Democrats on the Financial Crisis

(via Powerline)

Republicans should move from pro-business to pro-market

That is what Luigi Zingales writes in yesterday's Investor's Business Daily. Arnold Kling calls it going Jeffersonian.

Zingales's argument is based on the following premises:

1) There is a difference between being pro-business and being pro-market.
2) The Republican party is not a pro-market party right now.

He then writes:

Now the financial crisis has created significant discontent. In a survey taken last December, 60% of Americans declared themselves "angry" or "very angry" about the economic situation. If Republicans ignore this popular anger, as the party establishment did last autumn, they leave a powerful and potentially disruptive force in the hands of Democrats. The Democrats could channel popular anger into protectionism, 90% tax rates and onerous new market constraints.
In Republican hands, populism could become a strong force for positive change.

Read the whole thing. In my opinion, this is the only way forward for the GOP, and is why I think that a Romney nomination might be the real catastrophe for the GOP.

The President is "addicted to compromise"

That's according to NBC news White House correspondent Chuck Todd, citing as evidence the fact that the President seems to be more concerned with satisfying Olympia Snowe than the left wing of his party when it comes to the health care debate.

My take is that he would love to please the left wing of his party, because he is part of the left wing of his party, but the political reality is that the bill has to be something that Snowe can vote for.

Intelligent life has been discovered on Capitol Hill

Paraphrasing:

Lawrence O'Donnell: Do you have some alternative funding mechanism that you would suggest for legislation like this?

Congressman Paul Ryan: Well, I have an alternative bill.

Lawrence O'Donnell: But within the bill that the Democrats are trying to pass, I assume you people will oppose every form of "pay for" that they are using in the bill.

Congressman Paul Ryan: Why would we support a tax increase to support legislation that we absolutely do not support?

Watch the entire four minute interview here:

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Dennis Miller on President's thin skin

Dennis Miller on Bill O'Reilly last night had this great analogy:

Miller: Barack Obama has rabbit ears. It's like in baseball, you know that guy, you can get under his skin from the dugout. You can flip him out a little. He hears too much, he's got rabbit ears.

O'Reilly: So what you're saying is that the pitcher is on the mound and your going "Hey, you're a bum!" And then the pitcher is looking at you and breaks his concentration, and he throws the ball and it gets hit over the fence. That's Barack Obama, any kind of criticism and he reacts to it personally.

Miller: It's more than that. To please him you have to step up to the dugout and scream "each of your pitches is the greatest pitch I've ever seen in my life!"...or he gets rattled.

Beck is hilarious

Last week, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said Fox was not a legitimate news organization and was spreading lies.

In response, Glenn Beck installed a phone in his studio, sent the phone number by certified mail to Anita Dunn, and invited her to call at anytime to correct any errors. He has a staff member sitting next to the phone during every show waiting for the phone to ring.

Last week, Beck was provided with video showing how Anita Dunn had called Mao one of her favorite political philosophers.

On yesterday's show, Beck’s staff member manning the phone is dressed in a Mao suit and hat.

I don't care what you think of him, it's just great TV.

[Update]

And then there was this audio from Obama Manufacturing “Czar” Ron Bloom featured on Beck's show from earlier today:

Generally speaking we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market, or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults only, no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog.

Okay, I need to research the context of this quote, because a lot of free market types might say something like “the idea that we have a free market is nonsense”, but I’m pretty sure that a free market proponent would not say that the free market is nonsense. And what is with the Mao quotes? Can we get a quote from Jefferson, Washington, or Lincoln?

Yet another breakthrough courtesy of non-embryonic stem cells

From Scientific American:

Stem cells so far have been used to mend tissues ranging from damaged hearts to collapsed tracheas. Now the multifaceted cells have proved successful at regrowing bone in humans. In the first procedure of its kind, doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center replaced a 14-year-old boy's missing cheekbones—in part by repurposing stem cells from his own body.

Read the whole thing. Go to the link and scroll down for more Scientific American for more stories in this vein. The magazine doesn't hit you over the head with it, but one common thread in these stories (aside from the miraculous work of the scientists and physicians) is that they involve the use of "adult" stem cells rather than stem cells harvested from embryos.

