It's As If They Planned It All Along

Here's a buried nugget about Obamacare:

Among the regulations being rushed out the door by the Department of Health and Human Services 32 months after Obamacare passed is a requirement that every plan in America be subject to a $63 fee. That $63 is part of a fund to subsidize people with pre-existing conditions, who are more expensive to cover but whose costs must be transferred to healthier individuals in the new system.

Reporting suggests the costs could hit 190 million health care plans held by individuals or provided by employers.

Here's what I think.   Just as Obama doesn't care if we go off the fiscal cliff -- he can blame the Republicans, win the House in 2014, and push through more liberal stuff thereafter -- he doesn't care if Obamacare screws up health insurance.   The more expensive and complicated it gets, the more companies will dump their plans, and the more people will have to turn to the government for their healthcare.   It's all a stealth way to get to the endgame of single-payer, federally-run healthcare for everyone.   Which will be the apotheosis of big government, and the end of any hope of getting back to constitutional limited government in America.

A Post-Family World Cannot Survive

Bill Frezza has a must-read article up at RealClearMarkets.   I almost don't know what to do about this except cry:

If demography is destiny, democracy is toast-at least those democracies where citizens can vote themselves a living at someone else's expense. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to see that governments' addiction to intergenerational income redistribution is not sustainable unless someone keeps supplying babies at an accelerating pace.  

The root cause of the economic disaster that lies ahead is the kamikaze drive of democratic governments to displace the functions of the family, including the care of relatives in their old age. Since time immemorial, in every human society that ever was, and buttressed by social mores central to every religion ever practiced, children, grandchildren, and kin did what governments the world over now promise to do.

The burdens of providing for the aged used to begin when people could no longer care for themselves. The liabilities were dispersed, unenumerated, and owned by small groups of closely related individuals. These individuals owed their very existence to the elderly dependents who brought them into the world and nurtured them through childhood. The glue of duty, love, and reverence bound families together. Yes, families occasionally broke down, which threw unfortunates onto the mercy of charity. But isolated family failures never threatened to destabilize global economies.

Democracy changed all that. The burdens of providing for the aged are larger than ever thanks to the greater longevity that modernity accords. But the necessity and personal pride that drove the elderly to provide for themselves for as long as they could has been replaced by the invention of a universal "right of retirement" irrespective of an individual's means.

This "right" to stop working for the last 10, 20, or even 30 years of our lives is secured and supported through an electoral system under which politicians promise old-age entitlements in return for votes. The system subsists on coercive taxation, money printing, and borrowing from the future. Ballooning centrally owned liabilities are perched atop a demographic pyramid with a base that must continue growing to avoid Ponzian collapse.

The aggregate U.S. federal and state unfunded liabilities required to pay for all the entitlements promised by politicians past-namely Social Security, Medicare, and defined-benefit pensions for public employees-now exceed $100 trillion. Tomorrow's workers, including those yet unborn, have no particular kinship to the people who will be feasting on their paychecks.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

VDH on the Politics of Envy

Victor Davis Hanson describes the nature of "poverty" in America in today's article:

In the new climate of “fat cats,” “corporate jet owners,” “pay your fair share,” “you didn’t build that,” and “1 percent,” the more Americans have, the more they are envious of those who have more. One might have thought that the technological revolution, in combination with the welfare state, had redefined poverty altogether in ways that the fossilized entitlement bureaucracy could hardly grasp. Certainly, a Kia, an iPhone, and a big-screen TV do not disqualify one from the menu of American entitlements. That today’s earner or recipient of $35,000 in wages or entitlements has better appurtenances — in terms of computer power, phone, and car — than the $250,000 earner of 30 years ago means little. The point is not that the modern iPhone gives the poor man access to more knowledge than the entire RAND Corporation had 50 years ago, but that the contemporary RAND Corporation has more access than what an iPhone can provide, leaving its owner in relative terms still poor. That today’s Kia is better in many ways than yesterday’s Mercedes matters little — it is still not today’s Lexus. One of the great lessons in the age of Obama is that wealth and poverty will always remain relative. Happiness is now defined not as having the basics I need, but as ensuring that someone else does not have more. Obama has successfully appealed to the oldest and basest of human emotions — envy and jealousy, masked with the notion of enforced fairness — and for now they trump even the human desire to be free.

