A fat girl served me in McDonald's at lunchtime. She said 'sorry about the wait'. I said, 'Don't worry, you'll find a way to lose it eventually'.
Snow in the forecast and the TV weather gal said she was expecting 8 inches tonight. I thought to myself, 'fat chance', with a face like that !
A 10-year Old Irish boy stands crying at the side of the road. A man passing by asks 'What's wrong, lad?' The boy says 'Me ma died this morning.' 'Oh bejaysus,' The man says. 'Do you want me to call Father O’Riley for you?' The boy replies, 'No tanks mister, sex is the last ting on my mind at the moment.'
Years ago it was suggested that an apple a day kept the doctor away. But since all the doctors are now Muslim, I've found that a pulled pork sandwich works best!
I hate all this terrorist business. I used to love the days when you could look at an unattended bag on a plane, train or bus and think to yourself. 'I’m going to take that.'
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My learned friend responds to my response re our misguided immigration policies: "OK. I got it. We are all commanded to cherish the poor. But as Lincoln said, "With malice towards none and charity for all." Rehearing all the debate about Thatcher's win over socialism reminds me of two things. First, that there are reasons for the gap between the rich and poor. And second, we are ruled by the elites from Harvard and Yale and yes, Stanford, who were taught history is inexorably compelling us all FORWARD toward the end of history, which is some sort of Leninist egalitarianism.
Why should one man have more money than another? Do we believe that skilled workers, those who have more education for the task at hand, should make more than unskilled labor? The Left says no. Then what about workers who work harder? Should they be paid more? The Left says no. Well, what about workers who work longer? Should they get more? At this point, you might get a reluctant "maybe" from the Left.
Well, then, what about workers who save and invest and delay gratification to enjoy more later? Should they be entitled to the fruits of their savings? Again, the Left says no. Actually, Obama's proposal this week is that they are entitled to save enough to get $205,000 per year in withdrawals from their retirement accounts. After that, their savings are fair game for the rest of the polity.
There will always be rich and poor. We have spent 40 years trying to get rid of poverty and we have exacerbated the gap between the rich and poor. I have an economic theory that says why that must be the case, but that comes from seeing the poverty in the countries of the world that have the most "progressive" tax rates -- progressivity in the tax code always exacerbates poverty and diminishes entrepreneurship. The question is, is there a valid justification for the gap between the rich and poor? I can understand why we want to take from those who have become rich by stealing from others, or inherited their wealth, or maybe we can tax people who get ahead by sheer dumb luck. But there is no way often to distinguish between the rich who achieved their wealth through "good" reasons and those who achieved their wealth through "bad" reasons. And maybe we should not be trying to decide what is "good" and what is"bad."
But notwithstanding that, our policy makers were all taught at Harvard or Yale that the end of history is Egalitarianism -- all will be equal, or we will all die trying. Putting Equality alongside Liberty was not a positive human development -- it was an add-on in the French Revolution, which was a disaster for the modern era. If there is one thing that Liberty does, it makes us all unequal in the eyes of others. Liberty is a recognition of equality before God, not man.
So we are left with politics. And if we keep importing immigrants who want to feed off the public trough and not immigrants who want to build their own dream, we will have a different America very soon. If this immigration bill passes without some concessions to bring in AT LEAST AS MANY entrepreneurial workers from India and China and Japan and South America and Europe, we will not only create a nightmare society for our future, we will create a society that cannot hold. "
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If Yellen succeeds Bernanke will she be responsible for the potential inflation his policies may cause? (See 1 below.)
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Bowdoin bows to PC'ism! (See 2 below.)
Is Obama at war against American youth? (See 2a below.)
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Hillary no Thatcher, though press and media will do their best to make it seem so! (See 3and 3a below.)
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Thoughts on Obama's Budget! (See 4 below.)
So much for gun laws and statistics. (The email is somewhat misleading because it selectively leaves out countries that one would normally compare with the US. For example, Canada, Australia, France and the UK, and others, all have a murder rate of between 1-2%, and are excluded from the list.) (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)ISS Survey: Fed’s Yellen Likely to Succeed Bernanke
!
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke probably will be succeeded by Vice Chairman Janet Yellen when his term ends Jan. 31, according to a survey last week by International Strategy & Investment Group.
