Categories
National

If McCain Were President


photo credit: Wigwam Jones

After another year of domestic turmoil and political shenanigans, a year of watching President Obama in office rather than out on the campaign trail, I find myself frequently having the thought “if only McCain had been elected President instead.”

The thought came again today but unlike previous times I feel like sharing what would likely have happened in a McCain administration to this point.

If McCain had been president he would not have received the Nobel Peace Prize and Justice Souter would not have retired so he would not likely have named any justices to the Supreme Court by this point in his presidency. As far as issues that he would have dealt with that Obama has been dealing with I would like to address health care legislation, auto bailouts, stimulus, and Iran.

Categories
National

Don’t Rely on the Altruism of Baby Boomers

David Brooks must have thought yesterday was April Fools Day – that or he thinks he’s getting old so he decided to pen a column painting a rosy picture for seniors by coming to a senile conclusion. In The Geezers’ Crusade he comes to this wildly impossible conclusion:

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

Categories
General

Abolish Earmarks


photo credit: Skrewtape

For some time I have been internally conflicted on the issue of congressional earmarking. Many people, including such diverse characters as President Obama and Congressman Chaffetz, have been vocal about calling for an end to earmarks. Others such as my own Congressman, Rob Bishop, reply that earmarks are not an addition to the total size of our federal expenditures – but simply a direction regarding the spending of money already appropriated. Believers in small government who make that argument say that our focus should be on reducing total expenditures rather than shutting down the earmarking process. Personally, I would like to see an end to earmarking and a significant reduction in total spending. (Earmarks alone are an insignificant portion of our spending.)

Categories
culture National

Change I Could Believe In


photo credit: jasoneppink

Back in October I wrote about the dangers of a crisis mentality and tried to show that the abuse of crisis was not a one-party trait. I see that Will Wilkinson did a better job of showing that this month in Let the next crisis go to waste:

The Aughts began in crisis when the second plane hit the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration, loath to let a serious crisis go to waste, managed to parlay the nation’s alarm and credulity into an ill-conceived invasion of an entirely unrelated country, wasting over a trillion dollars and many tens of thousands of lives, all while losing control of the fight in Afghanistan and failing utterly to bring down Osama bin Laden.

Bush’s botched attempts to capitalize on crisis—the ugly aftermath to which Obama is heir—might have made an alert leader wary. But instead, Obama set up shop in the Oval Office and proceeded immediately to use crisis as (Emanuel’s words again) “an opportunity to do things you’d think you could not do.”

Rather than acting as a prudent guardian of the public good in a time of economic turbulence and hardship, Obama and the Democratic Congress have hurried to check the boxes on their partisan wish list precisely when the nation most needed a restorative break from transformative ambition.

Categories
General

A Real Christmas Gift

President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other congressional leaders among the Democrats hailed the passage of the Senate health “reform” bill as a Christmas gift to the American people. That’s about the equivalent of trying to convince the chief income earner(s) in a home that the real gift of Christmas for them is the increased balance on the credit card (or the reduced balance of their checking and/or saving’s accounts) rather than the presents they got.

In response to the news that the bill had finally passed my wife had a great idea for a real gift that the Senate could give us for Christmas some year (besides repealing that bill). If they have the authority to mandate that we buy insurance that opens up a world of possibilities. First and foremost her suggestion is that they should mandate that everyone in America should get an answering machine. Just imagine and end to:

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

The person you are calling is not available. *click*

I’m quite confident that universal telephone answering machines would have a positive impact on interstate commerce.

Categories
culture National

The Dangers of a Crisis Mentality


photo credit: paparutzi

Soon after the election last year in the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib wrote about the  opportunity presented by the financial crisis for Barack Obama. Perhaps he was simply reacting to Rahm Emanuel’s statement that, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Seib summed up that perspective on crisis by saying that:

The thing about a crisis is that it creates a sense of urgency. Actions that once appeared optional suddenly seem essential.

That really captures the essence of a crisis mentality. Unfortunately it only looks at the silver lining while ignoring the cloud in front of it. The assumption is that we all can see the dangers of the crisis cloud. Unfortunately the only part of the crisis cloud that most people see is the front side – the possibility with any crisis that we will fail. The problem is that right in front of the silver lining he spoke of there is the hidden backside of the crisis cloud which we conveniently forget.

Because of the sense of urgency that tends to accompany a crisis we not only begin to view once optional courses of action as essential, in many cases we go beyond that and begin to view once forbidden courses of action as excusable.

Categories
General

A Question to Ponder

I really did not need to focus on any serious topics today (or yesterday for that matter – notice the lack of a post) so I have to thank my brother for providing a humorous but thought provoking question on Facebook last night. I thought that the question deserved to be freed from the walled garden of Facebook so I thought I’d share it here:

If China decided to call America’s debt today, which state would {President Obama} sell to make ends meet?

California received some votes as well as Texas, North Dakota, and non-states such as Guam. What do other people think (recognizing that this is entirely not realistic no matter which state anyone suggests)?

Categories
National

Our National Emergency

I was surprised when I learned that Obama declared swine flu a national emergency late on Friday. My first thought was that I had not heard anything to suggest that things were any worse than they had been previously. Looking closer at the announcement the article states that “Swine flu is more widespread now than it’s ever been and has resulted in more than 1,000 U.S. deaths so far.”

While we don’t like the idea of 1000 deaths it’s important to put that into context by noting that the seasonal flu results in 36,000 U.S. deaths each year – that’s an average of 3,000 deaths per month year round. During the flu season that amounts to more than 1000 deaths per week. To really put that into context it should be noted that the seasonal flu produces that many deaths despite the fact that a vaccine is widely available while the swine flu vaccine is barely coming into circulation now.

That is enough information that there are many people who will shout that this is not an emergency – some will even say that this is a scare tactic or power grab by the administration. Going back to the actual declaration I have concluded that there really is a national problem.

The White House on Saturday said Obama signed a proclamation that would allow medical officials to bypass certain federal requirements.

The very real problem that this declaration of emergency addresses is a problem of over-regulation. The government should never regulate something to the point of interfering with the benefits of whatever they are regulating – as they have done with the medical system. (I would call this an emergency except that “emergency” suggests serious immediate consequences if we do not take immediate action whereas a lack of immediate action does not have particularly immediate consequences.)

Categories
National

Half-Truths from the White House

I am not naive enough to expect more than a half truth from a political leader anymore but I am still naive enough to do what little I can to expose the half of what they say that is false. The White House blog sets out to expose the Republican Leaders’ Plan to “Delay, Define, and Derail” health care legislation. Their closing statement is the classic half truth:

. . . while we remain committed to working with those in both parties who have good-faith proposals about how to strengthen the final reform bill, we will not stand idly by in the face of false accusations aimed to score political points or maintain the status quo at all costs.

They toss around the “false accusations” claim within eye-shot of publishing some false accusations of their own. For example, in that very statement they imply that  Republicans have offered no good-faith proposals. That’s not the first time they make that claim in their post. Earlier they said:

Republican leaders will resort to the time-honored tactic of attempting to stall reform to death – raising arbitrary and disingenuous hurdles under the guise of wanting further debate, when in reality they have no intention of offering constructive proposals.

Every time they make the claim that Republican’s have offered no constructive proposals voters need to recognize that only two types of administrations could make that claim right now. Either the administration is lying through their teeth (the more likely of the two) or else they are genuinely unaware of the good faith proposals that Republicans have offered such as HR 3400, which Democrats in control of Congress are not even willing to debate. Either kind of administration (dishonest or ignorant) is extremely dangerous to our nation. If they are dishonest they must be stopped. If they are ignorant they must become informed. I’m willing to work on both routes until I can prove which kind of administration we have.

Another half truth offered by the White House in that post is to reassert the claim (by using the CBO) that their bill will lower the deficit.

Republican leaders intend to repeat their claims that reform “will raise insurance premiums on individuals and families, while failing to lower the overall amount of money that the U.S. spends on health care… even though the nonpartisan CBO predicted the [Senate Finance Committee] bill would reduce the deficit and lower the cost curve, even as it extends coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.”

It has already been shown by history that the CBO estimate is based on the shakiest footing imaginable because it depends on Congress doing what it has never done before – cutting medicare spending. Until democratic leaders can show how they will actually fulfill the mythical fiscal promises in the bill that make that CBO estimate possible there’s no reasons to believe them over the Republicans. No matter who is proposing a bill there is no reason to pass it so long as there are significant unanswered questions about how it will actually work.

The Democrats are proposing bills that will not take effect for years and which depend on premises that are not dependable and then they wonder why people are hopping off their “Hope and Change” train.

Categories
National

A Tale of Two Vice Presidents


photo credit: BlatantNews.com

Once upon a time there was a young president who had campaigned on a platform of using the military more conservatively than his predecessor (who happened to be in the other party). During the campaign he had chosen a more experienced man as his running mate in an effort to soothe those voters who might be uncomfortable with his youth an lack of extensive experience.

Once in office an opportunity for military action presented itself and his vice president was among those who were keen to take the opportunity. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the president heeded the advice of his hawkish vice president and took the necessary steps to expand his use of the military  contrary to his campaign rhetoric.

Of course I am talking about George Bush here and his vice president, Dick Cheney. The trick is that the first paragraph applies word for word to Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden.