If you turn on C-SPAN 2 right now, the Senate is having a great debate on Obamacare — amongst Republicans. While President Obama meets behind closed doors with Democrats, the Senate GOP is on the floor and having a lively health-care discussion. Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) calls the tone of the debate "excellent." He's right. The Senate GOP seems informed and united. Everyone from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) to Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz) has weighed in. Topics: malpractice reform, Medicare cuts, taxes, etc. Why this hour matters: Instead of the usual talking points, the GOP senators, if only for a moment, are having a bit of useful back and forth. If they want any chance of defeating Harry Reid's bill, they'll have to all be on the same page. Sometimes it's best to have such debates on the floor, and not in the cloakroom.
The big votes today: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) has an amendment to limit the tax breaks for insurance executives and Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.) has an amendment to limit attorney fees in malpractice lawsuits.
I'm beginning to feel sorry for Andrew "Andy" Revkin, Senior Climate Alarmist at The New York Times. He does not emerge well from his chummy e-mails with the Settled Science enforcers ("You took the words right out of my mouth"), and evidently he resents the notion that he was merely a willing dupe:
It’s hard to keep up with syndicated columnists, but the Mark Steyn piece you just ran that mentions my reporting on climate was a gross distortion of reality (particularly where it asserts that “week after week” I somehow acted as an apologist for the climate scientist Michael Mann.
So the other day he makes the briefest of references to the news that during the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen the city's prostitutes will be offering their services free to "climate campaigners". He eschewed the cheap jests - nothing in there about what to do if you're a climate scientist and it's not just the temperature rising; no jokes about letting you sample her tree rings. Nonetheless, even the mere mention of this story from the Euro-press prompted Professor Michael Schlesinger, Head of Warm-Mongering at the University of Illinois, to take the metaphorical tire-iron to Revkin's legs:
Climate prostitutes? Shame on you for this gutter reportage. This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes. The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists... I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included. Copenhagen prostitutes? Unbelievable and unacceptable.
The ice caps may be melting but fortunately the ever bigger chill between the Settled Science Syndicate and Revkin seem likely to compensate. He's done sterling service over the years, but one mild hooker crack and he's being fitted for the ice-sheet overcoat. Steven Hayward adds re the CRU documents:
How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them?
Even by the standards of fanatical ideologues, these guys seem humorless plonkers.
...and this time the poor guy's not even in the military! From Channel 12 WBNG:
A Binghamton University professor is dead tonight after being stabbed by an anthropology student.
That's one way of putting it. Another is that Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani killed Richard T Antoun, author of Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic and Jewish Movements.
Climate scientist to Andy Revkin: "we can no longer trust you." [Steve Hayward]
Okay folks, here comes a new e-mail from the climate community yesterday that I did not hack (I was copied on it), and it is a case study in not getting it. Back story: Ever since Chris Horner and I were at a conference together with warmenist Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois a couple years ago, Chris and I have been included on Prof. Schesingler's e-mail distribution list, which usually consist of flagging climate news stories. But then yesterday we got copied on this message Schlesinger sent to New York Times science reporter Andy Revkin:
Andy:
Copenhagen prostitutes?
Climate prostitutes?
Shame on you for this gutter reportage. [Emphasis added.]
This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes.
The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists.
Of course, your blog is your blog.
But, I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included. [Emphasis added.]
Copenhagen prostitutes?
Unbelievable and unacceptable.
What are you doing and why?
Michael
So what so annoyed Schlesinger? Here's Revkin's offending blog post, which among other things passes along the amusing story of Copenhagen prostitutes offering free sex to climate campaigners (I'll leave to Mark Steyn the suitable lip gloss on this story), along with some other news items that the climate campaigners don't want reported. Judge for yourself if this constitutes "gutter reportage" and deserves censure from the climate science community. I'll add that one of the CRU e-mails I read mentioned that Revkin is not always reliable from their point of view; I can't now find it, but recall it vividly for the presumption that reporters are supposed to serve as mere transcribers for the climate campaign.
This raises another small but perhaps significant point that I didn't have room to comment on in my Weekly Standard article: How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them? There isn't the tiniest hint anywhere that any of these guys ever grin. It jives with my experience of environmentalists for 20 years now that they are the single most humorless slice of humanity on the planet. (My favorite: I had a top greenie lawyer for the Audubon Society once say at a conference that "I regard the National Association of Home Builders to be every bit as evil as the National Rifle Association." My comeback was: "I can understand why you'd think that about the home builders, but what's your problem with the NRA?" The guy didn't even crack a smile.) And here we see Andy Revkin threatened with a "cutoff" because he writes—on a blog—something mildly amusing about Copenhagen.
Here's a video for the Krayolas' catchy new song, "Fruteria." There's a funny NR connection to it: The concert footage was recorded at a performance I attended in San Antonio about a month ago. NR received a friendly shout out from the stage. When has that ever happened at a rock show? I wrote about the experience here.
The Trouble With Harry: A Senate Update [Robert Costa]
On a snowy day in Washington, the Senate was in session to vote on amendments to Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s health-care bill. Reid, predictably, resorted to histrionics in his floor remarks. “14,000 people lose their health insurance every day,“ said Reid. “The American people don't get weekends off from this injustice.”