We've mentioned this before.   We are a strange country.   We often give poverty assistance to people who have cell phones, cars, flat screen TVs.   We give food stamps to people who are too often already fat.  Luxuries no king could aspire to even twenty years ago -- access to any movie ever made, any book ever written, any information anywhere on the globe -- are now accepted as birthrights, and yet we clamor for more, more, more.   The "rich" have more than we do, and therefore it is unfair.  

From a social justice perspective, do American liberals ever note that the amount of largesse they spill into the rich ghettoes of America (for they are rich, by comparison with the rest of the globe and the rest of human history) keeps us from providing greater aid to truly poor around the world?   Shouldn't the Catholic Church be leading a charge to dismantle a wasteful welfare state that simultaneously denies dignity to faux "poor" Americans while denying assistance to actual poor in Africa and Asia and South America?

Belgium Dreamiin'

Not quite the catchy title, but the same basic idea.   People are not automatons.   Economics is the study of human behavior in reacting to scarcity, incentives, disincentives, opportunities, etc., all within the context of human nature/self-interest.   People act.   They are not just going to sit and passively pay higher and higher taxes:

A Belgian mayor says famed French actor Gerard Depardieu has bought a home and set up legal residence in his small town, lured by the food, the people, the lifestyle — and lower tax rates than back home.

The Socialist government under French President Francois Hollande has infuriated many ultra-rich in France by presenting a 2013 budget that would tax top earners at 75 percent over the first €1 million of annual income. Belgium's top rate is 50 percent.

If you've lost Gerard Depardieu...

California Dreamin'

You can ignore the laws of economics.   You can pretend that human nature is not self-interested.   You can imagine that higher taxes won't change human behavior, as human beings adapt and take action to protect their wealth and enhance their own families' futures.   But facts is facts.   At the end of the day, reality always wins:

About 100,000 more people moved away from California in 2011 than relocated to the Golden State, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The trend can be explained, in part, in monetary terms. Even in an economic boom, the cost of living in California has increased, prompting people to move out, and, in recent years, unemployment in the state has skyrocketed.

So, where are these former Californians going?

The Census Bureau calculates that the most popular destination is Texas (58,992), a state that is luring California companies.

Hmmmm... the reporter at the NBC SoCal affiliate seems to have missed an obvious cause... California's state income tax is the highest in the nation, and Texas' is zero.   Think that has anything to do with why companies and individiuals might decide that a thousand mile move is worth it?

Orwell Alert!

George Orwell might be amused (and horrified) by this story:

Instability in Egypt, where a newly-elected Islamic government teeters over an angry population, isn't enough to stop the U.S. from sending more than 20 F-16 fighter jets, as part of a $1 billion foreign aid package.

The first four jets are to be delivered to Egypt beginning Jan. 22, a source at the naval air base in Fort Worth, where the planes have been undergoing testing, told FoxNews.com. The North African nation already has a fleet of more than 200 of the planes and the latest shipment merely fulfills an order placed two years ago. But given the uncertainty in Cairo, some critics wonder if it is wise to be sending more top gun planes.

“Should an overreaction [by Egypt] spiral into a broader conflict between Egypt and Israel, such a scenario would put U.S. officials in an embarrassing position of having supplied massive amounts of military hardware … to both belligerents,” said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Sort of like borrowing money from China to subsidize solar energy companies that go bankrupt and get sold out of bankrupcty... back to China.

Girl of the Day - Teri Garr

If you were a teenager in the 1970s, you saw Young Frankenstein, and if you saw Young Frankenstein, you remember the great Teri Garr, who turns 66 today:

It Isn't Rocket Science

In fact, if you got past the first week of Econ 101 when they talked about supply and demand, you know everything you need to know about why college tuitions keep rising:

File This Under "You Couldn't Write This Stuff..."

Truth is now stranger than fiction:

Wanxiang America, the U.S. arm of a Chinese automotive parts giant, won the bidding for a bankrupt Massachusetts-based lithium battery manufacturer that was once hailed as a cornerstone of President Obama’s quest for American dominance in electric vehicles and battery technology.

A123 Systems announced Sunday that Wanxiang would pay $256.6 million for all of A123’s technology, its manufacturing facilities in the United States and China, and its contracts with utilities seeking grid storage and automakers seeking batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles.

So let me get this straight.   The Obama Administration borrows money from China to engage in speculative investing in a "green energy" company, then, when the company goes bankrupt, it is sold, presumably for pennies on the dollar, back to China.   So China not only has all of the assets of the company, it still owns the debt that my children and grandchildren will have to pay off.

