Girl of the Day - Aubrey Plaza

The family triumverate (The Regular Guy, The Regular Wife, The Regular Son) went sans the Regular Daughters last weekend (too little for R-rated movies) to see the indie film Safety Not Guaranteed.   Pretty good, not great, typical indie film with better than usual dialogue and character and goofy plot and somewhat banal themes (we'd all like to find a way to be able to fix our past mistakes).   Anyway the star is Aubrey Plaza of TV's Parks and Recreation (never seen it).   She's a little odd-looking, but very talented and appealing:

The Outsourcing Argument

I guess from a political perspective it matters for Mitt Romney to be able to argue that he didn't "outsource" jobs while at Bain.   But it would be helpful for the sake of intellectual clarity for someone to mention that no one "sends jobs overseas" to injure Americans.   A business owner might choose to build a factory overseas and hire overseas labor because doing so is cost-effective, and therefore beneficial to his shareholders, to whom he owes a fiduciary duty.   But he would do so only where the economics of doing so made sense.   If the economics made sense to build a factory in America and hire Americans, he would do so, again because he would owe it to his shareholders to maximize their profits.   But there are, in fact, not only jobs Americans won't do, but jobs Americans shouldn't do -- this is the theory of "comparative advantage" in economics, where higher-skilled workers who can add more value utilizing those skills should do so, while lower-skilled workers should be hired (wherever they may be) to do jobs that require only lower skills.   Oftentimes manufacturing goods overseas using lower cost labor has the effect of lowering the end price for American consumers, which is all to the good.   Democrats sometimes think the world would be great if everything was "made in America" using high-wage, high-benefit union jobs; but, then, average Americans would be paying much more for the goods they want.   (This is somewhat analogous to the liberal environmentalist who wants everyone to eat "organic" vegetables grown without any herbicides or pesticides.   Well, fine, but the result will be that average people will eat fewer vegetables, and poor people around the world would starve.)

Oh, and by the way, when Romney was at Bain he owed a fiduciary duty to his shareholders and investors, period.   He was a private citizen running a private business.   He wasn't obliged to keep any jobs in America if it was bad for his investors.    But Barack Obama is the President.   He owes a fiduciary duty to the American people.   So when stimulus money went to manufacture electric cars in Finland for Fisker, in my view he was breaching that duty.

Take a Step Back and Think About It

Obama beat McCain by 53-46, seven points.   That was a little over 9 million votes.   So Romney needs to either get 4% of Obama's voters to switch; or he needs to get some to switch and get more Republican turnout and less Democratic turnout.    He needs five million more, and he needs Obama to get five million less.   It's that simple, and it's very doable:

1. In 2008 a crashing economy was blamed on the then-current President, a Republican.   In 2012 there's no Bush on the ballot.   Whatever is happening now in the economy, it will be blamed on Obama.  

2. In 2008 the Democratic electorate was energized by the opportunity to vote for the first-ever African-American Presidential candidate.   They won't be as energized in 2012, not even close.

3. In 2008 the Republican candidate was a tired re-tread, McCain.   Romney is better already, and he's getting better too.

4. In 2008 Obama was hailed as a charismatic speaker, an orator of Lincoln/Churchill/MLK stature.   Does anyone think that anymore?   Aren't a lot of people embarrassed by the gushing over this lightweight?   Even if that's too harsh, will his act really play as well the second time around?

5. In 2008 Obama ran as someone who would unite America and pacify the world through the strength of his personal magnetism.   After four years of divisive, mean-spirited, us-against-them rhetoric, will anyone argue that Obama is a bipartisan uniter?   With Russia sending ships to Syria and Israel poised to attack Iran's nuclear labs, does anyone think the world is safer?   That America's reputation abroad is stronger?

6. Obama's race, charisma, oratory skill, and the adulation of the media made him hard to dislike in 2008, or at least hard to dislike openly.    Republicans were understandably disheartened, and didn't turnout to vote in the same numbers they did in 2004 or 2000.   Obama's easy to dislike now.   Republicans despise him and everything he stands for -- elitist academic know-nothing leftism.   They will turn out in droves to throw him out.


So put aside the issues -- Fast and Furious, Solyndra, bowing to foreign leaders, $5 trillion in new debt, Obamacare, tax demogoguery, 100 rounds of golf while there's 8% unemployment -- put all that aside.   Just structurally: 

Obama isn't the Messiah anymore.   We know him.   We've taken his measure.

Romney isn't McCain.  

2012 isn't 2008.

Girl of the Day - Fiftysomething Version (Mel Harris)

Mel Harris was the central character in what in retrospect seems like a harbinger of the whining white elite liberal culture we have today, the late 1980s show, thirtysomething.   She turns 56 today.   Tempus fugit.

