Krugman vs. DeLay
Paul Krugman has decided to go after Representative Tom DeLay. I am not the biggest fan of DeLay, but I do think he is an able Congressman who represents the issues I support. More importantly though, I think Krugman has a very distorted view of DeLay and is trying hard to portray DeLay is an extremist. Krugman uses such odd reasoning that a Freudian might wonder what it is exactly that Krugman is repressing.
To begin with Krugman claims that even liberals mistakenly think Tom DeLay is less radical than Newt Gingrich. Funny thing, that statement. I am pretty certain that the opposite is true. A Google search for the words: tom, delay, and radical retrieves an estimated 27,500 hits. Look here, here, here, and here. In fact, my inability to swoon over DeLay, in spite of his support for many positions I promote, is because he so often is quoted and characterized as so extreme and embarrassing.
Krugman falls into his normal pattern of not citing sources so it is hard to prove that he may be taking Tom DeLay out of context. But, let's just apply some logic to the quotes that Krugman attributes to DeLay.
"Mr. DeLay has described the Environmental Protection Agency as 'the Gestapo.'"
The Gestapo looked over people's shoulders and arrested people for just the appearance of a mistake. Hmmm. Can anyone see any parallels to the EPA? Even people in favor of regulations protecting the environment should be honest enough to see that the EPA has extraordinary powers to shut down a business with little due process. Sure, the EPA doesn't throw people in concentration camps. But, then again it is liberals like Krugman who say or imply that Conservatives are modern day Nazis. The irony here is that Nazism was about Socialism and the Gestapo was used to enforce Socialism--maybe DeLay is more correct than Krugman wants to admit.
"Above all, expect to see the wall between church and state come tumbling down. Mr. DeLay has said that he went into politics to promote a 'biblical worldview,'"
Okay, what is a "biblical worldview"? Could it be that it is a worldview that embraces the concept of right and wrong? Or how about the concept that there is a God? Western law is already firmly based on this world view. Where did we get laws against murder and theft? Why does the government get involved in marriage and divorce? Why do you think we hold parents responsible for the behavior of children? Forget that the whole point of separation of church and state was meant by the founders to mean that they didn't want an American version of the Church of England. A biblical view is not advocacy for the Baptist or Methodist church as the state religion--that would be a Baptist worldview, but simply a recognition that in order to preserve the very culture that promotes freedom and prosperity in this country there is a need to preserve the biblical foundation of western culture.
"How about the schools: after the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay called a press conference in which he attributed the tragedy to the fact that students are taught the theory of evolution."
If this is true, then DeLay is kind of obtuse. My guess, since I have no idea what the source for this is, is that DeLay said something a lot more detailed. He probably made some statement about how schools are in trouble and how Columbine was one example, but that there are many other problems to include: teaching the theory of evolution. Now, I am not one who wants to keep my children from learning about evolution. I learned about it in high school and college and concluded it was useful for predicting micro changes and that on macro changes much still needed to be researched. I intend to challenge my own children to ponder this exact issue. That being said, when DeLay and other social conservatives decry evolution what they really are saying is that they see evolution as a pillar in the religion of athiesm/agnosticism and that they resent that it is taught as fact while Biblical, and even Eastern, religions are taught as fiction or an opiate of the masses. Krugman and other liberals should stop poisening the water of school reform by making unfair allegations about a legitimate public concern.
"Many of those who minimize the threat the radical right now poses to America as we know it would hate to live in the country Mr. DeLay wants to create. Yet by playing down the seriousness of the challenge, they help bring his vision closer to reality."
This is the concluding statement in Krugman's piece. The one thing I am missing, at this point, is exactly where Krugman found the details of Tom DeLay's "vision". Krugman seems to be aware of some master plan that DeLay has for reinventing America. I looked at Tom DeLay's website and could not find any details about the master plan. If a true "vision" I would suppose that Tom DeLay would promote it. If a secret agenda, exactly how did Krugman figure it out? While Tom DeLay is not my favorite Republican to quote, I think Krugman is grossly unfair to a hard working and serious Congressman.
Jun 11, 2003
The Government Program Conundrum
I often observe with a grin that bureaucrats, Congress persons, most Democrats, and some Republicans are often befuddled to discover that a government program meant to solve a problem has failed. Foxnews.com reports that the Head Start program is not as successful as hoped. A little background is offered in the article, but I will summarize: Head Start is a federal program for low income children to recieve pre-schooling so that they can compete with the rich kids when they arrive in kindergarten. Initiated in the 1960s, this program is meant as a solution to a bad problem. There is little reason to dispute that poor kids tend to do worse in school. Grades, test-scores, and behavior lag norms. It is a tragedy in many respects. What is mistaken is the assumption that it can all be fixed by some government program. Here is the problem. As the parent of a child that was not poor enough to attend Head Start, I didn't want my kid to fall behind so I opted to pay for her to attend a private pre-school. At a minimum I made it impossible for poor kids to close the gap. Which points to the source of the conundrum--too many "government can fix the world" types don't make dynamic calculations. In other words they do not anticipate the unintended incentives they create. There are all kinds of examples.
Sticking with education here is another example. What is the consequence of lowering standards in public schools? The goal is to make sure that no one feels left behind or emotionally rejected. The hope is that as the mediocre students are encouraged to stay in school they will be grow by mixing with the 'smart' students. So what does a parent who understands the importance of high standards do? They home school or find a private school. What do the treachers who understand that some students can handle greater rigor do? They create gifted and talented programs that remove the 'smart' students from the normal classroom and create an achievement segregated school within a school. Consequently the smart kids still get the best teachers and the mediocre students struggle with the unqualified. College admissions committees learn to recognize the signs of smart kids even if the SAT scores lose relavence. If you are home schooled, privatly schooled, or in a gifted program then you must be smart. Ultimately, the mediocre student ends up with little to show for a lot of government spending.
So, back to Head Start. There are other problems related to educational achievement amongst the poor that should be studied and reviewed. For instance, is the real problem that poor kids are poor because the parents are dumb and genetics can not be overcome? I went to high school with many children of college professors and rarely were the children 'dumb'. Is it possible that the reverse of this phenomenon is true on the opposite end of the smarts spectrum? Liberals have often argued it is because of lack of funds in a poor family to send kids to private schools--thus Head Start funding. That may be true, but does Head Start attract the best teachers? Or do the best pre-school teachers prefer to work at private institutions with the children of wealthy parents who are willing to pay well for services and are available to volunteer at the school? Is it possible that there are other immutable factors? Studies show that a young person is more likely to get a college degree if the parents have a college degree. Why is this? Is there a family commitment to education? Or maybe nerds raise nerds.
Many in government will look upon the report cited by Foxnews.com and conclude that we need to spend more money. In fact, the article already notes a proposal to reform the system to allow State flexibility while providing more money. Ultimately, the real solution may be to scrap the Head Start program. Is there a case for helping poor kids have a chance? Sure. But, is the Head Start program giving them that chance? I don't think so.
I often observe with a grin that bureaucrats, Congress persons, most Democrats, and some Republicans are often befuddled to discover that a government program meant to solve a problem has failed. Foxnews.com reports that the Head Start program is not as successful as hoped. A little background is offered in the article, but I will summarize: Head Start is a federal program for low income children to recieve pre-schooling so that they can compete with the rich kids when they arrive in kindergarten. Initiated in the 1960s, this program is meant as a solution to a bad problem. There is little reason to dispute that poor kids tend to do worse in school. Grades, test-scores, and behavior lag norms. It is a tragedy in many respects. What is mistaken is the assumption that it can all be fixed by some government program. Here is the problem. As the parent of a child that was not poor enough to attend Head Start, I didn't want my kid to fall behind so I opted to pay for her to attend a private pre-school. At a minimum I made it impossible for poor kids to close the gap. Which points to the source of the conundrum--too many "government can fix the world" types don't make dynamic calculations. In other words they do not anticipate the unintended incentives they create. There are all kinds of examples.
Sticking with education here is another example. What is the consequence of lowering standards in public schools? The goal is to make sure that no one feels left behind or emotionally rejected. The hope is that as the mediocre students are encouraged to stay in school they will be grow by mixing with the 'smart' students. So what does a parent who understands the importance of high standards do? They home school or find a private school. What do the treachers who understand that some students can handle greater rigor do? They create gifted and talented programs that remove the 'smart' students from the normal classroom and create an achievement segregated school within a school. Consequently the smart kids still get the best teachers and the mediocre students struggle with the unqualified. College admissions committees learn to recognize the signs of smart kids even if the SAT scores lose relavence. If you are home schooled, privatly schooled, or in a gifted program then you must be smart. Ultimately, the mediocre student ends up with little to show for a lot of government spending.
So, back to Head Start. There are other problems related to educational achievement amongst the poor that should be studied and reviewed. For instance, is the real problem that poor kids are poor because the parents are dumb and genetics can not be overcome? I went to high school with many children of college professors and rarely were the children 'dumb'. Is it possible that the reverse of this phenomenon is true on the opposite end of the smarts spectrum? Liberals have often argued it is because of lack of funds in a poor family to send kids to private schools--thus Head Start funding. That may be true, but does Head Start attract the best teachers? Or do the best pre-school teachers prefer to work at private institutions with the children of wealthy parents who are willing to pay well for services and are available to volunteer at the school? Is it possible that there are other immutable factors? Studies show that a young person is more likely to get a college degree if the parents have a college degree. Why is this? Is there a family commitment to education? Or maybe nerds raise nerds.
Many in government will look upon the report cited by Foxnews.com and conclude that we need to spend more money. In fact, the article already notes a proposal to reform the system to allow State flexibility while providing more money. Ultimately, the real solution may be to scrap the Head Start program. Is there a case for helping poor kids have a chance? Sure. But, is the Head Start program giving them that chance? I don't think so.
Jun 10, 2003
Iraq, WMD, and editorialists that do not get it
On the editorial pages of today's New York Times Paul Krugman had this to say: "I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war."
Since this is the concluding sentence of his piece I can only conclude this is his most important point. While I am clearly surprised that we don't have more WMD evidence at this point, I am not sure that it equates to "misleading the nation into war." Krugman and his left wing colleagues were opposed to the war regardless. They are not disappointed so much as they are trying to score points after the game.
Before the war with Iraq these opponents tried every strategy to raise doubts and discourage support. First they tried the 'this is all about oil and Bush's oil buddies' argument. It didn't stick--it didn't add up. Next they tried the Vietnam quagmire argument. Essentially trying to make the case that just like our opponent in Vietnam the Iraqis would prove a determined and fierce force that would resist defeat. It didn't stick--American's felt the lessons of Afghanistan and the previous Gulf War were more consistent and appropriate. Next they tried the 'it is not right to start a preemptive war' argument. It didn't stick--Americans could easily make the connection that if we had preempted previous despots like Hitler we could have saved ourselves a lot of suffering. This strategy of trying a new fear each week continued relentlessly. There were the arguments about lack of world support, no UN mandate, the fury of the Arab street, no direct link to Al Qaeda, North Korea being more pressing and on and on. There were no principles except distrust of George W Bush's motives. It raised in my mind the following question: "Had Al Gore won the Presidency, and after 9/11 he had concluded that we needed to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein for once and for all, would the war opponents sing the same song?"
What Krugman and others do not get is that Americans understand the president's strategy. They understand that it is not just about WMD. It never was. I have a friend who was not at all excited about the war, but he understood and liked Bush. He thinks Bush is a cowboy, and he thinks this is what makes him great. What is a cowboy? Pick your favorite western and make some popcorn. There is good and there is bad, and everyone knows the difference. Sure, the good cowboy is sometimes weak for whiskey or women, but at the end of the day he is willing to risk all to save the town from a bunch of bad guys. He has no problem picking out the bad guys since they do bad things and clearly look out for each other. The point being that he sees right and wrong. For people who are unwilling or unable to see the difference between right and wrong such a world view is disturbing and frightening. They make arguments such as: 'the Arab right and wrong is different than the American right and wrong, so who is right?' But, this just proves that they don't get it. When Iraqi's pulled down the statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad Iraqis proved that they saw right and wrong the same way we did. Saddam was a bad man. The proof included many things. One of these was WMD. Interestingly enough, before the war there was never any question that he had WMD, but rather a question of whether or not he would ever use them against us or provide them to terrorists. Americans understand this. Americans understand that this is a war about right versus wrong. "You are either with us or against us" is a statement that carries a lot of meaning and seriousness. In one sense the reasons for war were complex--threats to strategic balance in the middle east, WMD, threats to humanity, potential relations with established terrorist groups, and even threats to the world oil market. But in another sense the reason for war was simple. Saddam was a bad man, we have known this for a long time and should never have tolerated him for so long. If there was an error it was that we waited so long.
After the war it became obvious that this was true. People were released from prisons, they rejoiced, and the regime quickly crumbled under the weight of selfishness. Opponents of the war were distraught for they had been embarrassed. Rather than admit that Saddam was trully a bad man and join in building a better future for the people of Iraq, the opponents have begun a new chorus: 'We were mislead into war'. We were not mislead or brainwashed or duped. All along we knew the terrorist links were weak and that WMD was a threat that might be years away, but what really scared us about Iraq was the track record of Saddam being a bad guy.
Ultimately, this is what still makes North Korea a problem. And what of Iran? In all cases we have no problem with the people of these nations. Do we hate Iraqis? I don't think so. And we do not hate Koreans or Iranians. But we do have a problem with Kim Jong Il and the Mullahs of Iran. These are bad people who are diametrically opposed to the interests of the United States, not to mention basic human rights. These are the people who look on the success of Osama bin Laden and get bad ideas. Are there other bad people out there? Yes. Do they seek after the means to militarily confront the interests of the United States? Not yet. Should we eventually concern ourselves with these dictators? Yes. But first let us concentrate on the nexus of bad guys who want to kill us, not to mention their own people. Maybe tomorrow we can get on to the other bad guys who just kill their own people. Afterall a cowboy can at most shoot only two guns at a time.
And as for Krugman and his cabal of left wing ninnies? Could you please stop trying to mislead Americans? Thanks.
On the editorial pages of today's New York Times Paul Krugman had this to say: "I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war."
Since this is the concluding sentence of his piece I can only conclude this is his most important point. While I am clearly surprised that we don't have more WMD evidence at this point, I am not sure that it equates to "misleading the nation into war." Krugman and his left wing colleagues were opposed to the war regardless. They are not disappointed so much as they are trying to score points after the game.
