The Intransigent Conservative: GDP

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

View the story "Thursday's Thoughts (2/14/13)" on Storify Thursday's Thoughts (2/14/13) http://theintransigentconservative.blogspot.com Storified by Brian Empric· Thu, Feb 14 2013 16:46:32 Emily Miller, former deputy press secretary for Secretaries of State Powell & Rice, writes that America cannot afford to put off spending restraint. As Speaker Boehner said last week, “The American people do not believe the president will use further tax revenues to lower the debt. After having seen this president attempt to spend his way into prosperity over the last four years, they know he’ll spend it.”

“President Obama has a way to delay the across-the-board $85 billion sequestration scheduled for March 1. His not-so-surprising proposal is to raise taxes so he can spend more. Fortunately, the GOP is not going along with this tired, old plan.”

“The original Budget Control Act was about deficit reduction, but the sequester part was only a reduction in spending — it had nothing to do with taxes,” said Patrick Louis Knudsen, senior fellow in federal budgetary affairs at the Heritage Foundation. “For that reason, if you’re going to replace it with something else, it should be alternative spending reductions.”

“The president keeps saying that the spending cuts in sequestration would be tough on the fragile economy, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem taking money out of the economy by taxes,” explained Mr. Knudsen. “Keynesians always do that — they fight against taking money out of the private sector with spending cuts, but have no problem doing it by raising taxes.” MILLER: Obama’s Insatiable Appetite for Taxes http://bit.ly/WZGGlAEmily Miller David A. Fahrenthold reports that the actual impact of a historic $37.8 billion federal spending cut in April 2011 was often negated by accounting gimmicks that “cut” programs that, in fact, had already been canceled.

“In some areas, they did bring significant cutbacks in federal spending… But the bill also turned out to be an epic kind of Washington illusion. It was stuffed with gimmicks that made the cuts seem far bigger — and the politicians far bolder — than they actually were.”

“Today, an examination of 12 of the largest cuts shows that, thanks in part to these gimmicks, federal agencies absorbed $23 billion in reductions without losing a single employee.”

“Many of the cuts we put in were smoke and mirrors,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a hard-line conservative now in his second term. “That’s the lesson from April 2011: that when Washington says it cuts spending, it doesn’t mean the same thing that normal people mean.”

“To sketch the bill’s biggest impacts, The Washington Post focused on the 16 largest individual cuts. Each, in theory, sliced at least $500 million from the federal budget. Together, they accounted for $26.1 billion, two-thirds of the total… there were at least seven where the cuts caused only minimal real-world disruptions or none at all.”

“The Post’s analysis found five large cuts that turned out to be very real… None of them actually caused an agency in Washington to shed federal personnel. Instead, they reduced the money that passed through those agencies to state and local projects.” Many 2011 federal budget cuts had little real-world effect http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/many-2011-federal-budget-cuts-had-little-real-world-effect/2013/02/09/11938e3e-6bc6-11e2-a396-ef12a93b4200_story.htmlDavid Fahrenthold budgetcuts2Brian_Empric Carl J. Schramm (@CarlSchramm), contributor at the 4% Growth Project and a recognized leading authority on entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth, asks, “What if the economy never recovers?”

“It is common to hear people discuss 2% annual growth and 8% unemployment as the ‘new normal’… Perhaps most alarming is that Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 have never known what it’s like to participate in a robust, growing, economy.”

“The sentiment felt today is not unprecedented in history. During the Great Depression there was likewise a feeling that recovery might never come. It is assumed that we now really understand the events of 1929 and how the near decade long Depression finally came to an end. Clearly we do not; if we did, we would have pulled ourselves out of the current predicament by now.”

“Through a good deal of ill-advised, ideological policymaking — including expanding public debt and a raft of novel regulatory ways to insert the government into the day-to-day lives of citizens and the decisions of business — the Roosevelt administration prolonged the American Depression well past the recovery that Europe enjoyed beginning in 1933… Many mistakenly believe that the war, with its need for soldiers and munitions workers and new deficit spending, solved the Depression. Without the war we might have had something like today’s jobless, quasi-recovery.”

“If there is no deus ex machina solution today (i.e., we don’t have a war) and America continues to spend more on the public sector than our society can possibly support at current levels of growth (growth being inversely influenced by the size of the nation’s deficit spending), will we ever see full employment again? It seems a certainty that higher taxes on those willing to risk capital by investing in new industrial infrastructure (the motor of private-sector job creation) will surely cause investment financing to become more costly, thus adding to the anti-growth forces.”

“Higher taxes coupled with out-of-control spending are likely to produce another year in which growth won’t happen and jobs creation remains level or falls… If the concomitant cost in all this is that our economy can never again grow at 4% or 5% a year, it will indeed be a bleak future for America’s promise.” Forgetting Prosperity | 4 PercentWhat if the economy never recovers? There's a growing portion of Americans who consider this a real possibility. It is common to hear peo... Dr. Salim Furth, Senior Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, writes about last week’s CBO forecast, which “continued the pattern of predicting a strong recovery just two years away.” There are 3 possible explanations: forecasts are never perfect, factors have contributed to the slow recovery, or the past five years “have been a clinic in bad policymaking.”