Let's Assume for a Minute That Obamacare Is a Great Thing We Should All Want

OK, let's assume that Obamacare is a great thing, a boon to man, something that no thinking person would want if they could afford it.   The problem is...

We.   Can't.   Afford.    It.   

Here's a telling chart.    People forget that one of the sleights-of-hand used to sell Obamacare was that it would only cost $900 billion (only!) over ten years.... I get it, less than a trillion!.   What a bargain.   But to get there, Obamaa had to start counting from FY 2009, when the bill wouldn't go into effect until 2014.   The actual ten year estimated cost is now supposed to be $2.6 trillion.

And, of course, the $2.6 trillion assumes that the government's estimates for what this particular social spending/welfare benefit/new entitlement program will cost are completely, totally, 100% accurate, and not wildly skewed to come up with the lowest possible figure for political consumption by a gullible public.   If Obamacare behave like every other entitlement program, it will end up costing much, much more than promised.   But, even assuming they're right, it still ends up adding roughly $250 billion a year to the federal budget, when we are already over-spending by more than a trillion every year.   Does it really make sense to borrow another quarter of a trillion dollars a year from China to fund a new entitlement?   Would any rational country -- i.e., one that isn't embarked upon a campaign of national suicide to rival anything Gibbon ever could have imagined for Rome -- do such a stupid thing?

I don't think Obamacare is a boon to man.   I think it will ruin the healthcare system in America, lower the quality of care, increase waiting lines, end in rationing and, inevitably, a regime of quasi-state-mandated euthanasia.  It's that bad.   But even if it were good...

We.   Can't.   Afford.    It.

It's that simple.

Alert the Media - Ultra-Liberal Black Democratic Activists Probably Don't Like Romney

Apparently the big story of the day is that the NAACP audience for a speech today by Mitt Romney booed when he stated what he's been stating everywhere else when he speaks -- that he would repeal Obamacare.   Meh.   When ultra-liberal black Democratic Party insider/activists act like, well, ultra-liberal black Democratic Party insider/activists, it's not really news.

Romney gets some kudos for giving a speech he had to give -- he would have been blasted had he declined the invitation -- without making any gaffes, at least as far as I can tell today.   Maybe the media will find one if they look hard enough... they can always manufacture something if they ask enough people whether they were offended by anything Romney said.   But he gets this out of the way relatively early in the campaign, so that's a good thing.

Of course, given the unemployment rate for black Americans of 14.4%, you'd think some of the members of the NAACP might rethink their allegiance to the Democrats.

Naaaaaaaah.....

Another Reason to Watch Mad Men

Mad Men star Jon Hamm was at the All-Star Game Celebrity Softball event and apparently he's a huge St. Louis sports fan, something I did not know.   Pretty cool.

Girl of the Day - Daniela Hantuchova

Ranked #33 in the world in tennis, but #1 in ESPN's "body issue" this week (you know, the issue where they get world class athletes to pose in tasteful semi-nudes in a blatant attempt to juice circulation).   I liked this shot better anyway.  

The VP Race

There's a rumor going around that Romney has his short list for VP down to four names:  Pawlenty, Portman, Ryan and Jindal.   If that's the case, it's Portman.   Here's why.

1.  Pawlenty.   Pawlenty would be a good choice.   He's been a governor, he comes from a swingable state (barely), Minnesota.   He's likeable (although his own presidential campaign didn't take off).   But... the thing about Pawlenty is that main thing he was known for in his short campaign was a half-assed attempt to blast Romney for Romneycare, calling it at one point "Obamneycare."    We can't afford having commercials blasting in swing states saying "Romney's own running mate said X."   Add to that the fact that Minnesota would be a good "get," but if we get Minnesota, we've already won, and I don't see what Pawlenty adds.

2. Ryan.   I love Paul Ryan.   I love him as the face of the party for budgetary issues.   I'd love for him to run for President in eight years (after two terms of Romney).   But I don't want him this year as VP.   I think he's been labeled by the MSM as the right's archdruid who wants to cut everything to the bone.   I agree with him on all of that, but politically I think he would be a liability.  He's also young and doesn't have any executive experience... not ideal.   And, again, if we get Wisconsin, we've already won.   (P.S. We are going to win Wisconsin this time around, but we'll do so without Ryan at the top of the ticket because of the energy in the state coming from the Governor's office, and because we'll have a strong Senate candidate for Herb Kohl's open seat, former Governor Tommy Thompson.)