New Glenn Beck book "shockingly good"

In a book review over at FrontPageMag.com, David Forsmark writes this about Glenn Beck's new book "Arguing with Idiots":

It’s not just good — much of it is really, really good. Shockingly good. It reminded me of the kind of bestsellers that came out in the early 1980s, when free-market thinking made its big comeback, aided by libertarian Robert Ringer’s Restoring the American Dream on the pop-thinking level, and George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty for the more philosophical reader.

But what much of the content of Arguing really reminds me of — and don’t throw things at me — is the late, great Milton and Rose Friedman’s classic of capitalism, Free to Choose. Now, before anyone has a stroke or writes my editor in shock and disdain, I’m not saying Arguing with Idiots is in the league with the book that is one of the five most influential of my life.

However, I do think this book would have made Milton Friedman smile with approval.

He goes on:

“Universal Health Care” is one of the book’s most valuable chapters. Unlike some other segments, such as the one about the Second Amendment, Beck (and his team of writers and illustrators) does more than (very effectively) restate familiar arguments, Beck offers witty asides and on-point illustrations (both literally and figuratively) while presenting a wealth of material that will be new to even well-informed readers and veterans of the political commentary wars. Particularly terrific is a section on how innovative companies are meeting the demand for low-cost insurance and changing the paradigm on how health care is delivered. This is something the current debate is sorely lacking from free-market advocates, who too often are merely opponents of socialized medicine.

When it comes to the debate over whether or not Glenn Beck is good for the conservative movement, I am firmly on the side of "he is good for the movement." He does come across as a clown, but the reality is that he has inspired his audience to read serious books on history and political philosophy and economics. He is not a mouthpiece, he does not recite talking points, and he has broken serious news stories neglected by the mainstream media. For Beck, conservatism and the philosophy of limited government is so much more than "cut taxes", which is too often the only argument many "conservatives" are able to come up with when debating some of these issues. He constantly implores his audience to do their own homework and learn the arguments.

The review ends as follows: "This is a book filled with persuasive arguments that lots of people who argue about such things for a living have never heard. And they need to."

After watching Michael Steele get destroyed by Shep Smith on Fox News in a debate over health care reform, I am thinking that maybe someone should send him a copy of "Arguing with Idiots", so that he can avoid sounding like one himself.

"Penn State and Ohio State did not drive Harvard out of business"

That is the argument made by Jeffey Toobin on Bill Maher's Real Time back on September 18th.

He made this point to demonstrate that the public option is really just an "option", and that public and private can co-exist without the public sector entity driving the private sector entity out of business. On the surface, this is a fairly convincing argument.

But the problem with that argument is as follows:

All of the plans being considered require insurance companies to accept customers with pre-existing conditions. The problem with that is, why would a person buy health insurance before getting sick if they could not be denied coverage once they did get sick?

To solve that problem, the President has proposed a mandate that everyone must purchase coverage. If you don't have insurance, then you will be fined. But that leads to the following question: who will decide whether or not a plan fulfills all of the requirements of the mandate?

Ultimately, those requirements will be outlined by the health care bill and enforced by some agency of the government.

We should be asking questions like, if I wanted to buy a high deductible plan (such as a $10,000 deductible) to cover only unexpected medical expenses, will that kind of plan qualify, or will it be considered a "non-qualified" plan? Will only benefit rich, low-deductible plans be considered "qualified"? And if a plan is deemed to be "non-qualified", won't that effectively force those plans off of the market? And if the Federal government has the power to force certain plans off the market, how is that not a takeover of the industry?

In summary, once they require insurance companies to accept patients with pre-existing conditions, then they must require everyone to buy insurance. Once they can mandate that everyone buy insurance, they will have to decide what kind of insurance is considered a "qualified insurance plan". Once they have that power, then they have effectively taken over the entire industry. So no, it's not "just an option".

An obvious point

After Obama's speech last month before Congress on health care overhaul, I asked "If it is going to be illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition, then why would anyone buy insurance before getting sick. It's like requiring State Farm to insure my home after it has already burned down".