Sixty-five percent of those polled at the organization’s conference last week said Yellen, 66, is most likely to be nominated for the top job, according to a report Monday by Roberto Perli, a Washington-based managing director at the investment research firm and a former economist for the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs. Sixteen percent of the fund managers surveyed said Bernanke, 59, probably will serve a third four-year term.
Bernanke said at a March 20 press conference he’s “spoken to the president a bit” about his future and that he feels no personal responsibility to keep the post and lead the winding down of the central bank’s unprecedented bond buying. The Fed said last month it will maintain $85 billion in monthly purchases until the job-market outlook improves substantially.
“We agree with the general consensus that Yellen is probably the front runner, but we think her odds might not be as high as many investors seem to believe,” Perli wrote in a note to clients. “In general, we would expect the Fed to continue down the policy path that was traced in recent years.”
Bernanke “could well be renominated,” Perli wrote. Former Treasury secretaries Timothy F. Geithner and Larry Summers “have good chances” of being nominated and “strong ties to the administration,” Perli wrote. In the survey, 5 percent saw Summers, a former director of the National Economic Council, as the most likely next Fed chief while 3 percent named Geithner.
Dudley, Ferguson
Also at 3 percent in the survey were Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley and Roger Ferguson, a former Fed vice chairman and now chief executive officer of New York-based TIAA-CREF, which oversees $502 billion in assets for 3.7 million retirement clients. Two percent cited Donald Kohn, the Fed’s vice chairman from 2006 to 2010 and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, declined to comment on the survey’s findings.
Yellen became vice chairman of the Board of Governors in 2010. She also was a governor from 1994 to 1997 and served as president of the San Francisco Fed from 2004 to 2010.
Bernanke also said in his March 20 news conference that he doesn’t see himself as the only person qualified to lead the U.S. central bank in the years ahead.
Fed Chief
Bernanke took over as Fed chief in 2006 after being appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. He started a second term in 2010 after being re-appointed by Obama, a Democrat. Bernanke also served as Fed Board governor from 2002 to 2005, when he left to take the position as chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“I don’t think the administration has made up its mind and I don’t think Bernanke has made up his mind so it’s still too early to talk about this, but among clients it’s an important topic,” Perli said Monday in an interview. Yellen “is not a sure thing. There are others that might make legitimate Fed chairmen and shouldn’t be forgotten.”
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Dick
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1)ISS Survey: Fed’s Yellen Likely to Succeed Bernanke
!
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke probably will be succeeded by Vice Chairman Janet Yellen when his term ends Jan. 31, according to a survey last week by International Strategy & Investment Group.
Sixty-five percent of those polled at the organization’s conference last week said Yellen, 66, is most likely to be nominated for the top job, according to a report Monday by Roberto Perli, a Washington-based managing director at the investment research firm and a former economist for the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs. Sixteen percent of the fund managers surveyed said Bernanke, 59, probably will serve a third four-year term.
Bernanke said at a March 20 press conference he’s “spoken to the president a bit” about his future and that he feels no personal responsibility to keep the post and lead the winding down of the central bank’s unprecedented bond buying. The Fed said last month it will maintain $85 billion in monthly purchases until the job-market outlook improves substantially.
“We agree with the general consensus that Yellen is probably the front runner, but we think her odds might not be as high as many investors seem to believe,” Perli wrote in a note to clients. “In general, we would expect the Fed to continue down the policy path that was traced in recent years.”
Bernanke “could well be renominated,” Perli wrote. Former Treasury secretaries Timothy F. Geithner and Larry Summers “have good chances” of being nominated and “strong ties to the administration,” Perli wrote. In the survey, 5 percent saw Summers, a former director of the National Economic Council, as the most likely next Fed chief while 3 percent named Geithner.
Dudley, Ferguson
Also at 3 percent in the survey were Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley and Roger Ferguson, a former Fed vice chairman and now chief executive officer of New York-based TIAA-CREF, which oversees $502 billion in assets for 3.7 million retirement clients. Two percent cited Donald Kohn, the Fed’s vice chairman from 2006 to 2010 and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, declined to comment on the survey’s findings.
Yellen became vice chairman of the Board of Governors in 2010. She also was a governor from 1994 to 1997 and served as president of the San Francisco Fed from 2004 to 2010.
Bernanke also said in his March 20 news conference that he doesn’t see himself as the only person qualified to lead the U.S. central bank in the years ahead.