Reid may be trying to look tough by working weekends, but most Americans will see him as curiously uninterested in the real drama this weekend: the Alabama-Florida football game for the S.E.C. crown (Bama won). Republicans, meanwhile, mostly yawned during the first day of Reid’s weekend wingding. They know that this debate is nowhere near over. “Majority leaders believe if they stay weekends, somehow we’re going to blink,“ said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “We’re not going to blink.”
In fact, it was Reid who ended up doing most of the squinting, especially when it came time to count the votes on the Medicare amendment proposed by Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.). The Nebraskan’s motion, which would have eliminated $42 billion in Medicare cuts, was defeated, 53 to 41, but four Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP: Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Jim Webb (Va.), and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.).
Lincoln, the AP reports, “initially cast a ‘no’ vote with the Democratic majority but switched to ‘yes’ in the course of the 15-minute vote . . . Lincoln said later that she changed her vote after considering how important home health care is to Arkansas. ‘That's why they give us 15 minutes,’ said Lincoln.” Yes indeed: 15 minutes for Lincoln to consider the possible ads against her in her re-election battle next year.
Lincoln will have another day in the spotlight tomorrow when her own amendment — to cut the tax breaks on the salaries of health-insurance company executives — will come up for a vote. The money saved from her proposal, she says, will go toward Medicare. Her gist: Cut tax breaks for big-bad execs and save Medicare.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) was quick to say that he doesn’t buy Lincoln’s logic. He wondered: Is it because the insurance execs didn’t play ball with Obama? “We could get a lot of income into the Medicare trust fund by limiting compensation beyond health care to say, for instance, executives of trade associations or union leaders, or trial lawyers or baseball players or movie stars,” he said. The NRSC also criticized Lincoln for her proposal, calling on her to donate the $550,000 in campaign cash she has received over the years from insurance companies to charity.
Beyond amendment bickering, President Obama is also scheduled to visit the Senate tomorrow, where he’ll try to rally Democrats to pass a bill by Christmas. It's doubtful whether his visit will help to focus Reid's caucus, especially since they're an easily distracted bunch.
I noticed the same mistake in The Lost Symbol. There are others, too. It probably comes out better on the whole, though, than 24—-tunneling under the White House from the Potomac????
At any rate, can you recommend one or two other DC thrillers for me? (We're buying The First Assassin for a couple of family members for Christmas!)
Two (other) great Washington thrillers: Shelley's Heart by Charles McCarry and Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. A great novel of Washington politics: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury.
A couple of years back, the Reverend Stephen Boissoin committed the crime of writing a letter to a local newspaper objecting to various aspects of "the homosexual agenda". The Alberta "Human Rights" Tribunal convicted him of this crime and imposed a lifetime speech ban preventing him, in essence, from saying anything about homosexuality in public or private ever again anywhere for the rest of his life.
The Court of Queen's Bench in Alberta has now struck down this outrageous decision. Mr Justice Wilson's ruling could not be plainer. He rejects all the Tribunal's punishments as "illegal", not least the speech ban:
The direction to cease and desist the publishing of "disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals' is beyond the power of the Panel. "Disparaging remarks"were not defined by the Panel. But clearly, "disparaging remarks" are remarks much less serious than hateful and contemptuous remarks and are quite lawful to make. They are beyond the power of the Act to regulate and the power of the Province to restrain.
Quite so. And how sad that an appeals court should have to point out something so obvious. The Reverend Boissoin has won a belated and costly victory over the ideological control-freaks of the Canadian thought police. On the broader questions, Mr Justice Wilson is more reserved, pointing out correctly that these are matters for the legislature. Unfortunately, Canada's political class are in no hurry to take it up. Nonetheless, the Court of Queen's Bench decision (not to mention its reference to yours truly) would have been less likely before the campaign to restore freedom of speech up north. The cravenness of the politicians is depressing, but Ezra and I and a few others have helped to change the climate - and, for the moment, rendered these disgusting laws unenforceable.
As for America, you see in the recent push for "hate crimes" legislation how easily the same temptations apply here.
I'm currently reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown—the book that follows The Da Vinci Code. I probably wouldn't have bothered, except that The Lost Symbol is set in Washington, D.C. I'm a sucker for thrillers set here.
Early on, I noticed a mistake. On page 13, the hero is driving across Memorial Bridge, on his way into D.C.:
He put down his notes and gazed out at the calm waters of the Potomac passing beneath him. ... Langdon gazed left, across the Tidal Basin, toward the gracefully rounded silhouette of the Jefferson Memorial...
Actually, if you gaze left while crossing the Memorial Bridge, you see the Kennedy Center. To see the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial, you have to gaze right.
A Good Summary of "Anti-Conservatism" [Mike Potemra]
Reading A. N. Wilson’s The Victorians, I came across this nugget. When Charles Dickens bought a new house, he had some fake book-backs made as a decoration for one of the rooms. Some were labeled as follows: “The Wisdom of Our Ancestors – I. Ignorance. II. Superstition. III. The Block. IV. The Stake. V. The Rack. VI. Dirt. VII. Disease.” (Wilson points out that Dickens was able simultaneously to romanticize the past – and in this dichotomy embodied an important facet of the Victorian character, its complicated attitude toward modernity.)
If You're Looking for Christmas Music . . . [Mike Potemra]
. . . that emphasizes the “Christ” in Christmas, please consider tuning in to one of my favorite Internet radio stations, FBC Radio, broadcasting out of Foundations Bible College, a fundamentalist academy in Dunn, N.C. The station specializes not in Southern Gospel music or other music forms that are currently popular in conservative U.S. Protestantism, but in classic English hymns and sacred music from the Western classical repertoire. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to praise Foundations Bible College for this wonderful act of cultural conservation, and what better time than the Christmas season? I think many, many NRO readers will enjoy this station as much as I do.
The redefault rate on the administration's Making Home Affordable mortgage-workout scheme is 25 percent. Another 50 percent are making payments but have failed to submit the proper documents to prove that they're eligibile for the program. Only 25 percent of 650,000 borrowers are making it through the modification process, out of an estimated 4 million facing foreclosure.
Why isn't the program working? Cato's Mark Calabria supplied the answers at a hearing earlier this fall, but they weren't the ones Congress or the administration wanted to hear:
The short answer to why previous federal efforts to stem the current tide of foreclosures have largely failed is that such efforts have grossly misdiagnosed the causes of mortgage defaults. An implicit assumption behind former Treasury Secretary Paulson's HOPE NOW, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair's IndyMac model, and the Obama Administration's current foreclosure efforts is that the current wave of foreclosures is almost exclusively the result of predatory lending practices and "exploding" adjustable rate mortgages, where large payment shocks upon the rate re-set cause mortgage payment to become "unaffordable."
The simple truth is that the vast majority of mortgage defaults are being driven by the same factors that have always driven mortgage defaults: generally a negative equity position on the part of the homeowner coupled with a life event that results in a substantial shock to their income, most often a job loss or reduction in earnings. Until both of these components, negative equity and a negative income shock are addressed, foreclosures will remain at highly elevated levels.
Even The New York Times is catching up: Floyd Norris reports that the plan is failing because many homeowners cannot afford to pay back the principal they owe. Banks are cutting interest rates to as low as 2 percent, stretching terms out up to 40 years and in some cases shielding part of the principal from accruing any interest at all. The administration's plan is to help homeowners and banks conspire to pretend that just the principal on these loans can someday be repaid. But they can't — not unless housing prices miraculously recover to their bubblicious highs. Won't happen. See this chart for details.
I was nodding in agreement until I got to this part: "And when the bishops say that all people should have 'ready access to quality, comprehensive, and affordable health care,' that doesn't even mean that they have endorsed universal coverage, let alone a specific legislative attempt to come closer to it." What else could it mean? "Universal" means "all people," doesn't it? . . .
Pro-choicers always say that [we] pro-lifers care about life only up to birth. If health-care reform would save lives, shouldn't we be for it?
The bishops think all people should have access to good, affordable care. Universal coverage means that all people should have comprehensive insurance policies. These aren't necessarily the same thing. It's possible that legislation ensuring universal coverage would bankrupt the country while giving everyone access to a wait list. It's also possible that free-market reforms would lead to universal access to good, affordable care without comprehensive insurance policies for all: Maybe we'd see declining prices for routine care paid for out of pocket, cheap insurance policies that covered catastrophic expenses, and charitable institutions that filled the gaps.
To say something is possible is of course not to say that it is the case. My point here is that a Catholic may in good conscience believe these things—and may in good conscience believe that extending insurance coverage won't save many lives—and therefore favor alternatives to the Reid and Pelosi legislation.
Re: Terrance Watanabe, I Want to Party With You [Stephen Spruiell]
Jonah, I found the next two paragraphs of Mr. Watanabe's story even more interesting:
Today, Mr. Watanabe and Harrah's are fighting over another issue: whether the casino company bears some of the responsibility for his losses.
In a civil suit filed in Clark County District Court last month, Mr. Watanabe, 52 years old, says casino staff routinely plied him with liquor and pain medication as part of a systematic plan to keep him gambling.
Laugh if you like, but Mr. Watanabe's story is just a comically exaggerated version of a tale that is currently playing itself out in Congress. Millions of Americans bet during the boom that housing prices would keep going up. They took out loans they couldn't afford on the assumption that in a few years, when prices had risen, they could use their new equity to refinance into something more affordable.
The housing bubble burst, and we turned into a nation of Watanabes, claiming that the Fed plied us with easy money and predatory lenders tricked us into taking out no-money-down, pick-a-payment mortgages. Mr. Watanabe just needs to reframe his case a little bit. His casino hosts, with their potent cocktails, engaged in predatory blending. Where's his bailout?
These stories always end with a little less freedom for the rest of us. I doubt that Mr. Watanabe's accusations will spur policymakers to put an end to free drinks at the blackjack table, but "fair-housing" advocates have already convinced Congress to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with the plenary authority to define “unfair” or “abusive” lending practices. The new agency will probably end up banning many completely fair financial products because the Watanabe's of the world might abuse them.