This point is now being made by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the main health care insurance lobbying group in Washington, based on findings in a study conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers. I'm not sure why a study was needed to arrive at this obvious point, but this is how Real Clear Politics describes it.

Since the legislation would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on account of poor health, many people will wait to sign up until they get sick, the industry says. And that will drive up costs for everybody else.

[Update]

Krauthammer agrees: "I think the report is obvious and intuitive."

Granholm's economic cluelessness and insights from Steve Wynn

From yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Michigan Governor made the following statement:

In Michigan, you know, we -- you spend as a consumer $1,200 to $1,600 in every vehicle, if it's a domestically made American vehicle, for health care. Now, that's not what is being spent by other -- for consumers of other products that are not -- that are from other countries, because other countries provide some assistance. There is a partnership there. The full burden of health care is not on the backs of the private sector.

So in summary, the U.S. auto industry cannot compete because in other countries, "the full burden of health care is not on the backs of the private sector."

My question to the Governor is, even if the government paid for everyone's health care, where in the world does she think the money comes from? IT HAS TO COME FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR. All government expenditures are a burden on the private sector, because it's the private sector that will ultimately have to pick up the tab.

She should be honest and admit that she is a rent-seeker who is looking for yet another taxpayer subsidy for the auto industry.

Steve Wynn, on the other hand, was the star of the show, and here are a few quotes from the CEO of Wynn Resorts:

Health care and all of -- and all that other stimulus should have been held back, and the priority should have been job creation. And the most powerful weapon and the tool that the government has for that is its tax policy.

They seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction. And if the government had used its power to restrain its tax collection, they would have given everybody who runs small businesses, large businesses, a chance to hire more people.

Chris, Chris, the economists have had their moment. Really, everybody who has absolutely no experience in insuring people, creating jobs, have had their moment.

Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason, that simple truth has evaded everybody.

The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for their labor, whether it's you and I, Chris, or anybody else.

The people that are paying the price for this juggernaut of federal spending are the middle class and the working class of America. And soaring rhetoric and great speeches, with or without a Teleprompter, aren't going to change the truth. And the truth is the biggest enemy, the biggest obstacle, that working middle class America has is government spending.

Good Limbaugh Interview on Today Show

JAMIE GANGEL: I hate to ruin your reputation.

RUSH: (laughing)

JAMIE GANGEL: But off camera you are polite, you are courteous, you have old-fashioned manners.

RUSH: Absolutely, Jamie.

JAMIE GANGEL: What happens when that microphone goes on?

RUSH: I am the same guy.

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Thanks to NBC and Jamie Gangel for airing this even-handed interview. It's amazing what can be learned by doing some basic reporting, rather than lazily reciting some allegations that were posted on Media Matters.

Part 2 of the interview to air tomorrow.

It's okay to say that Baucus plan will add to the deficit

...according to Ramesh over at NRO.

I completely agree with Ramesh and others who say that the plan will almost certainly not be deficit neutral.

But again, isn't that besides the point? I'm sure that when Castro expropriated all of the private property in Cuba in 1959, that was also a deficit neutral government program.

Harvard Salutes Valedictorian of Class of 2013

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. At a ceremony this morning, officials at Harvard University congratulated the Valedictorian of the Class of 2013, Ted Baker, a freshman from Metuchen, N.J.

Though the honor is typically bestowed at graduation to the senior with the highest cumulative grade point average, University officials said Mr. Baker has shown "remarkable potential" since he arrived on campus early last month. "We are confident that having been recognized as the outstanding scholar in the Class of 2013, Ted will do very well on his first mid-term exams," said one official who preferred to remain anonymous. Mr. Baker reportedly intends to major in either economics or European literature. "Of course, I don't have to decide that until midway through my sophomore year," he commented. "And that's a ways off."

The school also named its salutatorian for the Class of 2013, Jamie Griffin, currently a 6th grader at St. Stanislaus Catholic School in Stockbridge . . . .

Scarborough obliterates Max Blumenthal

There was some excellent TV this morning on Morning Joe at about 7:30AM. Joe Scarborough interviewed Max Blumenthal who made the following arguments:

1) The Republican party has been hi-jacked by extremists who are well outside the mainstream.
2) Most of the inflammatory discourse in politics comes from the right.
3) This has prevented Obama from being able to govern effectively.