Fed Chief
Bernanke took over as Fed chief in 2006 after being appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. He started a second term in 2010 after being re-appointed by Obama, a Democrat. Bernanke also served as Fed Board governor from 2002 to 2005, when he left to take the position as chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“I don’t think the administration has made up its mind and I don’t think Bernanke has made up his mind so it’s still too early to talk about this, but among clients it’s an important topic,” Perli said Monday in an interview. Yellen “is not a sure thing. There are others that might make legitimate Fed chairmen and shouldn’t be forgotten.”
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2)Subverting Bowdoin
By Norman Rogers
The National Association of Scholars has released a detailed and scholarly examination of Bowdoin College. Bowdoin, located in Maine, is a small and elite liberal arts college. For the study, Bowdoin is a target of convenience. It is meant to be a typical exemplar, exhibiting traits not terribly different from dozens of similar places.
In late 60's or early 70's a great shift took place in American higher education. The idea that the students should all receive a basic grounding in history, government, social science, arts, and languages was discarded. Bowdoin abandoned its general education requirements in 1969. A deeply subversive and frankly weird ideology has become dominant in the trendier colleges. The ideology doesn't have an accepted name because the colleges deny that they have fundamentally changed their practices and beliefs. Sometimes it is described as an obsession with race, gender, and sex. It is characterized by political correctness. Orwellian misuse of language is practiced. An example is use of the word "diversity" to characterize aggressive discrimination in favor of certain racial groups and against others. Since racial discrimination is supposedly frowned upon or is illegal, they have to pretend it is something else. Many colleges suppress freedom of speech when the speech in question violates the canons of political correctness. The president of Harvard was fired for speculating out loud that women may be worse at math than men. Some things are unmentionable in academic company. At Hampshire College the speech code prohibited "psychological intimidation and harassment of any person or pet." Many colleges have speech codes that prohibit speech that might make someone else, especially members of favored minority groups, feel bad. However Hampshire seems to have been unique in attempting to protect the psychological well being of pets.
In the preface to the National Association of Scholars Bowdoin report, Peter Wood elucidates the dogmatic nature of Bowdoin ideology:
The two Bowdoin goals -- global citizenship and openness -- actually push against each other. Openness requires skepticism and a sincere willingness to look for hidden assumptions, but Bowdoin's understanding of global citizenship requires that some very large questions be settled in advance. A commitment to global citizenship requires a commitment to diversity (in its current understanding, the notion that each of us is defined in the most meaningful ways by the group to which we belong) and to the racial preferences that follow from diversity; to multiculturalism (all cultures are equal); to the idea that gender and social norms are all simply social constructs (an assumption that justifies virtually unlimited government intervention necessary to achieve the global citizen's understanding of sexual justice); and to "sustainability" (which assumes that free market economic systems, and the materialistic, bourgeois values that drive them, are destroying the planet). These are notions that are not meaningfully "open to debate" at Bowdoin; indeed, a commitment to global citizenship requires that they not be open to debate. Students are encouraged to "think critically" about anything that threatens the college's dogmas on diversity, multiculturalism, gender, and sustainability, etc., but, for the most part, not to think critically about those dogmas themselves.
Above all the elite colleges are obsessed with status. Their equivalent of the academy awards are the U.S. News and World Report rankings of U.S. colleges. The rankings published by this popular magazine loom large in the worldview of academic administrators. I well remember a huge bash put on by an academic division of a large public university when they cracked the top 40 in the U.S. News ratings.
The U.S. News rankings depend largely on the quality of the student body as revealed by their high school academic credentials. The elite colleges compete to attract these students, who are, clearly, some of the best and brightest. These talented young people are a national asset. They could be expected to assume influential positions in their later lives. Are the elite colleges improving this high quality raw material or making them into rejects?
Rather than bread and circuses, Bowdoin keeps its students occupied with alcohol, drugs, and sex. Although the students are mostly under the 21-year-old drinking age in Maine, binge drinking by underage students is tolerated, making a mockery of the official college policy that that underage students are not supposed to drink. Bowdoin helpfully provides bowls of condoms in the student quarters and has many seminars and briefings that are supposedly aimed at preventing sexual coercion, but that are also instructional and encouraging when viewed in a different light. The students self report extensive use of marijuana. The extent of the alcohol and drug problem is illustrated by the fact that the college offers optional, substance-free living options for students who would prefer not to be around binge drinkers or potheads. Of course if the official policy on substances were not a joke, the substance-free option would be unnecessary.