Before the war with Iraq these opponents tried every strategy to raise doubts and discourage support. First they tried the 'this is all about oil and Bush's oil buddies' argument. It didn't stick--it didn't add up. Next they tried the Vietnam quagmire argument. Essentially trying to make the case that just like our opponent in Vietnam the Iraqis would prove a determined and fierce force that would resist defeat. It didn't stick--American's felt the lessons of Afghanistan and the previous Gulf War were more consistent and appropriate. Next they tried the 'it is not right to start a preemptive war' argument. It didn't stick--Americans could easily make the connection that if we had preempted previous despots like Hitler we could have saved ourselves a lot of suffering. This strategy of trying a new fear each week continued relentlessly. There were the arguments about lack of world support, no UN mandate, the fury of the Arab street, no direct link to Al Qaeda, North Korea being more pressing and on and on. There were no principles except distrust of George W Bush's motives. It raised in my mind the following question: "Had Al Gore won the Presidency, and after 9/11 he had concluded that we needed to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein for once and for all, would the war opponents sing the same song?"
What Krugman and others do not get is that Americans understand the president's strategy. They understand that it is not just about WMD. It never was. I have a friend who was not at all excited about the war, but he understood and liked Bush. He thinks Bush is a cowboy, and he thinks this is what makes him great. What is a cowboy? Pick your favorite western and make some popcorn. There is good and there is bad, and everyone knows the difference. Sure, the good cowboy is sometimes weak for whiskey or women, but at the end of the day he is willing to risk all to save the town from a bunch of bad guys. He has no problem picking out the bad guys since they do bad things and clearly look out for each other. The point being that he sees right and wrong. For people who are unwilling or unable to see the difference between right and wrong such a world view is disturbing and frightening. They make arguments such as: 'the Arab right and wrong is different than the American right and wrong, so who is right?' But, this just proves that they don't get it. When Iraqi's pulled down the statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad Iraqis proved that they saw right and wrong the same way we did. Saddam was a bad man. The proof included many things. One of these was WMD. Interestingly enough, before the war there was never any question that he had WMD, but rather a question of whether or not he would ever use them against us or provide them to terrorists. Americans understand this. Americans understand that this is a war about right versus wrong. "You are either with us or against us" is a statement that carries a lot of meaning and seriousness. In one sense the reasons for war were complex--threats to strategic balance in the middle east, WMD, threats to humanity, potential relations with established terrorist groups, and even threats to the world oil market. But in another sense the reason for war was simple. Saddam was a bad man, we have known this for a long time and should never have tolerated him for so long. If there was an error it was that we waited so long.
After the war it became obvious that this was true. People were released from prisons, they rejoiced, and the regime quickly crumbled under the weight of selfishness. Opponents of the war were distraught for they had been embarrassed. Rather than admit that Saddam was trully a bad man and join in building a better future for the people of Iraq, the opponents have begun a new chorus: 'We were mislead into war'. We were not mislead or brainwashed or duped. All along we knew the terrorist links were weak and that WMD was a threat that might be years away, but what really scared us about Iraq was the track record of Saddam being a bad guy.
Ultimately, this is what still makes North Korea a problem. And what of Iran? In all cases we have no problem with the people of these nations. Do we hate Iraqis? I don't think so. And we do not hate Koreans or Iranians. But we do have a problem with Kim Jong Il and the Mullahs of Iran. These are bad people who are diametrically opposed to the interests of the United States, not to mention basic human rights. These are the people who look on the success of Osama bin Laden and get bad ideas. Are there other bad people out there? Yes. Do they seek after the means to militarily confront the interests of the United States? Not yet. Should we eventually concern ourselves with these dictators? Yes. But first let us concentrate on the nexus of bad guys who want to kill us, not to mention their own people. Maybe tomorrow we can get on to the other bad guys who just kill their own people. Afterall a cowboy can at most shoot only two guns at a time.
And as for Krugman and his cabal of left wing ninnies? Could you please stop trying to mislead Americans? Thanks.
Jun 9, 2003
Martha Stewart
Let's begin by addressing this issue. I think the only prescient commentary was offered by John Stewart on The Daily Show. All the networks are falling all over themselves to report this as some big development. John Stewart points out in his own special way that they are overplaying it. It appears that she broke the law. Okay, so does that mean we need to spend endless hours on it? She fits into the same category as Bill Bennet and Sammy Sosa -- they all should have known better.
Hillary
This is another story blown out of proportion. She wrote a book, and apparently was upset when she found out her husband was getting some action from an intern. Is it just me or is she managing the best publicity effort for a book in the history of new books? She will sell her books and she will become a star, as if she isn't already one. And maybe, just maybe, people will realize that this is all just the latest act in a very precise and long-term effort to elect her as President. If nothing else, I must give her credit for managing a great strategy. I can't stand her, but I respect he ability. And it is time that her political opponents all do the same. She is smart, focused and ambitious. She can beat us and we better get ready.
News
Is there any news these days? The tax cuts passed, no American cares if we don't find WMD, the Yankees dropped their series with the Cubs, the NBA finals are all but decided in favor of the Spurs, and ... Summer is here and news slows down. So do I. I spent Saturday lounging around a pool with my kids and about the only thing on my mind was putting on sun screen. Here is to a lazy summer.
Let's begin by addressing this issue. I think the only prescient commentary was offered by John Stewart on The Daily Show. All the networks are falling all over themselves to report this as some big development. John Stewart points out in his own special way that they are overplaying it. It appears that she broke the law. Okay, so does that mean we need to spend endless hours on it? She fits into the same category as Bill Bennet and Sammy Sosa -- they all should have known better.
Hillary
This is another story blown out of proportion. She wrote a book, and apparently was upset when she found out her husband was getting some action from an intern. Is it just me or is she managing the best publicity effort for a book in the history of new books? She will sell her books and she will become a star, as if she isn't already one. And maybe, just maybe, people will realize that this is all just the latest act in a very precise and long-term effort to elect her as President. If nothing else, I must give her credit for managing a great strategy. I can't stand her, but I respect he ability. And it is time that her political opponents all do the same. She is smart, focused and ambitious. She can beat us and we better get ready.
News
Is there any news these days? The tax cuts passed, no American cares if we don't find WMD, the Yankees dropped their series with the Cubs, the NBA finals are all but decided in favor of the Spurs, and ... Summer is here and news slows down. So do I. I spent Saturday lounging around a pool with my kids and about the only thing on my mind was putting on sun screen. Here is to a lazy summer.
Jun 5, 2003
Reader Comments
I received some feedback to my posting from Tuesday of this week and I felt it would be valuable to share this with other readers. The reader's comments are italicized.
FCC -- As I understand, the changes also mean the same company could own the most popular TV station a handful or radio stations, and the only newspaper in a mid-size town. But still, what's the big deal? As long as everybody knows the Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, UT] owns KSL, KSL radio, and the Deseret News, they can choose where they get their news.
The reader is right. It is worth clarifying that the details of the plan include this change as well as others. It might be helpful to review the testimony of Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, to the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday. I happened to catch it on C-Span and amongst other things he makes it clear that owning stations in markets totaling 45% of households may still mean you only own 3% of actual stations. Like my reader, I agree that an informed citizenry can choose to look elsewhere for the news.
WMD -- I'm surprised they haven't turned up. I honestly thought they were there. I'm not quite as surprised that it took so long for us to figure out on Korea and Iran--they wouldn't be too terribly hard to hide. Makes one wonder how much we really do know. How many weapons, technology, etc. is N. Korea shipping to other countries? Russia?
Surprise is a good way to describe it. Best I can figure the WMD either never were there, have been destroyed, or are well hidden (horrible grammar, I know). As for never being there, we can easily demonstrate that the Democrats and France agreed that Iraq had WMD before the war. The debate was never about the veracity of this fact. So to say the White House was making the story up is misleading political opportunism. I don't think they were destroyed. If well hidden eventually we should find them. But how about a different angle? Is the problem that they HAD WMD or that they were doing everything they could to obtain, develop, distribute, and use WMD? Fair -- the evidence of this is also missing. But consider this, when Bush first introduced the Axis of Evil I argued that the real link between the three was an openly expressed desire to oppose, in a belligerant way, the policies of the United States of America. Why, for example, isn't Cuba or France on the list? Cuba causes all kinds of problems and sometimes makes a lot of noise, but when push comes to shove they are not willing to directly confront us in a physical way and they are not on the market to acquire the military arms to do just that. France causes us trouble all the time (if you think Iraq is the first time they were obstinate you need to read up on Cold War history) and they even have a WMD program. But they do not call us the Great Satan, try to assasinate our President, shoot at our airplanes, or cheer when we are stricken as we were on 9/11. The only fights they pick with us are over letting in agricultural exports. What Osama showed the world was that there is a way to fight the US and inflict casualties. So a fair question after 9/11 is: 'Who might get some bad ideas?' And the list easily came out as Iraq, Iran, and N Korea. The next question is: 'What are these countries most likely to try should they get some bad ideas?' The easy answer is: 'Anything they have already been trying'. And in all three cases there was a documented effort to create WMD or the tools of WMD. All three have had documented programs to create nuclear weapons and interestingly enough N Korea is well documented for trying to build missiles that it has then sold to Iran and Iraq. You can do similar analysis from different directions and you come up with a similar list. Consider it yet another way, Thomas Friedman makes some real good points about why we picked on Iraq. The bottome-line? Because we could. Of the problems out there, Iraq was the easiest way to show the world that we were serious and that we could really do some damage.
Spending -- It's out of control and Bush isn't pointing the finger at the Democrats because they're not entirely to blame.
Exactly my point. And this is why I say that this is my only criticism of Bush. Does this mean I wouldn't vote for him in 2004? No. Just look at the record and you will see that Congressional Republicans are handing out pork barrel like crazy. With a little effort on a search engine you can find all kinds of lists of this junk. And to make it worse, even Bush himself has handed out the garbage. Good politics, BAD leadership.
Tax cut -- I don't know the details of the latest bill but I'm all for simplifying things. Especially being a small business owner, let's make it simple all the way around. Lower the better too.
Amen.
Economics Lesson For the Day
Frederic Bastiat is famous for his parable of the broken window. To put it simply, he uses it to explain the concept of opportunity costs -- if the government does X, it will prevent the free market from doing Y. So, the government should stop doing X. The story is worth reading, but there are also cliff notes versions available. I recommend you check it out.
I received some feedback to my posting from Tuesday of this week and I felt it would be valuable to share this with other readers. The reader's comments are italicized.
FCC -- As I understand, the changes also mean the same company could own the most popular TV station a handful or radio stations, and the only newspaper in a mid-size town. But still, what's the big deal? As long as everybody knows the Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, UT] owns KSL, KSL radio, and the Deseret News, they can choose where they get their news.
The reader is right. It is worth clarifying that the details of the plan include this change as well as others. It might be helpful to review the testimony of Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, to the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday. I happened to catch it on C-Span and amongst other things he makes it clear that owning stations in markets totaling 45% of households may still mean you only own 3% of actual stations. Like my reader, I agree that an informed citizenry can choose to look elsewhere for the news.
WMD -- I'm surprised they haven't turned up. I honestly thought they were there. I'm not quite as surprised that it took so long for us to figure out on Korea and Iran--they wouldn't be too terribly hard to hide. Makes one wonder how much we really do know. How many weapons, technology, etc. is N. Korea shipping to other countries? Russia?
Surprise is a good way to describe it. Best I can figure the WMD either never were there, have been destroyed, or are well hidden (horrible grammar, I know). As for never being there, we can easily demonstrate that the Democrats and France agreed that Iraq had WMD before the war. The debate was never about the veracity of this fact. So to say the White House was making the story up is misleading political opportunism. I don't think they were destroyed. If well hidden eventually we should find them. But how about a different angle? Is the problem that they HAD WMD or that they were doing everything they could to obtain, develop, distribute, and use WMD? Fair -- the evidence of this is also missing. But consider this, when Bush first introduced the Axis of Evil I argued that the real link between the three was an openly expressed desire to oppose, in a belligerant way, the policies of the United States of America. Why, for example, isn't Cuba or France on the list? Cuba causes all kinds of problems and sometimes makes a lot of noise, but when push comes to shove they are not willing to directly confront us in a physical way and they are not on the market to acquire the military arms to do just that. France causes us trouble all the time (if you think Iraq is the first time they were obstinate you need to read up on Cold War history) and they even have a WMD program. But they do not call us the Great Satan, try to assasinate our President, shoot at our airplanes, or cheer when we are stricken as we were on 9/11. The only fights they pick with us are over letting in agricultural exports. What Osama showed the world was that there is a way to fight the US and inflict casualties. So a fair question after 9/11 is: 'Who might get some bad ideas?' And the list easily came out as Iraq, Iran, and N Korea. The next question is: 'What are these countries most likely to try should they get some bad ideas?' The easy answer is: 'Anything they have already been trying'. And in all three cases there was a documented effort to create WMD or the tools of WMD. All three have had documented programs to create nuclear weapons and interestingly enough N Korea is well documented for trying to build missiles that it has then sold to Iran and Iraq. You can do similar analysis from different directions and you come up with a similar list. Consider it yet another way, Thomas Friedman makes some real good points about why we picked on Iraq. The bottome-line? Because we could. Of the problems out there, Iraq was the easiest way to show the world that we were serious and that we could really do some damage.
Spending -- It's out of control and Bush isn't pointing the finger at the Democrats because they're not entirely to blame.
Exactly my point. And this is why I say that this is my only criticism of Bush. Does this mean I wouldn't vote for him in 2004? No. Just look at the record and you will see that Congressional Republicans are handing out pork barrel like crazy. With a little effort on a search engine you can find all kinds of lists of this junk. And to make it worse, even Bush himself has handed out the garbage. Good politics, BAD leadership.
Tax cut -- I don't know the details of the latest bill but I'm all for simplifying things. Especially being a small business owner, let's make it simple all the way around. Lower the better too.
Amen.
Economics Lesson For the Day
Frederic Bastiat is famous for his parable of the broken window. To put it simply, he uses it to explain the concept of opportunity costs -- if the government does X, it will prevent the free market from doing Y. So, the government should stop doing X. The story is worth reading, but there are also cliff notes versions available. I recommend you check it out.
Jun 4, 2003
Misleading on Economics
Yesterday afternoon Daniel Gross criticized the Bush tax cuts in a piece on Slate. Readers of this blog (not that there are all that many), will recognize that I am not all that impressed by the Bush tax cut. I didn't give all my reasons yesterday, but Gross has given me the inspiration to go into a little detail. Gross is completely wrong on his criticism. And what is really bad is that he understands enough about economics to find some good sources, but in reality he wasn't paying attention when he was in Economics 101 in college.
First: My problem with the Bush tax-cut
It is not big enough to do enough; it is not big enough to force the government to cut spending on a few programs; and it is too complicated.
Big Enough: I could just talk about the equity issue of how much I am personally getting. A few hundred dollars is not going to change my behavior. In this sense, Gross is correct. Small tax cut changes have little effect on behavior. His mistake is that he links the wrong behavior to the wrong taxes and the wrong policy. But back to me. A cut of a few hundred dollars will only cause me to pay down a little debt and maybe buy that new DVD player I want to get. The DVD player is made in China and so the money goes right out the door. Sure, there is a cut in dividends and capital gains, but will anyone who actually realized a capital gain or owned stock in a company that had enough profit to issue a dividend please raise their hands? Don't get me wrong, in the long-run of about 5 to 10 years the capital gains and dividend tax-cut will be very good for the economy (more on that later when I take Gross to task), but in terms of immediate stimulation it does very little. And to make it worse, those clauses expire under the tax-cut law in about 3 years. Some good that does.
I have always felt that any tax cut should be measured on it's size relative to the economy. Since theoretically we are freeing up that amount of money to go towards the rest of the economy. The tax cut is a $350 billion cut over 10 years. So the real amount for this year is somewhat less than the total. The final numbers do not really matter, but let's just assume that half of the costs occur in year 1 -- $175 billion. The GDP is currently projected to be more than $10 trillion dollars for this year! The Federal budget is $2 trillion. So, even at $200 billion in tax cuts the amount of money returned to the economy or lost to the budget could be considered in percentage terms as only a 2% investment in the current economy. In reality the effect this year is more like $50 billion or half of a percent. In effect we are shifting the econoimic decision making for 0.5% of the economy away from the government and back to the people. Why not 5%? The existing tax cut is not big enough.
Spending Cuts: A tax cut with a 5% impact would force spending cuts and reduce the size of government. That would be a real change. Close down a few bureacracies and let some of those "smart" bureaucrats free to start businesses. In fact, you could give them each a very fat severance package just to soften the transition. Afterall if you didn't lay them off you would have to pay them for 20 years so why not buy off their cooperation with a severance check worth one year's salary? I bet you wouldn't find too many government workers protesting that. As I stated yesterday, government expenditures are growing at an incredible rate and it is time that we curb the appetite. A large tax cut would force some priortization on Congress.
Complicated: Because the tax cut is so small there needs to be a lot of fancy formulas in order to make it sound good. So, you need to make a certain amount of money and have a kid, or own some stock... The point is that in order to get your tax cut you will have to hire an accountant and by time you are done paying the accountant all of the tax cut will go to the accountant. Now, I personally have nothing against accountants since my wife is one and trust me we are excited about all the easy money coming our way, but why should a tax cut be so complicated? Make it larger and then you could just give everyone a big cut in rates and call it a day.
Now for Mr. Gross
The big mistake Mr Gross makes is that he confuses Supply Side economics with Keynesian economics. Let me try real hard to make this simple.
Keynes believed that in times of recession the government should run a deficit and stimulate demand. Demand is the aggregate desire of the entire economy to spend money on consumables and services. In good times consumers provide more than enough demand. But, every so often they become nervous and stop going to Wal-Mart. To be fair, and this is where people like Gross begin to get lost, Keynes did not mean that Uncle Sam should go to Wal-Mart and buy toilet paper, but he might as well have. Keynes understood that there was consumer demand and government demand that came together to create total demand -- C + G = D. If C drops then raising G can keep D high enough to stimulate the economy. In theory this is fine, but there are a few simple problems. G should drop back down as C returns to normal, but history tells us that it never happens and so we get inflation since D is now too great for the Total Supply (S). Time after time this puts in place a painful cycle of recession, growth, then inflation.
Supply Siders looked at this and asked if there was a better way to resolve the cycle (pay attention Mr Gross). Instead of going to Wal-Mart and buying the toilet paper, why not cut the cost for Wal-Mart of doing business? Or more specifically, why not cut the cost for people investing in Wal-Mart? Keeping it simple. If Sam Walton only has one store and in good times he makes a $50K profit each year after paying $25K in taxes, but in bad years he makes nothing after still paying large amounts of taxes, what is he likely to do in bad years? Close the store? Stop taking returns? And what happens to all the cheery greeters? So, the idea behind Supply Side is to cut the taxes on the returns to investment in capital such as stocks, bonds, property, buildings, and equipment. Therefore, the threshold for being a profitable business is lowered and the engine of the economy is freed up. We can debate if Supply Side works or not (and to be fair my economics professors were not all convinced), but at least we should be correct about what a Supply Side tax cut or tax increase is.
The tax cuts that Gross sites are all consumer tax relief. Marginal rates on my salary only affect how many DVD players or Big Macs I can buy in one year. But, cuts in taxes on capital gains affect how willing I am to buy stock in a new business. The funny thing is that Mr Gross uses the Bush Sr. and Clinton consumer tax increases to show that there was no negative impact on the economy from raising taxes. But, he fails to mention that in 1994 the new Republican Congress passed a cut in Capital Gains taxes. Supply Siders have a good argument for saying that the Clinton economic boom in the late 90's is thanks to that tax cut. Despite my criticisms of Bush's tax cut because of size, at least this tax cut is mostly a supply side cut with a few consumer benefits to help sell it. The last Bush tax cut was only a consumer tax cut. There is hope for the future of this economy because of the new tax cut.
Yesterday afternoon Daniel Gross criticized the Bush tax cuts in a piece on Slate. Readers of this blog (not that there are all that many), will recognize that I am not all that impressed by the Bush tax cut. I didn't give all my reasons yesterday, but Gross has given me the inspiration to go into a little detail. Gross is completely wrong on his criticism. And what is really bad is that he understands enough about economics to find some good sources, but in reality he wasn't paying attention when he was in Economics 101 in college.
First: My problem with the Bush tax-cut
It is not big enough to do enough; it is not big enough to force the government to cut spending on a few programs; and it is too complicated.
Big Enough: I could just talk about the equity issue of how much I am personally getting. A few hundred dollars is not going to change my behavior. In this sense, Gross is correct. Small tax cut changes have little effect on behavior. His mistake is that he links the wrong behavior to the wrong taxes and the wrong policy. But back to me. A cut of a few hundred dollars will only cause me to pay down a little debt and maybe buy that new DVD player I want to get. The DVD player is made in China and so the money goes right out the door. Sure, there is a cut in dividends and capital gains, but will anyone who actually realized a capital gain or owned stock in a company that had enough profit to issue a dividend please raise their hands? Don't get me wrong, in the long-run of about 5 to 10 years the capital gains and dividend tax-cut will be very good for the economy (more on that later when I take Gross to task), but in terms of immediate stimulation it does very little. And to make it worse, those clauses expire under the tax-cut law in about 3 years. Some good that does.
I have always felt that any tax cut should be measured on it's size relative to the economy. Since theoretically we are freeing up that amount of money to go towards the rest of the economy. The tax cut is a $350 billion cut over 10 years. So the real amount for this year is somewhat less than the total. The final numbers do not really matter, but let's just assume that half of the costs occur in year 1 -- $175 billion. The GDP is currently projected to be more than $10 trillion dollars for this year! The Federal budget is $2 trillion. So, even at $200 billion in tax cuts the amount of money returned to the economy or lost to the budget could be considered in percentage terms as only a 2% investment in the current economy. In reality the effect this year is more like $50 billion or half of a percent. In effect we are shifting the econoimic decision making for 0.5% of the economy away from the government and back to the people. Why not 5%? The existing tax cut is not big enough.
Spending Cuts: A tax cut with a 5% impact would force spending cuts and reduce the size of government. That would be a real change. Close down a few bureacracies and let some of those "smart" bureaucrats free to start businesses. In fact, you could give them each a very fat severance package just to soften the transition. Afterall if you didn't lay them off you would have to pay them for 20 years so why not buy off their cooperation with a severance check worth one year's salary? I bet you wouldn't find too many government workers protesting that. As I stated yesterday, government expenditures are growing at an incredible rate and it is time that we curb the appetite. A large tax cut would force some priortization on Congress.
Complicated: Because the tax cut is so small there needs to be a lot of fancy formulas in order to make it sound good. So, you need to make a certain amount of money and have a kid, or own some stock... The point is that in order to get your tax cut you will have to hire an accountant and by time you are done paying the accountant all of the tax cut will go to the accountant. Now, I personally have nothing against accountants since my wife is one and trust me we are excited about all the easy money coming our way, but why should a tax cut be so complicated? Make it larger and then you could just give everyone a big cut in rates and call it a day.
Now for Mr. Gross
The big mistake Mr Gross makes is that he confuses Supply Side economics with Keynesian economics. Let me try real hard to make this simple.
Keynes believed that in times of recession the government should run a deficit and stimulate demand. Demand is the aggregate desire of the entire economy to spend money on consumables and services. In good times consumers provide more than enough demand. But, every so often they become nervous and stop going to Wal-Mart. To be fair, and this is where people like Gross begin to get lost, Keynes did not mean that Uncle Sam should go to Wal-Mart and buy toilet paper, but he might as well have. Keynes understood that there was consumer demand and government demand that came together to create total demand -- C + G = D. If C drops then raising G can keep D high enough to stimulate the economy. In theory this is fine, but there are a few simple problems. G should drop back down as C returns to normal, but history tells us that it never happens and so we get inflation since D is now too great for the Total Supply (S). Time after time this puts in place a painful cycle of recession, growth, then inflation.
Supply Siders looked at this and asked if there was a better way to resolve the cycle (pay attention Mr Gross). Instead of going to Wal-Mart and buying the toilet paper, why not cut the cost for Wal-Mart of doing business? Or more specifically, why not cut the cost for people investing in Wal-Mart? Keeping it simple. If Sam Walton only has one store and in good times he makes a $50K profit each year after paying $25K in taxes, but in bad years he makes nothing after still paying large amounts of taxes, what is he likely to do in bad years? Close the store? Stop taking returns? And what happens to all the cheery greeters? So, the idea behind Supply Side is to cut the taxes on the returns to investment in capital such as stocks, bonds, property, buildings, and equipment. Therefore, the threshold for being a profitable business is lowered and the engine of the economy is freed up. We can debate if Supply Side works or not (and to be fair my economics professors were not all convinced), but at least we should be correct about what a Supply Side tax cut or tax increase is.
The tax cuts that Gross sites are all consumer tax relief. Marginal rates on my salary only affect how many DVD players or Big Macs I can buy in one year. But, cuts in taxes on capital gains affect how willing I am to buy stock in a new business. The funny thing is that Mr Gross uses the Bush Sr. and Clinton consumer tax increases to show that there was no negative impact on the economy from raising taxes. But, he fails to mention that in 1994 the new Republican Congress passed a cut in Capital Gains taxes. Supply Siders have a good argument for saying that the Clinton economic boom in the late 90's is thanks to that tax cut. Despite my criticisms of Bush's tax cut because of size, at least this tax cut is mostly a supply side cut with a few consumer benefits to help sell it. The last Bush tax cut was only a consumer tax cut. There is hope for the future of this economy because of the new tax cut.
Jun 3, 2003
I AM BACK !
I have just completed a move from Texas to Utah. I apologize for being absent. I feared that during my move news would break and I would miss a chance to comment. While I have missed a few opportunities to catch Paul Krugman in an exaggeration or two, I have not missed anything that I consider to be earth shattering. To catch myself up I am going to make quick comments on various issues I have missed.
1. FCC Regulation Change
Am I the only one who noticed that the regulation change did not say "one company can own it all", but instead said instead of 35% a company can approach 45%? That hardly seems like enough of a difference to justify all the uproar amongst liberals. And what exactly does the 35% vs. 45% mean? It doesn't mean I can own 45% of TV stations in New York. Instead it means that I can own TV stations whose total potential viewers equal no more than 45% of the national population. It does not give ABC, for example, exclusive rights to 45% of the market, but the right to compete with others in 45% of the market. Don't confuse ownership with affiliates. Most ABC stations are affiliates who are owned by a third party and don't count in the 45%. Finally, why is the government regulating this anyway? Would it make sense to say to McDonald's that they can only build restaurants in 45% of the country? How about Wal-Mart? Since I recently moved how about this one: U-Haul can only serve moves from point to point in 45% of the market? Plain and simple it is ludicrous!
2. Tax Cut
This would have been big news if it were a bigger cut that really simplified the tax code. Yes, I know that if the sunset clauses are ignored that this tax cut will be really big, and that it cuts supply-side favorites, and that it gets money into people's pockets. But, at the end of the day it is actually small. And it makes the tax code more complicated. And finally where was the courage to offset the tax cut with some spending CUTS? This tax cut is better than nothing, but next time can we really cut and simplify?
3. Bush's WMD Problem
I think that William F. Buckley has something good to say about this. I was a big supporter of the war and I have no reason to doubt that we did the right thing. But, the image looks bad for Bush on this. The irony is that his Democratic attackers accuse Bush of over-selling the WMD issue and say he is the best marketer in politics. If that is the case, then why hasn't his marketing department figured out a better way to answer the accusations? I think the reason is that he really is not all that great at marketing and he got blind-sided. Buckley has it about right. Somewhere along the line the intelligence failed. And we need to figure out how to prevent that in the future because it raises all those questions about Iran and N Korea's nuclear programs and how good our intelligence really is on that.
4. My only criticism of Bush
Every so often I ask myself how happy I am with this elected official or another. I try to be fair since as a matter of personal philosophy I feel all politicians, regardless of party, suffer from a sickness of overestimating the ability of government power to do good. Consequently they often view the government as the way to solve problems. In a few cases they are right. But, often they are wrong and simply end up trying to impress voters. A detailed discussion of my views should appropriately be tabled for a future and lengthier column. My point in mentioning this, however, is to stipulate the observation that this is the greatest cause of the march from little government to more government. It is one of the greatest reasons that the Internal Revenue Code gets longer and never shorter. It is the reason that even in a Republican administration government can grow. So, the least I search for is an effort to lessen this seemingly inevitable growth of government. All of that being said, my real point is that we have a problem. Government is growing like crazy. There was a time when Conservatives lamented that Bush had never used the veto in his battles with Senate Democrats. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress it would seem politically odd for the President to veto something from Congress. But spending is out of control. And NOT because of tax and spend Democrats. Bush needs to get nasty with some of the pork barrel. Bush needs to get nasty with a few unneeded government programs. Bush needs to veto on the principle of fiscal responsibility.
To make my point take a look at the Office of Management and Budget's website. Granted the wastebasket and other efforts featured on this site are positive steps in the right direction. However, if you look at these charts you can see the incredible growth of spending since Bush took office. In fact, in an attempt to deflect Democratic criticism that tax cuts are causing deficits to return, Bush's OMB makes the case for me. Sure, they point out that this trend began in 1998, but Bush hasn't stopped. In fact, it appears to have accelerated. I think Conservatives should be concerned. Using data from this document let me put it into a simple perspective. In 1988, towards the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency the total budget was just over $1 trillion in today's dollars (meaning that it was not literally that amount, but when comparing the value of today's dollar with the value of 1988's dollar it would be this amount). In 1998 (the starting year for the OMB's fancy graphs mentioned earlier) the total budget was $1.6 trillion. Today it is over $2 trillion. On the one hand one might defend Bush 2 by saying that from Reagan to Bush 2 the budget doubled so shame on Clinton. But, to be fair, Bush Sr.'s last budget (1992) comes in at $1.38 trillion, and Bush Jr. takes over with his first budget in 2001 at $1.86 trillion. And now it is projected for 2003 to be $2.14 trillion. To be fair, the last year and first year of a President's budget deserve to be fairly credited for overlap, but my point is not to do anything other than point out that the rate of spending has increased far too fast under Bush 2.
Bush is so concerned about avoiding confrontation that he has handed everyone a blank check. The Democrats are wrong, deficits are not here because of the Bush tax cuts, but Bush is wrong as well, the deficits are not solely because of the economy either. The return to deficits is because Bush and Congressional Republicans have abandoned the Conservative commitment to make government smaller and spend less taxpayer money. Shame on the Republicans. Shame on George W Bush.
5. Socialism Fails Again
Here is one more example of why socialism fails.
Finally
I want to make some observations about my drive across part of the country. In Texas the State flag of Texas is prominently displayed everywhere. I wonder if the Liberal's will ever pick on this symbol of independence. In no other state that I passed through (or for that matter that I have ever been in), did I see such a symbol of state heritage. I will miss this about Texas -- it is no wonder to me why the Bush clan made Texas their adopted home.
I also noticed that there is a lot of open country. In fact, there is a section starting in Kansas and heading into Colorado where I am sure that there is no more than one radio station. Yes, this is Bob Dole country. Just farm land as far as the eye can see.
Wyoming has nice roads. I know that seems a silly thing to say about a state, but made driving an easy thing and I appreciated it.
There is a lot of open space and a lot of beauty to behold in this country. Not that similar things do not exist in other countries, but I don't think recognizing that means I can't love this country and enjoy the beauty that I see. God bless the USA.
I have just completed a move from Texas to Utah. I apologize for being absent. I feared that during my move news would break and I would miss a chance to comment. While I have missed a few opportunities to catch Paul Krugman in an exaggeration or two, I have not missed anything that I consider to be earth shattering. To catch myself up I am going to make quick comments on various issues I have missed.
1. FCC Regulation Change
Am I the only one who noticed that the regulation change did not say "one company can own it all", but instead said instead of 35% a company can approach 45%? That hardly seems like enough of a difference to justify all the uproar amongst liberals. And what exactly does the 35% vs. 45% mean? It doesn't mean I can own 45% of TV stations in New York. Instead it means that I can own TV stations whose total potential viewers equal no more than 45% of the national population. It does not give ABC, for example, exclusive rights to 45% of the market, but the right to compete with others in 45% of the market. Don't confuse ownership with affiliates. Most ABC stations are affiliates who are owned by a third party and don't count in the 45%. Finally, why is the government regulating this anyway? Would it make sense to say to McDonald's that they can only build restaurants in 45% of the country? How about Wal-Mart? Since I recently moved how about this one: U-Haul can only serve moves from point to point in 45% of the market? Plain and simple it is ludicrous!
2. Tax Cut
This would have been big news if it were a bigger cut that really simplified the tax code. Yes, I know that if the sunset clauses are ignored that this tax cut will be really big, and that it cuts supply-side favorites, and that it gets money into people's pockets. But, at the end of the day it is actually small. And it makes the tax code more complicated. And finally where was the courage to offset the tax cut with some spending CUTS? This tax cut is better than nothing, but next time can we really cut and simplify?
3. Bush's WMD Problem
I think that William F. Buckley has something good to say about this. I was a big supporter of the war and I have no reason to doubt that we did the right thing. But, the image looks bad for Bush on this. The irony is that his Democratic attackers accuse Bush of over-selling the WMD issue and say he is the best marketer in politics. If that is the case, then why hasn't his marketing department figured out a better way to answer the accusations? I think the reason is that he really is not all that great at marketing and he got blind-sided. Buckley has it about right. Somewhere along the line the intelligence failed. And we need to figure out how to prevent that in the future because it raises all those questions about Iran and N Korea's nuclear programs and how good our intelligence really is on that.
4. My only criticism of Bush
Every so often I ask myself how happy I am with this elected official or another. I try to be fair since as a matter of personal philosophy I feel all politicians, regardless of party, suffer from a sickness of overestimating the ability of government power to do good. Consequently they often view the government as the way to solve problems. In a few cases they are right. But, often they are wrong and simply end up trying to impress voters. A detailed discussion of my views should appropriately be tabled for a future and lengthier column. My point in mentioning this, however, is to stipulate the observation that this is the greatest cause of the march from little government to more government. It is one of the greatest reasons that the Internal Revenue Code gets longer and never shorter. It is the reason that even in a Republican administration government can grow. So, the least I search for is an effort to lessen this seemingly inevitable growth of government. All of that being said, my real point is that we have a problem. Government is growing like crazy. There was a time when Conservatives lamented that Bush had never used the veto in his battles with Senate Democrats. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress it would seem politically odd for the President to veto something from Congress. But spending is out of control. And NOT because of tax and spend Democrats. Bush needs to get nasty with some of the pork barrel. Bush needs to get nasty with a few unneeded government programs. Bush needs to veto on the principle of fiscal responsibility.
To make my point take a look at the Office of Management and Budget's website. Granted the wastebasket and other efforts featured on this site are positive steps in the right direction. However, if you look at these charts you can see the incredible growth of spending since Bush took office. In fact, in an attempt to deflect Democratic criticism that tax cuts are causing deficits to return, Bush's OMB makes the case for me. Sure, they point out that this trend began in 1998, but Bush hasn't stopped. In fact, it appears to have accelerated. I think Conservatives should be concerned. Using data from this document let me put it into a simple perspective. In 1988, towards the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency the total budget was just over $1 trillion in today's dollars (meaning that it was not literally that amount, but when comparing the value of today's dollar with the value of 1988's dollar it would be this amount). In 1998 (the starting year for the OMB's fancy graphs mentioned earlier) the total budget was $1.6 trillion. Today it is over $2 trillion. On the one hand one might defend Bush 2 by saying that from Reagan to Bush 2 the budget doubled so shame on Clinton. But, to be fair, Bush Sr.'s last budget (1992) comes in at $1.38 trillion, and Bush Jr. takes over with his first budget in 2001 at $1.86 trillion. And now it is projected for 2003 to be $2.14 trillion. To be fair, the last year and first year of a President's budget deserve to be fairly credited for overlap, but my point is not to do anything other than point out that the rate of spending has increased far too fast under Bush 2.
Bush is so concerned about avoiding confrontation that he has handed everyone a blank check. The Democrats are wrong, deficits are not here because of the Bush tax cuts, but Bush is wrong as well, the deficits are not solely because of the economy either. The return to deficits is because Bush and Congressional Republicans have abandoned the Conservative commitment to make government smaller and spend less taxpayer money. Shame on the Republicans. Shame on George W Bush.
5. Socialism Fails Again
Here is one more example of why socialism fails.
Finally
I want to make some observations about my drive across part of the country. In Texas the State flag of Texas is prominently displayed everywhere. I wonder if the Liberal's will ever pick on this symbol of independence. In no other state that I passed through (or for that matter that I have ever been in), did I see such a symbol of state heritage. I will miss this about Texas -- it is no wonder to me why the Bush clan made Texas their adopted home.
I also noticed that there is a lot of open country. In fact, there is a section starting in Kansas and heading into Colorado where I am sure that there is no more than one radio station. Yes, this is Bob Dole country. Just farm land as far as the eye can see.
Wyoming has nice roads. I know that seems a silly thing to say about a state, but made driving an easy thing and I appreciated it.
There is a lot of open space and a lot of beauty to behold in this country. Not that similar things do not exist in other countries, but I don't think recognizing that means I can't love this country and enjoy the beauty that I see. God bless the USA.
May 16, 2003
Paul Krugman has Cronkite Envy
I think Paul Krugman must be watching a different news channel than me. Maybe he is watching Al Jazeera. In his New York Times editorial today he says that the Bush policy on terrrorism "has made us much less safe than we should be." I had to rub my eyes and re-read the piece to be sure that I did not misunderstand him. I think his premise is that Bush is practicing a "photo-op" policy as opposed to a successful policy. We could end this right here by simply asking the obvious: if your policy stinks where are you going to get the photo-ops from?
Krugman says that the war on Iraq simply distracted the US from pursuing Al Qaeda. He sights the bombing in Saudi Arabia and a study from a British think tank to argue that Al Qaeda is just as strong today as they were on September 10th. Let's start with the think tank. I really can't dispute his claim that the IISS is reputable. A glance at their website seems to indicate a pretty fair-minded agenda. But I couldn't find the Krugman quote. I'm not saying it isn't there (though one could wonder with Times reporters these days), just that I couldn't find it. I did a search of statements about Al Qaeda and turned up a list of statements. In fact, the first article seemed to be close to what he was referring to. I recommend people read the entire thing. It seems pretty consistent with what Bush is saying. I think Krugman is twisting the truth by taking a quote out of context.
What is the real lesson of the bombing in Saudi Arabia? Maybe Krugman should not ignore the following details: US intelligence warned Saudi officials about a threat like this, the US warned American's about travel to the region, Saudi officials made a bust on the exact group of terrorists that commited the acts just a week before but the terrorists got away, no airplanes were involved, and finally the bombing did not take place in America but in the home country of many Al Qaeda terrorists. Using my scoring method this looks like progress. I think Krugman is crying fire in a theatre when someone has lit a cigarette.
I think Krugman suffers from a current media ailment I call "Cronkite envy". During the Vietnam War Walter Cronkite was the respected CBS news anchor that so many relied on for news about the war. The turning point in the war appears to be when Cronkite declared the war a lost cause. Granted many other things happened in 1968, but this is the image we are all shown, and to this day Walter Cronkite is interviewed as an authority on the honest assessment of war. What ambitious news reporter does not want to be the Cronkite of our times? In fact, I think this was why so many news anchors quickly focused on early challenges in the war with Iraq. Each wanted to be like Cronkite. Each wanted to be the clever reporter who first identified the turning point. Of course none of them realized the irony of declaring a turning point on week two of a war when the US had been involved in Vietnam for almost a decade when Cronkite finally made his declaration.
Krugman and his peers missed the chance with the war on Iraq. We won and there is no chance to be the next Cronkite of history on that war. So what is left? Why not make accusations that we are failing in the war on terror? Put together a few random pieces and throw it up on a wall and see if it sticks. I am sorry Paul Krugman, but you will have to do better than this if you have any hopes of being the next Walter Cronkite.
I think Paul Krugman must be watching a different news channel than me. Maybe he is watching Al Jazeera. In his New York Times editorial today he says that the Bush policy on terrrorism "has made us much less safe than we should be." I had to rub my eyes and re-read the piece to be sure that I did not misunderstand him. I think his premise is that Bush is practicing a "photo-op" policy as opposed to a successful policy. We could end this right here by simply asking the obvious: if your policy stinks where are you going to get the photo-ops from?
Krugman says that the war on Iraq simply distracted the US from pursuing Al Qaeda. He sights the bombing in Saudi Arabia and a study from a British think tank to argue that Al Qaeda is just as strong today as they were on September 10th. Let's start with the think tank. I really can't dispute his claim that the IISS is reputable. A glance at their website seems to indicate a pretty fair-minded agenda. But I couldn't find the Krugman quote. I'm not saying it isn't there (though one could wonder with Times reporters these days), just that I couldn't find it. I did a search of statements about Al Qaeda and turned up a list of statements. In fact, the first article seemed to be close to what he was referring to. I recommend people read the entire thing. It seems pretty consistent with what Bush is saying. I think Krugman is twisting the truth by taking a quote out of context.
What is the real lesson of the bombing in Saudi Arabia? Maybe Krugman should not ignore the following details: US intelligence warned Saudi officials about a threat like this, the US warned American's about travel to the region, Saudi officials made a bust on the exact group of terrorists that commited the acts just a week before but the terrorists got away, no airplanes were involved, and finally the bombing did not take place in America but in the home country of many Al Qaeda terrorists. Using my scoring method this looks like progress. I think Krugman is crying fire in a theatre when someone has lit a cigarette.
I think Krugman suffers from a current media ailment I call "Cronkite envy". During the Vietnam War Walter Cronkite was the respected CBS news anchor that so many relied on for news about the war. The turning point in the war appears to be when Cronkite declared the war a lost cause. Granted many other things happened in 1968, but this is the image we are all shown, and to this day Walter Cronkite is interviewed as an authority on the honest assessment of war. What ambitious news reporter does not want to be the Cronkite of our times? In fact, I think this was why so many news anchors quickly focused on early challenges in the war with Iraq. Each wanted to be like Cronkite. Each wanted to be the clever reporter who first identified the turning point. Of course none of them realized the irony of declaring a turning point on week two of a war when the US had been involved in Vietnam for almost a decade when Cronkite finally made his declaration.
Krugman and his peers missed the chance with the war on Iraq. We won and there is no chance to be the next Cronkite of history on that war. So what is left? Why not make accusations that we are failing in the war on terror? Put together a few random pieces and throw it up on a wall and see if it sticks. I am sorry Paul Krugman, but you will have to do better than this if you have any hopes of being the next Walter Cronkite.
The New York Times and Blair
It is obvious that the Jayson Blair fiasco points to mismanagement at the New York Times--even the Times admits this. Conservatives celebrate this for two reasons: they view the Times as a Liberally biased newspaper that sets the tone for major news outlets, and they see this as proof that diversity for the sake of diversity is a failed agenda. Liberals jump to the defense of the Times because they see that Conservatives might succeed in making this case. What is not discussed is what this mismanagement should cause us to infer. For just a second, ignore the ideological battle lines of the culture wars and accept the premise that management of Jayson Blair represents a problem. There can only be two ways of looking at this. Either the New York Times allowed diversity to negatively influence management decisions or management of all reporters is really bad.
The racial diversity agenda, in and of itself, is not really at issue--we can have that debate another day. What is at issue is that management used Jayson Blair as an example of how diverse the Times is. This might imply a few things. Could it be that the Times feared that racial activists would target them? The leading strategy of racial activists like Jesse Jackson is to target big businesses and threaten lawsuits in order to get certain concessions on race and thereby set standards in industries. This strategy works exactly because bad publicity will hurt the industry leaders. So, many corporations find themselves forced to over emphasize policies that favor the hiring and retention of minorities. Thus we get Howell Raines speaking to a civil rights group and proclaiming that Jayson Blair is an example of efforts at the Times even though he knew of disciplinary action that had been taken against Blair. Was Raines that scared of the racial activists? Could he not find any other examples of successful minorities working for the Times? Is it possible that the Times really has few other examples? What does this imply about the Times' real commitment to a racial diversity agenda that they favor on their editorial pages?
Or does it imply that the Times did not have the guts to fire or demote a black reporter in spite of having a bad work history? Sure, they fired him now, but did they set him up, or were they just afraid to punish him without a mountain of evidence? Talk to any manager about firing and what well they say? Very dangerous. The liability is high regardless of race. So, usually the company finds some other way to "manage" the problem while carefully documenting bad performance. My understanding is that race makes companies even more nervous. Was the Times too nervous to properly punish Blair earlier? What does this say about the undo influence race has on the ability of editors at the Times to properly manage personnel?
On the issue of diversity at the Times I can only conclude that the Times is not sincere. Their commitment to racial diversity is phony. They want to avoid lawsuits and bad press. I think the Liberals should call them on this hypocrisy. Either it is hypocrisy about the Liberal race agenda, or the race agenda is weakened by the implication that a black reporter got special treatment. Thus the Conservative connection to the deabte on the issue of diversity.
On the other hand it is possible that this simply demonstrates a broader management problem. If you believe the claim from the Times that Blair was qualified, then what does this say about all reporters at the Times? Or all management at the Times? Does this mean that reporter candidates are not properly scrutinized for the proper skills? Or does it mean they are not scrutinized for an ethical conscience? For a paper with such high standards it can be presumed that the Times can pick from the best reporter candidates in the business. I am sure there are reporters reluctant to criticize the Times simply in hopes of not offending the management of the one paper most reporters dream of working for. If the Times has this type of power in the marketplace it is not beyond reason to expect that they could hire the best. It also stands to reason that management would want to protect this image by carefully scrutinizing candidates. Does this then imply that the Times is not very effective in screening job applicants? Maybe it is hard to screen properly, but then one might think that editors would be much more vigilant about monitoring reporters in order to preserve the image of the Times. Yes, the Times did catch Blair on previous occassions. But why have a policy that rehabilitates when you should have a lot of potential candidates for replacing Blair with? Instead the Times promoted him to a more prestigious assignment. What does this imply about all reporters at the Times? If Blair did not get special treatment for being black, then does this mean that this is the bad managment style of the Times? How many lies are there on the front page of today's Times?
What the Blair fiasco calls into question is the corporate honesty of the Times. Either the Times is not willing to admit that a racial diversity program had very negative consequences and was only in place for public relations purposes, or the Times is badly managed. Shame on Jayson Blair for what he did. And shame on the New York Times for what they failed to do.
It is obvious that the Jayson Blair fiasco points to mismanagement at the New York Times--even the Times admits this. Conservatives celebrate this for two reasons: they view the Times as a Liberally biased newspaper that sets the tone for major news outlets, and they see this as proof that diversity for the sake of diversity is a failed agenda. Liberals jump to the defense of the Times because they see that Conservatives might succeed in making this case. What is not discussed is what this mismanagement should cause us to infer. For just a second, ignore the ideological battle lines of the culture wars and accept the premise that management of Jayson Blair represents a problem. There can only be two ways of looking at this. Either the New York Times allowed diversity to negatively influence management decisions or management of all reporters is really bad.
The racial diversity agenda, in and of itself, is not really at issue--we can have that debate another day. What is at issue is that management used Jayson Blair as an example of how diverse the Times is. This might imply a few things. Could it be that the Times feared that racial activists would target them? The leading strategy of racial activists like Jesse Jackson is to target big businesses and threaten lawsuits in order to get certain concessions on race and thereby set standards in industries. This strategy works exactly because bad publicity will hurt the industry leaders. So, many corporations find themselves forced to over emphasize policies that favor the hiring and retention of minorities. Thus we get Howell Raines speaking to a civil rights group and proclaiming that Jayson Blair is an example of efforts at the Times even though he knew of disciplinary action that had been taken against Blair. Was Raines that scared of the racial activists? Could he not find any other examples of successful minorities working for the Times? Is it possible that the Times really has few other examples? What does this imply about the Times' real commitment to a racial diversity agenda that they favor on their editorial pages?
Or does it imply that the Times did not have the guts to fire or demote a black reporter in spite of having a bad work history? Sure, they fired him now, but did they set him up, or were they just afraid to punish him without a mountain of evidence? Talk to any manager about firing and what well they say? Very dangerous. The liability is high regardless of race. So, usually the company finds some other way to "manage" the problem while carefully documenting bad performance. My understanding is that race makes companies even more nervous. Was the Times too nervous to properly punish Blair earlier? What does this say about the undo influence race has on the ability of editors at the Times to properly manage personnel?
On the issue of diversity at the Times I can only conclude that the Times is not sincere. Their commitment to racial diversity is phony. They want to avoid lawsuits and bad press. I think the Liberals should call them on this hypocrisy. Either it is hypocrisy about the Liberal race agenda, or the race agenda is weakened by the implication that a black reporter got special treatment. Thus the Conservative connection to the deabte on the issue of diversity.
On the other hand it is possible that this simply demonstrates a broader management problem. If you believe the claim from the Times that Blair was qualified, then what does this say about all reporters at the Times? Or all management at the Times? Does this mean that reporter candidates are not properly scrutinized for the proper skills? Or does it mean they are not scrutinized for an ethical conscience? For a paper with such high standards it can be presumed that the Times can pick from the best reporter candidates in the business. I am sure there are reporters reluctant to criticize the Times simply in hopes of not offending the management of the one paper most reporters dream of working for. If the Times has this type of power in the marketplace it is not beyond reason to expect that they could hire the best. It also stands to reason that management would want to protect this image by carefully scrutinizing candidates. Does this then imply that the Times is not very effective in screening job applicants? Maybe it is hard to screen properly, but then one might think that editors would be much more vigilant about monitoring reporters in order to preserve the image of the Times. Yes, the Times did catch Blair on previous occassions. But why have a policy that rehabilitates when you should have a lot of potential candidates for replacing Blair with? Instead the Times promoted him to a more prestigious assignment. What does this imply about all reporters at the Times? If Blair did not get special treatment for being black, then does this mean that this is the bad managment style of the Times? How many lies are there on the front page of today's Times?
What the Blair fiasco calls into question is the corporate honesty of the Times. Either the Times is not willing to admit that a racial diversity program had very negative consequences and was only in place for public relations purposes, or the Times is badly managed. Shame on Jayson Blair for what he did. And shame on the New York Times for what they failed to do.
May 15, 2003
Senator Graham
In the finest tradition of Senators who think they should be President, Senator Graham has attacked Bush for a September 11th cover-up. It is hard to take Graham seriously because he is running for President. He knows full well the report cannot be released because it might compromise intelligence sources. Therefore, he is making an accusation no one can corroborate or deny and which simply has the effect of manipulating natural voter cynicism about politicians. The only logical response is an equal share of cynicism about his campaign for President not getting much attention--is he just trying to get some name recognition?
Senator Graham is in the position of John F Kennedy over 40 years ago. JFK made a big deal about a supposed "missile gap". According to his claims the US was far behind the USSR in the development of our Nuclear Missile forces. History of course verifies that JFK was incorrect. Why did he make the charge? He was a US Senator and reasonably could have had access to classified documents that would confirm or refute the suspicion. Furthermore, he could have used his influence to get some type of whispered information. But, this is exactly the point. If he had the information or not is besides the point. He wasn't so much lying, as he was running for office--no wonder people think politicians are all sleazy. JFK had to overcome a successful Republican administration. He had to stand out in the voters' minds. Eisenhower was strong on the issue of defense, and consequently his VP, Richard Nixon, could rely on voters assuming that policies would continue to safegaurd the United States from war with the USSR. The economy (here is a document) had clearly recovered from recession and the Korean war was over. What could JFK run on? JFK had to find ways to weaken the assumption of Nixon political strength on the issue of national defense. So he attacked the missile gap. See JFK's candidacy announcement and this transcript of a White House news conference right after he was elected to get some context for what went on.
To be fair, JFK and Graham are not the only politicians to use the national security scare tactic. It works exactly because we are scared and because it is impossible to refute without risking top-secret information. Which leads to the other side of the strategy--capitalize on the healthy cynicism of the American voter.
Bob Graham is obviously smart enough to know that voters perceive politicians as willing to lie about anything. So why not feed the flames of doubt about Bush on an issue that is hard for Bush to defend and hard for the media to independently verify? Graham never has to prove anything himself, he simply needs to "raise questions". Then any bombing, like the recent one in Saudi Arabia, just makes the voter say: "I'll be damned, they don't know what they are doing. I guess Sen Graham is right." It is a low risk gamble that pays off for Graham on the political level and can only hurt him when history gets written. He gets name recognition, he gets interviewed, and he gets support. Once again, he is not the first candidate for President to ever take such an approach.
The only defense for Bush on this is to simply state the obvious: Senator Graham is a politician who wants attention. Is it possible that he is right? Sure, it is possible that there are some things that could have been done better by Bush and his team. I hope there is no real cover-up of the proportions that Senator Graham purports. I am confident that the Bush team did not take the threat of terrorism seriously enough and that the report would prove this. But who would have? The ability to identify a past mistake does not qualify a man for the Presidency. The ability to do something proactive about a past mistake does.
In the finest tradition of Senators who think they should be President, Senator Graham has attacked Bush for a September 11th cover-up. It is hard to take Graham seriously because he is running for President. He knows full well the report cannot be released because it might compromise intelligence sources. Therefore, he is making an accusation no one can corroborate or deny and which simply has the effect of manipulating natural voter cynicism about politicians. The only logical response is an equal share of cynicism about his campaign for President not getting much attention--is he just trying to get some name recognition?
Senator Graham is in the position of John F Kennedy over 40 years ago. JFK made a big deal about a supposed "missile gap". According to his claims the US was far behind the USSR in the development of our Nuclear Missile forces. History of course verifies that JFK was incorrect. Why did he make the charge? He was a US Senator and reasonably could have had access to classified documents that would confirm or refute the suspicion. Furthermore, he could have used his influence to get some type of whispered information. But, this is exactly the point. If he had the information or not is besides the point. He wasn't so much lying, as he was running for office--no wonder people think politicians are all sleazy. JFK had to overcome a successful Republican administration. He had to stand out in the voters' minds. Eisenhower was strong on the issue of defense, and consequently his VP, Richard Nixon, could rely on voters assuming that policies would continue to safegaurd the United States from war with the USSR. The economy (here is a document) had clearly recovered from recession and the Korean war was over. What could JFK run on? JFK had to find ways to weaken the assumption of Nixon political strength on the issue of national defense. So he attacked the missile gap. See JFK's candidacy announcement and this transcript of a White House news conference right after he was elected to get some context for what went on.
To be fair, JFK and Graham are not the only politicians to use the national security scare tactic. It works exactly because we are scared and because it is impossible to refute without risking top-secret information. Which leads to the other side of the strategy--capitalize on the healthy cynicism of the American voter.
Bob Graham is obviously smart enough to know that voters perceive politicians as willing to lie about anything. So why not feed the flames of doubt about Bush on an issue that is hard for Bush to defend and hard for the media to independently verify? Graham never has to prove anything himself, he simply needs to "raise questions". Then any bombing, like the recent one in Saudi Arabia, just makes the voter say: "I'll be damned, they don't know what they are doing. I guess Sen Graham is right." It is a low risk gamble that pays off for Graham on the political level and can only hurt him when history gets written. He gets name recognition, he gets interviewed, and he gets support. Once again, he is not the first candidate for President to ever take such an approach.
The only defense for Bush on this is to simply state the obvious: Senator Graham is a politician who wants attention. Is it possible that he is right? Sure, it is possible that there are some things that could have been done better by Bush and his team. I hope there is no real cover-up of the proportions that Senator Graham purports. I am confident that the Bush team did not take the threat of terrorism seriously enough and that the report would prove this. But who would have? The ability to identify a past mistake does not qualify a man for the Presidency. The ability to do something proactive about a past mistake does.
May 14, 2003
Slam!
Paul Krugman had a piece in the New York Times yesterday that is noticably missing from the NYTimes on the web--try this from Krugman's unofficial site. In the piece Krugman makes a weak linkage between FCC regulation and some media support for the war. In fact, he calls it the China Syndrome and proceeds to make Fox News and Neil Cavuto the primary targets of his attack. I thought the piece was so shoddy that I had planned to tear it apart like I did with Krugman's last piece, but I will settle for pointing you to Neil Cavuto's great reponse (Kudos to Kathryn Lopez of National Review for pointing this out).
Paul Krugman had a piece in the New York Times yesterday that is noticably missing from the NYTimes on the web--try this from Krugman's unofficial site. In the piece Krugman makes a weak linkage between FCC regulation and some media support for the war. In fact, he calls it the China Syndrome and proceeds to make Fox News and Neil Cavuto the primary targets of his attack. I thought the piece was so shoddy that I had planned to tear it apart like I did with Krugman's last piece, but I will settle for pointing you to Neil Cavuto's great reponse (Kudos to Kathryn Lopez of National Review for pointing this out).
May 13, 2003
News Reporters
Nothing personal intended, but I think too many news reporters are dumb. I don't mean that they can't spell or speak well. The print variety have deep vocabularies and understand grammar far better than I ever will. It is also evident that many of them have an ability to sniff out stories. The TV variety are telegenic and I admit quite enjoyable to listen to. I doubt anyone would enjoy hearing my voice or watching me. Reporters are talented people. But, the competitive nature of the news business is that the business rewards people for talents that do not include deep thinking skills. Consequently I often find myself irritated by the simply dumb things many reporters do. In fact, I am not even sure that there is so much a liberal media bias as there is a dumb media bias. Reporter after reporter simply takes liberal spin at face value and never questions the validity of the argument. So I wonder what is worse: Jayson Blair filling his articles full of lies, or ignorant reporters who think they have discovered some mysterious new trend. Jayson Blair may be the smarter one.
Let me use a simple example from today's USAToday. At face value this is an interesting story. It appears to prove that Bush is perceived as arrogant by those in his own party. Not to mention the international stage. I know, the article does not explicitly make the comparison to international affairs, but who wouldn't assume the connection while reading? Did the reporters do that intentionally? I don't think so. In fact, I doubt the reporters even considered the comparison. My guess is that something like the following scenario unfolded. The reporters believe the assertion that Bush is disliked internationally for being "arrogant". Then one day one or more of the reporters stumble upon a Congressional Republican staffer at some event and they get talking. Maybe they are at a bar. Or maybe better yet, the staffer works for a disgruntled Republican and actually seeks out the reporter. The reporter is being used, but is dumb enough to think he or she has the best scoop in the history of newspaper reporting. Because the reporter essentially believes the spin that Bush is arrogant, the reporter never bothers to logically assess the situation and produces a story that has some logical inconsistencies. Let me demonstrate.
The only quotes from actual Republican Congressmen comes from Rep Chris Shays of Connecticutt, Senator Trent Lott, and Senator George Voinovich of Ohio. Now really, anyone following current events and actually thinking about the logic of these sources would have to already question the validity of the article.
Let's start with Chris Shays. Why does that name ring a bell? Can anybody say campaign-finance reform? As I remember it the original Bush strategy was to kill Campaign Finance Reform in the House. This was bad for Shays. Forget the fact he wasn't getting the same press time as McCain. I seem to recall stories about the White House and House leadership trying to strong arm the defeat of his bill. Do you think he has an axe to grind? So maybe he doesn't, but do you think a Congressman from liberal Connecticutt looks good when he makes it obvious that he isn't Bush's water boy. In fact, he supported Bush on the war with Iraq and took heat for it. Do you think he needs to make it clear to his voters that he is "independent"? I think this makes his credibility on the issue of Bush somewhat suspect.
How about Trent Lott? It is possible that he has an axe to grind. Maybe he is mad at the White House or Bill Frist for being eased out of power for his comments about Strom Thurmond. Possible, but I doubt it. I think the key is the quote:
"The president is having more trouble than he should" getting his priorities through Congress, says Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the former majority leader.
Of course the President is having more trouble than he should. The Republican criticism of Trent Lott was always that he was not too effective at getting anything passed, not to mention the President's priorities. That should be enough to call his statement into doubt. However, I doubt Senator Lott was actually criticizing the President if we were to see the full context of the quote. I like Trent a lot more now that he is not the Republican Senate leader. Because Trent speaks through the details of the issues and often prefaces his actual views with disclaimers. Anyone who actually watches TV news shows should realize this. It makes him enjoyable to listen to because he is willing to discuss the complexity of politics. Unfortunately, this type of political speaking lends itself too easily to quotes out of context. Why did the reporter have to finish so much of Trent Lott's statement? Could it be that he said something more like: 'The president is having more trouble than he should, but there is no doubt that he is succeeding.'? That sounds like the Trent Lott that I know.
Finally, how about George Voinovich? Wait a second. At the top of the article we get this:
"Some of my colleagues are carping" about the administration's reluctance to consult with Congress, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, says.
Seemingly this Senator is really opening up and telling it like it is. But where is the background story? In't Voinovich the same guy who has made it clear that he is against tax-cuts no matter what? He wants to balance the budget, right? If I am not mistaken he has had this position for a long time; before the proposal of tax-cuts by President Bush. Try this link. So when Bush came along with his proposal for more tax-cuts I can't imagine that Voinovich was all that excited about it. Would he have had a different view had the President invited him to the Oval office for coffee? I doubt it. If someone reads the USAToday story all the way through they then find the most important tidbit about the background towards the end.
Voinovich got a dose of that tactic when the president went to Ohio last month to urge the state's residents to support at least $550 billion in tax cuts over a decade. Voinovich, who wants no more than $350 billion in cuts, hasn't changed his position.
You don't say. Voinovich didn't like what the President did?! I am shocked. It is no wonder he is willing to provide a negative quote on the record.
You see, there is little logic used to question the validity of the stories premise. And it is not just demonstrated in the choice of people to quote. How about the contradiction in these two paragraphs:
Several Republican lawmakers and top aides use the same word to describe their sense of the administration's attitude toward Congress: arrogance.
There's lingering irritation among members of Congress over Bush's refusal to tell them until the last minute how much money he wanted for the Iraq war. There are broader complaints about his administration's penchant for secrecy, his reluctance to invest much time lobbying and socializing with them and his pattern of sending vague principles to Capitol Hill instead of detailed legislation.
I am not sure exactly how the sending of "vague principles... instead of detailed legislation" translates to "arrogance". Someone needs to explain that to me. So, the President essentially says to Congress: 'I don't care about the exact details, but I think we should stimulate the economy by cutting taxes by $700 billion, you guys can decide how best to do it.' I think arrogance would have been something more along the lines of: 'Do it this way or take the highway'. Something more along the lines of the Clinton Universal Health Care Proposal, or $50 billion stimulus package he sent when he was first elected. This is not the only logical inconsistency in the article.
Finally, the reporters prove to be dumb because they evidence a lack of historical perspective. The report says: "Democrats are more united as a minority in the Senate than they were when they ran it." Now wait a second here. This is often true of majority party vs. minority party in Congress. When was the last time the minority party in Congress was not united? All through the 1980's Reagan exploited the fact that Democrat's controlled the House--they couldn't seem to agree on anything except that one of them should be President instead. While in the Senate majority, Republican Senators went along in a strategy that made the House the problem with everything. Did Clinton have more trouble with Democrats when they were the majority in Congress or when they were in the minority? So, just think about it logically. If I am in the majority I want to get as much of what I promised my voters passed. In the majority I need to be noticed, so I make a name for myself by being a thorn in the side of the President on one issue. The President's team probably realizes this and so they look the other way and find votes elsewhere. And for that, they are accused of arrogance?! On the other hand, when Clinton was President with a Republican majority in both houses the only hope he had to pass anything was to get the moderates like Voinovich and Shays over for coffee and find out what they might be willing to vote for. I think there are just some moderates who like Jim Jeffords suddenly feel less important because Bush doesn't need to massage their egos as much as Bill Clinton did.
This is a simple example. But, there are others. It really makes me wonder how dumb can they be? Don't get me wrong, Bush may need to do a better job of getting along with the people of his party, but shouldn't the story be a little more skeptical?
Nothing personal intended, but I think too many news reporters are dumb. I don't mean that they can't spell or speak well. The print variety have deep vocabularies and understand grammar far better than I ever will. It is also evident that many of them have an ability to sniff out stories. The TV variety are telegenic and I admit quite enjoyable to listen to. I doubt anyone would enjoy hearing my voice or watching me. Reporters are talented people. But, the competitive nature of the news business is that the business rewards people for talents that do not include deep thinking skills. Consequently I often find myself irritated by the simply dumb things many reporters do. In fact, I am not even sure that there is so much a liberal media bias as there is a dumb media bias. Reporter after reporter simply takes liberal spin at face value and never questions the validity of the argument. So I wonder what is worse: Jayson Blair filling his articles full of lies, or ignorant reporters who think they have discovered some mysterious new trend. Jayson Blair may be the smarter one.
Let me use a simple example from today's USAToday. At face value this is an interesting story. It appears to prove that Bush is perceived as arrogant by those in his own party. Not to mention the international stage. I know, the article does not explicitly make the comparison to international affairs, but who wouldn't assume the connection while reading? Did the reporters do that intentionally? I don't think so. In fact, I doubt the reporters even considered the comparison. My guess is that something like the following scenario unfolded. The reporters believe the assertion that Bush is disliked internationally for being "arrogant". Then one day one or more of the reporters stumble upon a Congressional Republican staffer at some event and they get talking. Maybe they are at a bar. Or maybe better yet, the staffer works for a disgruntled Republican and actually seeks out the reporter. The reporter is being used, but is dumb enough to think he or she has the best scoop in the history of newspaper reporting. Because the reporter essentially believes the spin that Bush is arrogant, the reporter never bothers to logically assess the situation and produces a story that has some logical inconsistencies. Let me demonstrate.
The only quotes from actual Republican Congressmen comes from Rep Chris Shays of Connecticutt, Senator Trent Lott, and Senator George Voinovich of Ohio. Now really, anyone following current events and actually thinking about the logic of these sources would have to already question the validity of the article.
Let's start with Chris Shays. Why does that name ring a bell? Can anybody say campaign-finance reform? As I remember it the original Bush strategy was to kill Campaign Finance Reform in the House. This was bad for Shays. Forget the fact he wasn't getting the same press time as McCain. I seem to recall stories about the White House and House leadership trying to strong arm the defeat of his bill. Do you think he has an axe to grind? So maybe he doesn't, but do you think a Congressman from liberal Connecticutt looks good when he makes it obvious that he isn't Bush's water boy. In fact, he supported Bush on the war with Iraq and took heat for it. Do you think he needs to make it clear to his voters that he is "independent"? I think this makes his credibility on the issue of Bush somewhat suspect.
How about Trent Lott? It is possible that he has an axe to grind. Maybe he is mad at the White House or Bill Frist for being eased out of power for his comments about Strom Thurmond. Possible, but I doubt it. I think the key is the quote:
"The president is having more trouble than he should" getting his priorities through Congress, says Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the former majority leader.
Of course the President is having more trouble than he should. The Republican criticism of Trent Lott was always that he was not too effective at getting anything passed, not to mention the President's priorities. That should be enough to call his statement into doubt. However, I doubt Senator Lott was actually criticizing the President if we were to see the full context of the quote. I like Trent a lot more now that he is not the Republican Senate leader. Because Trent speaks through the details of the issues and often prefaces his actual views with disclaimers. Anyone who actually watches TV news shows should realize this. It makes him enjoyable to listen to because he is willing to discuss the complexity of politics. Unfortunately, this type of political speaking lends itself too easily to quotes out of context. Why did the reporter have to finish so much of Trent Lott's statement? Could it be that he said something more like: 'The president is having more trouble than he should, but there is no doubt that he is succeeding.'? That sounds like the Trent Lott that I know.
Finally, how about George Voinovich? Wait a second. At the top of the article we get this:
"Some of my colleagues are carping" about the administration's reluctance to consult with Congress, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, says.
Seemingly this Senator is really opening up and telling it like it is. But where is the background story? In't Voinovich the same guy who has made it clear that he is against tax-cuts no matter what? He wants to balance the budget, right? If I am not mistaken he has had this position for a long time; before the proposal of tax-cuts by President Bush. Try this link. So when Bush came along with his proposal for more tax-cuts I can't imagine that Voinovich was all that excited about it. Would he have had a different view had the President invited him to the Oval office for coffee? I doubt it. If someone reads the USAToday story all the way through they then find the most important tidbit about the background towards the end.
Voinovich got a dose of that tactic when the president went to Ohio last month to urge the state's residents to support at least $550 billion in tax cuts over a decade. Voinovich, who wants no more than $350 billion in cuts, hasn't changed his position.
You don't say. Voinovich didn't like what the President did?! I am shocked. It is no wonder he is willing to provide a negative quote on the record.
You see, there is little logic used to question the validity of the stories premise. And it is not just demonstrated in the choice of people to quote. How about the contradiction in these two paragraphs:
Several Republican lawmakers and top aides use the same word to describe their sense of the administration's attitude toward Congress: arrogance.
There's lingering irritation among members of Congress over Bush's refusal to tell them until the last minute how much money he wanted for the Iraq war. There are broader complaints about his administration's penchant for secrecy, his reluctance to invest much time lobbying and socializing with them and his pattern of sending vague principles to Capitol Hill instead of detailed legislation.
I am not sure exactly how the sending of "vague principles... instead of detailed legislation" translates to "arrogance". Someone needs to explain that to me. So, the President essentially says to Congress: 'I don't care about the exact details, but I think we should stimulate the economy by cutting taxes by $700 billion, you guys can decide how best to do it.' I think arrogance would have been something more along the lines of: 'Do it this way or take the highway'. Something more along the lines of the Clinton Universal Health Care Proposal, or $50 billion stimulus package he sent when he was first elected. This is not the only logical inconsistency in the article.
Finally, the reporters prove to be dumb because they evidence a lack of historical perspective. The report says: "Democrats are more united as a minority in the Senate than they were when they ran it." Now wait a second here. This is often true of majority party vs. minority party in Congress. When was the last time the minority party in Congress was not united? All through the 1980's Reagan exploited the fact that Democrat's controlled the House--they couldn't seem to agree on anything except that one of them should be President instead. While in the Senate majority, Republican Senators went along in a strategy that made the House the problem with everything. Did Clinton have more trouble with Democrats when they were the majority in Congress or when they were in the minority? So, just think about it logically. If I am in the majority I want to get as much of what I promised my voters passed. In the majority I need to be noticed, so I make a name for myself by being a thorn in the side of the President on one issue. The President's team probably realizes this and so they look the other way and find votes elsewhere. And for that, they are accused of arrogance?! On the other hand, when Clinton was President with a Republican majority in both houses the only hope he had to pass anything was to get the moderates like Voinovich and Shays over for coffee and find out what they might be willing to vote for. I think there are just some moderates who like Jim Jeffords suddenly feel less important because Bush doesn't need to massage their egos as much as Bill Clinton did.
This is a simple example. But, there are others. It really makes me wonder how dumb can they be? Don't get me wrong, Bush may need to do a better job of getting along with the people of his party, but shouldn't the story be a little more skeptical?
May 12, 2003
New York Times and Jayson Blair
Ouch! I may be wrong, but doesn't this look bad? I know that the New York Times is supposedly the paper of record, but it looks like the record is somewhat suspect. Furthermore, they make it clear that they knew this guys was a loser for a long time. Jay Nordlinger says that at least the Times: "has not only engaged in (necessary) damage control, it has conducted itself admirably."
I really enjoy reading the things that Jay has to say, and I agree that the Times has been impressive in it's damage control, but let's be fair. There is nothing admirable about it. Admirable would have been firing him long ago instead of trying to rehabilitate him. And if they wanted to rehabilitate him they should have been watching him more closely. Shame on the New York Times.