Joe asks the question, "why would I, a conservative who believes in small government, support a $700 billion stimulus written by Nancy Pelosi, a cap and trade bill drafted by Henry Waxman, or the health care plan that is going to take over 1/6 of the US economy?"

Blumenthal takes the bait and tells Joe that "you wouldn't have voted for those things because you are a member of the movement that has taken over the party", i.e. the far right-wing extremist movement that Blumenthal says compares Obama to Hitler and Stalin and believes the government is setting up FEMA concentration camps. (Blumenthal even calls Scarborough juvenile and tells him that he needs to be nicer to his guests.)

Of course, anyone who has watched Joe Scarbrough for more than five seconds knows this is completely ridiculous. Scarborough was able to illustrate how opposing Obama's agenda is not in any way extreme or out of the mainstream.

Perhaps the reason the President is having such a difficult time getting his programs through is because he is the one that is operating outside of the mainstream.

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Raising the Customer-Service Complaint to an Art Form

The Bard of Minneapolis, James Lileks, shares with us today an open letter to the head of a big box electronics chain. It begins:

Dear CEO of Best Buy:

You must be so proud.

To which you might well say: why, yes! But have you a specific reason in mind? I do.

And it gets better from there. Read the whole thing.

A case of morals

The list of movie stars and other celebs expressing outrage at the arrest of Roman Polanski for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl (he was 44 at the time) and fleeing justice for three decades continues to grow.

A petition in support of Polanski organized by La Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques begins this way:

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Ah yes, "a case of morals." As if he faced imprisonment for buying a bottle of wine on Sunday in a dry county, or for showing a little skin in one of his movies, or purchasing a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Rather than drugging and sodomizing an 8th grader.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this. The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Sacré bleu! Don't these américain savages realize that film festivals are international cultural events, and therefore beyond the reach of laws, much less bourgeois moralité? And don't they know that Switzerland is a neutral country? (What's that, Pierre? The age of consent in Switzerland is 16? Meaning that what Polanski did would have been a crime even in that "neutral" country? Oh, Pierre, you are clearly a censorious Puritan prude, whose mind is too small to appreciate art.)

Ahem.

The signatories to the SACD petition are mostly European figures whose names I do not recognize, but they do include such Hollywood luminaries as Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, and Jonathan Demme.

Several other big names have signed the petition in support of Polanski put forth by French journalist and Huffington Post columnist Bernard-Henri Levy. Like the SACD petition, Levy's makes much of the fact that Polanski was in Switzerland to receive an award for his cinematic achievements, as if the ability to tell actors where to stand were a legal defense to rape. He also notes, quite accurately, that Polanski has himself suffered, though he does not explain how this gave the director carte blanche to prey on a young girl.

Levy also asserts that his crime would be beyond the statute of limitations in most European countries, forgetting that (1) Polanski confessed to committing child rape in America, not Europe, and (2) Polanski fled the country to avoid his sentencing, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations.

Grotesquely, Levy calls Polanski a "martyr," which is an odd thing to call someone who has spent the last thirty years taking all possible measures to avoid having to suffer for his actions, much less his beliefs. Martyrs by definition face death rather than forsake their beliefs. If Mr. Polanski believes that forcing his 44-year-old body on a barely pubescent girl whom he had drugged was an honorable act, then he should be willing to defend his actions, and face the consequences. A martyr? More like one of the lions.

Levy's petition has been signed by Harrison Ford, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera (who should know better); Taylor Hackford (writer/director of Ray); Jeremy Irons, Sam Mendes (American Beauty); Mike Nichols (Charlie Wilson's War, The Birdcage); Natalie Portman (Harvard class of 2003); and Steven Soderbergh (The Informant, Traffic, the Ocean's Eleven movies).

[English version of the Levy petition; French version with a more complete listing of signers].

Depressing isn't it? To lighten your mood, here's Chris Rock, summing things up nicely:

John Podhoretz has some related thoughts over at The Weekly Standard, and this Mark Steyn column on Polanski is typically informative, astute, and funny.

