least four new House members (Jaime Herrera in Washington, Francisco Conseco and Bill Flores of Texas, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and David Rivera in Florida) and Marco Rubio of Florida in the Senate. (Florida has two other House seats occupied by Republicans of Hispanic background.) Two new members of the House Republican Caucus are black, West of Florida and Scott of South Carolina.

The Tea Party taught the pros in both parties several lessons, including the value of a clear populist message, but the pros have shown the Tea Party a thing or two, also. Decades ago Ray Bliss, Republican National Chairman, preached the importance of "organization," to the point that sound policies and a compelling campaign message were relatively neglected. Regardless, there was no doubt that Bliss' home state of Ohio in those days, and even today, was famous for its GOP organization in depth. This year the Republicans won back control of the governorship, both houses of Ohio's legislature and replaced one Republican senator (Voinovich) with another (Rob Portman), and added four new US House seats.

This year the Republican Party National Committee did much less well in fundraising than did the rival Democrats, and it showed in turnout efforts. In contrast, the NRCC (GOP House campaign committee) did much better than its Democratic counterpart.

Meanwhile, outside conservative groups like American Crossroads were immensely successful in matching overall pro-Democratic spending on ads and internet efforts. Trouble is, TV ads this year went beyond saturation to over-kill. Sometimes the ads piled on top of one another. Yet Republicans paid in places like Nevada and California for lack of year round paid organizational effort.

The pundits, if not the people, have spoken and the Republicans are expected to make major gains in Congress. There probably will be some nail biters that signal plane loads of party lawyers to descend on whatever unfortunate jurisdiction has the close race. If the anguishing contest(s) happen in a state with all mail or mostly mail-in ballots, expect weeks of frustration and outrage. Just what you wanted at the end of a long, bitter campaign

But that's not the half of it. Remember the Lame Duck session? It has to happen. All the big tax and budget decisions were put off in order not to rile up the natives. The natives, having become quite riled up anyhow, will now watch, and comment on, either a statesmanlike effort by Democrats to compromise with the outnumbered, but just-mandated Republicans, as a pile of prickly issues grows on legislative desks. Among them: income tax rates scheduled to jump in January; the Alternative Minimum Tax (many millions of middle income families will pay if this annual adjustment is not approved, and even if they are forced to pay now, they will pay back later the party that hits them with a tax supposedly levied on the rich only); and the estate tax (death tax) that, if not prevented, will rise to 55 percent in January ("Shoot me now!").

When they've got all that settled, they can resolve the budget that didn't get passed.

Candidates who are a bit behind in the polls are counting on either "enthusiasm" or their "ground game" (or both) to win for them.

The ground game is mainly about painstaking efforts to identify voters--door to door is most effective--and then get them to the polls. As Ford O'Connell and Steve Pearson of The Daily Caller observe, in modern campaigns TV is essential but insufficient, particularly in a close race.

Polls show a Republican tide, but look closely and you see that while people who seem to be "likely voters" are prepared to vote Republican this year "registered voters" are more Democratic.

Organizational action can make up for a deficit of commitment on the part of voters. Public employee unions are good at the ground game, whereas only once recently, in 2004, have Republicans developed a ground game that was very successful. Therefore, to the extent Democrats are able to get their voters out they will cut their otherwise major losses tomorrow.

Of course, one problem with a ground game: getting voters to the polls may bring out a goodly proportion that don't wind up voting your way!

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) is a powerful member of the current House majority. He has serious competition in the election this year, but is expected to survive just fine. One of the bills he loves most and would like to see the Obama Administration embrace is expansion of National Service to make it universal and mandatory. At 18 you would serve either in the military or in some approved civilian (government-funded) position, such as hospital care, education, or parks maintenance. A bill to achieve this aim already has been submitted.

President Obama himself endorsed the idea in the 2008 campaign, but then dropped it, as World Net Daily reminds us today, and it is a favorite of many progressives. It also is an idea that has been around since well before the military draft was abolished in the early 70s. That means that the arguments are well known. Ultimately, the sides trace to differing worldview conceptions of freedom and service. Progressives of an idealistic bent suppose that if voluntarism is good, the benefits would only increase if service became universal and compulsory. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead suggested back in 1966, think of the crooked teeth that could be straightened if all young people came through the hands of the government in their late teens; think of the improvements to study habits and personal hygiene that could be effected by a stint in "service". You see, we could help the younger generation (the folks who have trouble otherwise cleaning up their rooms) even as we taught them to help others.

I was at Harvard with Barney Frank. He was immensely popular in front of a crowd, the scourge of authority, tribune of of uncommon sense, the court jester of liberalism. The more outrageous he seemed, the more the university folk urged him on. Barney learned that you could make rude funny. He later apparently found that in Massachusetts discourteous tactics that would be regarded as out of bounds for a conservative were all right--almost a source of satisfaction--on the majoritarian left. In Congress today, people not his equals in power are afraid of him.

Rep. Frank, along with Sen. Dodd and Sen. Schumer, was one of the biggest defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the Bush Administration tried to reform them.

Peter Wallison also was at Harvard about the time that Barney Frank was performing. Peter, an ace lawyer and former Treasury official, is soft spoken, immensely amused by politics and life, but in a gentle way. He also is deeply knowledgeable about the legal and financial mistakes that led to the housing bubble. He warned about it for at least nine years before the bubble burst and then he described that process to any who would listen. A fellow at AEI, he is writing a book about the subject.

Today Peter writes at AEI's American blog about the surprising acknowledgements by Rep. Frank a few weeks ago that maybe, just maybe, it was a mistake to insist on government support for bad housing loans. But, he concludes, the turnaround in Barney's thinking seem to have been a temporary diversion.

One way or another, the new Congress is likely to take up Peter Wallison's topic, regardless of whether Barney Frank is on board.

If 75 percent of Americans, according to some polls, don't know who Rep. John Boehner of Ohio is--even though a Republican capture of the House would likely make him Speaker--they surely are even less familiar with Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Chairman of the Republican Conference, Pence is the number two ranking Republican in the House. More importantly, he is being considered as a dark horse candidate for President. Many conservatives comment approvingly about his general voting record, character and "viability."

Tomorrow Rep. Pence is slated to speak on behalf of Daniel Webster, who is running for a Florida seat the GOP is probably going to pick up next Tuesday. According to Politico.com, Pence is going to declare, contrary to some recent DC gossip, that a GOP majority would not be inclined to compromise with Democrats, including the President.

