I read this article several days ago and did not post at the time.
When it was sent to me today by a fellow memo reader, and I re-read it, I thought I would post. (See 1 below.)
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If you think the Gulf is slick, Democrats and the Obama Administration are getting even slicker with crafting tax increase proposals. (See 1a below.)
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I have been told that it is not the policy of Good Housekeeping Magazine to publish articles sort of back to back but my oldest daughter seems to have broken that policy. She has another piece appearing in the new Good Housekeeping issue and has given you a taste.
She is working on her second novel and just returned from a sojourn in Arkansas. (See 2 below.)
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Ahmadinejad is visiting Syria with the intent of warning that if sanctions are imposed he will launch Hezballah against Israel.
If he is serious, Hezballah will be destroyed and much of Lebanon with it but Israel will also be harmed. It could be shaping up to be a very hot summer. (See 3 below.)
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By the time you receive this, the IDF will have issued a scathing report stating the INF failed to make adequate provisions regarding the flotilla engagement which resulted in scores of deaths and injuries. (See 4 below.)
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Did the last meeting between Obama and Netanyahu result in an Obama sobering? (See 5below.)
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Krauthammer, though he does not specifically characterize Obama as such, suggests Obama enthuses over drinking his own bath water and continues to elevate himself above nation.
Psychiatrists have an expression that 'even the Queen's excrement smells.' (See 6 below.)
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The Justice Department, under Attorney General Holder and with Obama's apparent concurrence, does not seem to operate in a blind manner when it comes to voting cases.
John Fund finds evidence supporting Adam's accusation.(See 7 below.)
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Rep. Paul Ryan is a true breath of fresh air but the question is will Neanderthal Republicans have the courage and good sense to follow his Road Map?
The test is whether small provincial minds can think big? (See 8 below.)
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Academics still live in their Obama cocoon and some of their more elite have been placed in the administration because of their work in behavioral science with the intent to force we 'small people' to group think. (See 9 and 9a below.)
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Obamacare will prove to be the among the largest government vehicles for wealth transfer ever passed. Indoing so it will reduce growth and increase wastes as that is what bigger government does. (See 10 an 10a below.)
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At Tybee off and on for the next two weeks so memos will be spordaic. You get another deserved reprieve.
Dick
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1) Avertible catastrophe
By Lawrence Solomon
Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.
The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.
To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.
The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.
In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.
Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approachERROR_19"> Koops calls "crazy."
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.
A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. goveNG_ERROR_24">rnment could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.
Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history--until the BP Gulf spill.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.
1a)Raising Your Indirect Taxes
By Mark Morris
There are currently two pieces of tax legislation that have been introduced into Congress that will affect virtually every person in the United States. These new bills are very deceptive, since they tax the chemical and petroleum industry; however, what EPA and the sponsors of the bill do not mention is that these taxes will be passed back down to the consumer level.
The sponsors of the bill also claim that this tax will create or save jobs and "punish the polluters" (the petroleum and chemical industries) -- especially in light of the BP oil spill. The original Superfund taxes expired on January 1, 1996. Since the tax expired, the Superfund trust fund balance has dwindled to virtually zero. The trust fund is currently funded by appropriation bills from Congress.
On January 5, 2009, Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced the "Superfund Reinvestment Act of 2009" (H.R. 564). Representative Blumenauer stated when introducing the bill that "[t]his is a win for the environment, a win for local communities and a win for the economy." Rep. Blumenauer also claims that
[b]y renewing the tax, the industries that had a hand in creating the problem -- not taxpayers -- will once again be held accountable for cleaning it up. ... More importantly, we can put tens of thousands of people to work by investing in the restoration of these polluted sites.
r>Back in March 25, 2010, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the "Polluter Pays Restoration Act (S.3164). On June 21, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson forwarded to Congress the administration's proposed legislation to reinstate the Superfund Tax.
Both bills propose to return the original tax structure that expired in 1995, which is as follows:
■A petroleum tax of $0.097 per barrel (or 0.0023/gallon) or refined crude oil or refined oil products.
■A corporate environmental income tax. The tax rate is 0.12% on the alternative minimum taxable income above $2 million.
■An imported chemical derivatives tax.
There are numerous problems with enacting this new Superfund tax:
■In terms of corporate taxes (state and federal), the United States (as of 2008) had the second-highest corporate tax rate among the developed countries. This proposed new tax will only hurt American business further by making the United States less competitive with other countries around the world.
■The American Chemistry Council states that "in FY 2011, the costs of this tax to the chemical industry will be $328 million and increasing to $2.8 billion over the next ten year period." They also state that "[t]he chemistry industry is already facing slumping demand from the recession, continued high costs for energy, intense foreign competition, and razor-thin margins."