Congressman Grayson should stop "murdering" people immediately

From the Politico, an aide to Congressman Grayson wrote the following email to a constituent:

As you know, we do support the health care plan and feel failure to act is similar to murdering the uninsured. On the other hand, we respect differences of opinion and I will let him know how you feel.

So again, I ask Congressman Grayson to take action immediately and adopt my health insurance plan for him to use his $31 million personal fortune to buy insurance for at least four or five thousand families for the next year. And just to show how reasonable I am, I am going to allow him to keep a couple of million for him and his family. Not only will he be saving thousands of lives, his staffer will no longer be able to consider him an accessory to mass murder.

Leadership

Senenator Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committe, says he does not plan to read his committee's health care bill before he votes on it.

CNSNews.com reports that, Carper, a member of the self-proclaimed world's greatest deliberative body, explained, “I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life." Carper says he will "probably" read a summary of the bill, written in simpler language, rather than the bill itself.

The reporter goes on to explain that Sen. Jim Bunting (R-Ky) proposed an amendement that would have required the final text of each proposed bill to be available for 72 hours before the committee held its final vote. Last week committee defeated the amendment by a 13-10 vote.

Carper compared the full legislative language of the bill to credit card disclosure documents that he described as “gibberish,” meaning that “you can’t read it and really know what it says.”

When asked if Republican members of the committee should have a chance to read the full text of the bill if they believe they are capable of understanding it, Carper suggested Republicans would only pretend to understand the bill when in fact they would not understand it. “They might say that they’re reading it. They might say that they’re understanding it,” said Carper. “But that would probably be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. It’s hard stuff to understand.”

Carper said if Americans were given the chance to read the actual text of the bill he believes they would decide that it made little sense for either them—or members of Congress—to read such texts because of the difficulty in understanding them.

“I think if people had the chance to read that they’ll say you know maybe it doesn’t make much sense for either the legislators or me to read that kind of arcane language,” said Carper. “It’s just hard to decipher what it really means.”

(CNSnews.com). To sum up, Sen. Carper says that the actual language of the bill is too confusing to be understood by his fellow Democrats, Senate Republicans, or the American people. Clearly it should be passed right away!

Oddly enough, according to Politico, Sen. Carper is currently trying to push his own "moderate" health care plan. No telling if he's actually read it.

Premise of Michael Moore movie is false

Bob Burg has a great blog post about Michael Moore's new movie. He writes:

Dear Mr. Moore, please understand that government colluding with and rewarding special interests who contribute to their re-election campaigns is NOT Capitalism. With all respect, your entire premise is false. Unfortunately, most of America is going to accept your conclusion without even questioning the very false premise upon which it was based. You have a right to your opinion. But, when you have as much influence as you have, you also have a responsibility to understand what is and what isn’t, and to get your premises straight. Remember, by the very nature of having a false premise you can not reach a correct conclusion. Please check your premises.

Rep Grayson is obsessed with Republicans

Congressman Alan Grayson, the guy who said that the Republicans wanted people to "die quickly", appeared on MSNBC last night and called Republicans "knuckle dragging neanderthals" and repeatedly said that the Republicans have "nothing" and "no plan of their own".

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Two points:

1) Regarding his claim that the Republicans have "nothing", he should read this, and this, and maybe this, and this. I assume he would be aware of these proposals since his colleagues wrote them, but if not, it's called Google, and maybe he should have his staff spend more doing research and less time at Kinkos having colorful signs made about how Republicans want people to "die quickly".

2) Doesn't he know that the Democrats have huge majorities in both houses of Congress? The Republicans cannot stop the Democrats from enacting Obamacare. He seems to be obsessed with Republicans, despite the fact that they will be irrelevant if the Democrats can keep everyone in line.

[Update]

I just learned that Alan Grayson is worth about $31 million. Since he claims that 4000 people a month are dying because of lack of health insurance, my suggestion is that he buy health insurance for as many of them as possible right now. If he just takes about 90% of his fortune, he could probably buy a very nice health insurance plan for 4000-5000 families for about a year.