3. Jindal.  I also love Bobby Jindal.   He's my second choice for VP, and he'd destroy (I mean de-f'in-stroy) Slow Joe Biden in debates.   He's that smart.   And he'd add some diversity to the ticket as the son of Indian immigrants, and perhaps insulate Republicans on the immigration issue.   But he's young, and the pick might smack a little bit of desperation a la Sarah Palin... something to heighten the drama, attention-seeking, etc.   And, Republicans are going to win Louisiana easily anyway, so I don't know what he adds from an Electoral College perspective either.)

That leaves Portman.   Mature.   Check.  Experienced.   Check.   Able to be President.   Check.   Executive experience.   Not so much, although he did hold two essentially cabinet-level positions in the Bush administration as director of OMB and U.S. Trade Representative.   And, as the Senator from Ohio, he could help reel in the ultimate swing state, the must-have state, the can't-do-without-it state.   Rubio would do a similar trick in Florida and help with Hispanic voters, but he's short on experience after only two years in the Senate.   So it's Portman.

Or it's a surprise, someone we haven't even thought about yet.   

Food Stamp Nation

A terrific article by Rich Lowry at NRO about how we've become food stamp nation.   The data is bad enough:

The modern welfare state lives by the same credo. About 17 million people received food stamps back in 2000. Some 30 million received them in 2008. Roughly 46 million people receive them today. From 1 in 50 Americans on food stamps at the program’s national inception in the 1970s, 1 in 7 Americans are on them now.

This gibes with the tripling of federal disability rolls I've talked about before.   Are we starving more than we were 12 years ago?   Are we more disabled?   Or are we rapidly becoming a Spain-Italy-Greece nation of welfare benefit scam artists?

But here is the thing from the article that jumps out at me.   Lowry notes sardonically that the Obama Administration has been running radio ads seeking to get more people on food stamps.   That's bad enough.   But the apparent rationale in the ad -- the sales pitch -- is that going on food stamps is a way to lose weight!

Now, maybe it's heartless, but in my view, if you're already fat, you (a) haven't required my assistance to buy food in the past; and (b) don't require it now.  

But I couldn't really believe this, so I got on the Internet to see if I could find a tape of the actual broadcast.   Here it is:





P.S.   The federal food stamps program gives out an average of $133 per month -- $1600 a year -- to 46 million Americans.   That's about $75 billion a year.   And the people in the government's ad are giggling about how they're on food stamps!   Like they know they're getting away with something.

The Obama Paradox

This data was frankly surprising to me:

When Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate for white men who were 25-54 years old, i.e., in their prime earning years (the Regular Guy is 53... better get moving!), was 8.1% at the trough of the recession.   In June 2012 it is back down to 5.9%.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for blacks, which was 12.7% when Obama took office, has actually gone up to 14.4% in June 2012.   The unemployment rate for Hispanics, which was 10.0% when Obama took office, was up to 11.0% in June 2012.   And the unemployment rate for young people, ages 16-24, which was 14.9% in January 2009, is now up to 16.5% as of last month's jobs report.   All of this can easily be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics web page.

Why do these groups -- blacks, Hispanics, young people -- continue to support Obama, when his regime has so obviously been bad for them?

The real Obama record reflects government that is at the service of the professional elites, the business elites, the governmental elites, the union elites, the politically-connected.   In other words, middle-aged white dudes.

Hmmmm....

Washington Post Poll and Michael Gerson

The Washington Post is out with a poll today that, even with a +9 split of Democrats to Republicans among registered voters, shows Obama and Romney tied at 47-47.   This is very, very bad news for the President.  

First, even in the wave year for Democrats of 2008, with Obama in full "hope and change" mode and running to become the first African-American president against a highly dispirited Republican party which didn't really like their own candidate, John McCain, the electorate was only +7 Democrats.   In 2010, a wave year for Republicans, the split was even.   There is no way Democrats are as enthused this year as they were in 2008, and it is likely that an even greater Republican enthusiasm will emerge in 2012 when voters have a chance to vote against Obama himself and not just his Congressional surrogates.   If there is an even split among Dems and Republicans, it is likely that Romney would be well in the lead.

Second, this is registered voters.   Polls of likely voters are always more Republican, for the simple reason that Republicans tend to be responsible adults who actually go vote.   So Romney probably picks up a couple of points there too.

No wonder Post columnist Michael Gerson is so dour:

Obama is showing signs of ideological exhaustion. He seems incapable of producing an economic agenda equal to his political challenge.

The administration is left with one main self-justification: Financial panics cause longer downturns and slower recoveries. This is historically correct, but not the primary issue. The relevant question: Has Obama accelerated or slowed the recovery?

Obama is not responsible for the euro-zone crisis or the softening of the Chinese economy. But he has done several things to hinder American recovery. “He turned a temporary expansion of government, through TARP and the auto bailouts, into a permanent expansion of government,” argues Keith Hennessey of the Hoover Institution. “Government, measured by federal spending, is this year about 15 percent bigger than the historical average, measured relative to the economy. . . . This drains resources from private firms and individuals and means slower productivity growth.”

Obama’s major regulatory initiatives, particularly Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform, have added to economic uncertainty. Businesses are waiting for the implications of these laws to become clear, and federal rules to be written, before making investment choices. At the same time, the Obama administration has failed to make tough calls and secure legislative compromises on a variety of issues — the federal debt, future tax rates, the Keystone XL pipeline — that might remove sources of economic uncertainty. Instead, we get short-term policy extensions on large policy matters.

Given both the state of the economy and his policy performance, the buoyancy of Obama’s polling is a political marvel. But a portion of this depends on doubts about Mitt Romney, which can be eased. A humanizing Romney convention speech, some reassuring debate performances, a few innovative policy proposals appealing to Latinos or suburban women — and Romney becomes a more broadly imaginable president.

In this case, Obama could well suffer a Carter-like collapse, circa 1980. Not because of an ideological shift but a simple, collective judgment: He did not deliver recovery.

Now Gerson is no liberal -- he used to work at the Heritage Foundation, for Pete's sake!   But he does work now at the Washington Post, so he's conservative in the same way David Brooks is conservative at the New York Times -- he's the type of conservative Washington types will invite to their cocktail parties.   The upshot is that I think he's channelling what appears to be some real panic in the liberal establishment in Washington.

The Chicago Way

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is coming under fire because of Chicago's soaring murder rate, which has gone up 38% this year.   On the micro-level, I don't think Emanuel should be blamed.   He didn't create the dysfunctional south side of Chicago, where gangs essentially rule.   But, on a macro-level, it is important to note that Chicago is a city that has long been governmed by liberal Democrats, and which, on the South Side, has served as a laboratory for "community organizers" in experimenting with changing inner-city urban neighborhoods.   On that level, since we are going to spend four more months talking endlessly about Mitt Romney's successes in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in his chosen line of work, is it fair to note that Barack Obama's chosen work as a community organizer in Chicago now appears to have been an abject failure?

Obama '12:  Trying to Do for America What I Did for Chicago!

Girl of the Day - Obscurity Version (Sue Lyon)

This one is a bit obscure.   Sue Lyon was a starlet of the 1960s who famously starred in Lolita with James Mason, and less famously (except to me) was the ingenue opposite George C. Scott in one of my favorite movies as a kid, The Flim-Flam Man.

Ms. Lyon turns 66 today.

Obama's Bundlers

Don't believe anything you hear from the Obama campaign about Bain Capital or private equity or Wall Street.   Here are the biggest bundlers for the Obama campaign, people who have each arranged for contributions in excess of $1 million.   In the top five, four are individuals employed by Ariel Capital Management, Jordan Real Estate Investments, HBJ Investments, and Grosvenor Capital Management.  (The fifth and biggest bundler is Jeffrey Katzenberg of Hollywood fame.)   A casual Internet search reveals that these are a mutual fund company, a real estate company that also does private equity investments (i.e., buys companies like Bain Capital), another investment company, and a hedge fund.  

Hypocrisy alert!

Are You Man Enough?

There's a point in the great scene from Glengarry Glen Ross where the real estate executive is laying into his soon-to-be-fired salesmen with the caustic comment that there is money laying around out there and "are you man enough to pick it up?"   Well, there's wealth out there in America waiting to be picked up -- wealth in natural gas, oil shale, convential oil reserves, and offshore oil.   Here is a summary from Walter Russell Mead, one of my favorite bloggers:

While the chattering classes yammered on about American decline and peak oil, a quite different future is taking shape. A world energy revolution is underway and it will be shaping the realities of the 21st century when the Crash of 2008 and the Great Stagnation that followed only interest historians.  A new age of abundance for fossil fuels is upon us.  And the center of gravity of the global energy picture is shifting from the Middle East to… North America.

The two biggest winners look to be Canada and the United States. Canada, with something like two trillion barrels worth of conventional oil in its tar sands, and the United States with about a trillion barrels of shale oil, are the planet’s new super giant energy powers. Throw in natural gas and coal, and the United States is better supplied with fossil fuels than any other country on earth. Canada and the United States are each richer in oil than Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined....

The other important change in the new world energy picture is one I wrote about earlier this week: Israel’s potential emergence as a major oil and gas producer. With trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and potentially as much as 250 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil, Israel may be on the verge of joining the wealthiest Arab states as a world class energy producer.

These changes won’t take place overnight, but they are coming faster than many understand. US domestic oil production is up almost half a million barrels a day thanks to North Dakota, and the surge in US natural gas production is already changing international trade patterns. More change will come.

As I wrote a few days ago:   "America has enough energy to create an economic Golden Age... no civilization in history has ever turned its back on its own wealth in such an irrational way."  Are we men enough to pick it up?

Shameless Page Count Hype -- More Lolo Jones!

The Regular Guy Believes got a big boost a couple of weeks ago in page counts with a picture of Olympic track athlete Lolo Jones.   Far be it from me to shamelessly hype the blog, but, well, what the hell.   Think of it as being for America!

Girl of the Day - Kelly McGillis

Somewhat alarmingly, Kelly McGillis (Tom Cruise's love interest in Top Gun) turns 55 today.   But forget Top Gun, McGillis' best role was in a very fine movie directed by Peter Weir and co-starring Harrison Ford called Witness:




FYI, McGillis late in life, and after two failed marriages with two children, came out as a lesbian.  Meh.   Who cares? 

All You Need to Know

The reality is that there are "low information" voters out there who are not yet focused on the Presidential campaign.   So don't worry too much about polls showing Obama and Romney still neck-and-neck.  In the next four months people will start to focus on one question:  Did Obama do the job of President well enough to be re-elected?   I don't see how the answer to that question is anything but a resounding No.

Those aren't the results on jobs that the American people had a right to expect, period.   And Obama's recent lament that he "tried really hard" won't satisfy or convince very many adults.  

Girl of the Day - Summer Nights! (Olivia Newton-John)

Not much time... going to the zoo.   Here's a blast from the past:

Do. The. Opposite.

The genius (and horror) of the Clinton Presidency was that, while advancing the growth of the liberal welfare state, he never did (or at least, after Hillarycare, never tried) things that would create obvious points of reference for labeling him as a liberal welfare statist.   With Obama we have an even more horrific Presidency, but more clarity; his programs, his demeanor, his rhetoric, his cronies -- everything identifies him as a statist of the first order, i.e., not just a liberal or a progressive, but as a true socialist.   And that makes the choice in the upcoming election a true choice... we can have more of Obama, or we can go in the 180 degree opposite direction.   Riffing off of Victor Davis Hanson's list of policies Obama has introduced to harm the economy, Romney should promise to (and make this the mantra of his campaign) "do the opposite":

If one wanted to ensure permanent 8 percent to 9 percent unemployment, one might try the following:
1. Run up serial $1 trillion deficits
2. Add $5 trillion to the national debt in three and a half years... Romney needs to pledge and lay out a specific plan leading to a balanced budget by the end of his first term.   We can't wait.  
3. Impose a 2,400-page, trillion-dollar new federal takeover of health care, with layers of new taxation, much of it falling on the middle class and employers, even as favored concerns are given mass exemptions...  Romney needs to pledge and then follow through on the repeal of Obamacare.
4. Scare employers with constant us/them class warfare rhetoric about a demonized one-percenter class and its undeserved profits; constantly talk about raising new taxes and imposing regulations, ensuring uncertainty and convincing employers of unpredictability in regulation and taxes. You cannot convince a country to go into permanent near-recession, but President Obama is doing his best to try.... Romney needs to pledge and then follow through on permanently lowering capital gains and dividend taxes, as well as marginal income tax rates, in order to re-incentivize the American investor/entrepreneurial class.
5. Appoint a bipartisan committee to study the fiscal crisis and then neglect all its recommendations.... Romney needs to adopt some hybrid of the Simpson-Bowles and Ryan plans with regard to reforming entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) to make them financially feasible in the future.
6. Subsidize failed green companies, while denigrating successful gas and oil concerns, as well as putting rich oil-and-gas federal leases off limits.... Romney needs to aggressively deregulate the energy industry, including pledging that the federal government will no longer subsidize some forms of energy production over others; he needs to open up drilling on federal lands and offshore; and he needs to rein in the EPA to allow the construction of new coal plants, new nuclear power plants, and new petroleum refineries.   America has enough energy to create an economic Golden Age... no civilization in history has ever turned its back on its own wealth in such an irrational way.
7. Vastly increase unemployment insurance, disability, and food-stamp constituencies, while promising all sorts of mortgage, credit-card, and student-loan bailouts.   Romney needs to pledge to reform the unemployment, disability and food-stamp programs, the bankruptcy code, and to get the federal government out of the mortgage industry and student-loan industry, period.   We need to stop asking the responsible among us to subsidize the irresponsible.   That's what's really "unfair" in the American economy.
8. Borrow hundreds of billions for stimulus programs that are not shovel ready, but are rather aimed to bail out state budgets, pensions, and unions.... The power of public employee unions must be broken.   If I were Romney I would propose a constitutional amendment stating that public employment may not confer any property rights, including in pensions or retiree medical benefits, and that such benefits remain gratuities/gifts of the people that may be modified.
9. Federalize elements of non-profitable private companies, while threatening to shut down profitable plants for supposed union or environmental incorrect behavior.... Romney needs to pledge, and work to enact into law, a policy stating that the federal government will not intervene to bailout any company in any industry.   The market will decide winners and losers, not political connections or cronyism.