Regardless of how you feel about this theme, don't get too excited. A party that doesn't stand firmly for the program upon which it campaigned (in this case, spending cuts, no tax increases and reduced regulation) would demoralize its supporters. On the other hand, most voters know, as they did with Ronald Reagan, for example, that government entails responsibility to...well...govern. So, if Republicans get control of the House, or even the House and Senate, they still will be unable to roll over the President. What they can do is deny spending approvals and tax increases. They can hold hearings about government abuses, including over-regulation. They can pass good bills that it will force the Senate and the President to go on record, one way or another. And....they can compromise, on those occasions when getting half a loaf is better than none.

What people want to see, I think, is steely resolve to put principles into action. On the other hand, they don't expect or want ostrich-like avoidance of realities. It's hard to see the dividing line, of course, especially a week before an election. But it's there and finding it is a test of leadership.

Relatives asked me a couple of days ago if I wasn't concerned about all the "corporate" money coming into campaigns "anonymously" this year. Implicit in the question is the idea that the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has made soft money campaigning so profitable that literally hundreds of millions have been raised outside the two political parties this year.

Surely the cure is to have more laws to control or, even better, prohibit such activity?

Actually, no. If anything, the new money merely begins to compensate for the even vaster sums of money that government unions have long been able to put into campaigns and the natural advantages that our current laws give to incumbents. Even this year, incumbent Democrats, for example, are far out-raising their Republican opponents.

Twenty eight years ago a Census Bureau study by Dr. Gordon Green, an economist and chief of the bureau's Government Division, revealed that poverty was not going up in those days because of lack of federal programs to support the poor, but because of family breakups. This was a splash of cold water on the face of social analysis in America since it contradicted the familiar trope that it is poverty that causes family breakups. In fact, to repeat, it is family breakup that causes chronic poverty in most cases.

Now the Census is out with another study. We see poverty growing again, even during relatively good times (2008, before the economic slump began to bite) and this time it is happening largely because families are not forming at all. Marriage is going out of style among the poor. It is not too much in style among the upper classes, either.

No one wants to talk about this as a public policy issue, but it is major. Some 3.7 million Americans fell into poverty in 2008, which, as I say, was well before the brunt of the recession was felt. Crucially, single mothers bearing children out of wedlock are five times more likely to fall into poverty than those women who are married.

Jay Richards, a senior fellow of Discovery Institute and editor of the new Discovery book, God and Evolution, today debunks the idea that the salience of economic issues in the 2010 mid-term elections means that prospective Republican gains mean that the GOP will be less friendly to conservative social issues. The opposite seems to be true. Social conservatives happen to see a moral dimension to economics that other voters miss.

Most of the new candidates are conservative on all issues, including abortion, for example. It's just that some campaigns are fought over different sets of priorities, depending on the year. Sometimes it is social issues, sometimes foreign policy, and this time it's the constellation of spending, jobs and taxes.

Watch out for what is not being covered prominently in the news. There were many warnings about Islamist terrorism before 2001, including an explosion detonated at the World Trade Towers. Yet Americans preoccupied with domestic politics in September 2001 were caught unawares by the jihadists, changing our lives ever since. Likewise, the Bush Administration itself, and Sen. John McCain, were warning about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mis-regulated housing market as early as 2003. Yet they and all of us were thinking about politics, not economics, when the bubble burst in the fall of 2008, bringing about the slump we still endure.

Today, we are getting news about cyber-warfare that should alert even the politicos and observers fastened completely on next week's mid-term Congressional elections. Seymour Hersh is not my favorite writer, but give him credit for the warning in the latest New Yorker, "The Online Threat".

According to Hersh, there is a bureaucratic territorial struggle between the Department of Homeland Security, which is adding 1000 cyber security staff, and the N.S.A. (Sound familiar?) There is also a struggle between the cause of defending against cyber-attacks--which would militate in favor of everyone, public and private, obtaining encryption (which is available already)--and the interests of the military in having as much acces so computers as possible in order to catch cyber-terrorists in the act.

But surely if we know that encryption is the way to go, so do our opponents? To put it another way, if encryption is outlawed (or discouraged), only outlaws will use encryption. That is an exaggeration, but sanguine predictions that the kinds of terrorists who would like to destroy us (e.g., al Qaida) rather than merely spy on us (e.g., the Chinese) are unlikely to attack successfully and soon remind me of the same sanguine attitudes toward homeland attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon--prior to September, 2001. It will not go well with today's national leaders if they fail this time to protect us. Of course, in case of a successful cyber-attack, it will not go well with any of us.

Former Bush aide Peter Wehner submits in a Commentary magazine post today that the Juan Williams affair--and the revealing and damaging comment by Vivian Schiller, NPR's CEO, that Juan Williams might want to see his "psychiatrist"--has exposed NPR to new and unwanted scrutiny. The threat to NPR is not so much that the government will cut off its funding--it's only a small share of NPR's budget, assigned through the quasi-governmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting--but that foundations and corporations that in the past have seen NPR as a neutral news source they could sponsor without risk to their reputation may now become cautious. As is, NPR already gets a lot of its money from groups that have an ideological stake in how news is covered.

The most serious immediate repercussion of the Juan Williams firing may be that Mara Liasson's position is now rendered shaky. Liasson is less well known than Williams, but is a generally well regarded newswoman who appears on Fox as well as NPR. If NPR's stated policies regarding Fox are strictly enforced, she may be forced to choose.

Meanwhile, if Republicans win control of the House, you also may see hearings about NPR and its objectivity.

Twenty nine years ago, Juan Williams was a brash young reporter for the Washington Post. I was at a convivial luncheon party where he didn't really recognize me as a new member of the Reagan Administration. With his guard down he let it be known at our table what contempt he had for President Reagan and his policies. He was so harsh that I remember thinking, I don't believe I should ever allow myself to be interviewed by this man.

Indeed, a couple of years later, I had moved from the Census Bureau to the White House's Office of Planning and Evaluation. One of our initiatives was development of a family issues program--one that led in time to changes in the tax treatment of families, enactment of adoption-friendly policies and an anti-crime effort to protect missing and exploited children. Somehow, Juan Williams got wind of the families initiative and decided to write about it.

This year, for the first time, the general public is becoming aware that the huge debts of states and local governments are largely the result of public pensions and salaries that under collective bargaining have far outpaced inflation. As The Economist reports, they now are at a point that they probably cannot be paid back without bankrupting some jurisdictions. Facing freezes or cutbacks, it is no wonder the unions are among the most ardent proponents of tax increases.

What people are discovering, in this and other ways, is that the biggest special interest in government is the government itself. The part of the electorate that is never bored by an election campaigns and that never fail to vote are the public employee unions. Do you want to hold a rally? If you're on their side, they'll supply the crowd. Do you want someone to attack your opponent? Look to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee Union (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their counterparts.

This year is different only in that the power of government unions finally are getting some media attention. The Wall Street Journal has reported that public employee unions not only are bigger than private sector unions, but are supplying more campaign cash than any other group.

