Category: Politics

I’m a bad citizen or my politicians are bad leaders. Guess which is true.

Yesterday was election day, obviously, although even if I wasn’t politically aware, the half-a-dozen campaign fliers I received in each day’s mail for the last month were a signal. I didn’t vote yesterday. The easy answer would be that there were no national offices at stake and local politics don’t interest me. But that’s not why I didn’t vote.

Over the past few years, I’ve developed an improved understanding of governing based on principles of liberty. I don’t want to imply that I’m perfect at voting on those criteria. I’m not, as 2004 demonstrates. Yes, that was a “lesser of two evils” vote, which was a shift from earlier elections when I had an incomplete view¹ of our two major parties. In last year’s election I still held to the “lesser of two evils” theory, but only because I had to vote against George Allen and Tom Davis.

This year I looked over the ballot for the first time on Monday. I’d had little interest because the screaming message on almost every one of those campaign fliers I received was some indignation about illegal immigrants. There is nothing like an unhealthy dose of xenophobia to get me unenthusiastic about a particular campaign. After researching the candidates and their stances on the issues, I couldn’t vote for any of them, for any office. When they best a candidate can offer is a demand that the federal government increase education funding and stop micromanaging education, he won’t earn even a protest vote against the other guy.

So, I didn’t vote yesterday². Typing my name in every race would’ve been tedious and unproductive.

¹ I viewed Democrats with optimism and Republicans with pessimism, as a default. As I learned economics, I quickly figured out that Democrats are idiots. This coincided with the Republican shift into complete lunacy, which I’m not happy about but helped me break my illusions about political parties rather easily.

Basically, I’ve always been a libertarian. I just didn’t know that there was such a thing as libertarian and thought Democrats best exemplified what I care about. For a long time.

² There were no ballot measures to consider. I would’ve voted if there had been any measure, no matter how apparently inconsequential.

We must break the law to defend the law.

In its editorial today, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board demonstrates its abandonment of liberty in favor of authoritarianism and reverence for acting tough. It’s not necessary to go beyond the opening to know that the editors have lost all intellectual credibility:

Democrats welcomed Michael Mukasey as a “consensus choice” for Attorney General only weeks ago, but incredibly his confirmation is now an open question. The judge’s supposed offense is that he has refused to declare “illegal” a single interrogation technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass murderers.

Why the mock scare quotes on illegal? If it’s just one interrogation technique, presumably among many, why worry if it gets singled out and prohibited? Assuming that waterboarding amounts to torture, does it matter how many times it’s been used, or how awful the alleged mass murders committed by the tortured?

But the editors can’t help themselves:

… [All of the Democratic Presidential candidates would] disqualify a man of impeccable judicial temperament and credentials merely because he’s willing to give U.S. interrogators the benefit of the legal doubt before he has top-secret clearance.

Since when do government officials get the benefit of the doubt before prisoners? Last I checked, the government must prove guilt. Until it does, the accused is presumed innocent. It’s quite the anti-conservative stance to trust government first and only.

But it’s possible to give some credibility to the stated position. Judge Mukasey hasn’t reviewed the documents. That means he can’t and shouldn’t rule on whether or not specific U.S. interrogators have engaged in torture. That would be for later inquiry. However, it is possible to state whether or not waterboarding as an interrogation technique constitutes torture, absent any details or facts from alleged instances of its use.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of why voters don’t trust Democrats with national security? In the war against al Qaeda, interrogation and electronic surveillance are our most effective weapons. Yet Democrats have for years waged a guerrilla war against both of these tools, trying to impose procedural and legal limits that can only reduce their effectiveness. Judge Mukasey is merely collateral damage in this larger effort.

The editors are no doubt aware that the question is not the validity of using interrogation and electronic surveillance to uncover threats to the United States. The misdirection is telling about their character, but I’m more concerned with why they would be so opposed to procedural and legal limits. Effectiveness over costs? If that’s your position, be honest and agitate for a police state. You’ll argue what you want without falsely smearing opponents.

There are a few more informative points in the editorial:

Most important, [Mukasey’s] discretion serves the American people by helping to keep our enemies in some doubt about what they will face if they are captured.

Right, because if we say we don’t torture, then they won’t waste time preparing for torture. They’ll spend more time planning ways to kill every American. That’s time they now spend figuring out ways to avoid folding after being tortured interrogated. See, being forthright that we’re moral and humane would mean we lose.

What’s really at stake here is whether U.S. officials are going to have the basic tools required to extract information from America’s enemies.

U.S. officials have always had sophisticated (i.e. not basic) interrogation tools required to extract information. Those sophisticated tools were developed using our intelligence and reliance on the credibility of the information extracted. But the might-is-right crowd have dismissed intelligence in favor of brute force. When you’re too stupid to understand that sophisticated psychological techniques are more effective, you begin to think that torture is good and should be considered a basic tool.

But about that information:

Yet those interrogations have generated “thousands of intelligence reports.”

Thousands of intelligence reports… hmmm. How many of those proved accurate and how many proved to be a say-anything-please-make-the-torture-stop fiction that wasted U.S. resources in pursuit of a dead-end?

As for waterboarding, it is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA’s view seems to be that some version of waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough cases quickly. Press reports say it has been used only against a few high-value al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Zubaydah.

The CIA does not dictate what is and is not a legal interrogation method in the United States, alleged effectiveness notwithstanding. But that doesn’t matter, right? We only use it on deserving individuals. See, those who have been convicted of crimes in a court of law deserve it. Moral relativism, anyone?

It is possible to be serious on the threat facing our nation from enemies without getting hysterical and dismissing the reason our country exists as a quaint relic of the past.

Ignoring the Constitution is not patriotic.

I’m seeing a little bump in attention for Sen. Christopher Dodd’s run for the presidency, thanks to his comments at the latest Democratic get-together on decriminalizing medical marijuana. Interesting, I thought. I haven’t paid attention to the candidates so far because they’re all objectionable. But I really haven’t paid attention to Sen. Dodd. I figured today would be a perfect time to maybe find a dark horse who could make me hold my nose and cast my vote his way. Or not.

While perusing Sen. Dodd’s campaign site, I found every stance he has to be the same ridiculous trust in government through a drastic lack of understanding about economics and results. But I only want to focus on his plan for national service A New American Patriotism:

Chris Dodd believes that with leadership that inspires a new sense of American community, we can face the challenges of the 21st Century with the boldness and optimism that have always been the hallmark of our nation. That is why he is calling for a new American Community Initiative – a comprehensive national service plan that will draw upon the very best of our character to call Americans to service.

“Call Americans to service” is an interesting euphemism for mandatory volunteerism. He offers many prongs to his plan, but a few are worth exploring. For example:

Mandate community service as a requirement for high school graduation.

Every teen’s time will be better spent serving his community in some approved manner, as opposed to allowing the teen’s judgment of how her time should be best spent. Presumably the college of her choice would realize that the extra-curricular activity representing her interests is a poor substitute for the mandatory community service she must now undertake to improve herself the more important community.

Double the size of the Peace Corps and create a Rapid Response Reserve Corps made up of all national service alumni, as well as retired military and National Guard personnel, to respond to disasters and emergencies in America, whenever and wherever they occur.

Engage in national service and you, too, could be recalled to duty whenever and wherever disasters and emergencies occur. Your country needs you more than your personal life needs you.

Dramatically increase the number of AmeriCorps members to 1,000,000 and raise the education award to reflect the skyrocketing cost of tuition.

This is a good idea. I’m sure that increasing the demand for college tuition by having taxpayers subsidize the cost will have no effect on the price of tuition in a market where supply doesn’t change.

Create a new Senior Heroes Program that will provide older Americans with a $1,000 education award to further their own education or that of a deserving child.

This is my favorite, since I can think of no better way to spend $1,000 of taxpayer money than educating senior citizens. We care about seniors. Who cares that spending $1,000 educating 20-year-olds will, inevitably, return more to the community in the long-term than spending $1,000 educating 70-year-olds?

But about that furthering education as a public good: it’s not a public good. If it generates a return of more than $1,000, it will occur without government intervention. If it generates a return of less than $1,000, it doesn’t deserve government intervention. But it’s for the seniors! This warrants a little more detail from Sen. Dodd’s platform:

We can pass on no greater gift to future generations than the lessons of the past. Yet, too often, we fail to draw upon the experience, knowledge and ideas of our greatest generation. A Senior Heroes Program will provide such an opportunity by encouraging retired Americans already living longer, healthier lives to volunteer in our nation’s schools. In exchange for giving 1,000 hours of their time in our nation’s public schools, seniors will earn a $1,000 education award to further their own education or that of a designated child. Under the Dodd plan, Senior Heroes will be eligible to receive this award tax–free.