Wow, these liberals are really smart.   Or else the American voter is really dumb.

Bill Whittle on "Unserious People"

Bill Whittle seems like a nice guy, but he is scorching the earth with this video about the nincompoopery of the "fiscal cliff" talks.   Listen, and despair:

We Are All Michiganders Now

Herbert Stein once wrote, famously, that what can't continue, won't.   The ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the blue state model of government run by public-sector unions, private-sector unions, and their lackeys in the Democratic Party, is one such thing that can't continue, and therefore won't.   We can't afford it.   We can't afford the luxurious pensions for teachers and government bureaucrats, and companies can't afford to become benefit programs with productive enterprises as a sidebar.   General Motors died (it's a government-owned zombie now) when it became a retiree healthcare plan that only built cars as a hobby.  

Anyway, these thoughts arise from reading Paul Rahe on Michigan's Hail Mary pass to enact right to work legislation that might, just might, curtail the power of the unions:

Michigan was once a union stronghold -- the capital of an empire controlled by the United Auto Workers. The private-sector unions are now, however, no longer what they were. They have strangled industry.

Wherever I have gone in Michigan, I have heard stories of plants closing and of jobs disappearing. The collapse of the auto industry was merely the final coup de grace. Other industries -- and there were many of them -- withdrew or simply disappeared long before the arrival of the Great Recession. The unions and the Democratic machine associated with them have also destroyed Detroit. It was once the fourth largest city in the United States; it was once the nation's wealthiest city per capita. Now the median price of a house is $10,000, and, where there were once two million residents, there are now fewer than 700,000. The state is changing character. In the last decade, it has lost 10-15% of its population.

What I do not know is whether Michigan is ready to be a right-to-work state. Its becoming one would give one hope that it might have a future. Absent a major turn-around, it will continue on a path that will lead it to look like West Virginia in 1955. But what is needed is not always possible, and I find myself wondering whether -- in a state that firmly backed Barack Obama and Debbie Stabenow -- there will not be a ferocious reaction to what Rick Snyder and the Republicans are now doing. John Kasich and the Republicans in Ohio got a comeuppance not long ago when they passed a far less radical piece of legislation aimed at curbing public-sector union power (and that alone). Will Michigan explode? Will the unions strike back with powerful effect?

I do not know. But this I do know: If Snyder and the Republicans succeed -- if they are as successful with their endeavor as Scott Walker and the Republicans in Wisconsin have been with theirs -- it will shift the national balance. The unions may be entrenched in California, Illinois, and New York. Those states may be lost. They may have to face bankruptcy before they can make a comeback. But if Michigan can free itself from this albatross by its own efforts in the current environment, then, there is hope almost everywhere else. Things are going to get hot in Michigan. It is a state that bears close watching.

We are all Michiganders now.   Whether a cold financial civil war between the productive private citizens and the non-productive public sector and its union cronies can occur without a hot civil war eventually breaking out in riots and murder and mayhem... that remains to be seen.   History does not tell many tales of civilizations that, in the midst of decline and unraveling, managed to pull themselves back from the brink.

Girl of the Dey (Pun Intended)

For people of a certain age, the Partridge Family was the bad soundtrack of our early teenage years.   The star, of course, was David Cassidy; it's hard to overstate what an enormous star he was in the early 1970s, easily bigger than Justin Bieber is now.   His "sister" on the show was played by Susan Dey, who later went on to star on L.A. Law.   She turns 60 today.   That's right, sixty.   Tempus fugit, as ever.   It is often mistranslated as "time flies"... but apparently its literal translation is "time flees."   So it does.

Kobe

Bill Simmons, one of my favorite writers (and by that I mean that I would think he was a really really smart writer whether he was writing about basketball or the fiscal cliff), has a great article up on ESPN about Kobe Bryant.   Here's my favorite part:

I spent five hours with Bill Russell last week and thought of Kobe Bryant twice and only twice. One time, we were discussing a revelation from Russell's extraordinary biography, Second Wind, that Russell scouted the Celtics after joining them in 1956. Why would you scout your own teammates? What does that even mean? Russell wanted to play to their strengths and cover their weaknesses, which you can't do without figuring out exactly what those strengths and weaknesses were. So he studied them. He studied them during practices, shooting drills, scrimmages, even those rare moments when Red Auerbach rested him during games. He built a mental filing cabinet that stored everything they could and couldn't do, then determined how to boost them accordingly. It was HIS job to make THEM better. That's what he believed.