One might add to this in foreign policy:  be a friend to Israel and England, our best allies; stand firm against Iran, our enemy; support Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and all other countries of Eastern Europe who were once under the thumb of the Soviet Union; be suspicious of Russia, and vigilant in countering its aggression; be suspicious of China and vigilant in monitoring its expansion; be a friend to India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand -- all of the countries of the broader Anglosphere; police our borders with Mexico.   Etc., etc., etc.   In all cases,

Do.   The.    Opposite.

The Assumptions Built Into Obamacare

A very interesting article by the estimable Jay Cost over at the Weekly Standard suggests that many of the assumptions built into Obamacare -- and, in fact, necessary for it to work -- are illogical and contrary to centuries of learning about economics:

The bill is built on far too many questionable assumptions. If any one of them fails to hold, the entire thing could fall apart.

For instance, the Congressional Budget Office gave the authors of the bill a pretty good score on the efficacy of the individual mandate, declaring that only a small portion of the public would choose to go without health insurance. This is very important: If the mandate is too weak, too many people will forgo coverage until they get sick, insurance premiums will rise, more people will forgo coverage, and so on. It’s known as a “death spiral.”

CBO says it will not happen. But that is an assumption – one that not everybody agrees with. The insurance industry, for one. Though Democrats brutally demagogued insurers during the 2009-2010 drama to pass the bill, behind the scenes they worked assiduously to win their endorsement. They failed, but only because the mandate the Senate endorsed was so weak the insurers feared a death spiral. (There is also a chance that the mandate will lose some of its psychological teeth if people come to view it as a mere tax, which could increase the likelihood of a death spiral. Economics mingled with the realities of social psychology can produce some strange effects.)

 

There are plenty of other questionable assumptions like this scattered all throughout the bill. Consider:

-Will employers drop their insurance coverage en masse, knowing that their employees can get insurance on the exchanges? Democrats assume not, but there are signs that may not be the case.

-Can Medicare be cut by $500 billion without undermining quality of care? Democrats assume so, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is doubtful. 

-Can Medicaid handle about 15 million new recipients? Democrats assume so, but doctors are already loath to accept Medicaid because it pays so poorly.

-Can you increase the number of people demanding medical services, without a corresponding increase in the supply of services, without a huge spike in prices? Democrats assume so, but common sense casts doubt on this proposition.

With every contestable assumption built into the bill, the odds that the whole package will fail in some way increase substantially. Suppose an 80 percent chance of success on each of these five guesses; in that case, the likelihood that all of them will be correct is only 33 percent.

And because the components of the bill are so intertwined, a failure of one assumption could lead to a catastrophic collapse of the entire scheme, like a house of cards.

Time Horizons

I have occasionally commented on the phenomenon of American pundits (and some Catholics) criticizing the Church and the Pope (whether John Paul II or Benedict XVI) because they haven't modernized the Church by becoming more liberal on reproductive "rights" or on women entering the priesthood or on celibacy for priests, etc.   My comment is always:  the Pope and the Church have a different time horizon.   For many people, their time horizon is their own lifetime, and the concerns of their generation.   For the Baby Boomers who were teenagers in the 1960s, that means the push toward a more and more liberal social policy.   But for the Pope and the Church, the time horizon is eternity, or at least the span of the thousands of years since Christ.   With that different time horizon, they have different concerns.   They are, for instance, must less concerned with what the New York Times editorial board thinks.  

Naturally we care a lot about next November's presidential election, just as we here in Wisconsin cared a lot about last month's recall election for Governor.   But it's good to recall that there are things that human beings do that don't involve politics, or economics, that don't stop at the horizon of this year's disputes or a ten-year budget; things that draw our eye to the farthest reaches of time and space.   Religion is one.   And, perhaps on the opposite end of the spectrum (but perhaps not), pure science is another, and this week's announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN super-collider in Europe is instructive.   As much as we complain about our world, it is continually amazing what scientists and engineers have permitted us to learn:

After decades of careful experiment, physicists say they have found the "strongest indication to date" to prove the existence of the Higgs boson -- a subatomic particle so important to the understanding of space, time and matter that the physicist Leon Lederman nicknamed it "the God particle."

The announcement today, based on experiments at the Department of Energy's Fermilab near Chicago and other institutions, is not the final word, but it's very close. And it comes just before a major meeting this week in Australia, where more findings will be announced from the giant underground particle accelerator at CERN, the great physics lab in the Alps on the French-Swiss border.

"This is one of the cornerstones of how we understand the universe," said Rob Roser, a Fermilab physicist, "and if it's not there, we have to go back and check our assumptions about how the universe exists."

Obama Must Go

Send these charts to everyone you know.

First, here's the only chart you need to think about when you think about the unemployment numbers that came out today (8.2%).   Those numbers reflect only people who are still in the work force; if the labor force participation rate were as high as it was in 2008, the number would be more like 11-12%.   So you can be fooled by the unemployment "rate" -- you have to look at the reality of how many people out of the whole population have jobs -- the employment/population ratio.   It doesn't look good, and it's not getting better:

If you have to look at the unemployment rate, you should compare it to what Obama promised it would be if we enacted his $800 billion stimulus plan in early 2009.   The failure of the plan is obvious:

And, it's also plain that Obama is doing a much worse job in combatting this recession than other Presidents have done in the past:

The Obama "recovery" is the red line... every other recovery from a recession since World War II has been much, much better, and much, much quicker.

Why has the Obama recovery been so slow?   Victor Davis Hanson gives a good summary of the job-killing, growth-killing policies Obama and the Left have pursued:

If one wanted to ensure permanent 8 percent to 9 percent unemployment, one might try the following:
1. Run up serial $1 trillion deficits
2. Add $5 trillion to the national debt in three and a half years
3. Impose a 2,400-page, trillion-dollar new federal takeover of health care, with layers of new taxation, much of it falling on the middle class and employers, even as favored concerns are given mass exemptions.
4. Scare employers with constant us/them class warfare rhetoric about a demonized one-percenter class and its undeserved profits; constantly talk about raising new taxes and imposing regulations, ensuring uncertainty and convincing employers of unpredictability in regulation and taxes. You cannot convince a country to go into permanent near-recession, but President Obama is doing his best to try.
5. Appoint a bipartisan committee to study the fiscal crisis and then neglect all its recommendations.
6. Subsidize failed green companies, while denigrating successful gas and oil concerns, as well as putting rich oil-and-gas federal leases off limits.
7. Vastly increase unemployment insurance, disability, and food-stamp constituencies, while promising all sorts of mortgage, credit-card, and student-loan bailouts.
8. Borrow hundreds of billions for stimulus programs that are not shovel ready, but are rather aimed to bail out state budgets, pensions, and unions.
9. Federalize elements of non-profitable private companies, while threatening to shut down profitable plants for supposed union or environmental incorrect behavior.
10. Do not address changing the above policies, but rather blame others for such self-induced stagnation.
Do the above and you can pretty much always ensure something like the present slow-down.

Obama.   Must.   Go.  

Girl of the Day - Janet Leigh

Born in 1927, Janet Leigh is probably best known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.   But to me her best work was as the understanding girlfriend of Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate.    Here's the great train scene where they meet: -- some of the best dialogue ever:

Girl of the Day - Edie Falco

Not exactly a swimsuit model type, but the Regular Wife and I have been really enjoying finally getting around to watching The Sopranos.   Edie Falco plays Carmela Soprano, the wife of the mobster, and she's great.

By the way, a thought on home-building and TV-watching.   I just finished reading Alan Furst's newest novel, Mission to Paris (a great read, although not as good a novel as some of his earlier books... this one feels like he's in it for the money now, which is OK, but it's not the same as reading something that comes from some idiosyncratic place inside the writer).   I read it on the Kindle.   I have probably a cubic foot of Alan Furst novels downstairs, among the probably several hundred cubic feet of books in my library, but this one will only exist in the Internet cloud.   Meanwhile, we are watching The Sopranos streaming through Amazon, so we won't have to store those DVDs either.   Again, I probably have maybe ten cubic feet of my house devoted to storing DVDs, and another ten or so to storing CDs or old records (yes, we still have some!).  

Anyway, it occurred to me that the Internet is not just revolutionizing the way we read or view or listen to entertainment; it's likely to revolutionize the design of homes, since we will need much less space to store things that now can be stored as data on a smaller and smaller device.   Just a thought.

It's also mildly worrisome.   If everything is ultimately stored in a cloud, when the system crashes, will we be back to a new Dark Ages where we have to travel to the library at Alexandria (or wherever) to read ancient texts?   Maybe.   But then:  if the Internet and its attendant infrastructures crash, reading books will probably be the least of our worries.

***

P.S. Falco turns 49 today.   Younger than the Regular Guy!

Shattered - A Satire

The Regular Son came up with this version of the Rolling Stones' late 1970s classic, "Shattered":

"Shattered"

From the album "Some Liberal Academics"

By Prezidizzle Obizzle

Love and hope and change and peace are still surviving in D.C

But look at me

I've been shattered

My spending's so alarming

My panders never charming

My term's just a golfing party every week

We got people dressed in stoner hats, out disturbing traffic

Some kind of activism

Charisma, hopeychanginess

And tax and tax and tax and tax

And look at me, I've been shattered

All this chitter chatter, chitter chatter, chitter chatter

'Bout missile defense systems

I can't give it away till after my reelection

Then I'll be more flexible

Those who work get taxed and taxed

Disincentivise success

Success, success, success, does it matter?

What about my food stamps?

Pride and joy and hope and change

That's what makes up my campaign

Hope and change and AFSCME

Are still survivin' in D.C.

And look at me, I'm in tatters

I've been shattered

Folks, our economy's

Shattered

Folks, our GDP's

Shattered

Folks, health care for free's

Shattered

Your right to be free's

Shattered

Don't you know the unemployment rate's going

Up, up, up, up, UP!!!

To rap without a teleprompter is

Tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough

You got turmoil in the middle east, protests downtown

What a mess, this country's in tatters

I've been shattered, my brain's been battered

Splattered all over

The golf course

Slow Joe, he comes around, flatter, flatter, flatter

Not bad... methinks he has a future.   Here's the original:

Andy Griffith

Died today at age 86.   Big liberal, but big talent too, as here in a very early star-making turn:

Girl of the Day - Mystery Girl

Can you guess who this is?

I'll give a hint:  this is the same girl about twenty years later.

America Coming Apart, One Fraudulent Disability Claim at a Time

I've been reading Charles Murray's new book, Coming Apart.   On one level, it's a sociological study of the changes in key indicators among white Americans between the years 1960 and 2010, and the resulting divergences in wealth, stability, success and happiness between poor Americans (which he captures with the name of a fictional town of "Fishtown") and upper-middle-class professional Americans (which he calls "Belmont").   On another level, however, Murray is really describing the decline of American morality, and its consequent effects on the survivability of the American experiment.   In that way, it's an update and report back to De Tocqueville 175 years later.   The prognosis is, to put it mildly, not good.   Sorry, Alexis.

One of the virtues Murray examines that has increasingly been lost in America, is the virtue of industriousness.   What would Murray, or for that matter de Tocqueville, make of the following story?

A record of 8,733,461 workers took federal disability insurance payments in June 2012, according to the Social Security Administration. That was up from 8,707,185 in May.

It also exceeds the entire population of New York City, which according to the Census Bureau's latest estimate hit 8,244,910 in July 2011.

There has been a dramatic shrinkage in the United States over the past 20 years in the number of workers actually employed and earning paychecks per worker who is not employed and is taking federal disability insurance payments.

In June 1992, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 118,419,000 people employed in the United States, and, according to the Social Security Administration, there were 3,334,333 workers taking federal disability payments. That equaled about 1 person taking disability payments for each 35.5 people actually working.

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, there were 142,187,000 people employed and 7,442,377 workers taking federal disability payments. That equaled about 1 person taking disability payments for each 19.1 people actually working.

In May of this year, there were 142,287,000 people employed, and 8,707,185 workers taking federal disability payments. That equaled 1 worker taking disability payments for each 16.3 people working.

The federal disability payments made to the record 8,733,461 workers in June averaged $1,111.42.

Two points, one requiring a bit of logic, the second requiring arithmetic.

First, over the past twenty years medical science has vastly improved.   For instance, the ability of medical science to ameliorate the effects of disabilities, either physical (through surgery or advanced prosthetics), or psychological (through anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications), has vastly increased.   There shoudl be a lower percentage of long-term disabled, not a higher percentage!   So what are we to make of the numbers cited above.   Logic yields onlly one conclusion:   roughly 4 million Americans and perhaps more are perpetrating disability fraud on their fellow Americans.   We are paying deadbeats who could work, but prefer instead to concoct "medical" reasons why they can't.  

Second, look at that average payment.    $1,111 per month.   Times 8.7 million recipients.   That's about $9 billion per month in federal disability payments, or roughly $110 billion a year.   If half of those individuals are fraudfeasors, deadbeats, scam-artists -- and I'd be willing to bet that's the case -- that means that we are simply transferring more than $50 billion a year from productive, honest, taxpaying Americans to lazy scoundrels.  

As Murray details, in 1960s it was considered a scandal if a grown-up man did not work.  Not anymore.