How did the government unions get such power? A hundred years ago the study of government was not considered a "science" in any modern way. Americans and Englishmen studied "political economy" or "government," or just "history". Asked how to take a role in government, Churchill advised, "Study history! In history are all the secrets of statecraft."

But starting in the late 19th Century American college graduates found reasons to do advanced study in Bismarkian Germany, where universities had invented something called "political science." Like everything else in their government, the social democrats and social Darwinists of Germany wanted to turn what--since the time of Aristotle--had been regarded as a art or craft into "science", a predictable, testable field reserved to experts. The American graduate students came home to places like Johns Hopkins and Columbia and created "political science" departments.

Rep. Barney Frank is beginning to own up to his mistaken judgment in the runaway spending at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--which played a huge role in the housing bubble. But, meanwhile, the Administration is planning an even bigger bailout for these two semi-governmental entities.

This is the most significant and most neglected issue in the current campaign. The airwaves are alive with exaggerated attacks on opponents' character and slippery insinuations about opponents' policies. But the glaring issue that started the recession--and may cause a double dip--is still not being faced.

In Britain the new Conservative/Liberal government is cracking down on many of the "quangos" (quasi-governmental organizations) that operate largely outside the accountability of parliamentary democracy. But America has not begun to do anything similar.

Raising taxes--as planned for next year, if President Obama has his way--will likely lead to a continued decline in charitable giving. The poor economy of the last two years already is taking its toll on non-profits that count on donations.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy today reports that the top 400 charities in America experienced an 11 percent decline in contributions for 2009.

As an indication of how stock drops can hurt charity, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund plummeted 40.3 percent in 2009, according to the report.

On the other hand, some charities experienced an increase, perhaps attributable to those with jobs trying to help out more in hard times. Something similar happened in the early days of the Depression. Catholic Charities, for example, rose an impressive 60 percent. World Vision and AmeriCares both posted gains.

The economy is a bit better in 2010 and the charitable sector therefore may stabilize or show a tiny gain this year (the Chronicles report sees a possible 1.6 percent rise). But if taxes go up as planned in 2011--the income tax, the capital gains tax, the Estate Tax, and state and local taxes and fees--you can probably expect a further belt-tightening.

For me, the implication is clear: money the government gets will come partly at the expense of private philanthropy.

The White House and Congressional Democrats have been trying to recover from assertions that they have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on unproductive stimulus programs that failed to stimulate. Yet now, in face of a second year with negligible inflation, the President and Speaker Pelosi are promising to give a $250 check to seniors to over-ride the Social Security law that provides a cost of living increase (COLA) for recipients only if there there really is a cost of living increase in the economy. The point of the law is that people on fixed incomes cannot accommodate to inflation, so a cola is warranted in such times. However, we are in an economy with little or no inflation, and where, on the other hand, our future is burdened with ever-increasing federal deficits--now $1.3 trillion.

Reckless U.S. spending is contributing to a weakening of the dollar worldwide. Eventually, with further Fed paper manufacturing expected, the effective devaluation of the dollar will lead to inflation in American prices. Oddly, the President and Speaker Pelosi are causing the very kind of problem they supposedly would like to compensate for.

Candidates this fall who have been had a born-again conversion to fiscal integrity should think hard before they get behind this latest boondoggle. "Rather than pluinge $14 billion deeper into debt, Congress should get to work to save Social Security, averting painful across-the-board cuts for those in an near retirement as scheduled under current law, " is the way Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) puts it.

Some liberal voices already have been raised again the latest cyncial election campaign pander. "On this the president gets a failing grade," says a Washington Post editorial this morning.

Rep. Barney Frank's re-election campaign has become the scene of a surprising spate of truth-telling about the economic meltdown in the housing market that began two years ago this fall and still complicates recovery. Several stories have appeared in which Mr. Frank acknowledges his own failure to grasp the true nature of the problem seven years ago when something still could be done. In fact, he and Rep. Maxine Waters of California and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut virtually demonized those warning of danger.

The Bush Administration at the time was trying to promote more regulatory oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Sen. John McCain was sponsor of unsuccessful legislation on the topic. Unfortunately, they did not push hard enough and publicly enough. When the crisis broke in 2008, Sen. McCain did not even understand at first that his own warnings of three years earlier had been vindicated. He pointed instead at "Wall Street greed."

In fact, a very large majority of bad loans in 2008 were those arranged by federal agencies.

The federal commission that is supposed to be looking into the whole matter is slated to report to the public by December 15 this year. Rumors are that the report is slow in developing and may not make its deadline. Nonetheless, the pressures of campaigning and the current tensions over foreclosures seem to be bringing the subject back into view.

It's important that the full truth of the 2008 economic crisis be told and be told accurately if we are to dig out permanently from the current economic slump.

In Washington, DC today, I find the place awash with polls. All show Republican gains in the Congressional and state elections three weeks off, but the polling range is from a few points in the Democrats' direction nationally--based on registered voters--to a Republican blowout, with gains of 60 or so House seats, based on likely voters and a relatively low turnout. Faced with such data, the political prognosticators descend into complicated matrices of analysis.

Nonetheless, the trend is Republican. However, when Bloomberg News' poll asked voters for their opinion of the Republican Party, 49 percent expressed an unfavorable view. Democrats have a 46 percent unfavorable rating.
So, what does that tell us? Well, to start with, it would be a real surprise if voters ever expressed a strong positive feeling for either party. In our ironic age, one doesn't want to sound credulous--not when the TV is ablaze with negative ads about both parties. In other words, the poll question itself is suspect. People tell you what party they like by telling you about the party they don't like.

But as for the present national trend, one pollster I met today provided the curious, possibly telling (but "anecdotal") information that he was having trouble finding an adequate Democratic sample for his polls. For example, in a state with two to one Democrat registration, he lately has had trouble getting two out of three people to even identify themselves as Democrats. That alone say something about the condition of the brand right now.

On the ground interviews with voters, door to door, in the style of the late Sam Lubell, would be most instructive at this juncture in a national campaign, but I don't know of anyone doing such shoe leather research these days.

Relying mainly on polls is like an intelligence agency resting its judgment mainly on data intercepts rather than "Humint", the human intelligence gathered by old fashioned spies. We don't need spies in politics, but some old fashioned, on the ground interviews would give the current picture more vividness, more clarity.

When the irrepressible Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform makes a speech these days he likes to pass out a sheet that lists all the tax increases that are coming on line in the weeks ahead. (His website provides the list, too.) You get the idea that even if the Tea Party and its candidates swept the elections clean next month there would be no stopping some of the tax hikes. And it all is going to hit in the midst of a de facto recession.