■The American Petroleum Institute (API) states that the Superfund tax is not needed since in more than 70% of the cleanups, the responsible parties (not EPA) actually paid for the cleanup, not the Superfund Trust Fund. In addition, they claim that the petroleum industry paid $7.5 billion, or 57% of the taxes, into the fund, but the industry was responsible for only 10% of the liability.
■The chemical and petroleum industries are being punished for the past sins of companies. As stated in Administrator Jackson's letter to Congress, "This draft legislation, by reinstating the Superfund taxes, would ensure that parties who benefit from the manufacture or sale of substances commonly found in contaminated sites contribute to the cost of clean-up." This is not the case, since most Superfund sites are cleaned up by the responsible parties. Representative Blumenauer's claim that enacting the Superfund tax would protect communities, create jobs, and improve the environment and community health is misleading. The EPA has stated that around 70% of all site cleanups are paid for the Potential Responsible Party (PRP). The remainder of the sites are paid from taxpayer money that Congress appropriates. In other words, Congress, which gives out the funding, determines the speed at which cleanups are performed.
■Since chemicals and petroleum-based products are purchased in some form by consumers, one would expect to see an increase in prices, especially in the area of energy costs. It is estimated that some sectors in the chemical and petroleum industries will not be globally competitive. In addition, an excise tax on chlorine would increase the cost of disinfecting water. Taxes on chlorine and ammonia would offset any economic return of sale, making those chemicals non-competitive on a global basis. This could endanger jobs in these and other noncompetitive sectors.
■The bill defined a "large company" as one for which the alternative minimum taxable income is greater that $2 million per year. This bill will affect all but >veryspan> small companies.
■ National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett believes that the tax will hurt already-wounded companies and irreparably damage the economy. "The Superfund tax targets a petrochemical industry already struggling to reestablish itself," said Burnett. "While some of the proposed tax revenue is earmarked to help the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in reality, the tax will likely slow economic growth and retard the rebuilding process."
In addition, "[i]nstead of reinstating damaging taxes and allowing the inefficiencies of Superfund to continue, we need to reassess what has arguably been the EPA's most costly, yet least successful program," said Burnett. "It's time to throw Superfund on the scrapheap and establish new, creative solutions for the clean up of sites that pose a true threat to human health."
■Since EPA Superfund cleanups are typically not "shovel-ready," any jobs to be gained will not be immediate and will be in a long-term time frame. Thus, any claims about making or saving a job in the short term is false.
r>
■Another negative aspect of this bill is that it has a ten-year time period during which it will be in effect. The tentative start of this bill is in 2011 (assuming passage in the House and the Senate).
The new Superfund bills that are in Congress right now are important to the Obama administration and the environmental activist legislators in Congress. In the eyes of the administration and other legislators, they would help reduce the deficit and help put a strain on those industries which these players deem to be the cause of environmental pollution problems.
In light of the lackluster condition that the economy is in right now, Congress should be considering ways to help the petroleum and chemical industries become more competitive in the global marketplace. This will not occur until legislators with environmentalist sympathies think more about the economy instead of the progression of their green agendas.
Mark Morris works in the chemical industry.
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2)Debra Darvick
The View from Fifty and Beyond Blessed With the GH Seal Again!
Filed under Writing Life and tagged: Good Housekeeping, memoir, nostalgia
Haven’t even been able to see it myself since I’m still out here in Arkansas miles from a Rite-Aid or a Border’s where a magazine stand might be found…but I hear tell from my dear husband holding the fort back home that my essay, “My Clutter Calendar” appears in the August issue of Good Houskeeping magazine. Page 189. I had titled it “Summer Cleaning” but hey, they publish me, they can pick the title.
And what is summer cleaning you ask as opposed to spring cleaning? Read the article. No….I”ll give you a hint.
Spring cleaning throws open the windows and clears out dust and the wan and tired things you’ve held on to. You’re brimming with sap and energy as you sweep and brush and scour. But summer cleaning is quieter, more reflective; you retreat to the basement where it’s cool, going through old boxes remembering and culling. Spring cleaning lets go; summer cleaning holds on.
Back in November I was in NYC and went up to GH’s wonderful offices in the Hearst Building. I got a tour of the famed test kitchens and met with two realng-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">ly cool recent college grads: one a bio major, one a chem major. They now work for GH, testing all kinds of gizmos and products. The day I was there they were brushing great swaths of crimson, carmine, rose, fuschia and puce (do we get the color scheme?) on a board to test for colorfastness. Who knew you could get such a job?