So when Russell mentioned a current star devouring his book and stealing that specific concept — then thanking Russell for the help — naturally, I expected the player to be LeBron James, Chris Paul, Steve Nash, maybe even Kevin Durant. Nope.

Kobe Bryant.

"Really?" I said incredulously.

And that's how I learned that basketball's greatest teammate ever held something of a soft spot for Kobe, someone who's battled more coworkers over the years than Chevy Chase. Russell enjoys his competitiveness, loves his work ethic, appreciates his respect for history, and over anything else, loves how he borrowed that scouting idea. No other player ever mentioned it to him. Just Kobe. Which didn't make sense to me. After all, Kobe regards his teammates the same way President Obama regards the Secret Service — these guys are here to serve and protect ME. Why would he need to scout them? What was I missing?

Pearl Harbor and Moral Clarity

America had moral clarity in the years after Pearl Harbor.   We had been attacked, and our enemy needed to be defeated.   We did not seek understanding, or "peace with honor," or a "timetable for withdrawal," or a "winding down."   We did not think in terms of moral equivalence.   We sought unconditional surrender of our enemy, and would not settle for anything less.

I miss that kind of clarity.   How about you?

How History Gets Written

And it's not how you think necessarily.   I would expect the historical rating for FDR to go up after this movie starring one of the (bizarrely, probably even to him) beloved actors in America, Bill Murray, as FDR:

Unemployment Rate... Because It's Friday!

The unemployment rate ticked down to 7.7%, a rate which used to be considered horrible, and now is considered a triumph for our triumphalist President.    Driving the downtick was a sharp upturn in solid middle-class manufacturing jobs and high-skilled jobs in high value-added high-tech startup companies...

Or not.   Actually driving the unemployment rate downtick was the fact that 540,000 more people dropped out of the workforce.

Look, don't be fooled.   We've told you this a million times:

1.  We need about 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.   Anything less than that and we're losing ground.   If we get that it basically means that the economy is flat, not growing.

2.  The unemployment rate -- the rate of unemployment for people who are actually looking for work -- doesn't matter as much as the employment to population ratio, which continues to be in the crapper:

Arguing About Taxes Made Simple

Republicans have a hard time arguing about taxes, because they always end up being accused of just wanting to help "the rich."   If only "the rich" would pay "just a little bit more," the Democrats say, all of our fiscal woes would go away.   Magic.  

Well, here's all you need to know about taxes, a simple point that even the unwashed liberal masses in their Occupy Wall Street tents might understand:

1. The federal government's annual deficit for FY '12 was $1.089 trillion. Rounding up, call it $1.09 trillion.

2. The total in income taxes collected by the federal government last year was $1.093 trillion. Rounding down, call it (coincidentally) $1.09 trillion.

3. In short, to close the budget deficit, we would have to DOUBLE EVERYONE'S INCOME TAXES!!!!!!!

4. Do you recall any Democratic politician ever arguing that they are in favor of doubling everyone's taxes?   Emphasis on doubling.   Emphasis on everyone.   I don't seem to recall that.

Q.E.D. Anytime any liberal talks about closing the budget deficit by increasing the marginal tax rates on the "richest 1%" or "richest 2%" back to the Clinton Era tax rates, which amounts to about a 12% increase (from 35% to 39.6%), they are lying lying lying lying lying lying lying lying...

Dave Brubeck

There was a time, as hard as it is to imagine, when jazz was important enough to be featured on the cover of Time magazine.   That was a long time ago, though, back in 1954, when Dave Brubeck was featured.   Mr. Brubeck died yesterday, at the ripe old age of 91.   Of note:  he was a Catholic convert, like the Regular Guy, had a long and happy marriage, and was never known to indulge in drugs.   Yet this jazz composition was probably the most well-known in the modern jazz era:

Girl of the Day - Janine Turner

Janine Turner, best known as Maggie on Northern Exposure, turns 50 today.   She's a hardcore Republican too!

Just for fun, here's a scene from the show, which was one of our favorites when the Regular Wife and I were dating:

Bobby Jindal Positions Himself as the Outsider

Bobby Jindal is plainly running for President, and he's just as plainly positioning himself as the candidate from outside of the corruption that is Washington's beltway:

Republicans certainly should fight to at least get something done that will matter. At present, any reading of the headlines over the past week indicates that Republicans are fighting to protect the rich and cut benefits for seniors. It may be possible to have worse political positioning than that, but I’m not sure how.