Interesting new twist, designating the $1,000 to a child. Fine, whatever. It’s for the children! I get it. You want to help your grandkids, right? Serve!

But seriously, 6 months of work for $1,000? Democrats demand that economics be damned in favor of a mandatory minimum wage. Wouldn’t $1 per hour violate such a policy stance in a most abysmal way? I don’t think Sen. Dodd can claim that it’s not a wage. If the volunteer work is so compelling that people aren’t volunteering without the financial incentive, it’s hard to view the $1,000 as a bonus. Why does Sen. Dodd hate seniors?

I will not be voting for Sen. Dodd, on the non-chance that he wins the Democratic nomination. And, yes, the mere proposal of national service A New American Patriotism was enough for me to decide.

Insert random, relevant Orwell reference here.

It’s a fairly effective standard by now that I’m against whatever the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board agitates in favor of. I’d never surrender critical thinking and dismiss its essays without reading the arguments. But if I did, I’d be wrong less often than I’d be right.

For example:

As the Bush Administration winds down, one of its main tasks is preserving Presidential war-fighting powers against poaching by a hostile Congress and expansive judiciary. On this score, last week’s Senate “compromise” on warrantless wiretaps is at best a mixed achievement. In return for Congress’s blessing to continue this surveillance, the White House is ceding some of its Constitutional authority to unelected, unaccountable judges.

Presidential war-fighting powers apparently include the ability to ignore the Fourth Amendment. I missed that in the text of the Constitution, but I’m sure it’s there. Maybe it’s in the Ninth Amendment. Oh, wait…

I do love the mention of unelected, unaccountable judges. Anyone who supports President Bush in his quest for a dictatorial reading of the Constitution has no business challenging anyone as unaccountable, but set that point aside. Judges are certainly accountable to the Congress. And should they really be elected? Opening the rule of law to politics isn’t a particularly conservative position. Of course, the Journal’s editors aren’t really conservatives, in the limited government sense, so the talking point in place of an argument is unsurprising.

On the topic of telecom companies complying with warrantless government requests for information:

The larger principle is whether private individuals or companies should be punished for doing their patriotic duty when requested to do so by the government.

And we’ve reached the point where I stop taking them seriously. We all have a patriotic duty to serve our government. I can’t imagine a more un-American concept.

In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and the Attorney General asked the telecom companies to cooperate in what they told the companies was a legal program.

September 11th? Check. Blind faith in the benevolence of President Bush? Check. Government is always right? Check.

For centuries, the common law presumption has been that private parties should have legal immunity if they comply with such requests.

This sounds suspect, but I’m not an attorney. Wouldn’t companies have attorneys smart enough to request warrants? If they don’t know or ask, they should be immune simply because the government asks? This doesn’t sound correct.

In the absence of evidence that the government’s request is illegal, private actors should be given the benefit of the doubt for cooperating.

Again, obedience should be the default. It’s interesting that the government should always be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Don’t we have our republic specifically because we figured out that such an assumption was foolish?

Of course, if we’re using the preposterously low “in the absence of evidence” as our guide, shouldn’t the telecoms have asked the government to produce a warrant? Wouldn’t the absence of a warrant (“Don’t you worry about that”) be the absence of “the absence of evidence” that the government was engaging in shenanigans?

Imagine a society in which everyone refused such requests for fear of being sued: No airplane passenger would dare point out suspicious behavior by another passenger, and no subway rider would speak up about a suspicious package.

I wonder what they’ve named their straw man. They have to have named him by now, because I’m sure he’ll be around for a long time. It would be tedious to constantly say “hey, you, straw man”.

The airline passenger should and would point out suspicious behavior, but how did that get involved here? The issue is whether the government may instigate – without a warrant – an investigative search of data for alleged suspicious behavior. Set the scenario honestly. The government is going to the individual/company, not the other way around.

[The bill] includes a six-year sunset provision, which makes no sense against a terror threat that is likely to continue for decades.

A decades-long war. Hmm, why would anyone be concerned about setting aside a key Constitutional amendment to give the president broad powers? Gosh, I’m confused.

The great irony here is that, in the name of checking “secret” Presidential power, Congress is giving enormous authority to judges who will also make decisions in secret and never have to answer to the voters.

Unchecked, the president (in general, but President Bush, definitely) would make this decision in secret. When would he answer to voters for his secret exercise of this alleged power? I’m supposed to feel better with less oversight, as long as the kept-in-the-dark voting public can vote with information it doesn’t have? The Constitution is up for a vote?