GH stands behind any product with their seal. They’ve been doing this for 125 years. There’s something really comforting to that kind of integrity in a world where “flip-flop” refers to the perennial speech of our politicians and elected officials, not just summer footwear.
I’m home Sunday. It’s been a great stay. Met and made new friends, ate well, walked and walked these beautiful green hills. Am coming home with two new children’s stories; two essays (one may appear on AOL) but I’m not counting those eggs, or readers yet. And most satisfying, and natch the longest shot to seeing light of day, about 20,000 words on a second novel.
So, nu? What are you waiting for? You’re closer to a Rite-Aid than I am. Go get your copy of the August Good Housekeeping. On your newsstands today! Enjoy.
there you have it. Now, go get that Good Housekeeping!
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3)Feverish preparations are afoot in Tehran for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first visit to the Lebanese capital. Iranian sources define the trip's purpose as a confrontational exercise to warn the US and Israel that full implementation of the tough new UN, US and European sanctions will provoke an Iranian war on Israel - waged from Lebanon. Ahmadinejad's trip is expected before September - with the Syrian and Qatari rulers in tow.
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4)IDF to blame navy in scathing report on flotilla raid
Military probe to accuse navy of failing to prepare for violent resistance when boarding Gaza-bound aid ships.
By Tomer Zarchin, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel
An Israeli military report to be released today on the Israel Navy's deadly May raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla is expected to accuse the navy of failing to sufficiently consider the possibility that the commandos would encounter violent resistance when attempting to keep the ships out of Gaza.
The report is also expected to criticize the navy for not cooperating sufficiently with the Mossad in gathering information ahead of the flotilla's arrival and to discuss the process by which the raid was approved. It is not, however, expected to call for disciplinary action against particular officers.
Nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed in the May 31 raid after they used clubs and knives to attack Israel Navy commandos boarding the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara. Israel had previously warned that it would take over the ships to enforce its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The Israel Defense Forces committee investigating the raid, headed by Maj. Gen. (res. ) Giora Eiland, is the first to complete its investigation. The Turkel Committee, appointed by the government to examine whether the raid adhered to international law, has just begun its investigation. A team from the State Comptroller's Office will be beginning its own probe of the flotilla raid shortly.
Meanwhile, the Israel Navy is preparing to block a Libyan ship carrying humanitarian aid to the region, although sources in the IDF say chances are good that the ship will sail to the Egyptian port of El-Arish. But Yousef Sawani, who heads the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, the group that chartered the ship, said the passengers do want to reach Gaza and that reports that they are going to dock in El-Arish are intended to harm morale. He said the group was a global institution, not a Libyan one.
Witnesses and various other people who have spoken to Eiland say that his report will be very critical of the army's conduct in the affair. Eiland is also reportedly critical of the government's conduct, but the report will not cover politicians.
Eilan may, however, mention the government's conduct in the press conference he has called for today. The briefing may also be the place to mention the actions of specific people with regard to the affair, if he does not mention them in his report.
It is believed that Eiland is not likely to call for action against individuals involved in the affair because of his record on such things in the past, particularly his report on the abduction of soldier Gilad Shalit four years ago.
Eiland is expected to focus his attention on specific institutions - the navy and its intelligence branch, Military Intelligence, without specifically recommending action against the officers who head these bodies.
The navy is to be the main target of Eiland's critique of the operation, although his assessment will apparently be tempered by consideration for the navy's success in several operations in recent years under Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom.
The Turkel Committee is expected to make use of Eiland's conclusions as a jumping-off point for its investigation of the government's conduct during the affair.
If the findings of Eiland's committee and other evidence indicate that soldiers may have committed criminal offenses or war crimes, the military advocate general will be informed, and will then decide whether to open a criminal investigation, the State Prosecutor's Office informed the High Court of Justice yesterday.
The prosecution issued the statement ahead of this morning's High Court hearing of a petition by the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, which is protesting the government's decision to appoint the Turkel Committee to investigate the flotilla raid. The petitioners want a state commission of inquiry to be established that would probe all aspects of the IDF's action with regard to the Gaza flotilla, including the decision making that preceded the raid. They also want the committee to have the authority to question soldiers involved in the incident.
"A situation in which after every operation soldiers have to testify before a civilian committee, and when the feeling created is that the soldiers should hire lawyers when they embark on an operation, harms the soldiers' ability to function and the ability of the army to fulfill its duty," the prosecution said in a statement. "In extraordinary cases, in which there is no choice, it is done. But as a rule, this is to be avoided so as not to impair the army's ability to carry out its duty."