History majors at Bowdoin are not required to take any course in American History. Yale professor David Gelernter in his book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture suggested this:
Teaching American history, aside from a few marvelously evil incidents out of context, is dangerous to a basic tenet of the cultural revolution and must accordingly be stopped.
American history is threatening to those who want to rewrite the past and fundamentally change everything. It might subvert the America is evil paradigm.
Bowdoin is a political monoculture. Democrats outnumber Republicans among the faculty by more than 20-1 in humanities and social sciences. The students overwhelmingly voted for Obama.
Intellectuals have a long history of being seduced by pathological ideologies. In a previous generation it was communism and socialism. Now it is a weird amalgam of racial grievances, anti-capitalism, philosophical relativism, and radical environmentalism. It is pathetic that institutions that infect our best youth with this ideology are considered elite. Parents should not send their children to such places, the more so that the financial sacrifices are immense. The colleges have perfected techniques for extracting the maximum amount of money from each customer. Why undergo financial pain to have your kids inoculated with subversive ideas?
Norman Rogers is a retired computer entrepreneur. He often writes skeptically about global warming alarmism. He is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Heartland Institute and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. He maintains a personal website.
2a) It is popular wisdom that President Obama’s progressive social agenda is predicated on widespread support from the younger, hip generation. Certainly, concerns like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, the DREAM Act, gun control, women in combat, and blocking gas and oil exploration and pipeline transportation all get a lot of play on campuses and in popular culture. And these wedge issues supposedly represent the future direction of the country — a wise agenda for liberals eager to cement a majority constituency for decades to come.
But aside from the common-sense recognition that people become more conservative as they age and mature — and start paying taxes, and become financially responsible for their own children’s future — there is just as much likelihood that Barack Obama may inadvertently be building a conservative youth movement. Indeed, the new liberalism in all its economic manifestations is reactionary and anti-youth to the core. The administration seems aware of the potential paradoxes in this reverse “What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome of young people voting against their economic interests. Thus follows the constant courting of the hip and cool Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lena Dunham, Occupy Wall Streeters, and others who blend pop culture, sex, youth, energy, and fad — almost anything to avoid the truth that today’s teenagers are starting out each owing a lifetime share of the national debt amounting to more than three-quarters of a million dollars. Those who ran up the debt enjoyed the borrowing, but won’t be around to pay back their proverbial fair share.
University tuition has soared well beyond the rate of inflation, increases brought about by an inexcusable surge in administrative staffs, the reduction in teaching loads over the last few decades, the costs of subsidizing overly specialized and esoteric research, all sorts of costly new race/class/gender explorations, and a general expansion of non-teaching support staffs. Justification of such escalating costs was always based on the truism that college degrees represented a wise lifetime investment that ensured increased salary and better job security. That may still be true — in the long run — but bleak immediate employment prospects for those under 25, along with ballooning college loans, will eventually prompt a reexamination of such received wisdom. When academics at traditional universities trash private tech schools and on-line colleges, their criticism is not so much pedagogical as self-interested.
At some point, the huge campus speaking fees given a Michael Moore or a John Edwards, the off-topic rants of the English professor, and the proliferation of x-studies degrees that impart neither expertise nor marketability will be rethought by young consumers in terms of years of paying back high-interest student loans for brands that were not applicable to most employment.
Nearly every week, I receive a letter from a former student seeking help in finding a job. The common theme is a sense that something in their education went terribly wrong. Most fear that their present indebtedness is unsustainable and that their degrees are almost superfluous in today’s economy. There is also a vague resentment that no one in the self-interested university honestly apprised them of the odds stacked against them. It was about ten years ago when a student wrote me to complain that her professor’s skipping one of her classes had cost the student, in pro-rated terms, over $150. I wrote back to remind her to tally as well the interest charges on her tuition debt. Academics call such calculations consumerism, but students see what has happened to them as consumer fraud.
Apart from the elite of the Ivy League, most indebted students no longer look back at their professors and administrators as paragons of virtue or avatars of social change; instead, they see them as part of an establishment that sold them a bill of goods, one more interested in getting ever more customers than in finding jobs for those who bought their product on credit. The latest job figures show that among 20-to-24-year-olds, unemployment has risen (alone among various age cohorts) to 13.3 percent. For those in their prime working years (e.g., 25 to 34) unemployment is still high, at 7.4 percent. National debt per person has soared to over $53,000, a $20,000 surge in just the first 50 months of the Obama presidency. Most of the borrowing — both the Obama administration’s new borrowing and the older borrowing for payouts to those receiving pensions, Medicare, and Social Security — was the property of the Baby Boomer cohorts.