A former Bush economic adviser from Harvard, N. Gregory Mankiw, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times this past weekend that people like him simply will work less when taxes get so high that added income only represents a gift to the government. In effect, they will withhold some of their labor, and it is the economy that will feel the loss.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too young to recall the 1970s when this kind of dis-incentive last obtained. In England, pre-Thatcher, it was even worse. I remember visiting London in those days and remarking on all the highly visible money. I remember exclaiming, Some economic slump!

The trouble was, appearances were deceptive. For a wealthy person, the last dollars (or Euros) he earns in a high tax economy are virtually worthless to him, so he or she not only spends less time working, but more time in consumption of luxuries. You saw lots of Rolls Royces on the street in the old U.K. There was Lucullan, expense account-driven eating at fine restaurants. Business and law offices became grande and imposing. That sort of thing escapes the tax man. Plenty of other money went into pricey property overseas, especially in tax havens like the Bahamas.

One of the pleasures of the Internet is that it allows one to keep track of predictions for later references. Once again this year we heard that 2010 was going to be a big hurricane year. Well, it's about over, and it wasn't. Once again.

This is how much we know about climate.

It was hard to believe that a federal court would overturn a state ban on voting by convicted felons serving prison time. But it happened. Now, fortunately, a 9th Circuit Court has reversed that decision and supported the State of Washington--and the 47 other states that ban felons voting.

Had the suit succeeded, can you imagine the nature of politicking in the pen? The precinct meetings? The doorbelling by candidates? The promises of the pols? The vote buying?

Can you also imagine why recruiting votes in the prison might attract certain politicians?

Almost a month before the mid-term Congressional elections it may seem premature to start analyzing the failures of the new President. But that isn't stopping the pundits, including the previously laudatory Gloria Borger of CNN. "They didn't change Washington," she concludes, and describes the early strategic error of thinking that the White House could push its own agenda while it was trying to rescue the economy, even though it was the economy that had given Democrats their election mandate and complete control of the federal government.

Private colleges and universities have been quite willing to bow the knee to the federal government since federal aid began to arrive in the 1960s. But that may not be enough. The Obama Administration wants to tie its student loans and other grants to a new accreditation process that would make receipt of any funds--by students or faculty or administrators--subject to conformance to federal standards passed on to the states. This development could lead to an effective control of higher education by Washington, DC.

This threat should stir up even the laziest, conformist college president and trustees. Dissent is frowned up by this Administration. Academic freedom on many campuses already is confined. Now whatever is left may be placed in PC jeopardy. Robert Knight has the story in the Washington Times.

Knight calls attention to a Denver Post article by former U.S. senators Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown, who also have served as presidents of universities in Colorado, warning of the federal Department of Education's plans. "The department's power grab carries with it an implicit invitation for various pressure groups to seek legal mandates requiring colleges and universities to implement their pet theories about curriculum, degree requirements, faculty qualifications, teaching methods, textbooks, evolution, phonics, ROTC, climate change, family policy, abortion, race, sexual orientation, economic theory, etc. ... This assault on academic freedom and institutional autonomy is a slap in the face to regional accreditation agencies whose peer reviews have been bulwarks of integrity and academic quality for decades. Loss of accreditation is literally a death sentence."

Brown and Armstrong warn that action may be taken as early as next month to effectuate the new government role.

Jerry Brown, as candidate for Governor of California in 2010, is presenting himself as a strong friend of immigration, but when he was governor in 1975 he was the nation's most outspoken and active foe of immigration by political refugees from Vietnam. It is astonishing, as I visit California this week, to see how this relevant history seemingly has been forgotten.

I remember it very well. After the post-Watergate election of 1974, an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress cut off support for the government of South Vietnam. At the end of April, 1975, it became apparent suddenly that Saigon would fall. Almost as soon, the possibility arose that some, possibly large numbers of Vietnamese would try to flee the country as the Communists took over.

Eventually, about 130,000 Vietnamese successfully settled in the United States. They and their children beame citizens, and, as it happens, many reside in such places as Orange County and San Jose. The nation's first Congressman of Vietnamese decent, Anh ("Joseph") Cao, was elected recently in New Orleans as a Republican.

But in 1975 Gov. Jerry Brown made it starkly clear that he did not want any Vietnamese to come to his state. He went further and tried to stop them from coming. Julia Vedala Taft, who chaired President Ford's interagency task force on refugees recalled, "'The new governor of California, Jerry Brown, was very concerned about refugees settling in his state. Brown even attempted to prevent planes carrying refugees from landing at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. . . . The secretary of health and welfare, Mario Obledo, felt that this addition of a large minority group would be unwelcome in California. And he said that they already had a large population of Hispanics, Filipinos, blacks, and other minorities.'"

At the time, I was Secretary of State in Washington State. I had a friend who had married a Vietnamese woman and was trying frantically to help her family escape. I contacted Joel Pritchard, a member of Congress from Seattle, who said that his information was that few of the "boat people" and other refugees would succeed in getting out. But I knew from history that some determined and perceptive people usually do find a way to flee tyranny, as, for example, in Europe before World War II. I called another friend, Les Janka, who served under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Janka reported that refugees were getting out all right, but that Governor Brown's opposition to any of them settling in his state was making it hard to win national support for helping them.

I then called our own governor, Daniel J. Evans, who was out of town at a conference, but was able to take my call. Evans didn't have a lot of respect for his California colleague and was undaunted by the challenge of differing with him. The next day he assigned two aides, (future Secretary of State) Ralph Munro and Tom Pryor, state director of Emergency Services, to see what the state could do to help. Importantly he announced publicly that, in contrast to California, Washington State would accept refugees from Vietnam. Very quickly, Evans' announcement was welcomed by a relieved State Department. When the time came, Govenor and Mrs. Evans personally met the first planeloads of Vietnamese refugees to land on our shores--after a brief stop at a military base in California. Instead of trying to keep out the refugees, our state warmly welcomed and assisted them.

That was a moment that brought pride to Washington and to Governor Evans. The contrast with the attitude of Gov. Jerry Brown could not be more striking.

It's useful to recall the times: In 1975 the new Vietnamese arrivals represented no voting bloc. Backing them offered no elector advantage, while there was an anti-war sentiment in California that applauded Brown's stand. However, four years later, as he prepared for a run for president, Gov. Brown set up a committee to consider how to help the refugees. But I don't know of his ever admitting that he had been wrong in the first place.

This vivid memory is very much on my mind, therefore, as I hear what seem like opportunistic statements about immigration from the revived gubernatorial candidate of 2010, Jerry Brown. Once again, the man seems mostly motivated by political expediency, not principle.

A Wall Street Journal review of a book on the works of economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) describes the Paul Krugman of his day, a highly politicized economist on the left. Galbraith scornfully coined the term, "the conventional wisdom", but in truth he exemplified it.

James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer demonstrates that the highly decorated Galbraith--he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice--was an uncommonly charming and witty writer. It's just too bad that his economic recommendations were almost always wrong. In the mid-50's he predicted another Great Depression and kept predicting it as markets soared to new heights. An adviser to presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson in '52 and '56, he certainly knew young Sen. John F. Kennedy, but it was not Galbraith whose advice President Kennedy took when marginal tax rates were cut in the 60s and another boom ensued.

Discovery Institute senior fellow Wesley Smith, who co-directs our Center on Human Exceptionalism, is on top of the continuing effort to obscure just what is at stake in human embryo research. Since they are not getting very far in arguing that only human embryos can yield productive stem cell medical advances (because experience doesn't back up that claim), the proponents are reduced to misrepresenting the biology.

Those who cherish our representative form of government should fight back hard against the trends that militate against anyone running for office who isn't rich or financially subsidized. True friends of popular democracy especially should be on guard against bogus "reformers" like the so-called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government that file "process" lawsuits in the midst of political campaigns to damage financially strapped candidates.

In an assault this week, the self-appointed "Citizens" organization--described by the AP as a "government watchdog"--attacks Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell in Delaware for using campaign funds to pay her rent and other personal expenses. The complaint is as unjust as it is petty.

Nobody anywhere wants to take on the public employee unions. First of all, while the problem with the unions is not the members, but the leadership, it is hard to make that clear if the latter are running an "independent" ad campaign tearing you apart. Second, while businesses can take advantage of "soft money" provisions in elections, they so far have been shy about doing so; they have mixed constituencies, after all, and they are afraid of retribution. But labor unions toil under no such inhibitions. Third, unlike the business sector or manufacturing unions, public sector unions are not being hurt much by the recession. But they are very alarmed that future cutbacks may reach them. That means they currently have money to spend on political campaigns, along with ample motivation to spend it.

The role of the unions in politics is back in the news in England, where some old timers recall that resistance to union abuse in the 70s is what propelled Margaret Thatcher to power and maintained her there.

Robert J. Samuelson is one of the more adroit and useful economists writing for the media, and almost opposite from the ranting Paul Krugman, who finds a propaganda angle and then tries to support it. If anything, Samuelson of The Washington Post and Newsweek tries too much to coat his bitter pill of reality with sugary moral equivalence, as in Monday's column on whether tax hikes on "the rich" will help the economy.

You have to get well down in the article before you realize that the real point of the piece is the folly of raising taxes on investors and small businessmen in a recession.

Quoting Moody's, Samuelson cites predictions of 770,000 more jobs lost if the Obama tax increase goes through. Elsewhere Moody's has predicted a net loss of .4 percent of GDP with the tax increase. In other words, in the end, soaking the rich right now is a money loser for the federal government, as well as an economy poisoner.

Fifty three years ago a former Vice President of Communist Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas, published a book that landed him in jail. It was called The New Class and it has changed the way we understand the people at the top of societies that employ propaganda and coercion to replace a reviled former set of rulers with a new set--one just as privileged, if not more so, and one more autocratic than the class it removed.

Later, in the Soviet Union, the term "Nomenklatura" was used for those party leaders, generals and top bureaucrats who were entitled to the best apartments and "dachas", access to foreign luxury goods, travel and resort vacations and top educational opportunities for one's children.

Earlier this week New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter was embroiled in a minor controversy when he pretended to be hit by a pitch and so got a free ticket to first base. Replays, and an after-game admission by Jeter, proved that he hadn't been hit by the pitch at all, but simply pretended to have been. Even as he was pretending the home plate umpire was telling him to take his base. Whether he was granted the base because of his dramatic antics is unclear, as the umpire seemed to already have been persuaded that he'd been hit by the pitch. You can watch MLB's coverage which shows you specifically what happened. And then the fallout.

Needless to say. there are a lot of views within the sports world about what transpired that are all over the board. While this is a rather minor instance to be sure, it still involves a major player. And I think it strikes a chord in Americans for a reason they may not realize. Because they're Americans! And by that I mean, capitalists. Entrepreneurs. People who like innovation and who like to succeed.

Our senior fellow Michael Medved, who on the air brings the erudite down to earth, has an amusing column in USA Today comparing the sorry record of this year's Seattle Mariners and the current condition of America.

The fans are still around and good natured. The hot dogs and beer--and, in Seattle, the suchi--remain excellent. "It's still a joy and a privilege to watch the game," David reminds us.

Tonight's victories by Tea Party candidates in Delaware, New York and New Hampshire will be all over the news in the morning, and happily commenting on them will be Scott Rassmussen (of the Rassmussen Poll) and Doug Schoen. They are authors of Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System.

Their book's pub date is today. How is that for timing?

"So-called professionals in politics, business, and media have completely failed to comprehend the grassroots challenge to the status quo and have dismissed it as marginal and extreme," says the promo literature. "The authors explore the broad-based nature of the Tea Party movement and explain how it is reshaping American politics--whether politicians and elite journalists like it or not."

It is, shall we say, like watching a train wreck. In various places, such as Wisconsin, the federal passenger rail program has become a symbol for the wastefulness of the Obama Administration. Republican and Democratic candidates for US Senate and Governorare at sword points over the issue.

In Wisconsin and elsewhere Democrats apparently want high speed inter-city passenger rail even under the present arrangements and Republicans primarily want to stop wasteful spending. Losing out in this Hobson's choice (no new passenger rail service or government bloat) is an objective analysis that might show how passenger rail responsibly can and should have a comeback for inter-city service, especially over intermediate distances (over 75 miles, under 500). It's the option that has been ignored by the Democrats and all but ignored by Republicans-- reform.

Reform in this context starts with two principles: 1) public works, including rail projects, should be managed as DBOMs--projects where the same winning bidders design, build, operate and even maintain the infrastructure. This lowers costs and usually maximizes private sector investment. 2) Encourage private contractors to bid for service on existing routes as well as new ones. If the private sector can figure out how to make money on a route, why should taxpayers continue to fund Amtrak to run it?

Recently, a French company won a Virginia contest to take over rail traffic from Amtrak. That is nearly unprecedented. Meanwhile, Amtrak has made the remarkable decision to fire its government Inspector General. Clearly, organizational reform is needed, too.

If the Republicans win either house of Congress, they should finally push for passenger rail reform. But first they have to decide whether any infrastructure will have their support, especially any future for passenger rail.

The Tea Party movement is a protest against big government spending, high taxation and over-regulation. You might say that the Internet is a protest against dominance of news and commentary by Big Media.

But there are other oppressive monopolies that are being challenged. And still other challenges are coming.

For example, there is rumbling against the largely unchecked power of large government unions that manage to grow and prosper as the private sector shrinks--and also escape much of the scrutiny that accompanies individuals' and businesses' forays into politics.

There is the growing frustration with a higher education monopoly. As the public finds out about sweetheart deals for tenured faculty and bureaucracy, and costs for students (and parents) rocket upwards, a higher education bubble is developing.

Enacting speech codes on college campuses is one of those causes that leftists pursue to win arguments on which they cannot prevail democratically. It all sounds so reasonable and humane, avoiding "hurtful words", based on race, gender, etc., etc. But, in the end, the codes are really about stifling dissent. They almost always are applied against conservatives. If, indeed, a conservative tries to use a speech code against an "offensive" liberal, the judges (all liberals) will likely throw the case out, or maybe even reverse the case to target the party complaining.

From the beginning it should have been obvious that speech codes are inherently opposed to the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The courts are now weighing in, and not a moment too soon. The Alliance Defense Fund deserves special congratulations for its leadership on these matters. A victory in the Third District court can now be applied elsewhere in the country.

There are still cars zipping around America's bluer neighborhoods with bumper strips from way back in 2003: "No War for Oil."

That was the Iraq war, of course. There is no need to belabor the memories of the marches, the snide TV and radio commentaries, the alternative media fits about the supposed conspiracy. The idea that George W. Bush and his evil buddy, Dick Cheney, were sending American boys to die for oil was simply taken as a proven truth.

Only now, seven years later, as US combat troops leave Iraq, is oil production in Iraq finally back to its pre-war levels of production of 2.5 million barrels a day and easing upwards. Electricity production is doing better, but not great.

And the US oil companies that benefitted? Well, Exxon is there, but the biggest players are the Chinese. Does anyone remember the Chinese sending any troops to Iraq? Or the Russians?

Hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been spent on the Iraq war. By no conceivable accounting will anyone in the U.S. get that much back in Iraqi oil revenue--ever.

The Iraqis, meanwhile, do have oil as their big economic hope. The country's reserves are nearly those of Saudi Arabia and already supply 90 percent of government revenue. The big danger, simultaneously, is that oil will corrupt a country already steeped in traditions of corruption.

But it is long past time for those "No War for Oil" bumper strips to come off, don't you think?

The New York Times, as usual, leads the attack on the federal court ruling Monday against US Government funding for embryonic stem cell research (mainly through the National Institutes of Health), and as usual the reporting is tendentious.

"This decision has the potential to do serious damage to one of the most promising areas of biomedical research," says Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH.

In a companion article ("The Two Plaintiffs at Center for the Ban on Stem Cell Use"), the Times employs innuendo to raise personal questions about the lead researchers who brought the case, Dr. James L. Shirley and Dr. Theresa Deisher. It is one of those stories that sounds worrying until you read it again and realize how empty the charges are. (Basically, the plaintiffs have had disputes with colleagues. Big surprise.) In other words, just because the Times runs a negative article about someone doesn't mean there is any content to the charges. The truth is that the scientists who are plaintiffs have put their careers at risk by taking on the Government and especially the likes of powerful funders at NIH--not to mention biased journalists. They are, in short, very courageous.

In a third article, "Stem Cell Biology and its Complications," way down the page, long after we read how people with diabetes and other ravaging diseases are distressed by possible funding cuts for cures, the Times admits, "Yet despite the high hopes for embryonic stem cells, progresss has been slow--so far there are no treatments with the cells." (Emphasis added.) After all these years and who know how much much money: "no treatments with the (embryonic stem) cells."

Finally, the Times leaps in with a fourth article, an editorial deploring the decision, "Wrong Direction on Stem Cells." Expect attacks by columnists to follow.

The plaintiffs would have no chance against that kind of stacked journalistic deck. Fortunately, they apparently have a better case in court.

Ideology is largely responsible for the insistence on embryonic stem cell research to the relative exclusion of other stem cell approaches. It is another case of Big Science and its journalists enablers acting like Big Brother.

The news about the court victory for critics of embryonic stem cell research is huge, though it is not being played that way. You can be sure it would have been a bigger story if the case had been won by the government.

Nonetheless, it is in the first section of most papers and even on page one of the Wall Street Journal (above the fold). Theresa Deisher of Seattle is one of the plaintiffs who sued the Obama Administration over the matter. She kindly sent us a copy of the ruling, found here.

Obviously, the Administration will appeal. But they have been called out and the pro-life issues now have a legal force lacking before. It is amazing and grand that Deisher and company have shown what citizens can do--on the right side.

The Journal story says the ruling "was cheered by some Christian groups as a defense of human life" (imagine that), but "denounced by scientists who called it a major setback for medical research."

But it is not a setback for science. Deisher is a scientist in the field and Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow of Discovery Institute, has pointed out repeatedly that you don't need human embryos to get scientific progress using stem cells. Furthermore, evidence suggests that human embryos are bad candidates for research in the field.

Embryonic Stem Cells are wonderful candidates, of course, for the effort to pit human life defenders against people who long for medical advances. Judge Royce Lambert of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. has thrown a monkey wrench into that strategy.

Former Senator Ted Stevens, killed in a tragic plane crash in his beloved Alaska, is going to be the source of a great deal of sadness and regret in his home state tonight. It should induce some soul searching in Washington, DC.

Before Sen. Stevens was killed in real life he was ruined in political life by unscrupulous federal prosecutors. He finally was able to clear his name in court, but the indictment that preceded the 2008 election was timed so it would be all but impossible for him to be re-elected. Even so, he nearly was re-elected. The final vote margin was small. Clearly he would have returned to the Senate had it not been for the malign political activity of the federal prosecuting team.

Ted Stevens will be hailed correctly as one of the greatest sons of our fiftieth state, a giant of the Senate, a remarkable, durable public servant.

I hope his life story also will help speed reform of the judicial system that allowed rogue prosecutors to play politics with his honor and, frankly, with the democratic rights of Alaskans and the political well-being of the country.

The special army of 2010 Census workers is still being demobilized, but we already know that the south (including Texas, of course) is going to gain a lot of new Congressmen and certain northern states are going to lose. You can chart the way various states are faring by examining the various counties within them. It was clear even from figures from the boom times of a couple of years ago; I expect that the trends are stronger now.

With the exception of the political swing state of Ohio, almost all the states that have backed liberal candidates for the White House and Congress lead those losing Congressional districts. It's a blue state phenomenon. But it is not politics that characterizes this decline, but public policies. States (including Ohio) that have over-spent and over-taxed are hurting most.