The prosecution said it is up to the government to decide on the way the raid should be investigated. It said the Turkel Committee will have the authority to question soldiers and other members of the security forces regarding their responsibilities, but not to ask them about primarily military issues. The committee will also be able to ask Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi about international law as it applies to the raid.
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5)Israel Harel Op Ed: Obama sobers up
By Israel Harel
The Israeli media are shocked: U.S. President Barack Obama did not humiliate
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even worse, the Washington Post reported
that the opposite occurred: Netanyahu defeated Obama.
Even if the newspaper exaggerated, the outcome is still negative: Netanyahu,
the eternal wanted man, emerged from the White House with achievements, and
certainly not defeated as the media had hoped. And saddest of all, the
settlement freeze, which the media is so eager to perpetuate, may be thawed.
The prime minister did not defeat the U.S. president. Only his enemies, only
blind supporters of the Palestinians - and quite a number of Washington Post
writers are in that category - could write that. Had even an iota of
professional integrity found its way into their automatic support (and that
of many of their Israeli colleagues ) for the Palestinians, they would have
summed up as follows: There has been no strategic change in Obama's policy
of two states for two peoples, and Israel must still make most of the
concessions.
But as opposed to the dogmatically pro-Palestinian news commentators, Obama
has reached the conclusion that his tactics (which were also dogmatic ) did
not serve his objective, which is theirs as well.
Obama, as he made clear this week, is undergoing a process of sobering up.
He has understood, whether on his own or with the help of others, that the
person most to blame for the lack of progress may perhaps be found not in
Jerusalem, nor even in Ramallah, but in Washington. And that there may have
been truth in the claim that his Cairo speech, in which he toadied to the
Arabs, combined with his brutal pressure on Israel had caused the
Palestinians to climb such a tall tree that when they reached the top, they
suffered from vertigo and lost contact with reality.
And perhaps the U.S. president also reached the conclusion that since he
created this syndrome, it is his responsibility, precisely because he
supports the Palestinians, to get them down from the tree. His public
rapprochement with Netanyahu, which is mainly tactical, is the beginning of
this process.
The Palestinians will return to the negotiating table when they realize that
if they fail to do so, they will lose out, primarily on the issue of
territory. For in the present situation, the more organized and efficient
side, and the one with the greater resources, will be the one better able to
exploit the vacuum that has existed ever since the Palestinians appointed
Obama to head the team for freezing settlements and blasting Israel.
In order for them to resume negotiations, Obama must convince Abbas that, just
as the Palestinians have recently been grumbling, he really is not doing the job
according to their expectations, although he tried his best - and that if
they continue to be intractable, Israel is liable to continue to expand the
settlements to the geographic and demographic point of no return, even as
far as the United States is concerned.
When the Adam-Psagot-Tel Zion-Ofra-Beit El-Shilo-Eli settlement bloc becomes
like Ma'aleh Adumim and Ariel, no Israeli government, not even a Likud one,
will be able to imagine evacuating it. Nor would even a second-term Obama
administration. And that is all the more true once the Kedumim-Karnei
Shomron-Immanuel-Yakir-Revava settlement bloc links up with Ariel to create
a huge Israeli geographic and demographic space in the northern West Bank.
(And that is what is going to happen - because the Palestinians do not
really want, or some say are unable, to recognize Israel even within the
1967 lines. )
And if Obama, a true opponent of the settlements, did not mention a
continuation of the settlement freeze, that is a sign that he is using
continued Israeli expansion as yet another means of pressure. By so doing,
he has begun to restore his administration to a sane world view that takes
the abyss of Arab rejection of the Jewish state into account.
For Obama did hear the following things from Netanyahu, and not for the
first time ("And I believe him," Obama said to the cameras. Isn't that
humiliation? Would he talk that way about a European head of state? ): He
wants peace, and he knows that in return he will have to pay a high price.
In effect, he has already paid the biggest part of it, which to him may be
even more important than the territorial price, in his speech at Bar-Ilan
University. The leader of the Jewish state recognized - a historic
recognition - the Palestinians' right to a state of their own in the Land of
Israel, the homeland of the Jews.
Only someone who hates him with a passion, or does not understand the
historical, religious, substantive and political significance of this
recognition, could accuse Netanyahu, who took a giant step toward the
Palestinians, of foot-dragging. And Obama, who has apparently begun to
understand that the Palestinians will not make a similar declaration, has
begun to sober up. Let's hope he continues to do so.
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6) Obama's selective modesty
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
The president is convinced of his own magnificence, yet not of his country’s.
Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Barack Obama’s vision of NASA’s mission, as explained by administrator Charles Bolden: “One was he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering.”