Yet if the President won’t protect the Presidency, who will?

If the president won’t protect civil liberties, who will? If the Congress won’t protect civil liberties, who will? If the courts won’t protect civil liberties, who will?

The Constitution is wonderful. Politicians should read it.

George Will destroys the argument that the Constitution needs line-item veto authority for the president to make Congress behave.

But were a president empowered to cancel provisions of legislation, what he would be doing would be indistinguishable from legislating. He would be making, rather than executing, laws, and the separation of powers would be violated.

But Mr. Will demonstrates how presidents would misbehave:

And the line-item veto might result in increased spending. Legislators would have even less conscience about packing the budget with pork, because they could get credit for putting in what presidents would be responsible for taking out. Presidents, however, might use the pork for bargaining, saying to individual legislators: If you support me on this and that, I will not veto the bike path you named for your Aunt Emma.

Indeed. It’s the same basic argument as the one given for tax cuts instead of spending cuts. On spending, we’ve already learned that Congress is content to spend future tax receipts if it can’t get them today. Why should we expect future presidents – like members of Congress, politicians every one of them – to find religion on the line-item veto? We may not accurately predict the unintended consequences, but we should be smart enough to know they will occur.

A principled president would simply veto any and all appropriations bills until the Congress can a) trim it down to its legitimate essentials or b) override the veto.

The self-inflicted wound creates temporary sanity?

Michael Kinsley on the AMT:

The alternative minimum tax. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? And it has very bad press. The AMT was invented in 1969 as a way for the government to collect at least something from affluent people who had been a bit too successful at taking deductions and credits on the basic Form 1040. It operates like an extra fence around a maximum-security prison. If they don’t get you the first time, they’ll get you the second.

It would be easy to get indignant here because that’s a ridiculous analysis. It’s impossible to describe those 155 non-taxpayers as “a bit too successful at taking deductions and credits on the basic Form 1040”. Those deductions and credits came about because the politicians were picking winners and losers with giveaways in the tax code. The problem arose because 155 people figured out they could benefit from complexity being harder to manage than simplicity and the extreme inability of politicians to grasp that.

The next paragraph eliminates indignation, almost.

Conceptually, this is all wrong. Tax deductions aren’t (or aren’t supposed to be) goodies distributed like candy on Halloween. Each one should have its own justification. And you are entitled to each one you qualify for. Giving the kids too much candy and then trying to take some of it back is a good way to become unpopular in the neighborhood. The AMT is getting more unpopular every year, as more and more taxpayers fail to make it over that second fence. That group was fewer than 1 percent of taxpayers in 2000 and will be 20 percent in 2010 unless something is done.

There are a few points worth making, but they require going into details. Mr. Kinsley is offering an incomplete summary more than analysis. Fine. But it’s incorrect to assess the AMT’s new victims as failing to make it over the second fence. The AMT is getting unpopular, in the basic populist sense that it arose, because the government is actively pushing people over the first fence. Mr. Kinsley later adds:

The problem with present arrangements isn’t the AMT; it’s Bush’s tax cut for the affluent.

That is a reason more people are hit by the AMT. It is not the problem. From the liberal viewpoint that loves progressivity¹, everyone else is the rich. The average liberal voter is thinking that he is, at best, succeeding reasonably, whatever his level of success. It’s the other guy who should face the burden, the guy who is supposedly rich. He knows there’s a top sphere that deserves to be punished forced to pay his fair share, but he is never that guy. Now that the AMT is hitting through poor (illegitimate) design, the dual burdens of complexity and stupidity hover around his checkbook. And he’s pissed.

Later, Mr. Kinsley writes:

The AMT prevents the federal deficit from being even higher than it is.

Technically true, I suppose, but that’s wrong. The deficit is high. “Higher” is worth discussing, but the inability of Congress to stop trading federal goodies for votes keeps both the deficit and taxes high. Deficits prevent the AMT from being lower.

Mr. Kinsley’s conclusion, however, is spot on. A flat tax would be the answer. But the problem always rests with politicians and their inability to govern based on principles of fairness (and the Constitution), as opposed to the economic populism that currently rules.

But one person’s loophole is another person’s important social policy — or, in fact, the same person’s important social policy. As soon as we get that simpler system, people will start cluttering it up again: lower rates for capital gains, to encourage investment; the charitable deduction, to encourage philanthropy; a bigger exemption for dependents, to encourage “family values” (you got a problem with this, buddy?). But all that’s okay — in 20 years we can sweep out the clutter and start all over again.

Unfortunately.

¹ Conservatives love the AMT, too, since they can’t be bothered to spend less. Or fix the AMT while they had complete control of the government.

Not only does he think to the left, Robert Reich can’t see to the right.

I’m extra-ashamed today that I ever voted for someone who would give Robert Reich any job involving economic policy. From his blog today (emphasis mine):

No candidate for president has suggested that the nation should raise the marginal tax rate on the richest beyond the 38 percent rate it was under Clinton (it’s now 35 percent, but the richest of the rich, as I’ll explain in a moment, are paying only 15 percent). Yet new data from the IRS show that income inequality continues to widen. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are earning more than 21 percent of all income (the data are from 2005, the latest the IRS has examined). That’s a postwar record. The bottom fifty percent of all Americans, when all their incomes are combined together, is earning just 12.8 percent of the nation’s income.

This is an incomplete picture, and I’m sure Reich knows it. Look at the full picture using the same tax data Reich uses, but fails to link:

[I don’t know why this image won’t appear. I’m looking into it, but until then, the link works.]

Tax_Table_Percentage_1a.jpg
Click to enlarge

On their 21.2 percent of all income, the top 1 percent pay 39.38 percent of all taxes. On their 12.8 percent of all income, the bottom fifty percent pay 3.07 percent of all taxes. Those number are in the above table. Strangely, they’re in the column immediately to the right of the column Reich uses to select his data. Reich is intellectually dishonest.

Looking further at the tax tables, consider:

Tax_Table_Percentage_2a.jpg
Click to enlarge

Aside from the brief blip of President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, the tax burden for the top 1 percent of income earners has steadily increased since 1980, more than doubling in 25 years. The tax burden for the bottom 50 percent of income earners has steadily decreased since 1980, more than halving in 25 years. Still, Reich has the gall to write this:

If the rich and super-rich don’t pay their fair share of this tab, the middle class will get socked with the bill.

How are the top income earners not paying their fair share? They do not receive handouts benefits in anywhere near the proportion that middle- and low-income earners receive from their tax dollars, yet they’re still cheating the rest of America? Reich is a liar.

There is much more to analyze from Reich’s entry, but it’s the usual nonsense. Head over to Greg Mankiw, from whence the link came, for a brief synopsis of Reich’s idiotic redistributionist tax proposal.

Wow.

Beware of marketing over facts.

Any entry dealing with Harold Meyerson involves a man who never met a government solution that didn’t deserve to find a problem to address. It’s worth remembering.

In today’s Washington Post, Mr. Meyerson offers this:

My conservative brethren in the op-ed commentariat have made a disquieting discovery: The Republican candidates for president are saying nothing that addresses the economic anxieties of the American middle class. Both David Brooks and Michael Gerson, writing last Friday in the New York Times and The Post, respectively, expressed a mixture of amazement and horror at the disdain that the candidates display toward broadly centrist proposals to bolster Americans’ economic security, and at the candidates’ apparent indifference to their need to craft such proposals of their own.

How about this for the middle class: Discover a solution for whatever worries you. Invest. Save. Spend. Follow your bliss. Become a miser. Whatever. You have the power. Government doesn’t have the power. We’ll only make things worse. Rely on us and we’ll be back here in four years with greater anxieties.

Naturally, that can’t work because it’s realistic. Instead, we’re supposed to be thankful that there are broadly centrist proposals, which is an unfortunate euphemism for central planning to the needs of one group at the expense of the others. Yet, Mr. Meyerson wants us to agree with this:

“The Democrats propose something” such as expanding health-care coverage for children or providing federal matching funds for 401(k) accounts for families of modest means, bemoaned Brooks, “and the Republicans have no alternative.” Gerson grumbled that the candidates were taking gleeful potshots at the “baby bonds” notion — providing newborns with small savings accounts — that Hillary Clinton briefly floated, despite the fact that the idea has won support from the right as well as the left.

Expanding health care coverage for children. Nope, can’t oppose that, even though the existing program covers poor kids. The expansion would involve reaching into the middle class, presumably to cure their anxieties rather than to purchase their votes in exchange for individual responsibility. It’s for the children.

Federal matching funds for 401(k) accounts for families of “modest means” is nothing more than a transfer from “the rich” to the “poor”, as defined by a politician. It doesn’t matter if “the rich” live in a high-cost of living area or use their funds to invest in new businesses that will employ those of “modest means”. No, a straight wealth transfer is enlightened statecraft.

I’m amazed that Mr. Meyerson is bold enough to endorse baby bonds. While it’s amusing to assume that $5,000 is a small amount, when multiplied by the roughly 4,000,000 babies born each year, $20,000,000,000 is not a small amount. Even if we ignored mathematics, Sen. Clinton has already abandoned the idea. I’d like to see the support she received from the right that’s so convincing she dropped the plan immediately.

As a road map to governance, this is both dim and skimpy. President Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson can reliably be counted on to be against whatever Clinton is for. Beyond that, if we total up their domestic and economic policy proposals, they intend to do almost nothing at all.

If they weren’t raving lunatics, charlatans, or both, I’d say “Great, where do I check their name on my ballot.”

What unites these positions is more than just a common opposition to Hillary’s (or John Edwards’s or Barack Obama’s) proposals for universal coverage. They also adhere to the fundamental Republican laws handed down by Goldwater and Reagan: All government interventions on behalf of the people are inherently wrong. They erode freedom. The market can do a better job of whatever it is that needs doing.

Yes.

What the Republican field fails to realize is that the America that Goldwater and Reagan defended against the presumed predations of government no longer exists. …

Uh-oh.

… When Barry and Ronnie walked the earth, most Americans had enduring relations with their employers (ensured, in many cases, by a union contract), and their employers often provided them with health benefits and a pension. …

Where has that gotten us? People become uninsured the moment they change or lose a job. This is a condition FDR created with the New Deal. And there are underfunded pensions that one could arguably say came about because individuals punted control of that part of their life to someone else who may or may not have the individual’s best interest as prime motivation.

… Clearly, the private sector that Barry and Ron extolled while denouncing government ain’t what it used to be, and Americans know it.

No doubt the quickening creep of the federal government into all areas of economic life has nothing to do with that.

By the evidence of all polls, Americans are now looking more to government to provide, at least in health care, some of the security that employers used to offer.

Trading one parent for another is a good idea? Why? I’m not interested in letting people who are too immature to manage their own lives have the reigns of mine, as well.

A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll even showed that 59 percent of Republicans believe that foreign trade is bad for the U.S. economy, vs. just 32 percent who think it’s good.

If it’s to be believed, 59% of Republicans are idiots on this issue.

So, the short version is that Harold Meyerson still thinks government is benevolent and politicians won’t sell out today’s voter with a transfer of those promises to tomorrow’s voter.

I move closer to hoarding my savings in cash.

Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president:

“I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home,” she said.

I recently purchased a new car. I like the idea of getting that car for free. I suspect the dealership will even hand over the keys to me and call it free, as long as I set up a separate transaction where I relinquish a specific number of dollars – strangely matching the value of the car – to the dealership’s possession.

Interestingly, that sounds much like the tax charade that would occur for every child “given” $5,000 from their own future earnings.

It’s possible that funding could come from the earnings of another person currently working (parents?) or who will work in the future. Regardless, I’m sure the “trust fund” aspect will remain an IOU rather than asset-based, with the present tax dollars used for some other socialist adventure. And I discount the possibility that funding would come from the child’s parents, since that would imply a measure of fiscal responsibility wrapped inside this socialism. Since that would also discourage poor people from having children if they have to fund an extra $5,000 up front, there’s no way Sen. Clinton would suggest such a thing. She’ll cave once that possibility arises and claim it’s society’s job to support all children, especially those of the poor, with the poor to be defined loosely later.

More thoughts at A Stitch in Haste, no third solution, and Catallarchy.

Dance, puppets, dance!

From last night’s Democratic debate (I know, there was a debate?):

This is insulting. Follow the Constitution and let reality be the message within that limited sphere.

Via Jeff Jarvis, who says:

The Presidency isn’t a PBS self-improvement show. It’s an executive job.

As some of Mr. Jarvis’ commenters stated, I’m afraid Sen. Obama’s statement is true for too many Americans. Rhetoric wouldn’t continue if it didn’t work, and it wouldn’t rely on the basest claims if those didn’t appeal. Thanks to people like Karl Rove, we have evidence.

The change we need is not to go from fear to hope, it’s from coddling to trust. Stop trying to have the government parent Americans.