The French prefer Obama by a 64–4 margin.
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Government and Politics
The “Coburn Omnibus”
The WashingtonWatch.com blog has a breakout of all 36 bills in the “Coburn Omnibus.”
#36: a greenhouse in Suitland, Maryland!
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Losing Faith in What?
In the Los Angeles Times, Peter Gosselin offers a “news analysis” on the theme that “Americans may be losing faith in free markets.”
For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens — certainly better than government meddling.
No longer.
This kind of crisis of confidence occurs every time the economy temporarily heads south — which it inevitably does from time to time. What does this tell us? It tells us that people do not understand the economy very well. And what do stories like Gosselin’s tell us? That most journalists don’t either.
But economic downturns do offer the motivated reporter an opportunity to speculate on the possible political consequences of unflagging public and media ignorance. The causes for our current economic troubles are evidently too complex to fathom, so instead of writing intelligibly about what is actually happening and why, we are asked to wonder (hope? fear?) whether voters can be made to demand a “New Deal Lite,” before the economy regains steam and we become too satisfied to regulate ourselves into oblivion.
It would be useful if journalists could find a way to report on the actual nature of the American economy. This would be a real public service. The American economy is in fact a byzantine amalgam of market and state institutions enmeshed in a thicket of regulation. Gosselin maintains that “most people” in the U.S. think there is something out there called “the free market” that operates without “government meddling.” I’m not really sure that most people think that, but it seems Gosselin does, because he goes on to structure his “news analysis” as if the story is that dissatisfaction with a kind of laissez faire we do not have may be generating demand for basically the kind of dirigisme we’ve already got. But since economic systems we haven’t got can’t cause our economic problems, the result is confusion.
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The Mechanics of Government Gaining Ground
Over at the new WashingtonWatch.com blog, I’ve posted a piece illustrating the simple modern mechanics of something Jefferson warned against: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
Congress is considering a bill to cancel the scheduled termination of a commission that studies minority veterans issues. It would only cost three cents per U.S. family to keep it going, but it’s one of nearly 10,000 bills of all different stripes pending in the current Congress.
Did minority veterans fight for a country where each group looks to the government for special treatment or a little cut of the loot from taxpayers? Or for the country where the people’s spirits are still free?
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What’s Charlie Rangel Hiding?
A man who is willing to show how clean he is by initiating an ethics probe into his own fundraising activities surely wouldn’t mind explaining his motivation for terminating a study on Chinese trade practices that he himself commissioned to great fanfare. Until he does give this explanation, we can only speculate.
On May 23, 2007, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D‑NY) asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to undertake a comprehensive study of interventionist Chinese government policies and the role those policies play in exacerbating the U.S.-China trade imbalance. A three‐part study was requested, whereby the first part would describe the role and policies of the Chinese government concerning all aspect of the economy. Seven months were afforded to the ITC to complete the first phase, and a 272‐page study was published in December 2007.
The second phase was to focus on sectors and policies “which are the primary drivers of the U.S.-China trade deficit” to determine how much of that deficit can be attributed to interventionist Chinese policies like subsidization, currency manipulation, and export promotion. Phase two was to be published by today (no later than 14 months after the May 23, 2007 letter). But it wasn’t.
In a letter to then‐ITC chairman Dan Pearson dated April 1, 2008, Rangel expressed his disappointment with the ITC’s report so far, but took care to place the blame for the report’s faulty conclusions on the absence of transparency on the part of the Chinese government:
The inability to access within the time agreed upon key information, and to analyze this information thoroughly and rigorously, has led to numerous inadvertent mischaracterization in the draft. These mischaracterizations are understandable given several characteristics of the Chinese economy and Chinese society, including the lack of transparency in Chinese policymaking, the absence of a clear demarcation between central and provincial government responsibilities, the pace at which laws and regulations are being written and re‐written, and the incomplete development of the rule of law in China. Similarly, the breadth of the Committee’s request may have been too great, given the limitations on the Commission’s time, resources and lack of experience to date in investigating, identifying, obtaining and analyzing the kinds of information critical to the analysis sought in the Committee’s request.
Rangel went on to express confidence that the ITC would “develop the capacity to address the central and critical issues identified in the study,” but that he was suspending the work of the ITC on this matter, while his staff “work[ed] with the Commission staff to ensure that the Commission has the resources, time, and guidance it needs.”
I guess the ITC didn’t take the hint, so on June 25, 2008, Rangel terminated the study altogether.
Barack Obama Walks the Walk
After telling a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers that he opposes school voucher programs over the weekend, Senator Obama added that: “We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.”
Senator Obama sends his own two daughters to the private “Lab School” founded by John Dewey in 1896, which charged $20,000 in tuition at the middle school level last year. Though he says “we” should not be “throwing up our hands and walking away” from public schools, he has done precisely that.
That is his right, and, as a wealthy man, it is his prerogative under the current system of American education, which allows only the wealthy to easily choose between private and government schools. But instead of offering to extend that same choice to all families, Senator Obama wants the poor to wait for the public school system to be “fixed.”
I could editorialize about this, but I really don’t see the need. Readers of this blog are perfectly capable of drawing the obvious conclusions.
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City Life: Why Is It So Bad for So Many?
Why is city life so bad for so many? Here are some possibilities:
- Maybe because the government has a lousy a school system.
- Maybe because the government has a lousy justice system.
- Maybe because the government has a lousy tax system.
- Maybe because the government has a lousy welfare system.
- Maybe it is a combination of lousy policies.