Apart from the psychobabble – farcically turning a space-faring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer – what’s the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far – but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.
Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence – lauding, for example, Russia’s contribution to the space station.
Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the US to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.
For good measure, Bolden added that the US cannot get to Mars without international assistance.
Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of president John F. Kennedy’s pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.
There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy’s. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in Strasbourg, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Which of course means: If we’re all exceptional, no one is.
TAKE HUMAN rights. After Obama’s meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we too are working on perfecting our own democracy.
Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America.
Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the US side brought up Arizona’s immigration law – “early and often.” As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents, suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.
Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama’s modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America’s alleged failing – from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11.
It’s fine to recognize the achievements of others and be nonchauvinistic about one’s country. But Obama’s modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.
It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America’s sins and the world’s to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the first-person pronoun – I.
Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to cabinet members and other high government officials as “my” – “my secretary of homeland security,” “my national security team,” “my ambassador.”
The more normal – and respectful – usage is to say “the,” as in “the secretary of state.” These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution – not just the man who appointed them.
It’s a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama’s exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies – both about himself.
Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama’s modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence – yet not of his own country’s.
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7)Who Will Investigate the Investigators?
Another voter fraud scandal involving the Justice Department
By JOHN FUND
J. Christian Adams,, a former career Justice Department lawyer who resigned recently to protest political interference in cases he worked on, made some news yesterday in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
As expected, he claimed that Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation in an incident I detailed here yesterday. But Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case. He testified that last year Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice's Voting Rights section. She said she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal "Motor Voter" law -- Section 8, which requires states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.
According to Mr. Adams, Justice lawyers were told by Ms. Fernandes: "We're not interested in those kind of cases. What do they have to do with helping increase minority access and turnout? We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it."
If true, Ms. Fernandes was endorsing a policy of ignoring federal law and encouraging potential voter fraud. Ms. Fernandes was unavailable for comment yesterday, but the Justice Department has issued a statement accusing Mr. Adams of "distorting facts" in general and having a political agenda.
But there is some evidence backing up Mr. Adams. Last year, Justice abandoned a case it had pursued for three years against Missouri for failing to clean up its rolls. When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What's more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who this year is her party's candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat, contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.
The case made slow but steady progress through the courts for more than three years, amid little or no evidence of progress in cleaning up Missouri's voter rolls. Despite this, Obama Justice saw fit to dismiss the case in March 2009. Curiously, only a month earlier, Ms. Carnahan had announced her Senate candidacy. Missouri has a long and documented history of voter fraud in Democratic-leaning cities such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Ms. Carnahan may now stand to benefit from voter fraud facilitated by the improperly kept voter rolls that she herself allowed to continue.
Mr. Adams' allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.
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8)Think Big: Republicans should embrace Paul Ryan's Road Map.
BY Fred Barnes
For Republicans, the Road Map authored by congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is the most important proposal in domestic policy since Ronald Reagan embraced supply side economics in the 1980 presidential campaign. It’s not only the freshest, boldest, and most comprehensive Republican thinking, it’s also the most relevant. If Republicans adopt the Road Map as their basic ideological blueprint, it offers them the prospect of a landslide in the midterm election this year, followed by victory in the presidential election in 2012.
For sure, that’s a lot of weight for a policy statement drafted by a 40-year-old House member to bear. But the Road Map is perfectly timed to deal with the crises of the moment: economic stagnation, uncontrolled spending, the deficit and long-term debt, soaring tax rates, health care, the housing problem, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
Yet Republican leaders are wary of endorsing it, and for understandable reasons. The Road Map is sweeping and politically risky. It would overhaul popular programs like Medicare, relying on individuals to make decisions now made by government. Democrats are already attacking it. When Ryan delivered the weekly Republican radio address in late June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put out a press release under the heading, “Republicans Make Key Advocate of Privatizing Social Security and Ending Medicare Their Spokesman on Budget.”
Democrats insist focus groups have rejected Ryan’s reform of Medicare. When swing voters learn Medicare would become “a voucher system . . . it has a massive impact,” Democratic strategist Robert Creamer wrote in the Huffington Post. “People like the Democratic program of Medicare.”
Republican leaders fear the Road Map might jeopardize, or at least minimize, what is expected to be a decisive Republican victory in the November midterm election. Their advantage in the congressional generic poll is at an all-time high, and President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to the mid-40s. Given these usually reliable indicators, why give Democrats a target to shoot at?
There are three reasons Republicans should ignore their jitters about the Road Map. The first is that the nation’s disenchantment with Obama and Democrats will take Republicans only so far. There’s a residue of bad feelings toward Republicans from the years the party ruled Congress, spent too much, and produced scandals.