The new "civil war" is really a struggle over those public policies. California, which since statehood never before failed to gain Congressional representation, is not going to gain any after this Census. The once-Golden State actually is losing people by the hundreds of thousands as punitive taxes and regulations destroy manufacturing and agriculture. People who own or run factories and farms are being hurt, but so are their workers. The Central Valley is being literally decimated.

Americans' superstitious belief in the assured blessings of a college diploma is waning. A degree by itself does not mean someone is well-educated, in the classic sense of, say, 100 years ago. If it did, there still would be an audience for philosophy, for example, and for poetry, but there is not.

A college diploma (in contrast to most doctoral degrees) also does not by itself signify that someone has acquired a vendable set of economic skills--the litmus test of most parents paying the bills these days. The current recession displays how inadequate a college degree has become, with your average espresso barista boasting a bachelor's degree in English literature theory or sociology. Slowly the frustration is growing among the young as they realize that they have not just been indulged, but cheated.

A college degree doesn't even mean that students are smarter, rather than merely older, than when they arrived as freshmen. Surveys show, for example, that some seniors know less about the U.S. Constitution and the American form of government (crucial knowledge for a responsible citizen in a republic that subsidizes these students' education) than do their first year counterparts.

But what our education system does accomplish in the college years is to provide increasingly good livings for tenured professors, largely trivial journals that publish their trivial writing on navel-gazing trivial subjects, and layers of administrators to create and manage forms.

The higher ed bubble is pricked in a new book by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Breifus that is reviewed today in the Wall Street Journal.

Before readers complain that the article and the book (and my comments above) constitute an overly sweeping indictment, let us all acknowledge that there are some fine colleges and that even the bad ones have a some good professors. A few professors can even be called outstanding, whether on teaching or research grounds, or both.

Okay? But let the reader also acknowledge that the institution of college education is ripe for reform. If nothing else, the customers will demand it.

David Klinghoffer, a Discovery Institute fellow, published a column today in the LA Times descrying the descent of conservatism from the heights of "neocons" to the swamps of "crazycons", from the high-minded polemics of Bill Buckley (who did not see himself as a neocon, by the way), Irving Kristol and Richard John Neuhaus, to, well, internet innovator Andrew Breitbart and his supposedly "deceptive" attempt to reveal Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod as a racist. The latter episode, Klinghoffer thinks, typifies a rise of uncivil behavior and a decline of interest in positive policy alternatives.

The article is bound to provoke misunderstandings. Liberals will use it to pummel all conservatives and all conservative arguments, though that, of course, is not what Klinghoffer intended. (Exactly what he did intend is not at all clear.) Conservatives will see it--also incorrectly--as a demand that the Right lay off attacks on liberal leadership failures that are all too apparent in Washington, D.C.

This reminds me, sadly, of the early 60s when George Gilder and I criticized the Goldwaterites for tolerating segregationists and the John Birchers who was who were calling President Eisenhower a communist. We had good arguments on both points and maybe they helped lead to change. It certainly is gratifying to read recent historical accounts that show how Bill Buckley and others made a successful effort to turn the conservative movement around on civil rights and rhetorical extremism. Republicans in Congress at the time, as it happens, supported civil rights legislations in higher percentages than Democrats did, and the influence of the John Birch Society's paranoia managed to evaporate rather fast.

But meantime, many of the positive things Gilder and I were trying to contribute to right of center politics temporarily got lost in the controversy. Constructive conservative initiatives we tried to present languished. We found that we were perceived as foes by many on the right (that abated in time, of course), while the left only valued what we had to say so long as they could use it as a weapon against conservatives. The lesson I learned is that conservatives can make news by criticizing their natural allies, but seldom (given mainstream media bias) by criticizing their natural adversaries or by offering new policy ideas.

In only a few years it became clear, in any case, that the real locus of extremism was on the left. America and the West are still suffering from what the 60s and 70s wrought.

On the right, the conservative movement went on to triumph in the election and policies of Ronald Reagan. Buckley and Reagan brought people like Gilder and me more closely into the conservative fold. Both of us, in different ways, were able to provide ideas and leadership on national policies in the now-iconic Reagan administration.

Yes, today there are a few cringe making voices on the Right. Still others make mistakes, despite generally solid analyses. But it is one of the Left's favorite tactics to exaggerate and misrepresent mistakes by conservatives and to try to marginalize conservative spokesmen based on opportunistic and one-sided criteria of political correctness. I have not followed the case closely, but that may have happened to Andrew Breitbart.

Self-indulgence of stridency once again is much more pronounced on the Left. Only recently, for example, Tea Party activists were being accused of violent tendencies. When a federal judge voided much of the Arizona law on illegal immigration, who demonstrated in the streets? The angry Right? Nope, the Left.

Conservatives do need more policy initiatives in both domestic and international policy. The country needs it from them. But that hardly warrants now taking the spotlight off the destructive policies presently in place in Washington, D.C. First things first.

Bill Whittle enthuses over America's space program that thrilled him as a boy, but now is relegated to sclerotic, bureaucratic drift. Plainly, the current Administration is not much interested. The odd and exciting consequence, Whittle says in a Pajamas Media TV talk, is that the way has been cleared for private pioneers using their own money, "or money they can talk out of someone else." Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos are among the the new class of space explorers, like Lindbergh and Howard Hughes.

If you follow such things, you probably are aware that elite universities are fond of applicants who can pay the exorbitant tuition fees to attend--some $55,000 and up. Full-paying customers and the endowments of grateful alumni together make possible free or subsidized tuition for poorer applicants. However, as they fill the balance of their student bodies with scholarship applicants, admission officers tend to favor minority groups of various kinds. They used to favor women over men, but, since women are now a majority on many campuses, that emphasis has relaxed.

So what categories of students are not favored? Are there some that actually are discriminated against? Well, as you might also suspect, those effectively pushed away at elite universities are the very kinds of cases the schools might have sought out a half century ago, such as Asians, poor white students and middle class white students from rural areas and small towns. If they are demonstrably Christian--which might be revealed by essays submitted by applicants, or from leadership roles the applicants report having held in Christian youth groups--that is often a minus. So is excelling at activities regarded at retrograde, or at least unfashionable by the colleges, such as 4-H or ROTC.

The latter folks, the squares, who are rejected by admissions offices at the Ivies and other elite institutions, may well wind up in military academies and less prestigious state schools. They may become generals, entrepreneurs and small businessmen, rather than college professors and lawyers.

Ross Douthat (a Harvard grad) has a column today daring to expose the matter publicly. He concludes, "If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there's more to diversity than skin color -- and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers."

Meanwhile, a friend who counsels students seeking graduate school admission tells me that cautions them to remove from their applications references to religious participation or activities. Thus, a church mission to build an orphanage in Guatemala, for example, should be reported simply as a "humanitarian trip to Guatemala to build an orphanage." Tutoring disadvantaged youth under a church program should become merely "tutoring disadvantaged youth."