Here are a few structural reforms, any one of which would be worth fighting for in this fiscal cliff diving exercise:

• A federal balanced budget amendment. States have balanced budget laws, small businesses have to balance their budgets, and families have to do the same. This is an idea that is supported by virtually every American who does not live in the 202 area code. It’s common sense. It is also laughed at in Washington. When you mention the BBA as a solution, they roll their eyes and write you off as a non-serious person. But the American public is dead serious about it, and they should be.

• Place a cap on discretionary and mandatory federal spending by fixing a limit on it tied to a percentage of GDP. Eighteen percent is a reasonable number in my book, but almost any number would be a victory at this point. Require a super majority vote to over-ride this limit, which would allow for recourse in a time of war or other national emergency. Again, this solution makes far too much sense to be taken seriously in Washington, a sure sign that it’s a good idea. This president is rapidly making a permanently higher level of government spending the new normal.

• A super majority to increase taxes. Make it harder for the politicians in Washington to simply take more from Americans, thereby forcing them to stop growing government. Yes, Washington hates this idea, so it should be pursued with vigor.

• Term Limits. I know, I know, we can’t do that. But we should. And while we are at it, how about forbidding congressmen from lobbying for 5 years after they leave office.

This is all good stuff.   Keeping the focus on us protecting the rich, even though it's the right thing to do both morally (too little argued) and in terms of the economy, is damaging to the GOP.   We need to demand positive reforms.   Americans think, correctly, that the Washington political system is broken.   Demand that it be fixed in ways that make sense.   Don't spend more than you take in.   Don't spend more than what we've historically spent on government as a percentage of GDP.   It should be hard to raise taxes where the government (comprised of wealthy educated elites living in more expensive cities and getting more and better benefits than most Americans) proposes to take private citizens hard-earned dollars.   These are pretty basic things.

Oh, and I particularly like the last point about lobbying.   I'd make it ten years, and I'd make it a federal crime punishable by prison to violate the law on lobbying after Congressional service.   This is a really simple argument to make:

You shouldn't get rich by being in Congress.   Period.

Another Take Down Your Christmas Tree Story... But With a Twist

See if you notice anything about this all-too-routine "take down your Christmas tree because it's a religious symbol" story:

On Tuesday, Tarzana-based JB Partners Group Inc. sent a memo to staff at The Willows senior apartment building demanding they take down Christmas trees and menorahs in communal areas.   The company has owned The Willows for four years, but this is the first time it's given such a directive to staff.   On Wednesday, two dozen residents in the 75-resident complex gathered in the lobby to place a neon green sign that read: "Please Save Our Tree."   "We're all angry. We want that tree," said Fern Scheel, who has lived at the complex for nearly two years. "Where's our freedom? This is ridiculous."   The Willows staff and JB Property supervisor Wethanie Law declined to comment.   JB Partners Group owns apartments in California, Oklahoma and Colorado.   Resident Edna Johnson said Law had told her the tree had to be taken down because it's a religious symbol.   "We could put out Easter baskets, have turkey for Thanksgiving but no tree for Christmas because it has Christ's name in the beginning of Christmas," Johnson said.   Frances Schaeffer, who is Jewish, said she doesn't understand the property management company's stance. "This tree is a symbol of reverence that we can all enjoy regardless of our religious beliefs," she said.

Yes, it's instructive that Frances Schaeffer, "who is Jewish," also thinks it's stupid to force people to take down a Christmas tree.   She's got it exactly right, and it's a shame that common sense seems heroic nowadays.   Since when did grown ups feel threatened by someone else's holiday traditions, whether they are religious or not?   Real people don't think this is a big deal, and people who do think it's a big deal -- the anti-religion crusaders -- are fools you wouldn't want to get cornered talking to at a Christmas party anywhere.   If that's your axe to grind, you need to get a life.   

But the more important factoid that isn't even commented on in the story is that the entity ordering that the Christmas tree be taken down is a private company.   This is how infected our culture is with the idiocy of the left... and with just plain idiocy.   There is no legal basis whatsoever for a private company to take down a Christmas tree if it wants to have one, just as there is no legal basis whatsoever to require a private company to put up a Christmas tree if it doesn't want one.   The First Amendment, which affords private citizens freedom of religion, only restrains government action to "establish" a religion.  