Voters have memories. To overcome their qualms, Republicans need to provide more than a litany of Democratic faults. Voters are frightened about the future of the country. They’re looking for a serious solution to the mess we’re in. The Road Map offers exactly that, plus the opportunity to win more seats than Republicans are likely to capture solely by zinging Democrats.
The second reason should be obvious after the ignominious Republican defeat in May in the race for John Murtha’s old House seat in Pennsylvania. Democrat Mark Critz won by running to the right—against Washington, Obama, spending, the deficit —and Democratic candidates across the country are taking the same tack.
Republican candidates need to put some daylight between themselves and their Democratic opponents. The Road Map will do that. Democrats can’t endorse it for fear of alienating their liberal base, which loathes anything that reduces the size of government. The Road Map stamps Republican candidates as the real conservatives, which is what voters happen to be looking for in 2010.
The third reason is the Republican message (or the absence of one). In Pennsylvania, it was “send a message to Nancy Pelosi.” Voters declined. I like the Republican slogan that worked so well in 1946—“Had enough?” But a slogan is not a message. The Road Map is a message. The country is falling apart, we’re going broke, government is on a takeover binge, the economy is wobbling. The Road Map is the solution. That’s a pretty good message.
Those who tremble at the thought of pushing a big idea should remember the campaign of 1980. Reagan, who for years had warned of the evils of government spending and overreach, suddenly became the champion of an across the board, 30 percent cut in tax rates for individuals and business.
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9)Two Suburbs, Two Views of Obama: Each month of economic unease eats away at goodwill toward the president.
By Ronald Brownstein
CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- In this comfortable white-collar suburb southeast of Denver, the struggling economy is like a storm cloud on the horizon: menacing but still distant. A few miles away, in blue-collar Littleton, the downturn is more like a gale at the door. Yet both places share a volatile anxiety over the nation's direction that looms over the November election.
On July 4, 2008, I visited these two communities and found them starkly divided over the presidential race. White working-class voters in Littleton expressed doubts about Barack Obama's priorities, experience, and even loyalty, while Centennial's college-educated professionals were enthusiastic about his candidacy.
White-collar and blue-collar voters are reacting differently to the economic slowdown.
Through the 2008 election and Obama's presidency, blue-collar whites have remained his biggest skeptics, while he's drawn the most support from young people, minorities, and whites with college degrees (especially women). When I returned to Centennial and Littleton for their Independence Day celebrations last weekend, that basic fissure endured. But in both places, the sky had darkened for the president and his party.
The two communities present contrasting faces of the slowdown. At the parade outside Centennial's Willow Creek Elementary School, people spoke with anxiety about shrinking 401(k) accounts or sluggish business at their firms. But layoffs and foreclosures remain relatively rare on these streets.
Centennial City Council member Patrick Anderson says development was so slow last year that the council, which approves building permits, reduced its meeting schedule. Now he detects modest signs of revival, such as an IKEA store that recently broke ground. "We can see light at the end of the tunnel," Anderson says. "We just don't know how far away that light is." Even so, few shadows creased the picture of timeless suburban contentment that the parade presented with children on flag-festooned bicycles, toddlers teetering in Radio Flyer wagons, and fit young parents leading golden retrievers tugging against their leashes.
At Cornerstone Park in Littleton, where white and Hispanic families grilled burgers or tossed softballs across the open lawn, the downturn reached more deeply. Vance Corbett, his wife, and their four kids have moved in with his mother because he's been out of work since February. Kristy and Danny Garnica have taken in her father, a truck driver, because he has been jobless for a year. "For all the jobs he's applied for," she says worriedly, "it seems like it is getting further and further away."
At Cornerstone, more people than in 2008 praised Obama personally and no one questioned his patriotism. But his image as a Big Government liberal has hardened for many working-class whites. "I've been surprised by all the socialist stuff he's trying to push through," said Marc Terry, a beefy general contractor. More troubling for the president might be the several Hispanic men who also expressed disappointment. "Obama hasn't done any good that I know of," Danny Garnica said.
In white-collar Centennial, most of Obama's 2008 supporters still admire him as thoughtful and deliberate. They view him as making steady, if unspectacular, progress against the vast problems he inherited. "People don't realize how much worse it would have been if we hadn't done the stimulus," said Doug Christ, who owns rental properties and car washes.