Those over 50, who mostly run the nation, have popularized something called “internship,” a non-paid or low-paid apprenticeship that might or might not eventually lead to employment, but that typically does not even pay the room and board of the worker in question. Fifty years ago such “jobs” would have been the source of labor unrest, as thousands hit the streets to argue that they were little more than indentured serfs, and their employers virtual feudal lords. Yet few complain today because these interns are largely middle class, and they have been told that obedience and subservience are just the sorts of traits that employers appreciate. In today’s liberal legal universe, a six-figure-salaried senior female executive can sue for vast sums over a sexist remark (something akin to the president’s recent quip that California’s attorney general was the best-looking such officeholder in the nation), while a penniless student or recent graduate who labors for free has no legal recourse.
To a generation saddled with college debt and facing bleak job prospects, the current Democratic hysteria over any sensible reform of Social Security and Medicare increasingly sounds just as surreal. In fact, the only question left about reforming entitlements is not if, but when: whether those in their forties and fifties will share the pain of cutting back, or whether the escalating burdens of keeping the system solvent will fall entirely on a younger generation that will have bigger debts and smaller incomes.
Tomorrow’s public employee is not likely to receive a generous defined-benefit retirement plan — but will still hear whining from his far-better-compensated superiors as to how unfair it is to question whether their own compensation is sustainable. And far fewer in the future will so easily land a government job at all: In California the unsustainable cost of the public work force is due not to overstaffing, but to too few younger taxpayers to meet the state’s existing obligations, given the lucrative compensation and retirement packages of a select elder few, who somehow believe that their own privilege is proof of their egalitarianism. Forgotten in the national acrimony over unfunded defined-benefit retirement plans for public employees is that the divide is not public versus private sector, or left versus right, but older versus younger. For the public unions the implicit message is something like the following: Keep borrowing to fund our generation’s unsustainable pensions and, in turn, we may concede that the next generation will never receive something so bankrupting to the public purse.
The soon-to-be-$17-trillion debt — run up largely by the Baby Boomer generation — will lead to decades of budget cutting, inflation, and higher taxes. A decade from now, as 30-somethings try to buy a home and raise children while they are still paying off their student loans, they may wonder why the national burden of repaying the debts of the better-off falls largely upon themselves.
Indeed, a legacy of the Baby Boomer generation is the idea that it is natural for younger people to begin life with huge loans — not for a house or a car, but for an education of dubious market value.
The offspring of well-connected journalists, politicians, academics, professionals, and celebrities assure us in their documentaries and op-eds, and through their parents’ voices, that conservatives have lost the war for America’s youth. They certainly have, at least for a while, at in-the-news, private liberal-arts campuses. But for the vast majority of the state-schooled who have no such connections, little if any expectation of an inheritance, and lots of accumulated debt, there is nothing liberal about the values inherent in the present economy.
Given a choice between gay marriage, legalization of pot, and the banning of so-called assault rifles on the one hand, and, on the other, a good job with lower taxes, most young people will quietly prefer the latter. For that reason, conservatives should not outbid liberals to appear cool to new voters, but simply explain that a fair economy for all generations is no longer on the liberal agenda
NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals will appear in May from Bloomsbury Books.
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3)Will Hillary Clinton's Media Honeymoon Last?
A few days after Barack Obama finally emerged as the Democratic nominee in his epic 2008 showdown against Hillary Clinton, Katie Couric delivered a rare editorial commentary in an online video. The then-“CBS Evening News” anchor captured the emerging sentiment among much of the media establishment, which suddenly found itself with time for reflection.
“Sen. Clinton has received her fair share of the blame, and so has her political team, but like her or not, one of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media,” Couric said. “Many women have made the point that if Sen. Obama had to confront the racist equivalent of an ‘iron my shirt’ poster at campaign rallies, or a Hillary nutcracker sold at airports, or mainstream pundits saying they instinctively cross their legs at the mention of her name, the outrage would not be a footnote. It would be front-page news.”
Though media partiality toward Obama was neither uniform nor unfailing in that race, few could deny that the palpable excitement surrounding the Illinois senator’s candidacy tended to overshadow the equally historic nature of Clinton’s run.
And while the relationship between campaign staffers and reporters is typically adversarial, the dynamic inside the Clinton campaign bubble was often particularly contentious.