Re: Baucus Nominated Girlfriend for U.S. Attorney Post [Marc Thiessen]
With news of Baucus’ “sweetheart” deal to get his mistress a job at Justice, Republicans on Capitol Hill should be asking: What “sweetheart” deals did he sneak into the health-care bill?
Andy is headed to the federal courthouse in Manhattan to speak at the rally today protesting Shiekh Mohammed and friends being tried there.
Andy is no stranger to that courthouse, of course, the prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman is a story he tells chillingly well in his book Willful Blindness. But it's odd to know he's speaking outside the courthouse this time. It's also, unfortunately, a sign of the times.
In a recent attempt to defend Kennedy, Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Bucks County said, "We don't legislate at the orders of the Vatican; we legislate what is in our conscience and what we think is good for our country."
I agree. But in 16 years as a Catholic in public office, I never received an order from the Vatican or any clergyman.
I also agree with Murphy - as does the catechism - that Catholics must be true to their consciences. But that is not a free-floating guide that we can define ourselves. A Catholic is required to form his conscience in accordance with the church's teachings on faith and reason, and to act in a morally coherent and consistent way, both privately and publicly.
Finally, the church maintains that there is a natural law that forms the basic moral foundation of society and that can be known through the exercise of reason. Thus, a Catholic public official with a well-formed conscience can arrive at correct moral conclusions not by faith, but by reason.
How's that Saudi Rehab Program for Gitmo Detainees Working Out? [Andy McCarthy]
At the Long War Journal, Tom Joscelyn has another success story rung up by the brilliant project to wean jihadists off jihad by sending them to ... a "rehabilitation" program in Saudi Arabia (where Wahhabism is the state religion and infidels are deemed too low a life-form to enter the holy cities). Sort of like a 12-step program that meets at the local gin-mill.
It seems that Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish has left the Kingdom — one of several Saudi rehab program graduates to rejoin the jihad. He now sits in Yemen as al-Qaeda's top mufti in the Arabian Peninsula. That is, he is an authority in Islamic jurisprudence who can approve (among other things) terrorist attacks. Rubaish had been held at Gitmo for five years after his capture in Pakistan in 2001, but the Saudis persuaded our government that they could handle the matter. Consider it handled.
Oh, by the way, you'll be pleased to know Yemen is developing its own rehab program, too. It's not like we won't have options here. Who needs Gitmo, that international embarrassment? Obviously, keeping trained jihadists locked up in Cuba causes far more terrorist recruitment than does allowing them to stroll free and clear around the globe.
At Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer has story being broken by the Christian Action Network about jihadist training camps in the U.S. — including a snippet from footage that will apparently start rolling out next week.
LAS VEGAS — During a year-long gambling binge at the Caesars Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, Terrance Watanabe managed to lose nearly $127 million.
The run is believed to be one of the biggest losing streaks by an individual in Las Vegas history. It devoured much of Mr. Watanabe's personal fortune, he says, which he built up over more than two decades running his family's party-favor import business in Omaha, Neb. It also benefitted the two casinos' parent company, Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which derived about 5.6% of its Las Vegas gambling revenue from Mr. Watanabe that year.
Steve Hayward has written probably the best piece on the CRUtape letters to date. For those who want to get up to speed, I can't recommend it highly enough. Part of his conclusion:
The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA's James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. There is no doubt plenty more of this kind of corruption in other hotbeds of climate science, but there are also a lot of unbiased scientists trying to do important and valuable work. Climate alarmists and their media cheerleaders are fond of warning about "tipping points" to disaster, but ironically this episode may represent a tipping point against the alarmists. The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause.
KSM Trial: 9/11 Never Forget Rally Saturday at Noon [Andy McCarthy]
Details here on today's rally outside the federal courthouses in lower Manhattan (Foley Square area) — a few blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood — to urge the Obama administration to reverse its decision to give the 9/11 war criminals a civilian trial.
Baucus Nominated Girlfriend for U.S. Attorney Post [Daniel Foster]
Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) nominated his former state office director, Melodee Hanes, for U.S. Attorney while the two were involved in a romantic relationship, according to Baucus spokesman Ty Matsdorf.
Matsdorf told the Washington Post that Hanes was one of three nominees Baucus submitted to the White House with no ranking. He also said that Baucus and Hanes decided to withdraw her name when the couple decided to cohabitate in Washington.
Hanes served on Baucus's staff from 2002 to 2009, and is currently an Acting Deputy Administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, according to a Justice Department web site.
Yesterday, I attempted to debunk Stephen Walt’s latest bit of sophistry and propaganda. Today, David Frum takes Walt on from a somewhat different perspective, noting in part:
Even by its own premises this argument is a bust. I have little doubt the approval of the United States in Germany and Japan was higher in 1960 than in 1939. In the interim we had killed hundreds of thousands of Germans and Japanese. The difference was regime change and a change in the population’s tolerance for tyranny. Mr. Walt might take a lesson.