But if Obama's support hasn't crumbled in Centennial, it has cracked. Mark Neifert voted for Obama, but he plans to vote Republican this year because he believes that much of the stimulus was wasted on special interests. Divided government, he says, "would provide a balance" and discourage "abuse of power." In both communities, conservative critics who feel that Obama has dangerously expanded Washington's role appear much more engaged than his supporters. Conservatives are drawing energy from a trinity of Obama provocations: deficits, federal spending, and bailouts that they believe ignored the virtues of "creative destruction."
Strikingly, even some who believe that Obama's economic program prevented a greater disaster remain offended about the lifelines to financial institutions; they consider the help irresponsible and even "un-American" because these institutions pocketed big bonuses while still constricting credit. And with fear growing that the economy is slowing again, Obama faces a widening sense that his agenda may have purchased only temporary relief at the price of lasting debt. Particularly in Centennial, but among some residents in Littleton too, Obama has a genuine well of respect, and time to recover lost ground before 2012. But each month of economic unease drains a little more goodwill from that well.
9a)Now Behave
By Christine Rosen
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We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
—B.?F. Skinner
When Barack Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, observers credited the extraordinary effectiveness of his grassroots organizing with helping him to achieve his historic victory. But Obama had another unacknowledged ally on his side: behavioral science. A team of behavioral scientists, including at least one Nobel laureate, advised the campaign on everything from honing his message to fundraising techniques to voter-turnout tactics.
After the election, Obama appointed several members of this behavioral brain trust to prominent positions in his administration, most notably the law professor Cass Sunstein as the “regulation czar” at the Office of Management and Budget. In areas such as health care, environmental regulation, and the economy, Obama is relying on experts like Sunstein to launch one of the most ambitious behaviorist-style policy projects in American political history. Drawing on the recent findings of behavioral economics, they hope to encourage us to conserve energy at home by using “smart meters,” save better for retirement by automatically enrolling us in the company 401(k) plan, and make smarter choices about mortgages and credit cards, among other things. An admiring New York Times Magazine profile of Sunstein by Benjamin Wallace-Wells noted that the regulation czar and his fellow behaviorists envision a world where “government regulations can operate at the level of philosophy.” As one Indiana state senator told the Economist, marveling at the detailed requirements for spending included in the federal economic stimulus package, “They’re going to control your behavior with specifications and regulations.”
About the Author
Christine Rosen is senior editor of the New Atlantis. This essay appears, in somewhat different form, in New Threats to Freedom, a collection of essays edited by Adam Bellow and just published by the Templeton Press.
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10)Who Pays for ObamaCare? What Donald Berwick and Joe the Plumber both understand
Among Donald Berwick's greatest rhetorical hits is this one: "any health-care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must—must—redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate." Count that as one more reason that President Obama made Dr. Berwick a recess appointee to run Medicare and Medicaid rather than have this philosophy debated in the Senate.
We are also learning that "spreading the wealth," as Mr. Obama famously told Joe the Plumber in 2008, is the silent intellectual and political foundation of ObamaCare. We say silent because Democrats never admitted this while the bill was moving through Congress.
But only days after the bill passed, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus exulted that it would result in "a leveling" of the "maldistribution of income in America," adding that "The wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle-income class is left behind." David Leonhardt of the New York Times, who channels White House budget director Peter Orszag, also cheered after the bill passed that ObamaCare is "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality" in generations.
An April analysis by Patrick Fleenor and Gerald Prante of the Tax Foundation reveals how right they are. ObamaCare's new "health-care funding plan" will shift some $104 billion in 2016 to Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution from those in the top half. The wealth transfer will be even larger in future years. While every income group sees a direct or indirect tax increase, everyone below the 50th income percentile comes out a net beneficiary.
At least at the start, Americans in the 50th through 80th income percentiles—or those earning between $99,000 to $158,000—are nearly beneficiaries too, if not for the taxes on insurers, drug makers and other businesses that will be passed on to everyone as higher health costs. This group will eventually get soaked even more—probably through a value-added tax—once ObamaCare's costs explode. But at the beginning the biggest losers are the upper middle class, especially the top 10% of income earners, mainly because a 3.8% Medicare "payroll" tax surcharge will now apply to investment income. ObamaCare, in short, is almost certainly the largest wealth transfer in American history.
Distributional analyses like the Tax Foundation's are usually staples in any Beltway policy debate, especially when Republicans want to cut taxes. Yet aside from this or that provision, none of the outfits that usually report for this duty—the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities—have attempted to estimate the full incidence of ObamaCare's taxes and subsidies.
In part this may be because ObamaCare is such a complex rewrite of health, tax, welfare and labor laws. But it's also embarrassing to liberals that much of ObamaCare's redistribution will merely move income to the lower middle class from the upper middle class, and the President habitually promises that people earning under $200,000 will be exempt from his tax increases. We now know they won't be.
With his vast new powers over what government spends, Dr. Berwick will be well situated to equalize outcomes even more, and he certainly seems inclined to do so. The most charitable reading of his redistribution remarks, delivered in a 2008 London speech, is that any health insurance system will involve some degree of redistribution to the "less fortunate," that is, to the sick from the healthy.
Yet Dr. Berwick made those comments in the context of a larger, and bitter, indictment of the U.S. health system, even though the huge public programs he will run already account for about half of all national health spending. From his point of view this isn't enough. And his main stance was that individual clinical choices must be subordinated to government central planning to serve his view of social justice and health care guaranteed by the state.
The great irony is that this sort of enforced egalitarianism imposes higher taxes and other policies that reduce the total stock of wealth and leave less for Dr. Berwick to redistribute. Economic growth has been by far the most important factor in improving health and longevity, especially for those whom Dr. Berwick calls "the poorer and less fortunate."
Americans have learned the hard way over the past two years that this Administration believes in wealth redistribution first, economic growth second. Or as Dr. Berwick also put it in his wealth-redistribution speech, it is crucial not to have to rely on "the darkness of private enterprise."
10a)Lessons From the Swedish Welfare State
New research shows bigger government means slower growth. Our country is a prime example
By ANDREAS BERGH AND MAGNUS HENREKSON
Americans are debating whether to substantially expand the size of their government. As Swedish economists who live in the developed world's largest welfare state, we urge our friends in the New World to look carefully before they leap.
Fifty years ago, Sweden and America spent about the same on their government, a bit under 30% of GDP. This is no longer true. In the years leading up to Sweden's financial crisis in the early 1990s, government spending went as high as 60% of GDP. In America it barely budged, increasing only to about 33%.
While America was maintaining its standing as one of the world's wealthiest nations, Sweden's standing fell. In 1970, Sweden was the fourth richest country in the world on a per capita basis. By 1993, it had fallen to 17th.
This led us to ask whether Sweden's dramatic increase in the size of government contributed to its sluggish growth. Our research shows that it did.
We surveyed the existing literature looking at the trade-offs between government size and economic growth throughout the world. While results vary, the most recent research, by Diego Romero-Avila in the European Journal of Political Economy (2008) and by Andreas Bergh and Martin Karlsson in Public Choice (2010) find a negative correlation between government size and economic growth in rich countries.
The weight of the evidence demonstrates that when government spending increases by 10 percentage points of GDP, the annual growth rate drops by 0.5 to 1 percentage point. This may not sound like much, but over 30 years this would result in the loss of trillions of dollars each year in an economy as large as America's.
To put it in personal terms, the average American's per capita income in 2009 was $46,405. A dip of 1% in the economic growth rate (to 2% from 3% for example) would mean an individual income loss of $464 in the first year. Over 30 years, a one percentage point difference in the growth rate translates to roughly $354,000 in lost income per person.
We also investigated the claim that Sweden is proof that big government does not harm the economy. While Sweden has done very well compared to other developed countries in the last 15 years, it has also implemented sweeping pro-market reforms. Examples include a national system of free school choice based on vouchers up through senior year of high school, a financially stable public pension system that can adjust payouts if contributions to the system fall for some reason, and comprehensive tax reform that has lowered marginal tax rates tremendously.
Even if Sweden's government still spends some 20% of GDP more than the U.S. on average, the Swedish economy is now much more market oriented and government spending is down by almost 10% of GDP since the early 1990s.
Sweden's recent growth is thus the result of opting for free-market solutions instead of growing government. By comparison, the U.S. already has a relatively free economy, and therefore does not have as much potential for further market-based reform in order to offset the negative growth effects of a larger government.
Also, in Sweden, high personal tax rates encourage people to do work around the house that Americans pay others to do for them. Americans eat out more and hire people to clean their homes, take care of their children, or mow their lawns. Swedes, who have less money to spend after taxes, will do such work themselves. Raising government spending and taxes would cause Americans to behave more like Swedes, hurting the entire U.S. service sector and throwing many—mainly working class Americans—out of a job.
Many Americans argue that the U.S. could safely increase its spending share from roughly 32% of GDP to 37%–38% of GDP. The evidence suggests otherwise. The U.S. needs to acknowledge the trade-off between government size and economic growth. A larger government sector may decrease some economic inequality, but will ultimately leave Americans sharing smaller pieces of a smaller pie.
Mr. Bergh is an associate with the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Lund University and the Ratio Institute in Stockholm. Mr. Henrekson is the CEO of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm. They are the authors of "Government Size and Implications for Economic Growth" (AEI Press, 2010).
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