But that was then.
These days, it is increasingly difficult to find an unflattering word written or said about Clinton in the mainstream press as she begins re-emerging as a force in domestic politics after four years in the constitutionally apolitical role of secretary of state. And this generally glowing coverage figures to benefit Clinton as she mulls a second presidential run.
But any edge over her potential opponents may prove flimsy as 2016 draws nearer. The inevitable reexamination of her extensive record in the national limelight and another looming campaign will surely take some of the shine off this politician considered the strongest non-incumbent presidential front-runner in modern U.S. history.
“There’s a good chance she can continue to get a lot of good coverage between now and the time the general election starts; and then you’ll get what is sometimes, in my view, artificially evenhanded coverage that hurts one candidate and benefits another,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who has more than four decades of high-level experience on presidential campaigns. “There’s a natural tendency of the press to even this thing out. On the other hand, I think what’s being written now reflects her real strength in the Democratic Party and in the country.”
Indeed, there is ample reason for all of Clinton’s positive press.
A week after she stepped down at the State Department, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 67 percent of registered voters had a favorable view of the onetime first lady, and her claim to the title of the nation’s most popular national politician remains strong.
The 65-year-old former senator from New York seemed on top of her game in her initial foray on the public speaking circuit last week, generating perhaps more interest and excitement at this early stage in the presidential cycle than any would-be candidate in memory.
“The coverage has been overwhelmingly positive, and there’s two reasons for that,” said John Geer, co-director of The Vanderbilt Poll and an expert on the intersection of presidential politics and media. “One: There’s lots of good things to say about her, especially her term as secretary of state. And the second is that she hasn’t announced. If she does announce, the coverage will start to turn more critical because she’s now a potential president -- and she knows that better than anybody.”
One clear advantage that comes with Clinton’s current position outside of government is that she has full control over when and where to weigh in on the issues of the day. With no controversial votes to cast and no compulsion to be at the forefront of contentious political fights, she is less subject to the unscripted mishaps that tend to befall public officials.
Even partisan Republicans have little incentive to criticize her -- though Clinton’s GOP opponents don’t intend to let the honeymoon continue much longer. The strategists behind America Rising -- a Republican firm established last month to conduct opposition research for GOP groups and candidates -- are particularly keen to set the tone for the likely media reassessment of Clinton’s record.
“We're going to be building the research and video infrastructure for the right looking ahead to 2016 this year -- earlier than its ever been done in a presidential cycle,” Tim Miller, the group’s spokesperson, told RCP. “This will allow us to hold Hillary accountable for all her various permutations over the decades and begin redefining her before she has a formal campaign apparatus.”
America Rising and other GOP-affiliated groups will no doubt prod media organizations to vigorously delve into Clinton’s tenure at the State Department -- particularly her handling of the lead-up to and aftermath of the attack last September on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
For their part, Clinton confidants do not intend to let the other side get a leg up in cultivating coverage as they await her decision.
Last week, Democratic strategist James Carville lent his support to the “Ready for Hillary” super PAC, which is publicly urging Clinton to run and is aiming to generate even more positive press to perpetuate an air of inevitability.
Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, said she does not know if the former first lady will run in 2016, but she intends to do “everything I can to help her” if that happens.
Shalala suggested that team Clinton’s experience in dealing with the press five years ago -- and vice versa -- would inform the media dynamic heading into a potential campaign.
“I don’t think they’re going to give her a free shot, but I do think the media learned a lot in the last campaign,” Shalala said. “It’s also a very different media -- it’s more focused on social media and on the Web. The Democratic Party, as you know, in the last campaign learned a lot about that.”
4) A Primer for Understanding Obama's Budget
Congress and the White House routinely hide the impact on the deficit of their proposals and laws.
By WILLIAM POOLE
President Obama will release his overdue budget on Wednesday. It will doubtless project a reduction in the federal budget deficit—a projection that journalists, commentators and policy makers should ignore. To do otherwise is to be complicit in fraud. Strong statement? Not really.
For 50 years or so the federal government has deliberately and to an increasing extent misstated probable future budget deficits. Democrats and Republicans are guilty. The White House is guilty. And so is Congress. Private firms that deliberately misrepresent their financial statements in this fashion would be guilty of a crime.
The magnitude of the misrepresentation is breathtaking. For one example, the bitterly contested "fiscal cliff" legislation (the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012) raised the top income tax rate to 39.6%. However, the Congressional Budget Office's latest (early February) deficit projection for 2013-22 is now $4.6 trillionhigher than the baseline deficit it projected in mid-2012. After the tax increase, how can that be?
Easy. Congress requires the CBO to present its baseline budget projections on the basis of "current law." Congress then manipulates current law to understate probable future outlays beyond the present year, and to overstate probable future revenues. These manipulations change CBO baseline budget projections based on current law. Voilà, actual deficits exceed projections, and the previous budget projections are rendered meaningless.
Congress can misrepresent the effects of any given piece of legislation in complex ways. It does not do so by entering, say, $800 million when the correct number is $900 million. Instead, Congress enacts certain tax and spending measures as "temporary" when it has no intention of allowing the provision to lapse; or it assumes legislative provisions in current law that would cut spending will be made, when Congress knows they never will.
Fortunately, some years ago the CBO began to present "alternative scenario" budget projections, in which differences from current-law projections are explained in detail. In its early February update, one example is that the 25% cut in physician Medicare reimbursements scheduled for next Jan. 1 will not occur. That adjustment increases the projected deficit in 2023 by $16 billion, and cumulatively by $138 billion from 2014-23. Congress has overridden the scheduled cut in physician reimbursements every year since 2003, in a legislative provision known as the "doc fix."
Keep in mind that these provisions may be extended piecemeal, and for differing periods, in various pieces of legislation over the course of the year. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 had about 30 of these so-called extenders.
What are traders, portfolio managers, journalists and citizens to do in the face of such practices? My recommendation is to ignore the official current-law scoring estimates of the federal budget, unless you have sufficient analytical resources to sort through the legislative details, line by line, and figure out what is really going on.
Some Republican commentators are too harsh on the CBO, saying or implying that it is complicit in the misleading projections. Federal law requires that CBO present current-law budget projections. To make that point clear, in its most recent budget update—a document 77 pages long—a search turns up 61 occurrences of "current law," "current laws," and "current-law."
The CBO goes out of its way to emphasize the problems with the budget projections it presents. Its "alternative scenario" projections are featured prominently. You may not like these alternative projections, because you would specify the alternative differently, but they are the only truly honest and useful effort in town.
The House and Senate budget committees could assist us by requesting that the CBO score all proposed legislation according to its alternative scenario as well as according to current law. If the committees won't do so, the ranking minority member of each committee could do so by sending a letter to the CBO.
U.S. fiscal policy is in a chaotic state. Policy decisions are wrapped around the convoluted budget accounting that Congress and the White House use to obfuscate, dissemble and hide what is really being done. That is a tragedy, and our democracy is worse for it.
Mr. Poole is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
4a)Here is a fascinating group of statistics that will surprise you if you read to the end of the List
WORLD MURDER STATISTICS
From the World Health Organization:
The latest Murder Statistics for the world:
Murders per 100,000 citizens
Honduras 91.6
El Salvador 69.2
Cote d'lvoire 56.9
Jamaica 52.2
Venezuela 45.1
Belize 41.4
US Virgin Islands 39.2
Guatemala 38.5
Saint Kits and Nevis 38.2
Zambia 38.0
Uganda 36.3
Malawi 36.0
Lesotho 35.2
Trinidad and Tobago 35.2
Colombia 33.4
South Africa 31.8
Congo 30.8
Central African Republic 29.3
Bahamas 27.4
Puerto Rico 26.2
Saint Lucia 25.2
Dominican Republic 25.0
Tanzania 24.5
Sudan 24.2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9
Ethiopia 22.5
Guinea 22.5
Dominica 22.1
Burundi 21.7
Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7
Panama 21.6
Brazil 21.0
Equatorial Guinea 20.7
Guinea-Bissau 20.2
Kenya 20.1
Kyrgyzstan 20.1
Cameroon 19.7
Montserrat 19.7
Greenland 19.2
Angola 19.0
Guyana 18.6
Burkina Faso 18.0
Eritrea 17.8
Namibia 17.2
Rwanda 17.1
Mexico 16.9
Chad 15.8
Ghana 15.7
Ecuador 15.2
North Korea 15.2
Benin 15.1
Sierra Leone 14.9
Mauritania 14.7
Botswana 14.5
Zimbabwe 14.3
Gabon 13.8
Nicaragua 13.6
French Guiana 13.3
Papua New Guinea 13.0
Swaziland 12.9
Bermuda 12.3
Comoros 12.2
Nigeria 12.2
Cape Verde 11.6
Grenada 11.5
Paraguay 11.5
Barbados 11.3
Togo 10.9
Gambia 10.8
Peru 10.8
Myanmar 10.2
Russia 10.2
Liberia 10.1
Costa Rica 10.0
Nauru 9.8
Bolivia 8.9
Mozambique 8.8
Kazakhstan 8.8
Senegal 8.7
Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7
Mongolia 8.7
British Virgin Islands 8.6
Cayman Islands 8.4
Seychelles 8.3
Madagascar 8.1
Indonesia 8.1
Mali 8.0
Pakistan 7.8
Moldova 7.5
Kiribati 7.3
Guadeloupe 7.0
Haiti 6.9
Timor-Leste 6.9
Anguilla 6.8
Antigua and Barbuda 6.8
Lithuania 6.6
Uruguay 5.9
Philippines 5.4
Ukraine 5.2
Estonia 5.2
Cuba 5.0
Belarus 4.9
Thailand 4.8
Suriname 4.6
Laos 4.6
Georgia 4.3
Martinique 4.2
And
The United States 4.2
ALL the countries above America have 100% gun bans
It might be of interest to note that Switzerland also has NO MURDER OCCURRENCE.
However their law requires that EVERYONE own a gun, maintain marksman qualifications
and "carry".
The latest Murder Statistics for the world:
Murders per 100,000 citizens
Honduras 91.6
El Salvador 69.2
Cote d'lvoire 56.9
Jamaica 52.2
Venezuela 45.1
Belize 41.4
US Virgin Islands 39.2
Guatemala 38.5
Saint Kits and Nevis 38.2
Zambia 38.0
Uganda 36.3
Malawi 36.0
Lesotho 35.2
Trinidad and Tobago 35.2
Colombia 33.4
South Africa 31.8
Congo 30.8
Central African Republic 29.3
Bahamas 27.4
Puerto Rico 26.2
Saint Lucia 25.2
Dominican Republic 25.0
Tanzania 24.5
Sudan 24.2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 22.9
Ethiopia 22.5
Guinea 22.5
Dominica 22.1
Burundi 21.7
Democratic Republic of the Congo 21.7
Panama 21.6
Brazil 21.0
Equatorial Guinea 20.7
Guinea-Bissau 20.2
Kenya 20.1
Kyrgyzstan 20.1
Cameroon 19.7
Montserrat 19.7
Greenland 19.2
Angola 19.0
Guyana 18.6
Burkina Faso 18.0
Eritrea 17.8
Namibia 17.2
Rwanda 17.1
Mexico 16.9
Chad 15.8
Ghana 15.7
Ecuador 15.2
North Korea 15.2
Benin 15.1
Sierra Leone 14.9
Mauritania 14.7
Botswana 14.5
Zimbabwe 14.3
Gabon 13.8
Nicaragua 13.6
French Guiana 13.3
Papua New Guinea 13.0
Swaziland 12.9
Bermuda 12.3
Comoros 12.2
Nigeria 12.2
Cape Verde 11.6
Grenada 11.5
Paraguay 11.5
Barbados 11.3
Togo 10.9
Gambia 10.8
Peru 10.8
Myanmar 10.2
Russia 10.2
Liberia 10.1
Costa Rica 10.0
Nauru 9.8
Bolivia 8.9
Mozambique 8.8
Kazakhstan 8.8
Senegal 8.7
Turks and Caicos Islands 8.7
Mongolia 8.7
British Virgin Islands 8.6
Cayman Islands 8.4
Seychelles 8.3
Madagascar 8.1
Indonesia 8.1
Mali 8.0
Pakistan 7.8
Moldova 7.5
Kiribati 7.3
Guadeloupe 7.0
Haiti 6.9
Timor-Leste 6.9
Anguilla 6.8
Antigua and Barbuda 6.8
Lithuania 6.6
Uruguay 5.9
Philippines 5.4
Ukraine 5.2
Estonia 5.2
Cuba 5.0
Belarus 4.9
Thailand 4.8
Suriname 4.6
Laos 4.6
Georgia 4.3
Martinique 4.2
And
The United States 4.2
ALL the countries above America have 100% gun bans
It might be of interest to note that Switzerland also has NO MURDER OCCURRENCE.
However their law requires that EVERYONE own a gun, maintain marksman qualifications
and "carry".
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