IJ isn't claiming that the ban on compensating bone-marrow donors is unconstitutional because it's bad policy, but rather because it infringes on individual liberty without a rational basis — thereby constituting a deprivation of liberty without due process of law. And the deprivation of liberty is quite severe: IJ's clients are very sick with cancer, and they will likely die unless they are allowed to offer compensation to encourage donors to come forward to engage in voluntary transactions — transactions that will save real lives, not cheapen life in some abstract sense.
Now, courts engaging in rational-basis review are extremely deferential to legislatures, as perhaps they should be. Under this level of scrutiny, practically any rationale that Congress offers to support a law will pass constitutional muster. But what's interesting about IJ's claim is that it does not depend on a free-ranging, independent consideration of the law's "rationality." It is instead limited to the rationale that Congress itself supplied when it passed the law — thus it does not ask judges to act based on their own policy sense, but rather on Congress's stated legislative purpose.
IJ's argument is that the law does not make sense even on its own express terms. IJ's lead attorney on the case, Jeff Rowes, explains this here:
We know what Congress intended when it enacted [the ban on compensating organ donors]. 1,500 pages of detailed legislative history make it clear that Congress wanted to outlaw markets in kidneys and other solid organs. . . . Congress didn’t intend to criminalize compensation for renewable cells such as blood or sperm. In fact, the Conference Report the House and Senate jointly sent to President Reagan with the bill he signed said so.
Bone marrow is renewable, but it was anomalously included on the list of banned "organs." This is irrational in a very narrow and provable sense, based on the stated purpose of the law.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) is best known as the House GOP’s go-to guy on fiscal policy. In recent months, the 39-year-old budget hawk has been a leading voice in the debates over Obamacare and unemployment, which has led to an increased national profile via op-eds, cable-show appearances (he’s seemingly ubiquitous on CNBC), and speeches at tea-party rallies.
On Thursday, Ryan took a break from tangling with Democrats over domestic issues to outline his thoughts on U.S. foreign policy in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. It was Ryan’s first-ever appearance at the CFR, an influential think tank that publishes the bimonthly journal Foreign Affairs. “The speech enabled me to come out a bit from my cocoon of AEI, Heritage, and the CATO Institute,” laughs Ryan.
Ryan tells NRO that the speech shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, since he has always been interested in foreign policy, both personally and professionally. “I’m not just a one-man band on economics,” he says. “Foreign policy is not my typical bailiwick, but I’ve been focusing on the Middle East trade portfolio on the House Ways and Means Committee for many years.”
The START I pact between the U.S. and Russia will expire Friday night, but talks are expected to continue until a new agreement is reached. Both sides say they want to uphold the “spirit” of the 1991 Cold War–era treaty. But the U.S. seems confused about what that treaty meant.
START I, with its deep reductions in the nuclear arsenals of both sides, did not come about because arms control had created greater trust between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was possible because the Soviet Union itself had changed. While the Soviet Union existed in its totalitarian form, nearly two decades of arms control brought little advantage to the U.S. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed an explosion of the arms race and the rapid expansion of Soviet power.
In fact, all experience shows that progress in relations with Russia depends on improvements in the Russian internal situation. Without that, arms-control agreements are meaningless. At the same time, in the present negotiations, what is at stake is possible damage to the strategic position of the U.S. Russia is unable to maintain its huge nuclear arsenal and will be compelled to retire a large number of launchers whether an agreement is signed or not. Russian general Nikolai Solovtsov, the commander of the Strategic Missile Troops, was quoted by Interfax-AVN online as saying that not a single Russian launcher with remaining service life would be withdrawn under a new treaty. The American cuts, however, will be real.
Reducing our strategic forces to a level at which Russia can compete may preserve Russian strategic parity, but it should not be a goal of the U.S. We have strategic requirements of our own. As for the “reset” that the new agreement is intended to facilitate, it should depend on decent values on the part of Russia’s leaders and respect for human rights.
— David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. His latest book is Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State.
Does the Jobs Report 'Hide the Decline'? [Daniel Foster]
The jobs report might, to borrow a phrase, "hide the decline" in employment. Two economists who predicted that the November numbers would be better than expected say the improvement may be attributable to quirks in the Labor Department's statistical models.
The models adjust for regular seasonal fluctuations in employment, but give added weight to fluctuations in recent years. So the 610,000 jobs that were lost last November in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse — the first decline in that month since 2001 and the largest ever recorded — figured heavily into the Department's estimate of new jobless claims, and could have given "the impression the labor market is improving faster than it actually is."
Said one of the economists: "It may not be a sign that we have gotten to the point where we are going to see sustainable gains in employment.”
The seasonal adjustment issue seems to have worked in reverse for October, making it appear as though the economy shed more jobs than it actually did. The economists cited in the story also correctly predicted that the jobs report would revise October assessments downward (as noted below).
Well, it is obviously a PR maneuver. Unemployment is high. People showed [concern] on Election Day in November that the administration and Congress are spending all their time on health care, which is not a high priority. High priority is the economy.
It is the conceit of liberals in power to imagine that the government not only should but can create jobs. Outside of world wars, it doesn't. Generally it gets in the way.
I mean, there are things that you can do by clearing the brush:
Number one, kill health care with all of the job-killing mandates and penalties which are holding up employment.
Secondly, kill cap and trade, which will destroy what's left of the industrial Midwest.
Kill the stimulus package, and distribute the remaining billions either to individuals or to the Treasury.
The other thing they can do is to approve the free trade agreements with Columbia and South Korea, which will create American jobs …
And lastly, and the most important here, is sort of a reprise of 2008 — lift the unbelievably absurd restrictions on drilling for gas and oil, which would create a gold rush of jobs in the country and help us in terms of national security and the economy.
On the White House invoking “separation of powers” to prevent social secretary Desiree Rogers from testifying on Capitol Hill:
I love this story.
Of course, every time you are in power, you invoke executive power if you don't want to be embarrassed. And the opposition declares itself shocked and outraged at the hiding of information and obstruction of justice.
What is comical about this is it's being invoked for a social secretary in a circumstance where, in the original Supreme Court rulings, it was intended for high officials with important state secrets. What was the state secret here — the nature of the flower arrangements at the head table? You know, it is as if somebody is invoking the Fifth Amendment in a dispute over a parking ticket.
But there was one real piece of news in this hearing, and that was that the head of the Secret Service was asked if there has been an increased level of threats against President Obama – [important] because, you know, there was a rumor in the summer that [with Obama, the threats] had increased by a large percent, perhaps doubled or even worse. Mark Sullivan said that the level of threat against President Obama is the same as against Bush and Clinton, which I think is heartening. It refutes a lot of the rumors and the insinuations that we heard this summer when there was a lot of opposition to Obama policies.
House Democrat Facing Ethics Inquiry on Credit Cards [Daniel Foster]
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, is facing an ethics probe for his role in an investigation of credit-card companies.
Several former staffers have alleged that Thompson pressured Visa, MasterCard, and others into political donations by threatening to impose tighter security standards that would cost the companies millions.
Within weeks of a hearing on identity theft — an issue the Homeland Security Committee had never before dealt with — Thompson received $15,000 in donations from the credit-card industry and its lobbyists, according to the WashingtonPost. No new regulations have since been proposed.
2012 will be the centennial of Milton Friedman’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first book on public policy: Capitalism and Freedom. ...
From research, to public policy recommendations, including a celebration of the right of individuals to choose their own path in life, we must put renewed energy into preserving and extending the winning ideas of freedom.
Start now. 2012 is two short years ahead. Start planning events, activities, productions, publications and collaborations. Share your plans with us, and we’ll post them on this site. Regularly check the Calendar of Events to learn what others are doing.
Ryan, Cantor On Obama's T.A.R.P. Temptation [Robert Costa]
After Thursday’s job summit, the White House is considering using leftover funds from the financial bailout to help boost job creation. Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells NRO that such a plan would be foolhardy. “President Obama is trying to apply ‘Cash for Clunkers’ to the entire American economy,” he says.
Such a policy would “just be cosmetic and political marketing,” says Ryan. “Economic actors see through the spin. There’s no need to deploy this kind of capital. If people can borrow, they are doing it. Instead of ladling T.A.R.P. funds, the president should be trying to lower taxes.” The administration, he says, is “desperately trying to pull future economic growth into the present.”
“We’re going to see modest, positive growth for the fourth quarter, but next year we’ll probably see another slowdown,” says Ryan. “Spending more money is not going to solve the administration’s problems.” The bailout funds, Ryan adds, should go back to the Treasury to help reduce the deficit.
President Obama is likely to endorse using a portion of the government's $700 billion financial bailout for a new jobs creation program during a speech about the economy next week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday morning.
"The president thinks we should and must do everything in our power to create an environment for job growth and job creation," Gibbs said. When asked whether Obama will talk about the use of TARP funds on Tuesday, Gibbs said, "I think that's likely."
About $139 billion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, remains unallocated and available to the administration.
UPDATE II: From Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.):
TARP funds borrowed from the taxpayer should not become a slush fund for the political whims of Washington. The TARP was passed last fall because most experts believed that our capital markets were on the verge of absolute collapse. It was an action that no one really wanted to take, but it was an extraordinary amount of money that was passed because this country was in an economic emergency.
The President and Speaker Pelosi need to recognize that TARP money was borrowed from the taxpayer to deal with a dire emergency, and now it must be returned. In fact, current law states that returned TARP funds are to be used to reduce the debt – not more spending preferred by the President. This country is in debt, and the only responsible action is to pay it down, not preserve and expand it.
The United States lost another 11, 000 jobs last month, and the Obama administration is treating that like it's good news — Hey, could have been worse!
I work in the chemical industry. Across all chemical sectors output actually declined in November after several months of improvement. I wish it weren't so, but there is no recovery coming. We should retrain our paradigm to accept that 8-10% unemployment equals full employment. We wanted to be like Europe, well we just achieved the first key metric. Reducing our defense and increasing the welfare state is next.
Tim Pawlenty has hired McCain fundraiser Brian Haley to serve as finance director for his PAC, part of an accelerating effort to staff-up and raise money in advance of a possible 2012 Presidential run.
Shays Campaign Manager Indicted for Embezzlement [Daniel Foster]
A longtime aide to former Rep. Chris Shays (R., Conn.) has been indicted on embezzlement and tax-evasion charges. Michael Sohn, who served as Shays's campaign manager from 2003 to 2008, is accused of stealing $250,000 from the campaign.
Brookhiser and Buckley and Buckley (Free) [NR Staff]
Last year we privately published a beautiful collection – subtitled “A Gathering of Columns, Editorial, Obituaries, Essays, Eulogies, and Other Reflections on the Death and Life of a Great Man” – that was given to special friends of Bill Buckley and National Review. We have a few boxes remaining of the paperback copy of WFB, The Tribute. We refuse to sell them but would love for folks to have them.
So, anyone who today purchases a copy of Rick Brookhiser’s Right Time, Right Place, Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement (it costs only $27.95, which includes shipping and handling, and can be ordered here, while the autographed and inscribed copy can be purchased here), or a copy of Priscilla Buckley’s delightful new book, History Writ Small: Exploring Its Nooks and Crannies by Barge, Boat, and Balloon (only $21.95, including s&h, ordered here) will receive one free copy of WFB, The Tribute.em
Politico’s indefatigable gossip-queen Anne Schroeder Mullins has caught on to the hot story of the Obama administration’s apparent attempt to shrink the White House Hanukah party, writing that the planned reduction is “not making for happy holidays.”
Mullins refers to my piece for the JTA, which talked about my experiences dealing with the White House Hanukah party under Bush. Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council criticized me in the Huffington Post, writing that my piece may be “a reflection of conservative Jews searching for ways to knock the President.” The truth is, as I told Mullins, I doubt many Republican Jews care about the size of the Hanukah party, as they have little to no expectation of being invited. My point is that the Hanukah party is a (relatively) easy way to do something nice for the Jewish community, and the Obama administration would be making a penny-wise, pound-foolish mistake to let the size of the party become an issue.
Forman told Mullins that the Jewish community has “a lot bigger fish to fry.” He is right about that. On the divide between substantive and symbolic issues, the size of the party is definitely on the symbolic side of things. In fact, I wrote in the JTA piece that “the size of the party may not be a big deal in the grand scheme of things.” But in politics, symbolic gestures can help minimize substantive disagreements. The Obama administration has run into difficulty in both areas with the Jewish community thus far, on issues such as pressuring Israel for a settlement freeze and granting a Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson. Forman claims that “In terms of public policy and access, this administration has been great.” I’m sure that’s true for the National Jewish Democratic Council. I’m less sure that it’s true for the American Jewish community as a whole.
Mullins even quotes one Jewish Democrat who says, with a touch of understatement, “Let’s just say their Middle East policy hasn’t been perfect so far.” I suspect that the reason for his anonymity is that he still holds out hope of getting invited to the party.
I take Anthony Dick to be gently suggesting that I haven't made a full-dress argument for the view that striking down the federal ban on compensating bone-marrow donors would be an act of judicial activism. He's right. My points were narrower. The first is that we can't jump from the idea that allowing compensation would be a good policy to the conclusion that the Constitution compels it. The second is that most conservatives are going to be hesitant to make that jump.
But since Anthony has expanded the discussion, let me note that he is also right to assume that I am not a fan of rational-basis tests, which I think have played an important role in the growth of judicial power beyond its constitutional dimensions. For more on this topic, I'd recommend Robert Nagel's excellent book Constitutional Cultures.
Update: Just saw this e-mail on the topic from reader P.M.
With the rational basis argument made by IJ in this case, here's the key analysis. Most would agree that government could ban the sale of, say, a heart from a living donor, since that would result in physician-assisted suicide, at best. At the other end of the spectrum, few could imagine government banning the sale of blood, plasma, or semen, as they are so trivially easy to obtain, at essentially zero risk of harm to the donor. Where, on the spectrum between those two, does it become "irrational" for government to ban the sale of some body component? Medicine is now capable of performing transplants of faces and hands. Can government ban the sale of human hands from living donors? If I decide that my family would be better off with me with a horribly disfigured face of scar tissue and $2 million paid by some rich man whose face was horribly damaged by fire or a dog attack or whatever, can the government ban that?
For the sake of argument, let's say that government's authority to ban the sale of certain organs is based on the risk of harm to the donor the removal of that organ would pose. The removal of the heart would pose a 100% risk of death. The donation of sperm is a 0% risk of harm, the donation of blood perhaps a .00005% risk of even minor harm. The risk of kidney donation poses maybe a 1% risk of harm to the donor. . . . I think that, because the risk of harm is such a vague question, dependent on a review of any number of scientific studies of varying degrees of decision, and because the resolution of the issue effects any number of other public policy issues, it is the legislature which should make the determination about where to draw the line.
The IJ lawsuit says that it's the proper role of the court to decide where that line. The weakness of their argument is that they won't (and cannot) say what the rule of law is, to determine where Congress has freedom to act and where it doesn't. They won't say that, for example, if the risk of harm is less than 1%, Congress may not regulate the sale, but if it is between 50% and 1%, Congress is free to act as it sees fit. As you say, all the "rational basis" test comes down to, in the end, is whether the judge does or does not agree with the policy decision.
Anyway, glad you stuck up for consistency within the conservative movement on judicial activism. The IJ lawsuit should also be opposed on life grounds; human body parts should never be treated as commodities to be bought or sold, because that cheapens human life itself.
Words matter because will matters. Success in war depends on three things: a brave and highly skilled soldiery, such as the U.S. military 2009, the finest counterinsurgency force in history; brilliant, battle-tested commanders such as Gens. David Petraeus and McChrystal, fresh from the success of the surge in Iraq; and the will to prevail as personified by the commander-in-chief.
There’s the rub. And that is why at such crucial moments, presidents don’t issue a policy paper. They give a speech. It gives tone and texture. It allows their policy to be imbued with purpose and feeling. This one was festooned with hedges, caveats, and one giant exit ramp.
Cadets are trained in acceptance of orders, and the Commander-in-Chief was effectively issuing an order to all who were present. No cadet will be spared from the effects of President Obama’s remarks — his message has been received and internalized by all who were present in Eisenhower Hall. I am humbled by the President’s decision to announce his new strategy at my school and completely reject the notion of any who suggest that West Point is in any way “the enemy camp.” The enemy camps are in Helmand province, where soldiers are currently engaged in the President’s mission.
As a member of the Class of 2010, I am preparing to graduate and utilize the skills and lessons that West Point has taught me to join those deployed and contribute to the Afghanistan conflict. I am confident that my classmates all feel similarly, and it will be an honor to serve beside them.
Re: The Center for American Progress Edits Catholicism [Andy McCarthy]
Ramesh, maybe the Center for American Progress meant Obamacare is consistent with moderate Catholicism, as opposed to the extreme positions urged by those crazy Catholicists.
Michael, speaking of corrections Ellen Goodman might have run, here she is in a column from way back in January of 1980, about the opening of an IVF clinic in Virginia:
A fear of many who protest the opening of this clinic is that doctors there will fertilize myriad eggs and discard the “extras” and the abnormal as if they were no more meaningful than a dish of caviar. But this fear seems largely unwarranted.
Today, of course, this fear has been entirely realized, and a whole industry of embryo manufacture and destruction is thriving. Has Goodman acknowledged that her confidence that such horrors could be avoided has been proven wrong? Not at all; on the contrary, she is an avid supporter of embryo-destructive research, which makes use of exactly those “extra” embryos.
My column on the "jobs summit" today. Bottom line: It's the entrepreneurial churn that's most important.
UPDATE:
An e-mail:
Subject: Jobs that create growth and jobs that don't.
All Work Is Not Equal
There is a real difference between a government job and a job in the private sector. Private sector jobs contribute to the growth of the economy because the private sector employee produces a product or provides a service that the consumer wants to buy, thus generating income, producing wealth, expanding economic activity and thereby providing the basis for increasing employment.
No government employee produces any product or service that the consumer purchases. Hence government jobs produce no income, create no wealth, generate no economic expansion, and provide no economic incentive for job creation. What’s more, all government jobs are paid for with revenues taken from the private sector in the form of taxes on individuals and businesses, thus siphoning economic resources out of the productive private economy and dumping them into the non-productive government economy.
Another e-mail:
Mr. Lowry;
I think your correspondent goes too far with the blanket statement "No government employee produces any product or service that the consumer purchases." I can think of several examples — A patent issued the US Patent & Trademark Office is paid for and wanted by its applicant, and the patentee uses that patent to create value in the economy. As a private pilot, I buy gov't printed navigational charts routinely. I find them to have value (by providing safety), and contribute to the greater economy by my flying, which is enhanced by those charts.I can agree that the private sector has an advantage of more efficiently allocating resources in many or most situations, however. Wasteful government jobs, e.g., paying one person to dig holes and another to fill them in, does not yield any benefit to the economy.
The employment situation improved dramatically in November. Although payrolls declined 11,000, they were up 148,000 including revisions to the last two months. Given the recent trend of upward revisions, it’s probable that the November number itself will be revised into positive territory in the next couple of months. However, the best part of the employment report was that the total number of hours worked in the private sector increased 0.6 percent, which is the equivalent of a stunning 660,000 jobs. In other words, if the number of hours per worker had remained unchanged in November, the increase in labor demand could have pushed payrolls up a huge 650,000. No wonder that civilian employment — an alternative measure of job creation — increased 227,000. Given the economic growth we’ve had since the summer, the jobless rate may have peaked at 10.2 percent in October, and has just started a downward trend with the November decline to 10.0 percent. The jobless rate will not decline every month, but is likely to be significantly lower by late next year.
Leading signals of improving demand for labor jumped out of today’s report. Temp employment increased 52,000, the fourth consecutive gain; overtime hours in the manufacturing sector are up 30 percent versus eight months ago. The only cautionary part of today’s report was that average hourly earnings were up only 0.1 percent in November, which is not enough to keep up with inflation. However, given the increase in hours, average weekly earnings were up 0.7 percent, which should be enough to beat inflation.
— Bob Stein is senior economist with First Trust Advisers.