The Man on the Airplane
On an airplane flight last night I sat next to a man from Texas. Granted, I live in Texas, but I have only been there about a year and half and can hardly claim to be "from Texas". Without divulging too much of a personal conversation, I had the following observation. Texas is great! This man came from the East Coast to live in Texas 16 years ago. Okay, he has also lived elsewhere, but his origins are on the East Coast. His favorite Texas bumper sticker? Something to the effect of 'I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as quick as I could' Let's just say he was NOT ashamed that the President came from Texas. Carrier landing at sea? He loved it. The best part? He is educated and told me about all the cool cosmopolitan things to do in Texas. What a great person to share a flight with. Sort of dispels the assumption that Texas loves Bush only because it is full of rednecks.
Tax Cut
My friend on the airplane was all for the tax cut. Bush go for broke!
Ouch! I may be wrong, but doesn't this look bad? I know that the New York Times is supposedly the paper of record, but it looks like the record is somewhat suspect. Furthermore, they make it clear that they knew this guys was a loser for a long time. Jay Nordlinger says that at least the Times: "has not only engaged in (necessary) damage control, it has conducted itself admirably."
I really enjoy reading the things that Jay has to say, and I agree that the Times has been impressive in it's damage control, but let's be fair. There is nothing admirable about it. Admirable would have been firing him long ago instead of trying to rehabilitate him. And if they wanted to rehabilitate him they should have been watching him more closely. Shame on the New York Times.
The Man on the Airplane
On an airplane flight last night I sat next to a man from Texas. Granted, I live in Texas, but I have only been there about a year and half and can hardly claim to be "from Texas". Without divulging too much of a personal conversation, I had the following observation. Texas is great! This man came from the East Coast to live in Texas 16 years ago. Okay, he has also lived elsewhere, but his origins are on the East Coast. His favorite Texas bumper sticker? Something to the effect of 'I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as quick as I could' Let's just say he was NOT ashamed that the President came from Texas. Carrier landing at sea? He loved it. The best part? He is educated and told me about all the cool cosmopolitan things to do in Texas. What a great person to share a flight with. Sort of dispels the assumption that Texas loves Bush only because it is full of rednecks.
Tax Cut
My friend on the airplane was all for the tax cut. Bush go for broke!
May 9, 2003
Tax Cut
Paul Krugman has a piece in today's New York Times that is misleading. As a undergrad economics major I am glad I never wasted time in a class from Paul Krugman.
Chutzpah, according to the classic definition, is when you murder your parents, then ask for sympathy because you're an orphan. But what do we call it if after you are placed with foster parents, you try the same thing all over again?
To begin with his metaphor is real extreme. I am not sure that the tax cut actually killed anyone. In fact, according to the logic of Krugman the tax cut actually benefitted GW Bush's parents. Paul, drop the extreme unrelated images and get on with your point.
Needless to say, the bill was silly by design. The administration didn't intend to compromise: it fully expected to get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire, implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.
Okay, TRUTH ALERT!! Sure, his congressional allies insisted on it, but why? To begin with, these were not his real allies. For example, the former Republican Senator Jim Jeffords insisted on it. I am not sure how he qualifies as an ALLY. And then there were the moderate senators from states that are Democratic strong holds. How can Olympia Snowe be expected to survive an election challenge from Democrats if she can't show that she has the ability to hold back the President from extreme measures? The people from Maine should be proud to have such a power broker from their state.
I agree the sunset clause is ridiculous. But, it was a political reality. As Senate Democrats have proven on the issue of judge confirmations, they are more than able, and willing, to filibuster any proposal from President Bush. The reality is that a permanent change in taxes can be filibustered, and a budget resolution cannot. Bush cleverly found a way to get a tax cut, keep moderates on board, and avoid a filibuster. I think that is good politics.
Now, how about the economics of it? I am no professor of Economics, but Krugman appears to put a very biased spin on the facts.
In 2001 a tax cut that delivered about 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of families was marketed as a tax break for ordinary folks.
If a politician gets 60% of the vote, would you say he doesn't represent the ordinary folks? Okay, sorry that is the politician in me speaking.
Shouldn't Krugman tell us how much of the tax burden is paid by the richest 1%? A good economist should be able to provide this statistic. Using numbers from 1995 the burden was something like 29% of taxes paid by the top 1%. Still looks disproportionate to give them 40% of the tax cut? The problem is that the same study says that the bottom 20% of families contributed a NEGATIVE 2% to the tax base. Take them out of the equation and you get numbers that are not disproportionate at all. I am sure a PhD in Economics should be able to calculate that for us.
See the report for yourself
the typical family would get a tax break of only $217 next year, but families with incomes above $1 million would get an average of $93,500 each.
What does the typical family make? It would be nice to know this so that we can ask the question of the proportionality. Once again, I would think a PhD in economics would know where to find a statistic for this. Maybe he doesn't want to since defining a "typical" family can be a hard thing to do. A good Economics professor knows this. Do you define it as average income? Mean or median? Do you define it at the poverty line? Average income may be something like $60,000. At that level the percentage of income to get exempted from taxes is better for the million dollar person (0.3% vs 9%). But, there are some flaws in doing the analysis like this. To begin with, we already have seen above that the million dollar person already pays far more in taxes than the "typical" person. So, a tax cut that cuts everyones taxes by say 5% will invariably give a greater tax break to the rich. But, return to the question I asked first: what is a "typical" family? My family will get a bigger break and we live on a "typical" street with 2 kids and my wife is a soccer mom. Are we typical? We will get more than $217 from Bush's taxcut. Because the tax break is not an accross the board elimination of all taxes it is easy to find a "typical" family with no stock investments and thereby get a low tax savings from the tax cut.
It's hard to find an independent economist who thinks that the Bush proposal would create the 1.4 million jobs claimed by the administration
Krugman asserts that it is hard. About as hard as providing honest statistics related to your other claims? Let's just accept that maybe it is hard. Is that because they only think it would get 1 million jobs? Or is it because they know, as I do, that it could be possible, but since there are so many other dynamics in the economy that it is not safe to make such big predictions? Sure, I doubt we will get 1.4 million jobs. But, I don't think we will get more jobs WITHOUT a tax cut than we would get WITH a tax cut.
And bear in mind that Bush-style tax cuts now have a track record. Of the 2.1 million jobs lost over the past two years, 1.7 million vanished after the passage of the 2001 tax cut.
This proves that Krugman somehow ignores the nightly news. Let's see, has anything unexpected and shocking happened in our world since the tax cuts were made? Hmmm. I am not sure. Is it possible that some buildings fell in New York and we have fought two wars/battles? How much uncertainty does that provide to the economy?
And one day we'll realize that international investors are treating us like a banana republic — that they won't finance our trade deficit unless they are paid very high rates of interest (have I mentioned that the dollar has just fallen to a four-year low against the euro?) — and everyone will wonder why.
Paul, Paul, Paul. Why don't you provide the economically ignorant masses with a more honest assessment? The euro going up has more to do with European decisions than it has to do with a tax cut. And a banana republic? Even if the US defaulted, the US economy would still be a better investment than Costa Rica (no offense to the Costa Ricans). Paul, I am glad I never had bad Economics professors like you.
Paul Krugman has a piece in today's New York Times that is misleading. As a undergrad economics major I am glad I never wasted time in a class from Paul Krugman.
Chutzpah, according to the classic definition, is when you murder your parents, then ask for sympathy because you're an orphan. But what do we call it if after you are placed with foster parents, you try the same thing all over again?
To begin with his metaphor is real extreme. I am not sure that the tax cut actually killed anyone. In fact, according to the logic of Krugman the tax cut actually benefitted GW Bush's parents. Paul, drop the extreme unrelated images and get on with your point.
Needless to say, the bill was silly by design. The administration didn't intend to compromise: it fully expected to get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire, implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.
Okay, TRUTH ALERT!! Sure, his congressional allies insisted on it, but why? To begin with, these were not his real allies. For example, the former Republican Senator Jim Jeffords insisted on it. I am not sure how he qualifies as an ALLY. And then there were the moderate senators from states that are Democratic strong holds. How can Olympia Snowe be expected to survive an election challenge from Democrats if she can't show that she has the ability to hold back the President from extreme measures? The people from Maine should be proud to have such a power broker from their state.
I agree the sunset clause is ridiculous. But, it was a political reality. As Senate Democrats have proven on the issue of judge confirmations, they are more than able, and willing, to filibuster any proposal from President Bush. The reality is that a permanent change in taxes can be filibustered, and a budget resolution cannot. Bush cleverly found a way to get a tax cut, keep moderates on board, and avoid a filibuster. I think that is good politics.
Now, how about the economics of it? I am no professor of Economics, but Krugman appears to put a very biased spin on the facts.
In 2001 a tax cut that delivered about 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of families was marketed as a tax break for ordinary folks.
If a politician gets 60% of the vote, would you say he doesn't represent the ordinary folks? Okay, sorry that is the politician in me speaking.
Shouldn't Krugman tell us how much of the tax burden is paid by the richest 1%? A good economist should be able to provide this statistic. Using numbers from 1995 the burden was something like 29% of taxes paid by the top 1%. Still looks disproportionate to give them 40% of the tax cut? The problem is that the same study says that the bottom 20% of families contributed a NEGATIVE 2% to the tax base. Take them out of the equation and you get numbers that are not disproportionate at all. I am sure a PhD in Economics should be able to calculate that for us.
See the report for yourself
the typical family would get a tax break of only $217 next year, but families with incomes above $1 million would get an average of $93,500 each.
What does the typical family make? It would be nice to know this so that we can ask the question of the proportionality. Once again, I would think a PhD in economics would know where to find a statistic for this. Maybe he doesn't want to since defining a "typical" family can be a hard thing to do. A good Economics professor knows this. Do you define it as average income? Mean or median? Do you define it at the poverty line? Average income may be something like $60,000. At that level the percentage of income to get exempted from taxes is better for the million dollar person (0.3% vs 9%). But, there are some flaws in doing the analysis like this. To begin with, we already have seen above that the million dollar person already pays far more in taxes than the "typical" person. So, a tax cut that cuts everyones taxes by say 5% will invariably give a greater tax break to the rich. But, return to the question I asked first: what is a "typical" family? My family will get a bigger break and we live on a "typical" street with 2 kids and my wife is a soccer mom. Are we typical? We will get more than $217 from Bush's taxcut. Because the tax break is not an accross the board elimination of all taxes it is easy to find a "typical" family with no stock investments and thereby get a low tax savings from the tax cut.
It's hard to find an independent economist who thinks that the Bush proposal would create the 1.4 million jobs claimed by the administration
Krugman asserts that it is hard. About as hard as providing honest statistics related to your other claims? Let's just accept that maybe it is hard. Is that because they only think it would get 1 million jobs? Or is it because they know, as I do, that it could be possible, but since there are so many other dynamics in the economy that it is not safe to make such big predictions? Sure, I doubt we will get 1.4 million jobs. But, I don't think we will get more jobs WITHOUT a tax cut than we would get WITH a tax cut.
And bear in mind that Bush-style tax cuts now have a track record. Of the 2.1 million jobs lost over the past two years, 1.7 million vanished after the passage of the 2001 tax cut.
This proves that Krugman somehow ignores the nightly news. Let's see, has anything unexpected and shocking happened in our world since the tax cuts were made? Hmmm. I am not sure. Is it possible that some buildings fell in New York and we have fought two wars/battles? How much uncertainty does that provide to the economy?
And one day we'll realize that international investors are treating us like a banana republic — that they won't finance our trade deficit unless they are paid very high rates of interest (have I mentioned that the dollar has just fallen to a four-year low against the euro?) — and everyone will wonder why.
Paul, Paul, Paul. Why don't you provide the economically ignorant masses with a more honest assessment? The euro going up has more to do with European decisions than it has to do with a tax cut. And a banana republic? Even if the US defaulted, the US economy would still be a better investment than Costa Rica (no offense to the Costa Ricans). Paul, I am glad I never had bad Economics professors like you.
Bennett, Goldberg, etc.
Jonah Goldberg is insisting that consistency is oppresive and that hypocrisy on the part of the liberals is the real sin. I agree that liberals really have no right to make accusations of hypocrisy on the part of Bennett, when they themselves looked the other way for something much worse like Bill Clinton. The liberal accusers have weak ground to stand on.
However, this does not mitigate the fact that they picked a good item to go after Bill Bennett on. They broadcast a behavior that most followers of Bill Bennett, including myself, find to be less than virtuous. Even if he never spoke out against it, and even if he never hurt his family, and even if he did it in private and even if he didn't bankrupt himself, nevertheless he had to know he was doing something his supporters would find questionable.
Let's use an example. If tomorrow G W Bush were discovered to have begun drinking again what would be the appropriate reaction? It is legal, he did it in private, never spent more money on it than he had, and Laura knew about it. He would be discredited. The liberals who already didn't like him would have no change in ultimate view on Bush, but for the social conservative who accepted that he has changed his ways there would be a lot of disappointment. No need for an impeachment, but beyond a doubt he would not win reelection. Would that be unfair? The case could fairly be made that it is somewhat disproportionate to the error. The liberals would be hypocritical for making an issue since they obviously don't care about this behavior. But, conservatives by our nature care about virtues. Bill Bennett was all about making this point. His message was that our culture should include norms on behavior. I agree with that message. I feel that it is appropriate for our culture to make judgements about what is not acceptable in the public commons. Sometimes we will get that judgement wrong and will need to adjust our thinking but that should not prevent us from making consensus judgements about what is appropriate.
Therefore it is a mistake to rationalize away Bill Bennett's gambling. He did something wrong. Yes, the liberals who brought it up are real hypocrits for making an issue of Bill doing something they support making widely legal. But, Bill is not without blemish for his actions. At a minimum he should have realized that his fans would not look kindly on what he was doing. He made a mistake and we should say so.
Jonah Goldberg is insisting that consistency is oppresive and that hypocrisy on the part of the liberals is the real sin. I agree that liberals really have no right to make accusations of hypocrisy on the part of Bennett, when they themselves looked the other way for something much worse like Bill Clinton. The liberal accusers have weak ground to stand on.
However, this does not mitigate the fact that they picked a good item to go after Bill Bennett on. They broadcast a behavior that most followers of Bill Bennett, including myself, find to be less than virtuous. Even if he never spoke out against it, and even if he never hurt his family, and even if he did it in private and even if he didn't bankrupt himself, nevertheless he had to know he was doing something his supporters would find questionable.