“Although CBO’s economic approach is typical among forecasters and historically unbiased, the economy’s persistent failure to launch as predicted raises questions. Are current conditions of persistent slow growth and high unemployment principally the result of bad luck, uncertain global economic conditions, or bad policy?”

“Each year the Outlook embodies the spring-back theory of recessions, with a robust recovery beginning two years away. As Chart 1 exhibits, the boom is always just around the corner—but has not arrived as predicted in the past few years. From 2010 to 2012, annual growth averaged 2.1 percent, which is not enough to diminish the gap between actual and potential GDP.”

“Washington has made large, impactful policies that have negative incentive effects on the private economy, including overhauling the welfare eligibility rules, rewriting the bankruptcy rules for General Motors, pointless tax rebates, harmful tax increases, regulatory uncertainty, sequestration uncertainty, ‘Cash for Clunkers,’ the ‘Cornhusker Kickback,’ blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, funding railroad boondoggles in the desert, Obamacare, and Dodd–Frank.”

“As the economy limps through its fourth year of ‘recovery,’ CBO has further diminished its expectations for the long-term potential of the economy. This can be seen in Chart 2, where the forecast for 2019 GDP has fallen each year since 2010.”

“As discouraging as the new CBO Outlook is, reality will probably be worse unless federal policies improve.” Questions Raised by the CBO ReportAs expected, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Budget and Economic Outlook released today continued the pattern of predicting a stron... CBO chart 1Brian_Empric CBO chart 2Brian_Empric Ori Lewis reports that Benjamin Netanyahu has recently told a group of American Jewish leaders “that new centrifuges Iran was installing for its uranium enrichment program could cut by a third the time needed to create a nuclear bomb.” Based on the parameters of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in late September 2012, this means Iran could have enough material to produce a bomb in about 60-90 days.

“The move underlined Iran's defiance of international demands to scale back the uranium enrichment which Tehran says is for civilian purposes but which could also potentially be used to make material for atomic bombs.”

“Iran's ... nuclear weapons program continues unabated ... I drew a line at the U.N. last time I was there,” Netanyahu said. “They haven't crossed that line but what they are doing is to shorten the time that it will take them to cross that line and the way they are (doing it) is by putting in new, faster centrifuges that cut the time by one third.”

“You have to upgrade the sanctions and they have to know that if the sanctions and diplomacy fail, they will face a credible military threat. That's essential. Nothing else will do the job, and it's getting closer,” Netanyahu said. New #Iran centrifuges could shorten path to atomic bomb: Netanyahu http://reut.rs/YS9ifL #IsraelReuters Top News Rick Santorum writes that Obama and his recent nominees are determined to blur the clear moral lines between right and wrong.

“Iran remains the greatest threat to the security of the United States and its people that exists in the world today. Iran – where ‘Death to America’ chants can be frequently heard on the street and whose leaders have pledged to ‘annihilate’ Israel – continues its aggression.”

“In late January, a former Iranian diplomat defected and told Israeli television that Venezuela is shipping uranium to Iran and the country is only a year away from having a nuclear bomb and would use it against Israel.”

“For those of us who recognize and take these threats seriously, the first weeks of the second Obama administration have been a grim period. The nominations of Chuck Hagel, John Kerry and John Brennan, for the heads of Defense, State and CIA, respectively, have been a reminder that President Obama would prefer a softer, more negotiable stance with Iran than what is required to confront this threat.”

“As a U.S. senator, Hagel voted against sanctions on Iran and refused to sign a letter that labeled Hezbollah a terrorist organization – the same Hezbollah that was linked to a bombing in Bulgaria last summer.”

“Brennan’s views, like Hagel’s, have been even more accommodating of Iran and its ally, Hezbollah. He has tried to remove language like ‘radical Islam’ and ‘jihad’ from the law enforcement and intelligence communities…”

“While Kerry’s anti-war views are well-known from his post-Vietnam days, his friendliness toward our more recent enemies has been less reported. He has been a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for example, and has advocated deeper engagement with bad actors and friends of Iran like Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro and Egypt’s new dictator, Mohamed Morsi.”

“These three – Hagel, Kerry and Brennan – along with President Obama, are what Barry Rubin, Middle East expert and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal, calls ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’

“Instead of drawing clear moral lines against what we know to be the evil and very serious threat of Iran, these four have a history of blurring, of seeking to engage, of negotiating and of ‘appealing to moderate elements.’ Given the aggressive nature and deadly threat we face, the thought of where these four will lead us is downright scary.” My latest: Getting Serious with Iran. http://ptrtvoic.es/WTObsURick Santorum Conservatives have not reacted favorably to the formation of Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project super PAC. Nate Silver analyzes the previous two rounds of Republican Senate primaries and determines that “money is usually the least pressing problem for the incumbents and other establishment-backed candidates whom Mr. Rove’s group might be inclined to support.”

There is a small correlation between share of funds raised and margin of victory, but “the relationship is much weaker than it is in general elections for the Senate, when fund-raising totals have about twice as much power to predict the margin between the Democratic and Republican candidates.”

“The table below reflects 23 Senate races between 2010 and 2012 in which an establishment-backed candidate squared off against an insurgent candidate in a Republican Senate primary…the overall message from the data should be reasonably clear. The establishment candidates substantially outraised the insurgents, by an average of $4.3 million to $1.2 million… And yet, the insurgent candidates won 11 of 23 races, or nearly half the contests.”

“The voters who do turn out in Republican Senate primaries are likely to be highly informed consumers of conservative-friendly news media outlets such as talk radio, prime-time shows on Fox News and conservative magazines and blogs. They may also weigh the endorsements of prominent conservative politicians and organizations. An insurgent candidate who is presented in a favorable light in these outlets may have plenty of ability to reach her target voters, even if she is spending little or nothing on paid advertisements and outreach efforts.

“Mr. Rove’s efforts could backfire, therefore, if they result in the insurgent candidate receiving more sympathetic treatment through these channels; the amount of so-called ‘earned media’ that the insurgent receives could outweigh the extra advertisements that the establishment candidate is able to afford.”

“The intuition is simply that it may be dangerous to raise the profile of an insurgent candidate for whom a little extra money and exposure could go a long way.”

“Republican voters have already been rejecting these candidates despite their overwhelming advantage in paid media placements, and often because they are viewed as too much a part of the Washington establishment. It will take more than a new super PAC for Mr. Rove to earn back their trust.” [new article] New Rove Group Could Backfire on G.O.P. http://nyti.ms/12nnM7xNate Silver nate silver tableBrian_Empric James Taranto interviews former Justice Department Civil Rights division attorney and voting-rights expert Hans von Spakovsky about the liberal campaign to expand the electoral rolls via the Voter Empowerment Act of 2013—and why Obama is on board.

“In December, some ‘three dozen of the most powerful liberal advocacy groups, including union organizations,’ held a strategy session, he says, citing a report from the liberal magazine Mother Jones. They agreed to ‘oppose all voter integrity efforts, things like voter ID,’ to push for federal legislation requiring states to permit voter registration on Election Day, and to institute ‘automatic’ voter registration.”

“They basically want to use the government to do Democratic voter outreach and voter registration for them,” Mr. von Spakovsky says. “They believe that if they can get, for example, everyone registered to vote who is currently getting government benefits like welfare . . . then that will somehow get them more votes at the polls and make it easier to win elections.”

“A Pew Center study found that in 2008—when, as Mr. von Spakovsky reminds me, ‘we had the highest turnout in a presidential election since the 1960s’—the average wait time was 10 to 20 minutes. In 2012, according to an MIT study, Florida had the longest average wait time, 45 minutes. Long waits can be a problem in big cities, but officials ‘can easily fix that themselves, without any federal help, by reducing the precinct sizes.’”

“The left is constantly working on these voting issues,” Mr. von Spakovsky says. “They have dozens of organizations, with a lot of money.” The goal, he says, is “to change the rules to give them an advantage in elections. The other side of the political aisle just doesn't do that.”

“They keep trying to scare black voters into thinking that these voter ID laws are an attempt to take away the right to vote,” Mr. von Spakovsky says. “We know that's not true. The experience of states that have had voter ID laws in place for [several] years, like Georgia and Indiana, shows that it does not suppress the vote of black voters; it doesn't in any way keep them out of the polls.” My Weekend Interview with Hans von Spakovsky: The Coming Battle Over the Ballot Box http://on.wsj.com/ULYPVLJames Taranto David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman write that the courts would no more allow government to undermine the Second Amendment than the First. It doesn’t matter if the American people support Obama’s proposed gun-control measures, because “constitutionally protected rights are guarded with particular vigor precisely when public opinion turns against them.”

“Could there be a better illustration of the cultural divide over firearms than the White House photograph of our skeet-shooting president? Clay pigeons are launched into the air, but the president's smoking shotgun is level with the ground. This is not a man who is comfortable around guns. And that goes a long way toward explaining his gun-control agenda.”

“The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Heller v. District of Columbia confirmed that the Second Amendment means what it says: ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’… After Heller and its follow-on case, McDonald v. Chicago, which applied the Second Amendment rights to the states, what government cannot do is deny the individual interest in self-defense. As a legal matter, that debate is settled.”

“While the courts are still sorting out Heller's implications, politicians should not assume that they have a free hand to restrict private gun ownership. Decades of case law interpreting and applying the other provisions of the Bill of Rights show that there are hard-and-fast limits on gun control.”

“The government cannot abridge constitutionally protected rights simply to make a symbolic point or because it feels that something must be done.”

“A state cannot circumvent the right to a free press by requiring that an unfriendly newspaper carry millions in libel insurance or pay a thousand-dollar tax on barrels of ink—the real motive, in either case, would be transparent and the regulation struck down. How could the result be any different for the right to keep and bear arms?”

“At bottom, the Constitution requires sensible and effective regulation of guns that respects and upholds this most fundamental right. Policies motivated by nothing more than discomfort with firearms, often born of a lack of experience, fall far short.” Me and @DavidRivkin in @WSJopinion: Gun Control and the Constitution http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323951904578290460073953432.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTopAndrew M. Grossman Obama shoots skeetBrian_Empric Amity Shlaes (@AmityShlaes), who directs The 4% Growth Project, is the author of the new book “Coolidge,” a reexamination of President Calvin Coolidge and the 1920s. She argues that Republicans pursuing small government and big results may want to consider a strategy of not just thinking small, but like Coolidge, being small too.

“The Grand Old Party’s abiding affection for a ‘bigger and better’ presidency isn’t entirely logical. After all, the Obama presidency commenced with an effort to reenact the Hundred Days. Yet President Obama’s first-term economic performance itself was not ‘big’ but mediocre, tiny even. Perhaps Republicans should consider whether inaction on the part of the White House can be desirable. Perhaps, led by Republicans, the United States could benefit from trying out an unfashionable idea: the small presidency.”

In the election of 1920, Warren Harding and his running mate Calvin Coolidge “coolly campaigned on the humdrum, underwhelming motto of ‘normalcy,’ meaning a reduction in uncertainty.”

“The White House was no bully pulpit; the Republican elephant should not be an elephant in a china shop. After winning the presidency, Harding continued to endorse inaction. ‘No altered system will work a miracle,’ Harding told the crowds at his March 1921 inauguration. ‘Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of the proven system.’ Harding wanted to ensure that government did less so that commerce might enjoy free range.”

“But… Harding was not really cut out to be a small president. His personality was big, and he tended to do things in a big way… Even when it came to legislating smaller government, Harding tended to favor a big style, demanding extra sessions of Congress to implement his agenda.”

The silent Coolidge became president in August 1923 when Harding died unexpectedly, and after finishing Harding’s term, he was elected in 1924 with 54% of the vote.

“Coolidge’s aims differed little from Harding’s: Indeed, he told the (Washington) Post’s (owner Edward) McLean that he aimed to carry out Harding’s plans ‘to perfection.’ But where Harding had relished the limelight, Coolidge shrank from it. Where Harding had led, Coolidge now delegated. As vice president, the New Englander had struck Washington socialites with his silence, and as president he continued to do so.”

“Many rated Coolidge weak. Some were even astounded that the presidency should come to such a nonentity… And he declined to run for reelection in 1928, forgoing a near-certain chance at victory. That earned him the contempt of his very practical party.”

“By 1929, when Coolidge left Washington, he had completed the legislative tasks Harding had only started. His 50 vetoes had held back the Progressives; his federal budget contained less spending in 1929 than it had in 1924. The harmony between Coolidge’s modest goals and his modest comportment lent the whole undertaking credibility.”

Shlaes believes that many Republican political failures “can be blamed on the party’s unwillingness to try out the small presidency again.”

“In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon similarly blurred the distinction between the two parties when he opted to play economic superhero at Camp David, ending the gold standard and imposing wage and price controls. These policies were popular at the time, but they hurt the party for decades: ‘We are all Keynesians now,’ Nixon’s phrase, too often meant we were all Democrats as well. Ronald Reagan, strong as he was, also fits in here. We can see some of Coolidge in him, for, like Coolidge, he cut taxes, looked away from details, and delegated routinely. But his willingness to permit continued federal spending produced a record of deficits that would undermine the Republican reputation for fiscal probity.” The Small Presidencywrites on NRO: Action is something Americans of both parties demand of their presidents these days. This is natural for Democrats, whose ...

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Wednesday's Write-up


Happy 102nd Birthday to the 16th Republican President -- Ronald Reagan (photo from The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation)

@ColeToon

View the story "Wednesday's Write-up (2/6/13)" on Storify Wednesday's Write-up (2/6/13) http://theintransigentconservative.blogspot.com Storified by Brian Empric· Wed, Feb 06 2013 16:10:07 Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (research psychiatrist and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center) writes that President John F. Kennedy's dream of replacing state mental hospitals with federally funded community mental-health centers (CMHCs) is now a hugely expensive nightmare, and the federal government has effectively destroyed the mental illness treatment system.

“President Kennedy's proposal was historic because the public care of mentally ill individuals had been exclusively a state responsibility for more than a century. The federal initiative encouraged the closing of state hospitals and aborted the development of state-funded outpatient clinics in process at that time.”

“It has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. In fact, it failed because it did not provide care for the sickest patients released from the state hospitals. When President Ronald Reagan finally block-granted federal CMHC funds to the states in 1981, he was not killing the program. He was disposing of the corpse.”

“Approximately half of the mentally ill individuals discharged from state mental hospitals, many of whom had family support, sought outpatient treatment and have done well. The other half, many of whom lack family support and suffer from the most severe illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have done poorly… According to multiple studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center, these untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10% of all homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings), constitute 20% of jail and prison inmates and at least 30% of the homeless.”

“Altogether, the annual total public funds for the support and treatment of mentally ill individuals is now more than $140 billion… The evidence is overwhelming that this federal experiment has failed, as seen most recently in the mass shootings by mentally ill individuals in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. It is time for the federal government to get out of this business and return the responsibility, and funds, to the states.” E. Fuller Torrey: Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill http://on.wsj.com/Xk2jcmOpinion & Commentary Jonathan S. Tobin writes that Michigan congressman Justin Amash thinks that we should mind our manners when tweeting about the abhorrent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of a tyrannical, terrorist regime and an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.

“Republican Justin Amash is a second generation Palestinian-American and is apparently under the impression that any comparison of even one of the vilest figures on the international stage to a monkey is a sign of racism against Persians or perhaps prejudice against Muslims and Arabs.”

“Race is the third rail of American politics and any comment that smacks of hatred is abhorrent. But the attempt to depict Ahmadinejad as a victim of Western prejudice lacks credibility. The day that Americans can’t crack wise about a purveyor of hatred is one in which we not only have lost our sense of humor but also our moral compass.”

“Indeed, the problem with Ahmadinejad is that too many Americans don’t take the hatred and the existential threat his regime poses to Israel as well as to the security of the world seriously because he is a comic figure and so easily lampooned.”

“Amash is probably trying to use McCain’s tweet to further the popular idea that American Muslims and Arabs are suffering under the burden of prejudice. Though the post-9/11 backlash is more myth than reality, it would have been a terrible thing had McCain actually slurred Muslims or Persians. But he didn’t. He just made a joke about Ahmadinejad and the poor primate that is alleged to have been strapped into a rocket by his terrorist masters… Amash’s faux outrage about the insult directed at the Iranian president tells us more about his priorities than it does about those of McCain.” A nation that can't joke about a hatemonger has lost its sense of humor & its moral compass. thttp://goo.gl/TxcCoJonathan S. Tobin So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week? "Iran launches monkey into space" http://news.yahoo.com/iran-launches-monkey-space-showing-missile-progress-003037176.htmlJohn McCain Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?John McCain Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes. “@SenJohnMcCain: Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?”Justin Amash Investor’s Business Daily opines that we must deny Egypt military aid after President Mohammed Morsi’s indisputably anti-Semitic remarks - when he called Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” and “blood-suckers” during a television broadcast in 2010.

“We know that Morsi is the Mideast darling of this administration. The Muslim Brotherhood honcho was groomed by the State Department to replace longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

“But his viciously anti-Semitic remarks, recorded on Egyptian TV not long before he took power, should instantly disqualify him from such military aid.”

“Dear Brothers,” he exhorted Egyptian Muslims, “we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all who support them.”

“Last year, the administration shipped the first of a batch of 20 new F-16 fighter jets and 125 Abrams M1A1 tanks to Egypt… It plans to deliver the entire order to Morsi by the end of this year.”

“Morsi, further, has formalized ties with Hamas and Tehran, sworn enemies of Israel. At the same time, he's threatened to torpedo the Camp David pact by referendum, knowing the majority of Egyptians favor tearing up the 30-year peace deal.”

“Before the regime in Cairo receives any more military aid, the president must condemn its Jew-bashing hate speech and certify that it's upholding both the spirit and the letter of the Camp David accords.” No F-16s For Bloodthirsty Anti-SemitesMideast: With the discovery of a video of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi condemning Jews and Israel, Obama should immediately halt shi... @DavidLimbaugh argues that the Senate must not confirm Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense if they believe he is ill-equipped to advise Obama on national security issues and would weaken America.

“Notwithstanding former Sen. Chuck Hagel's diminished view of the post – ‘I won't be in a policymaking position’ -- the secretary of defense is an exceedingly important position and must be filled with someone who understands the complexity and gravity of the threats we face.

“In his testimony at his confirmation hearing, Hagel demonstrated a remarkable unwillingness to clarify his past statements, a stunning misapprehension of the identity, intentions and capabilities of our enemies, and a disturbing ignorance of the critical subject matter on which he would be advising the president.”

“Under intense questioning, he wouldn't concede that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps -- one of the worst exporters of terrorism in the world and responsible for killing countless of Americans and supporting the Iraqi insurgency -- is a terrorist entity… How does one advise the president on terrorism when he apparently doesn't understand what it is and who some of its greatest practitioners are?”

“Perhaps most objectionable is Hagel's bigoted accusation that ‘the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people (in Congress).’ When pressed, Hagel wouldn't name any specific people he had in mind, nor did he come close to giving a satisfactory explanation for his disgraceful terminology -- because there is none.” David LimbaughFebruary 04, 2013 Column: The Senate Must Reject Hagel Printer Friendly Tweet The Senate's "advice and consent" role doesn't require it t... In the cover story of The Weekly Standard, Meghan Clyne (managing editor of National Affairs and former speechwriter to Mr. & Mrs. George W. Bush) believes that we need a better argument to younger voters against the massive federal debt. The two major consequences of excessive debt – increased borrowing costs and economic stagnation – will be most painful for today’s young Americans.

“Politicians are not known for originality. In their public speech, most cling to the security of clichéd stock phrases the way toddlers hold fast to threadbare blankets.”

“But while ‘our children’ are the favorite—and often the only—reason offered to whip debt now, this rhetorical standard seems stubbornly ineffective. Our debts are still here, still growing, with no solution in sight.

“Why does this ubiquitous line fail to spur Americans to demand fiscal reform? In part because it is poorly suited to those who most need convincing: younger Americans… According to a Pew Research Center analysis of national exit-polling data, younger voters also strongly prefer more expansive government: 59 percent of voters aged 18-29 said ‘government should do more to solve problems,’ compared to 35 percent among the 65-and-older group.”

“The young women who supported Obama because he forced employers to fund their preferred methods for not having children seem particularly unlikely to be persuaded by calls for generational forward-thinking.”

“The debts we face now are not like any debts we have seen before. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has spiked in the past only during wars or major crises like the Great Depression… Our deficits today, and our projected debt over the next two decades, are not climbing in response to catastrophes. They are not projected to come back down.”

“Should the government have to pay significantly more to satisfy lenders concerned about its creditworthiness—or about the Federal Reserve inflating away the debt—American students, home buyers, entrepreneurs, drivers, and shoppers will pay more for their loans, too… Americans in their early 30s or younger are thus most likely to be taking out mortgages right around the time interest rates could begin skyrocketing as America’s debt becomes unmanageable.”

“When politicians tell the nation, including young voters, that the consequences of government’s reckless borrowing will be borne by ‘our children and grandchildren,’ they’re peddling a dangerous deception. If you’re alive and working now, you will bear those consequences.”

“If growing debts prolong our economic stagnation—extending today’s high unemployment, suppressed wages, and anemic growth—the results could be devastating for today’s younger Americans… Researchers have observed that most wage growth and job mobility happen in the first 10 years of a person’s career; for young people now in that crucial stretch, years of debt-induced economic languor (not to mention recession) could be poisonous to their lifetime earning prospects.”

“All of this adds up to a dire warning that should be heeded above all by the young Americans whose aspirations are most likely to be crushed by our fiscal mismanagement. But it is unlikely to be, as long as our politicians insist that the reason to control our debt is our ‘children and grandchildren.’ This throwaway line may appeal to older Americans, but they already vote for candidates who promise to cut spending and reform entitlements. It now desperately needs to be supplemented with an honest, fact-based argument aimed at the self-interest of younger voters.” Abandon 'the Children'Politicians are not known for originality. In their public speech, most cling to the security of clichéd stock phrases the way toddlers h... Neil Irwin writes that another $1 trillion deficit – the gap between what America is capable of and what it is actually producing – is getting worse, not better, and will widen even further this year.

“Potential GDP is the CBO’s best guess of what the U.S. economy is capable of churning out. If almost all the people who wanted a job had one, if factories were running at their capacity, if office building and shopping malls were full, our collective national output would be the dark blue line.” (see chart below)

“Yes, the economy has been growing for the last 3½ years. But the ‘output gap,’ the difference between what we’re capable of producing and what we’re actually producing, hasn’t actually closed.”

“Add it all up, and this is the scary vision of the economy presented by the CBO data: We had a really bad downturn in 2008-2009. Since then, we’ve been growing, but we haven’t made up the lost ground. Instead, in 2012 and 2013, we are set to lose further ground rather than make it up. And we’re producing below our potential even after adjusting for the fact that our potential was damaged by the recession.” CBO-GDP and Potential GDPBrian_Empric The most depressing graph in the new CBO report, and the other trillion dollar deficit. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/06/the-most-depressing-graph-in-the-new-cbo-report/Neil Irwin Stuart Rothenberg (editor & publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report) notes that the odds are against Senate Democrats in 2014, with 21 seats to defend. Republicans must win 20 out of 35 races to regain a majority in the Senate, holding our 14 seats and flipping 6 Democratic seats.

There are 6 seats currently held by Democrats in states where Romney beat Obama by double-digits: Montana (+13.7%), Alaska (+14.0%), Louisiana (+17.2%), South Dakota (+18.0%), Arkansas (+23.7%), and West Virginia (+26.8%).

“The biggest factor in how the cycle turns out probably isn’t candidate recruiting, fundraising or the number of open seats, though each will affect the fight for the Senate next year. It is almost certainly going to be President Barack Obama’s popularity and the electorate’s sense of how he is doing.”

“With Senate contests next year in four (six) strongly anti-Obama states, Democrats can’t afford a second Obama midterm election with a national electorate that wants to send a message of dissatisfaction with the president.”

“The president isn’t on the ballot next year, so the only way for anti-Obama voters to express their opinion of the president is to vote against his party’s Senate nominees. And that makes Senate seats in anti-Obama states in 2014 much more difficult to hold than Senate seats in anti-Obama states were in 2012.” Rothenberg: Obama Looms Large Over Democrats' 2014 Fight to Retain the Senate http://roll.cl/11DELXw via @StuPoliticsRoll Call Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman report that Florida Governor Rick Scott is internally budgeting $100 million for his reelection campaign next year, if Charlie Crist is the opposing nominee.

“Scott’s 2014 campaign — possibly pitting him against party-switching former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist as the Democratic candidate — won’t just be a jacked-up version of the 2010 version, knowledgeable Republicans said. In addition to darkening the sky with paid media, Scott’s team is looking at the possibility of creating a state-specific data and analytics division, either within the campaign or at the Republican Party of Florida.”

“Crist, who currently leads in Democratic primary polling, has not said definitively that he will run for governor again in 2014. At least a handful of other Democrats are considering the race, including former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, state Sen. Nan Rich and former Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the 2010 Democratic nominee.”

“Polls show Scott is in a dangerous predicament: a Quinnipiac University poll in December pegged his approval rating at just 36 percent. Last month, the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling put that number slightly lower, at 33 percent. PPP found Scott trailing Crist by 14 percentage points in a general election.”

“The biggest reason not to count Scott out, Republicans say, is the uncertainty surrounding his Democratic opposition. Crist may be polling strongly now, but Republicans believe the ex-governor is vulnerable to attacks on his glaring political flip-flops and his connection to a campaign finance scandal within the state GOP.” Embattled Rick Scott plans $100M campaign vs. Charlie Crist: http://politi.co/X2S67RPOLITICO

Friday, February 1, 2013

Friday’s Florilegium


@AUG_RickMcKee

View the story "Friday’s Florilegium (2/1/13)" on Storify Friday’s Florilegium (2/1/13) http://theintransigentconservative.blogspot.com Storified by Brian Empric· Fri, Feb 01 2013 19:57:57 Investor’s Business Daily Editorial opines about Obamanomics.

“According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the economy ‘unexpectedly’ declined 0.1% in last three months of 2012, the first decline since early 2009.

“The Obama administration, naturally, tried to look for scapegoats, this time settling on Hurricane Sandy and Republican-induced uncertainty over the ‘fiscal cliff’ outcome.”

“Liberals were also quick to blame alleged spending cuts… An interesting theory. Except that while the BEA says defense spending declined in Q4, overall federal spending was up $31 billion compared with Q4 2011 and up $98 billion compared with Q3 2012, according to monthly spending reports out of the Treasury Department.”

“The lack of good excuses might explain why Obama and Co. are so desperate to put a positive spin on the numbers.

“Democratic Party communications director Brad Woodhouse actually tweeted that this was ‘the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you'll ever see.’”

“That's one way of looking at it… Another is that slow to non-existent growth has become the new normal thanks to Obama's growth-choking policies, with the economy consistently underperforming expectations.” As GDP Falls, President Obama Runs Out of Excuses http://bit.ly/TcLtzKIBDeditorials Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook also expounds about the lack of fourth quarter growth.

“The federal government reported Wednesday that the U.S. economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012, but not to worry. The report is better than it sounds, the stock market is rocking, and in any event the Federal Reserve will take the news as another reason to keep both feet pressed firmly on the monetary accelerator. Bad economy=more Fed cowbell=higher stock prices. Risk on, baby.”

“The government spending decline deserves a word because the Keynesians are using it to call for more ‘stimulus.’ The national income accounts include a Keynesian bias that equates higher government spending with growth, no matter how wasteful the spending. Thus the spending blitz of 2009-2010 gave a fillip to GDP, though not a sustainable one.”

“The real story is that the Keynesians promised that the stimulus would kick-start the economy to a higher growth plane. It hasn't. Growth has sputtered in each of the last three years, and for all of 2012 was only 2.2%. That's barely above 1.8% in 2011, which was below 2.4% in 2010. The biggest loser in all of this should be the notion that temporary bursts of government spending can produce durable economic expansions.”

“The Keynesian explanation is that we're still recovering from the financial panic, though it's worth recalling that in January 2010 the Fed predicted that growth in 2012 would be 3.5% to 4.5%, not 2.2%.” As Contractions Go . . . http://on.wsj.com/TZibX2Opinion & Commentary Jeff Bergner (former Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Chief of Staff for Senator Richard Lugar) writes that claims to support a 'scalpel' over a 'meat ax' for making spending cuts become excuses for doing nothing.

“Targeted reductions would be welcome, but the current federal budget didn't drop from the sky. Every program in the budget—from defense to food stamps, agriculture, Medicare and beyond—is in place for a reason: It has advocates in Congress and a constituency in the country. These advocates won't sit idly by while their programs are targeted, whether by a scalpel or any other instrument. That is why targeted spending cuts have historically been both rare and small. And in a government as closely divided as today's, there is virtually no prospect for meaningful targeted spending cuts.”

“Each reduction of 1% in the $3.6 trillion federal budget would yield roughly $36 billion the first year and would reduce the budget baseline in future years. Even with modest reductions, this is real money.”

“So let's give up the politically pointless effort to pick and choose among programs, accept the political reality of current allocations, and reduce everything proportionately. No one program would be very much disadvantaged. In many cases, a 1% or 3% reduction would scarcely be noticed. Are we really to believe that a government that spent $2.7 trillion five years ago couldn't survive a 3% cut that would bring spending to ‘only’ $3.5 trillion today?” Jeff Bergner: The Case for Across-the-Board Spending Cuts http://on.wsj.com/114JuBcWSJ Politics Henry I. Miller (Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution) writes that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson epitomizes the “erosion of transparency in government, wasteful spending, burdensome regulation, and waning trust in the integrity of the public sector” that continues to depress economic growth.

“Jackson – who has just announced her resignation — seems unaware that regulation has costs, direct and indirect; that regulators should strive to limit the intrusiveness of oversight to the level that is necessary and sufficient; and that her agency has myriad deficiencies in both policies and personnel.”

“A recent analysis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute estimated that the annual cost of compliance with EPA regulations alone is more than a third of a trillion dollars.”

“Some of the most onerous policies introduced on Jackson’s watch include stricter gas-mileage standards, an increase in the amount of ethanol in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent and more stringent ambient air standards under the Clean Air Act. Particularly damaging was an EPA rule finalized in February 2012 that created new emissions standards for coal- and oil-fired electric utilities.”

“Because many EPA policies and actions torture both statutes and common sense to a degree that approaches malfeasance, it’s no surprise that the agency is regularly reined in by the federal judiciary.”

“In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17.”

“EPA Administrator Jackson recently announced that she would resign in February — but only after yet another agency scandal, one that involved her personally. Under various aliases, she has maintained several secret government email accounts that she uses to conduct agency business, apparently to obscure her involvement in various agency actions.”

“In so many ways, EPA pollutes the cause of transparent, effective government. It’s hard to imagine a successor to Lisa Jackson who would be a worse steward of the environment, but I’m sure President Obama will do his best to find one.” The EPA's Lisa Jackson: The Worst Head of the Worst Regulatory Agency, Ever - ForbesLisa P Jackson speaking at the press conference where she was nominated as EPA head. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) President Obama and his mi... Lee Smith asks if the Obama administration does not hold itself accountable, how can our adversaries know they will pay a price when they kill Americans?

“One thing Hillary Clinton got right in her testimony before Congress last week: ‘When America is absent,’ she said, ‘there are consequences.’ But the administration she served has chosen to be absent, and we are seeing the consequences play out, from North Africa to the Levant, where the unchecked flow of weapons, experienced jihadist fighters, and Salafist ideology is reshaping the regional balance of power—and tilting it against the United States.”

“Obama’s desire to disengage from the Middle East was driven at first by his politically useful cartoon version of Bush’s Iraq, a ‘quagmire’ that he wished to avoid at all costs. But now, at the beginning of his second term, Obama seems to fear U.S. intervention of any kind. Indeed, his administration’s reluctance to do any follow-up work in Libya after the initial bombing left a weak, democratically elected, non-Islamist Libyan government to fend for itself, which has produced a region-wide catastrophe.”

“Indeed, two years into the Arab revolutions, it is perhaps most accurate to understand the uprisings across the region not as fights against corruption or struggles for dignity or democracy. Rather, the Arab Spring is a series of astonishingly successful battles against Arab security services.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-vacuum_697833.html?nopager=1TWS—White House vacuum in the ME, from... http://fb.me/1QPpQXsmOLee Smith Karl Rove writes that demography isn't destiny, because nothing is permanent in politics—and assuming that it is will likely make liberal Democrats overreach again.

“Many are arguing these days that President Obama has forged a new majority coalition of women, minorities, young people and upscale cultural liberals so large and durable that he can do what no president has done before—pursue a very liberal agenda without serious opposition or defections from his own party.”

“By some measures, voters are less liberal today than they were four years ago. In the 2008 exit poll, 51% said ‘government should do more to solve problems’ while 43% felt ‘government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.’ In 2012, 43% said ‘government should do more’ and 51% believed ‘government is doing too many things.’”

“Voters age 18-29 were those most likely to move away from Mr. Obama between 2008 and 2012, and Republican identification generally increases as people graduate college, start work and begin families. Of those who were 18-29 years old in the 1972 election, 47% were Democrats, 26% Republicans and 28% independents. By 2012, these same voters (now ages 58-69) were roughly 37% Democratic, 34% Republican and 29% independent. They backed Mr. Romney by 51%-47%.” About that 'Permanent Democratic Majority'...http://on.wsj.com/UEJmV1Karl Rove Frank Newport (Gallup's Editor in Chief) publishes the lists of the top 10 most conservative, most liberal, and most moderate states in the union. There is not much surprise in Gallup’s findings: “The most conservative states are in the South, Midwest, and Mountain West, while the most liberal are on the East or the West Coast.”

“The top 10 conservative states are all red states that vote reliably Republican in national elections, all located in the nation's Southern, Midwestern, and Mountain West regions. These include (in addition to Alabama, North Dakota, and Wyoming) Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Arkansas. There is not, however, a perfect correlation between ideology and party. Three of the 10 most Republican states -- Kansas, Montana, and Alaska -- do not rank among the most conservative states. And Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas rank in the top 10 conservative states but not the 10 most Republican.”

“Overall, Americans in 2012 remained slightly more likely to identify as conservative (38%) than as moderate (36%) or as liberal (23%), a pattern that reflects the general consistency in ideological self-reports over recent years.”

“In 2012, 69% of conservatives either identified as Republican or leaned Republican, meaning that three in 10 did not follow the predicted partisan pattern.” Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States: http://www.gallup.com/poll/160196/alabama-north-dakota-wyoming-conservative-states.aspx?utm_source=add_this&utm_medium=addthis.com&utm_campaign=sharing#.UQuw-w4qAiY.twitterGallup Biz Journal http://www.gallup.com/poll/160196/alabama-north-dakota-wyoming-conservative-states.aspx#mapsnippet1Brian_Empric Jonathan Easley reports that Fox News personality and radio host Geraldo Rivera is contemplating a run as a Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey in 2014.

“Rivera could face a tough primary challenge, however, with reports suggesting that Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick of Westfield, state Sen. Joe Kyrillos of Monmouth County and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are all weighing bids for the GOP ticket.

“No official Republican contenders have emerged so far, and none have much of a national profile. New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican senator since the 1970s.” Geraldo Rivera "truly contemplating" running for New Jersey Senate. http://bit.ly/12cLpE2Jonathan Easley