But the government could not tell "Tarzana-based JB Partners" to put up a Christmas tree, or to take one down, and hasn't.   This is purely a business decision -- and a strange one -- by JB Partners.   Essentially they are saying that our company is anti-Christmas, for no reason other than they are, apparently, anti-Christmas.  

Whether that will play in the market is another thing.   If I were looking for a retirement home and I were a Christian, as most Americans still are, I'd be looking elsewhere other than to JB Partners, which appears to be anti-Christian.  

Somebody's getting their ass chewed out at JB Partners right now for subjecting their company to this much bad press.   What were they thinking?

Girl of the Day - Don't Blame Me, I'm Just the Messenger Version

Don't blame me.   Blame the wintery cold.

You Can't Negotiate With Crazy People

This is the apotheosis -- or is it the nadir -- of modern liberalism:

The city of Detroit faces a major financial crisis and one member of city council thinks President Barack Obama should step in and help.

City Council member JoAnn Watson said Tuesday the citizens support of Obama in last month's election was enough reason for the president to bailout the struggling the city.

"Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo...  After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander Young, he went to Washington, D.C. and came home with some bacon.  That's what you do."

Well, that about sums it up.   Remember when Mitt Romney said after the election that Obama had won by essentially buying the votes of his constituencies?   Remember how he was pilloried for that?   Now apparently it's OK to admit that that's exactly what the Democratic Party stands for.   Vote for Obama, Vote for Liberalism, Vote for the Democratic Party, and they will use the power of the state to extract protection money from the productive classes to give to the least productive and most dysfunctional communities.

At some point, what Ms. Watson doesn't realize is that YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY.

Birthday Today - JJ Cale

It's JJ Cale's 74th birthday today.   He wrote a pretty good song once upon a time:




I wasn't kidding, was I?

An Interesting Explanation

The obvious explanation for why Obama rejects compromise on higher tax rates for the "wealthy" is that he truly wants to punish them, because he truly is a socialist.   I still think that's true -- Occam's razor and all that -- but Clark Judge on Hugh Hewitt's blog has a plausible alternative explanation that I hadn't considered:

House Republicans have already conceded the point.  They have offered up reduced deductions that will raise as much as the administration claims increased tax rates will raise.  They are clear.  They want to keep tax rates low so as not stifle new business creation and growth, which is for a variety of reasons is highly sensitive to personal tax rates. These products of the entrepreneurial renaissance that started in the last 1970s or early 1980s have created all the net new jobs in the U.S. over the past three decades.
 
If today’s were a normal White House, administration officials would have grabbed the GOP plan in a DC minute.... But the Obama White House is not a normal White House.... 
 
So what more is behind the president’s demand?  
 
Some believe it is political.  They contend the president wants to take the government over the cliff, which, thanks to media protection, he can get away.  He can blame Republicans for the financial chaos and universal tax hikes that follow, force a complete GOP surrender and take back the House at the next election.
 
How about this as an explanation though?  He wants exactly the opposite of what Republicans want – and does so not out of pride or economic ignorance, but for the simplest and most direct of political motives – a key constituency wants it.
 
The constituency I have in mind is organized labor and the motive would be to put a break on the very entrepreneurial renaissance that Republicans so prize....
  
But why?  Why should labor go after the major source of American job creation?  It has to do with the simple, classic approach of unions to all competition: stop it.
 
Here is the business problem, if you will, of the U.S. labor movement.  They are losing market share.  They talk a lot about jobs – meaning union jobs – moving overseas. But at least as big an issue for them is the American entrepreneurial renaissance.  By and large, its workers have rejected the movement’s attempts to organize them.  And in industry after industry, these new and energetic non-union firms have been expanding at the expense of old unionized ones.  In other words, one of the president’s major sources of support sees America’s entrepreneurial renaissance as competition and wants to, if not stop it, slow it drastically down....
 
If I’m right, that’s why he won’t move on tax rates.

We tend to think that everyone agrees that small business entrepreneurship is a good thing.   It's the American Way, after all.   But that's not really true, is it?   The type of person that starts a small business is anathema to the Democrats, because he's independent of and generally opposed to government interference in the economy.   To that entrepreneur, Big Government is the enemy and the arranged marriage between Big Business and Big Labor is a competitor.   

If you've ever heard an Ivy League liberal arts major talk about fellow students who are going to "sell out" after college, you know what I mean.   They mouth support for the small business entrepreneur.   But liberals really hate them.