Tom Alberg, who helped found Discovery Institute in 1990 and was president of its Board for many years (and still serves as a Director), is one of the most innovative entrepreneurs around. He knows the importance of pro-growth economic policies and is keenly aware of the dangers of the present moment. So it is with delight that I note that he has been appointed by President Obama to the prestigious new National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Council will operate under Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, former governor of Washington State.

Alberg is a lawyer by background, who served as Sr. Vice President at McCaw Cellular when it was sold to AT&T. He was an early investor in Amazon and a founding principal in Madrona Venture Group, the Seattle-based high tech investment house. He also is responsible for Novelty Hill winery and several other original-ideas-taken-concrete-shape. Many of his business projects, such as Oxbow, a model farm in the Snoqualmie Valley east of Seattle, combine philanthropic vision with business purposes-- as for example, a teaching program for schoolchildren visiting Oxbow Farm.

Tom has a talent for innovation, appreciates talent and promotes talent. He's an unusually enlightened and resourceful businessman. Good for President Obama for recognizing this, and here's hoping the President listens to his appointee's advice on his Advisory Council.

Among the other members of the Council announced yesterday are Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! and Carl Shramm, CEO of the Kauffman Foundation.

The failure of the US House of Representatives, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to write a long range budget plan "makes no sense" according to Kent Conrad, the Democratic senator responsible for managing a budget plan in the "Upper House". Thus, David Broder, the venerable Washington Post columnist (I was interviewed by him first in 1962!), points out the irresponsible attitude of the House majority in dealing with the spending issue--regarded by American voters as the most important facing the country.

Do Democrats, with a huge majority in the House, actually think their record will stand scrutiny this fall?

Says Broder, "Of all the times for Congress to abandon its responsibility for long-term fiscal planning, this is the worst."

The New York Time's Michael Powell has a disturbing story about the fiscal bind of the State of Illinois, where bills the state owes to its agencies, such as universities, and to private contractors, such as funeral directors who bury the indigent, are many months behind. The State's collapse is damaging the private economy and exacerbating the already high (11 percent) unemployment rate.

The policy under the Democrats has not been "tax and spend," but even worse, "borrow and spend." Today, the state deficit is $12 billion, equal to about half the state budget.

California, New York and other states are in bad trouble, too, but Illinois may be closest to the brink. If it goes over, it could trigger other defaults and help drag down the economy of the country.

The idea apparently traces originally to Ralph Harris of the conservative Institute for Economic Analysis in London, according to Charles Moore in this morning's London Telegraph, but it has received most of its publicity from Nick Clegg, Liberal Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister in the new Conservative/Liberal coalition government in the UK. In any case the Great Repeal Bill that Clegg proposes invites all citizens to suggest laws and programs whose elimination would represent progress for the realm. Thousands of bad laws were passed under Labour, says Clegg, and "it is our liberty that has paid the price."

One suspects that Labour wasn't the only responsible party, but never mind.

It is proving to be a popular cause, as ordinary citizens seek vengeance on plush government job sinecures, spendthrift do-gooding, pushy bureaucrats, invasive and time wasting regulations and unnecessarily protracted government processes that succeed mostly in driving people bats.

We need a similar initiative in the US of A. Start with the various follies coming to light in the new 2,000 page health care act.

It's a suitable pledge for tomorrow's celebration of our nation's birth.

The new Health Care Bill defies clear understanding, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted when she said we would have to wait until it was adopted to find out what's in it. In truth, though adopted now, it is still opaque.

Here's an example. A helpful Capitol Hill staff analyst has assisted me as I try to comprehend all the taxes that are going to be raised by the Congress and Obama Administration. By now you know (I hope) that the top income tax rate for wage earners is going from 35 percent to 39.6 percent as of January 1, 2011. The capital gains tax goes up to 20 percent, the Estate Tax goes up to 55 percent (from zero percent this year). Pretty horrible if you think that economic recovery requires private sector incentives to invest in new businesses and jobs.

But another downward pressure on growth is uncertainty, including the sheer complexity of the tax code.

Note that Obamacare now adds new surcharges on "high income" earners and investors at the beginning of the following year (2012). But the process is so byzantine that it definitely will confuse many and frustrate everyone, even accountants, as they seek to comply. See if you can follow.

The Tea Parties, whatever you think of their key themes of the danger of runaway federal spending and coming high taxes, also also tend to a background theme of patriotism that is worth thinking about as Independence Day approaches.

A recent Internet sensation was caused when retired Marine Lewis Shaeffer, attending a Georgia Tea Party, extemporaneously reminded the crowd of the usually neglected last verse of The Star Spangled Banner-- by singing it.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause. it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

It reminds me: when you are told at some civic event that a prayer would be unconstitutional, you can suggest that we all just sing the full National Anthem instead! Who can call that unconstitutional?

And as the event concludes, we can sing America the Beautiful, including the magnificent lines of Katherine Lee Bates in the second stanza, "America! America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

For this troubled generation--tempted to solipsism and secularism--those are words to live by, and prosper from.

I meet all kinds of people, including frustrated liberals who think that many of our problems today would disappear if only the "rich" and "the corporations" paid more in taxes. Government obviously needs more money, or else budgets wouldn't keep going up, right? So we need to take a bit more from people who have more than they need and redistribute it.

So I try this experiment. I ask people, "How high do you think the top federal income tax rate should be?" I get a lot of blank stares, then they often say something like, "Twenty percent."

Then I ask, "What do you think the top income tax rate actually is right now?" This is a test, obviously, and it makes some people uncomfortable. But many finally answer something like, "Fifteen percent?" Maybe, "Twenty percent?"

I then explain that the top federal marginal rate of income tax today is 35 percent. Obviously, by their own valuation, that is too high.

In a couple of cases, people say, well, maybe that's just fine.

Then I ask if they are aware it is about to go up--January 1, 2011--to 39.5 percent. At that point, they start to perceive the truth: taxes are already too high. We are at the point where we start to discourage entrepreneurship and strangle growth--when what we desperately need is strong economic activity.

Then I point out that the new Obama Health Care Act will add a further "surcharge" of three percent to payroll taxes of the "rich"....Meanwhile, the Estate Tax (the "Death Tax") goes up to 55 percent next year on estates worth at least $1.2 million....Capital gains taxes are slated to rise from 15 to 20 percent.

And all of this comes before state and local income taxes in most states.

The truly rich can manage it. Their money is mostly not in salaries. The people who get soaked are those folks aspiring to get rich by building businesses and creating new jobs--the people on salaries or commissions. High income taxes thwart their ability to save and invest.

I have had some success with this socratic approach. Deep down, even many liberals don't believe in the policies of their leaders.