Let's use an example. If tomorrow G W Bush were discovered to have begun drinking again what would be the appropriate reaction? It is legal, he did it in private, never spent more money on it than he had, and Laura knew about it. He would be discredited. The liberals who already didn't like him would have no change in ultimate view on Bush, but for the social conservative who accepted that he has changed his ways there would be a lot of disappointment. No need for an impeachment, but beyond a doubt he would not win reelection. Would that be unfair? The case could fairly be made that it is somewhat disproportionate to the error. The liberals would be hypocritical for making an issue since they obviously don't care about this behavior. But, conservatives by our nature care about virtues. Bill Bennett was all about making this point. His message was that our culture should include norms on behavior. I agree with that message. I feel that it is appropriate for our culture to make judgements about what is not acceptable in the public commons. Sometimes we will get that judgement wrong and will need to adjust our thinking but that should not prevent us from making consensus judgements about what is appropriate.
Therefore it is a mistake to rationalize away Bill Bennett's gambling. He did something wrong. Yes, the liberals who brought it up are real hypocrits for making an issue of Bill doing something they support making widely legal. But, Bill is not without blemish for his actions. At a minimum he should have realized that his fans would not look kindly on what he was doing. He made a mistake and we should say so.
May 8, 2003
Hypocrisy, Bennett and gambling
Jonah Goldberg has placed himself in an interesting position on the issue of Bill Bennett and gambling. It all started with this piece: Booking Bennett. My impression is that it has gotten a lot of attention and feedback from Jonah Goldberg readers. I assume this from all of the activity today on the National Review Online Corner.
I think much of what Jonah has to say about the issue is correct. Admittedly, I am a Goldberg fan. I consume his stuff voraciously. But as I have read his responses to emails I have come to feel that for the first time I actually disagree with Jonah. Generally, I find his arguments very sound and compelling. I often forward what he has written to friends. I guess since I have found something I don't like I should stop reading his pieces altogether. It sort of makes it hard for me to agree with all the other stuff Jonah writes since it came from the same person...
Now that would be idiotic!
And that is my point, and Jonah's original point, on Bill Bennett. Bill did something wrong, not as bad as some things he could have done, but it is wrong none the less. I will not stop being his fan, but I do have an awakening that he is imperfect by my personal standards. Consequently I will be more skeptical the next time I refer to him as an authority. But, that won't stop me from referring to him. While Jonah has clearly stated that he does not condone Bill's behavior, he has somehow allowed himself to be placed in the corner of being Bennett's apologist. His responses on NRO's Corner show this. Bill did something wrong and we should let him suffer for it and earn back his credibility the old fashioned way.
To the majority of those who are fans of a Bill Bennett, gambling is not an honorable past time. Referring to stats from someone in the gaming industry (as Jonah did) hardly passes as a legitimate and unbiased defense of gambling. Conservatives should not sacrifice our own moral authority by trying to rationalize someone elses error. This has nothing to do with consistency as the NRO Corner discussion has wasted time discussing, but everything to do with calling a spade a spade. Bennett is smart enough to have known his average fan views gambling badly and that is the point. Furthermore, he is smart enough to have known to avoid something that would have given the false impression (or even the liberals a chance to claim the false impression) of evil.
Bill -- shame on you and change your ways.
Jonah -- get back on track.
Jonah Goldberg has placed himself in an interesting position on the issue of Bill Bennett and gambling. It all started with this piece: Booking Bennett. My impression is that it has gotten a lot of attention and feedback from Jonah Goldberg readers. I assume this from all of the activity today on the National Review Online Corner.
I think much of what Jonah has to say about the issue is correct. Admittedly, I am a Goldberg fan. I consume his stuff voraciously. But as I have read his responses to emails I have come to feel that for the first time I actually disagree with Jonah. Generally, I find his arguments very sound and compelling. I often forward what he has written to friends. I guess since I have found something I don't like I should stop reading his pieces altogether. It sort of makes it hard for me to agree with all the other stuff Jonah writes since it came from the same person...
Now that would be idiotic!
And that is my point, and Jonah's original point, on Bill Bennett. Bill did something wrong, not as bad as some things he could have done, but it is wrong none the less. I will not stop being his fan, but I do have an awakening that he is imperfect by my personal standards. Consequently I will be more skeptical the next time I refer to him as an authority. But, that won't stop me from referring to him. While Jonah has clearly stated that he does not condone Bill's behavior, he has somehow allowed himself to be placed in the corner of being Bennett's apologist. His responses on NRO's Corner show this. Bill did something wrong and we should let him suffer for it and earn back his credibility the old fashioned way.
To the majority of those who are fans of a Bill Bennett, gambling is not an honorable past time. Referring to stats from someone in the gaming industry (as Jonah did) hardly passes as a legitimate and unbiased defense of gambling. Conservatives should not sacrifice our own moral authority by trying to rationalize someone elses error. This has nothing to do with consistency as the NRO Corner discussion has wasted time discussing, but everything to do with calling a spade a spade. Bennett is smart enough to have known his average fan views gambling badly and that is the point. Furthermore, he is smart enough to have known to avoid something that would have given the false impression (or even the liberals a chance to claim the false impression) of evil.
Bill -- shame on you and change your ways.
Jonah -- get back on track.
More on Bill Bennett
Just so people do not misunderstand me, let me say Bill Bennett has done the right thing by pledging to stop his gambling ways. I wish him well in giving up something he enjoys. Here are two pieces that I think are very appropriate from a conservative source.
Robert George on the High-Stakes Gamble that Bennett participated in.
Dave Shiflett: Bennett's Real Problem
Now, I do realize that Bennett is being targeted unfairly because a lot of Clinton backers hate him, but still there is a need to admit this is not the type of behavior that Bill Bennett fans exepct of Bill.
Hugh Hewitt has a good piece on Bill Bennett's Virtue
Bush's Carrier Landing
Some Democrats are complaining. Meanwhile many conservatives are trying hard to give one justification or another. My reaction? SO WHAT?!?!
Yes, there is a political element every time the President does anything. Afterall, if he sat in his office and played Solitaire people might complain as well. In my opinion Bush killed two birds with one stone. In the finest tradition of commanders riding a top a white stallion, George Bush swooped onto the deck of the most sophisticated naval vessel in the world, using technology that is unrivaled to do something few other Presidents in the world can. He inspired his troops and inspired the citizens of our nation. At the same time he reeinforced a cowboy image that his detractors detest simply because they know that most Americans love it. We eat it up for the same reasons that we cheer for our favorite sports team. I see the pictures and I say: "Yes! That's my Pres!" However, I have news for the liberals. Come election day I will vote for him not because he landed on a carrier, but because he is a leader and ultimately the landing is just a reminder of what I already know. Then again, maybe what bothers Democrats is that they know he is a leader and they really have no way to counter that.
Just so people do not misunderstand me, let me say Bill Bennett has done the right thing by pledging to stop his gambling ways. I wish him well in giving up something he enjoys. Here are two pieces that I think are very appropriate from a conservative source.
Robert George on the High-Stakes Gamble that Bennett participated in.
Dave Shiflett: Bennett's Real Problem
Now, I do realize that Bennett is being targeted unfairly because a lot of Clinton backers hate him, but still there is a need to admit this is not the type of behavior that Bill Bennett fans exepct of Bill.
Hugh Hewitt has a good piece on Bill Bennett's Virtue
Bush's Carrier Landing
Some Democrats are complaining. Meanwhile many conservatives are trying hard to give one justification or another. My reaction? SO WHAT?!?!
Yes, there is a political element every time the President does anything. Afterall, if he sat in his office and played Solitaire people might complain as well. In my opinion Bush killed two birds with one stone. In the finest tradition of commanders riding a top a white stallion, George Bush swooped onto the deck of the most sophisticated naval vessel in the world, using technology that is unrivaled to do something few other Presidents in the world can. He inspired his troops and inspired the citizens of our nation. At the same time he reeinforced a cowboy image that his detractors detest simply because they know that most Americans love it. We eat it up for the same reasons that we cheer for our favorite sports team. I see the pictures and I say: "Yes! That's my Pres!" However, I have news for the liberals. Come election day I will vote for him not because he landed on a carrier, but because he is a leader and ultimately the landing is just a reminder of what I already know. Then again, maybe what bothers Democrats is that they know he is a leader and they really have no way to counter that.
May 7, 2003
Bill Bennett
I am disappointed. And not just with Bill.
I admired Bill Bennett. He stands for what is right and has invested the time and effort to share his values. When I see him interviewed he comes across as very smart and demonstrates the ability to reason out issues. He has picked issues that I agree with and clearly communicates the positions in ways that sound reasonable. He speaks with authority. But the same traditions and values that make me listen to his messages make me uncomfortable with Bill Bennett gambling. I have pulled a slot or two while staying in Las Vegas but I think I gambled a grand total of $10. I think I can justifiably say to the public: 'I didn't do it to the detriment of my family' or 'I was always in control' or 'it is just like drinking alchohol' without sounding like an elitist that doesn't get it.
The mistake of the rich and famous is not gambling, drugs, interns or even alchohol. The mistake is pride expressed in an elitist attitude and lifestyle. They are so sure of themselves and their own ability that they feel they are above the fray. This was the problem with Bill Clinton. I know a lot of my fellow conservatives feel that Clinton was wrong because he lied to the American people; or more importantly, lied under oath. I disagree. Clinton's mistake was that he thought he was so important that he could do anything and it didn't matter. In that sense, getting jiggy with the interns was just as bad as lying. And that is where Bill Bennett gets in trouble too. Sure, gambling is not as bad as sharing cigars with interns, but the same pride and elitism is at play. The same attitude of: 'I can do whatever I want because it is no one elses business.' That is an acceptable defense for private citizens who want to live their life out of the public spot light. That is why I never really have cared about Roger Clinton or Jenna Bush. For that matter, that is why I could care less that George W Bush may have done drugs when he was young--he wasn't President then and there is no indication that he wanted to be. But, when someone chooses to become a leader or an example then higher personal standards should apply. Sure, Bill Bennett broke no law, but he clearly participated in an activity that most of his supporters find to be unacceptable.
I am also disappointed in many of my fellow conservatives. I think this is an opportunity to express how we feel about two things. First, how bad gambling is. In many situations conservatives take a stand against gambling, why not now? Second, that we are not mean. We can recognize Bill's mistake for what it is, let him suffer for a while and learn his lesson, and then forgive him. He should return to the stage after an appropriate amount of time and continue to be a voice for conservative issues. He will have to work to regain his voice of authority, but in time he should return and be back to his previous level.
Just because we as conservatives like Bill Bennett's ability to debate liberals is no reason to look the other way. We should punish our own first and then forgive him and allow him to return. If not, we are exposed to be no better than the liberal apologists who defended Clinton. We are co-opted into the shameful role of Hillary Clinton defending our own against some vast left-wing conspiracy. We are better than Democrats and we should act like it.
I am disappointed. And not just with Bill.
I admired Bill Bennett. He stands for what is right and has invested the time and effort to share his values. When I see him interviewed he comes across as very smart and demonstrates the ability to reason out issues. He has picked issues that I agree with and clearly communicates the positions in ways that sound reasonable. He speaks with authority. But the same traditions and values that make me listen to his messages make me uncomfortable with Bill Bennett gambling. I have pulled a slot or two while staying in Las Vegas but I think I gambled a grand total of $10. I think I can justifiably say to the public: 'I didn't do it to the detriment of my family' or 'I was always in control' or 'it is just like drinking alchohol' without sounding like an elitist that doesn't get it.
The mistake of the rich and famous is not gambling, drugs, interns or even alchohol. The mistake is pride expressed in an elitist attitude and lifestyle. They are so sure of themselves and their own ability that they feel they are above the fray. This was the problem with Bill Clinton. I know a lot of my fellow conservatives feel that Clinton was wrong because he lied to the American people; or more importantly, lied under oath. I disagree. Clinton's mistake was that he thought he was so important that he could do anything and it didn't matter. In that sense, getting jiggy with the interns was just as bad as lying. And that is where Bill Bennett gets in trouble too. Sure, gambling is not as bad as sharing cigars with interns, but the same pride and elitism is at play. The same attitude of: 'I can do whatever I want because it is no one elses business.' That is an acceptable defense for private citizens who want to live their life out of the public spot light. That is why I never really have cared about Roger Clinton or Jenna Bush. For that matter, that is why I could care less that George W Bush may have done drugs when he was young--he wasn't President then and there is no indication that he wanted to be. But, when someone chooses to become a leader or an example then higher personal standards should apply. Sure, Bill Bennett broke no law, but he clearly participated in an activity that most of his supporters find to be unacceptable.
I am also disappointed in many of my fellow conservatives. I think this is an opportunity to express how we feel about two things. First, how bad gambling is. In many situations conservatives take a stand against gambling, why not now? Second, that we are not mean. We can recognize Bill's mistake for what it is, let him suffer for a while and learn his lesson, and then forgive him. He should return to the stage after an appropriate amount of time and continue to be a voice for conservative issues. He will have to work to regain his voice of authority, but in time he should return and be back to his previous level.
Just because we as conservatives like Bill Bennett's ability to debate liberals is no reason to look the other way. We should punish our own first and then forgive him and allow him to return. If not, we are exposed to be no better than the liberal apologists who defended Clinton. We are co-opted into the shameful role of Hillary Clinton defending our own against some vast left-wing conspiracy. We are better than Democrats and we should act like it.
I spend a lot of time reading what this person or that person has to say on an issue and I keep saying to myself: "I should be doing that." So I decided to jump into the fray and give my thoughts on issues. There must be thousands of people doing this same thing, but why not join in. Hopefully someone will read this.
As I ponder things to post I think you should be aware that I intend to cover mostly current events. Following current events is my hobby. Granted this is a somewhat geeky hobby, but someone has to be a geek, why not me? I hope that I will not just provide the spin you can read anywhere else. Instead I hope to be introspective and share my deeper theories about things. I will also deviate occassionally and talk about other things like sports, culture, my family and so forth. If I do this I promise to provide some sort of heading or title to differentiate the content. To fill out views on some of these other topics I may even invite others to post as well since I think that they might provide some insight that I appreciate.
I hope that you will become a regular reader, give me feedback, and enjoy.
As I ponder things to post I think you should be aware that I intend to cover mostly current events. Following current events is my hobby. Granted this is a somewhat geeky hobby, but someone has to be a geek, why not me? I hope that I will not just provide the spin you can read anywhere else. Instead I hope to be introspective and share my deeper theories about things. I will also deviate occassionally and talk about other things like sports, culture, my family and so forth. If I do this I promise to provide some sort of heading or title to differentiate the content. To fill out views on some of these other topics I may even invite others to post as well since I think that they might provide some insight that I appreciate.
I hope that you will become a regular reader, give me feedback, and enjoy.
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