This actually makes a lot of sense.   We say "don't raise marginal tax rates because it will slow down new business startups and private sector job creation."  

Liberals say:  "Exactly." 

Birthday Today - Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, born today in 1866, is one of my favorite abstract modernist painters.   The problem with much of modernist painting is that it strives so hard to shock the bourgeoisie (increasingly impossible given our decadence) that it loses sight of the purpose of art -- to create beauty that is pleasing to the eye.   Half the time, what passes for modernist art requires extensive footnotes and exegesis by the elites of universities or leaders in the "art world" of New York, LA, London or Paris.   Real art -- and I recognize that this is a conservative position that would be laughed at by those elites -- should speak directly to an intelligent layman's eye and mind and heart, and it should convey an aesthetic sensation that does not require mediation by an elite.   Call that sensation "pleasure" or "beauty" or "reality" or "interest" or whatever.   But I don't want a snob from New York telling me what I should like or not like, when half of the stuff they say is great you wouldn't hang in your downstairs bathroom.

Anyway, some of Kandinsky (not the more geometric stuff, but what I would call the "messier" or more organic stuff) appeals to me because, although abstract, his paintings are beautiful in form and color.   Same for some Diebenkorn and some Pollack.   I don't need the dissertation to like them:

Double Standard Alert, Episode 1,238,247...

Victor Davis Hanson notices the obvious:

Rice’s critics were mild in comparison to what Washington is accustomed to from past scandals. After all, it is not as if a special prosecutor had been appointed, like the one who went after Scooter Libby for a crime (supposedly disclosing the fact that Valerie Plame was a covert operative) that was not a crime (she was not a covert operative) — and if it were a crime, it was known in advance to the prosecutor to have been committed by someone other than Libby (Richard Armitage).

Apparently it's OK to let actual CIA operatives die on actual missions overseas in actually dangerous places like Benghazi.   But it's not OK to mention that a non-operative living in Georgetown works at the CIA... at least not when there's political hay against Republicans to be made.

Where does Scooter Libby go to get his reputation back?

But it  gets worse, as Hanson explains:

There is sexism and racism in l’affaire Rice — but sadly it is all originating from the Obama administration and its supporters. First, having a woman or a minority as secretary of state has been accepted as the new normal for over a decade. Indeed, we have not seen a white male in the office since Warren Christopher stepped down in January 1997. Over that period, Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, was ridiculed by liberal critics for his misleading testimony about weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the Iraq War; I don’t recall him alleging racism. Vocal liberal senators tore into Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, during her confirmation hearings; throughout her tenure, she was subjected to venomous criticism over her role in the Iraq War. Was Senator Barbara Boxer, who mercilessly grilled her, a racist? A disinterested observer over the last decade would conclude that the chief critics of black and female secretaries of state have been liberal Democrats — with no countervailing criticism of them from the Black Caucus, the Washington Post, or the Democratic party. Note in that regard that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left the Bush administration under vicious liberal criticism — although not quite as harsh as the vitriol directed at Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Again, their critics were not tarred with allegations of racism or anti-Latino bias.

Hanson's summation is elegant:

We are asked to believe that a multimillionaire African-American woman, who boasts that those who “mess” with her end up badly, is a victim of racism for not being welcomed as a nominee for secretary of state — a position that has not been held by a white male in 15 years — after she went on five television shows the Sunday after the Benghazi attack in an effort to convince Americans of the absurd myth that their ambassador had been killed in the course of a demonstration gone bad, rather than being murdered in a preplanned al-Qaedist hit.

 

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

From the 2012 Midwest Oireachtas (if you don't know what that means, you're not in Irish Dancing), here are the Regular Daughters and their winning (that's right... winning!) U-15 ceili team:

Girl of the Day - Katarina Witt

Here's a name I haven't heard for years... Katarina Witt turns 47 today.   For a time, when the Winter Olympics were a much bigger deal than they are today, every four years or so would create a new superstar gold-medalist from women's figure skating.   There was Peggy Fleming (1968), Dorothy Hamill (1976), and then Witt in 1984 and 1988.   In my bad old days of being single, she was right in my wheelhouse for unrequited ogling:

Birthday Today - Gilbert Stuart

Perhaps early America's greatest portrait painter, Gilbert Stuart was born today in 1755.   You'll recognize this fellow:

I also like this one, of a woman named Ann Calvert Robinson: