Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI)
Roadmap for America
is bold and far-reaching. That's exactly
why so
few Republicans are willing to endorse it, at least publicly. Ryan, the highest ranking Republican on the
Budget Committee is a so-called "growth hawk" and has long championed supply-side
economics, which says that cutting taxes on the very rich increases the supply
of labor and will increase employment.
More importantly, proponents
argue that a tax cut on capital incentivizes both savings and investment and is
therefore the most crucial path towards economic growth. Ryan's thinking mirrors that of the late
conservative economist Milton Friedman who once said, "I am in favor of cutting
taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's
possible." But there's a catch.
According to analysis by the
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the Tax Policy Center and Citizens for
Tax Justice, Ryan's Roadmap not only
seeks to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but in fact, it dramatically cut the
taxes of the richest Americans. Writes CBPP senior fellow
Paul Van de Water, Ryan's plan will "give the most affluent households a
new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on
high-income households; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends,
and interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, and the alternative
minimum tax."
Bush
era tax cuts, set to expire at the end of 2010, brought the top marginal income
tax rate to 35 percent. Ryan's plan aims
to cut that rate, which will otherwise go back up to 39.6 percent down to 25
percent. For a little perspective, the
top marginal income tax rate for most of the Reagan years was 50 percent. The
Tax Policy Center notes: "the Roadmap's tax provisions would be highly
regressive compared with the current tax system." But it's regressive for a reason.
Part of this model, at least
from a fiscal policy perspective, all rests on the theory that cutting taxes
increases the tax base - the total number of people who pay taxes - and
therefore, will result in greater government revenue. Theoretically, this latter argument makes
sense. Empirically, however, it's proven
to be as worthless as a typewriter.
Paul Ryan's Roadmap not only
makes the wealthiest Americans wealthier, it makes everyone else poorer. Under his proposal, most people earning
between $20,000 and $200,000 will see their taxes rise. Since wealthy people tend to make most of
their income from securities, Ryan's "simplified" tax code is really a tax
shift in which the rich will be paying taxes at a lower rate than those in the
middle class. And that's the point.
Van de Water concludes, "the
Ryan Roadmap charts a radical course that, if they understood it, few Americans
likely would want to follow." Peter
Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, agrees, saying that under
Ryan's Roadmap "more risk is loaded onto individuals."
In a last ditch effort to
fight against health care reform, private insurance companies are funneling
millions of dollars through the Chamber
of Commerce to air yet another
misleading ad in seventeen states.
To further obfuscate the
money trail, the Chamber produces their anti-reform ads under the name "Employers
for a Healthy Economy." This newest ad,
titled "Afford,"
paints Democratic health care reform proposals as costing too much for American
families - all the while ignoring the fact that the reform legislation will
support American families and businesses.
The insurance
industry stands to gain the most if reform fails - a fact they are
desperate to hide from the American public.
The Chamber of Commerce has
been the willing vehicle through which AHIP has funneled money and
misinformation to the American public.
Reports say up to $20 million has
gone from the insurance industry directly to Chamber coffers - although it
is impossible to know the exact figure.
Both organizations have failed to provide any semblance of transparency
regarding their finances, and so are keeping the American public ignorant of
their anti-reform activity.
The Chamber & Insurance Companies have teamed up
to block health care reform.
Millions
of dollars have flowed to the Chamber from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser
Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group, and Wellpoint - companies that saw
profits increase 56%
in 2009 and have raised premiums for American families even higher
$144
million spent to lobby Congress, including efforts to fight health care
reform
With the national debt at $12 trillion and climbing, it's
readily apparent that the federal government will have to make tough choices in
the years to come. There will need to be
changes made in Social Security and Medicare in order to ensure the programs
remain solvent for future generations of Americans.
There's also something that can be done today. The Senate health care bill soon to be voted
on by the House will extend health coverage to 31 million Americans, rein in
insurance company abuses, and reduce the deficit by $118 BILLION.
In a new analysis released
today, the Congressional Budget Office wrote:
CBO and JCT now estimate that, on balance, the direct
spending and revenue effects of enacting H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate
would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $118 billion over the
2010-2019 period.
Also
today, 41 top economists wrote
a letter to President Obama and members of Congress declaring health care
reform critical to containing health care costs.
The
economists wrote:
America
has higher per-capita medical spending than any other industrial democracy.
Health care spending, now $2.6 trillion, is projected to reach $4.5 trillion by
2019. Without effective reform of the
way we pay for health care, growth of health care spending will create
unsustainable fiscal burdens, eat into cash compensation, perpetuate waste, and
undermine the prospects for universal access to needed care.
The health care
reforms passed by the House and Senate - with recent modifications proposed
by President Obama - include serious
measures that will slow the growth of health care spending. Putting the
brakes on health care spending will take multiple measures, and we must start
now. Democratic and Republican experts have proposed many different approaches
to "bending the cost curve."
[...]
Taken together, these
measures are a serious, multi-faceted initiative to improve the quality and
efficiency of American medical care, rein in the fastest growing portion of
government and private budgets and provide a valuable platform for future
cost-control efforts. If this nation is committed to cost containment and
deficit reduction we must pass health care reform. If this legislation fails,
the chances of reducing the growth of health care spending in the future will
be greatly reduced.
Our nation is simply spending too much money on health
care. Unless members of Congress want to
see growing health care costs eat up even greater portions of the budgets of
the federal government and American families, they must vote to reform our
health care system.
Laura Rozen in Politico reports on a story appearing today in Israel.
It is about the effect that Prime Minister Netanyahu's announcement of new West Bank settlements -- during Vice President Biden's visit -- could do to the United States. It is written by a top Israeli journalist, Shimon Shiffer, in the conservative Yedioth Achronoth, the largest circulation newspaper in Israel..
People who heard what Biden said were stunned. "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden castigated his interlocutors. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace."
Yesterday's announcement of 1,600 new settler units was the tip of the iceberg. Today, Israel announced another 50,000 settler units in Jerusalem. What a way to treat Joe Biden, who has been so close to Israel for 30 years that he's practically a kibbutznik.
It all makes me suspect that Israel is just faking its fear of Iranian nukes. If Israel was really concerned it would place its relationship with the United States above the political desire to suck up to settlers, religious fanatics and rightwing lunatics. Clearly, it does not.
During an
exchange on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. John McCain
(R-AZ) and Sen.
Lamar Alexander (R-TN) restated their opposition to using budget reconciliation to finish
health care reform. But, ignoring the
GOP's history with the procedure, the senators deceptively focused on the
controversy over judicial filibusters in 2005. "In the interest of full
disclosure, Republicans when they were in the majority, we tried to change [the
rules]," McCain said. Alexander added, "The
senator from Arizona
has a certain amount of credibility on this."
MCCAIN:
We'll be glad to vote, but we want to vote preserving the institution of the
Senate of the 60-vote rule. And, in the
interest of full disclosure, Republicans when they were in the majority, we
tried to change it, as the senator from Tennessee
remembers. [...]
ALEXANDER:
Well, I appreciate the senator from Arizona
bringing this up. And I think it's
important for the American people to be reminded that the senator from Arizona has a certain
amount of credibility on this - because it was the Republicans, about four
years ago when we were in the majority, and we became frustrated because
Democrats were blocking President Bush's judicial appointments. So,
some of us - some Republicans, I didn't - but some Republicans said, well,
let's just jam it through. We won the
election. Let's get it with 51
votes. Let's change the rules. But Senator McCain and a group of others
said, Wait just a minute. He said
then what he said just today. He said
the United States
founders set up the United States Senate to be a protector of minority
rights. And as Senator Byrd, the senior
Democratic senator, has said, sometimes the minority is right. [...] As Senator Byrd has said, running the
health care bill through the Senate like a freight train is an outrage, and
it would be an outrage.
As Media Matters Action has noted, the comparison to 2005 is terribly dishonest. Republicans literally wanted to "change
the rules" in the middle of the game, in order to prohibit filibusters on
President Bush's judicial nominees. That
scheme, which McCain helped defeat in the "Gang of 14," was known as the "nuclear
option." Today, Democrats simply want to utilize the existing rules,
as Republicans did repeatedly
to enact conservative legislation when they were in power. And, rather than using reconciliation to pass
major legislation, they only want to make minor changes to a bill that already
passed with 60 votes.
Additionally,
Alexander's implication that he never supported majority-rule is false, as is
his claim that McCain "has a certain amount of credibility on the issue." Alexander voted for
several reconciliation bills during the Bush administration, including the
2003 tax cuts for the rich. McCain
joined Alexander in supporting the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which passed
via reconciliation with zero Democratic supporters. (Both of those bills
required Vice President Cheney's vote to break a 50-50 tie.) In a speech last
March, McCain conceded that Republicans had "engaged in using reconciliation to
further the party's agenda," adding that "the
groundwork has been laid."
Finally,
Alexander's reference to Sen. Robert Byrd (R-WV) is misleading. While Byrd did say reconciliation shouldn't
be used to pass comprehensive health reform, he supports
using the procedure pass a fix to the bill that already passed.
California gubernatorial
candidate Meg Whitman, a national co-chair of John McCain's failed presidential
campaign, held a press conference yesterday at the Port of Oakland. At least that's what most of the press
thought it was. The San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci reports
it like this:
Reporters from Bay Area media outlets -- TV, print and radio -- turned up
for Whitman's advertised campaign stop in Oakland,
where the former eBay CEO had announced a campaign stop and press event.
But once at the Union Pacific Railroad site, the assembled reporters were
not allowed to view her tour -- and herded into a holding room instead.
Then came the news that Whitman also wouldn't take questions; reporters
had been called in to "see" her make statements on "how she
could be helpful as governor" on jobs and the economy, Whitman spokeswoman
Sarah Pompei said.
Veteran reporters, who included KTVU's Randy Shandobil and KPIX's Hank
Plante, were among the crowd that wasn't amused. Question: is Whitman a
candidate for governor, or a museum piece to be "watched" by
reporters?
Pompei said that
Union Pacific had come out against reporters accompanying her on the tour of
the facility, a claim the company disputes. A spokesman for Union Pacific told
Marinucci, "we planned, actually, to have press talk with Meg on the tour....we
understood there would be media availability and we wanted to work with
that." After talking to
officials from the company, Whitman refused to answer questions from the
reporters she had asked to come and cover her event. The campaign claims there just wasn't enough
time. However, she did have time to meet with a conservative columnist.
But Whitman lingered for some time with railroad officials in the same
room -- just feet away from the press, who refused to leave. Finally, they were
herded out, at which point Whitman's campaign drew the blinds and put up a
movie screen to block them from seeing the candidate.
Whitman did sit down to talk for 30 minutes with the Chronicle's
Republican op-ed columnist, Debra J. Saunders -- but the rest were shut out.
The entire fiasco promoted Shandobil to ask Pompei, "Well,
why were we invited?" That's a good
question.
Yesterday, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke at a
conference for the National Association of Counties, where she stressed the
importance of enacting health care reform.
"We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it away from the
fog of the controversy," Pelosi said.
Conservatives
are treating Pelosi's comment like some sort of epic scandal. Fox
News is reporting that Pelosi "gaffed," while Twitter virtually exploded
with House Republicans disparaging the speaker.
"Wait, what?" Rep. Aaron Schock
(R-IL) quipped. "Supposed 2 b the other
way around, isn't it?" Rep. Virginia Foxx
(R-NC) added. In a press release, Rep. Mike
Pence (R-IN) called Pelosi's statement "truly astonishing":
The
reality is that this legislation represents the kind of elitist attitude, the
"We know better than you attitude" that the American people are sick
and tired of. It is truly astonishing
that the Speaker of the House said yesterday, here in Washington, D.C.,
that we need to "pass the bill so we can find out what's in it."
Madam Speaker, the American people know what's in this bill and they don't want
it.
But what Pelosi
was saying is remarkably easy to explain.
The Republican spin targets the phrase "so you can find out what's in
it," taking it entirely out of context.
It's no coincidence, though, that the next words out of the speaker's
mouth were, "away from the fog of the controversy." A paragraph earlier Pelosi
referenced "the
controversies within the bill."
The fact is,
millions of Americans don't know
what's actually in health care reform because Republicans have continually
drummed up false talking points to create controversy and scare their constituents (like when Foxx
declared that health reform would "put seniors in a position of being put
to death by their government").
And that's what
Pelosi was attesting to. When reform
finally passes, the American people will find out what's really in the bill (and, equally important, what's not). Today's manufactured controversy is just an
extension of the strategy that has produced so many false attacks
over the past year: throw something at the wall, see if it sticks.
Any economics student is well-versed in the laws of supply
and demand. When the market's demand for
a product increases, it pushes the price upward. Likewise, when demand for a product falls, it
forces the producer to lower the price of the good.
On a related note, the Human Events Book Store today sent an
email offering newly released books by Karl Rove, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck
for $1 each.
Suhail Khan, a former Bush administration political appointee at the Department of
Transportation and a board member of the American Conservative Union (the
people that put on CPAC), takes to the Daily Callertoday to admonish
President Barack Obama for having the audacity to sit "with his
feet up on the Resolute Desk." It seems
that Khan has found out about this dastardly act through an e-mail,
which shows the president talking to members of his senior staff and kicking
back. Khan writes:
Many preceding presidents wouldn't go
as far as to even enter the Oval Office without a suit and tie, much less use
this very important and public office in an informal or casual manner. And
yet, while conferring with his senior aides in the Oval Office, President Obama
obviously feels it appropriate enough to prop-up his feet on the historically
significant nineteenth-century Resolute Desk. Perhaps its the age in which we
live, or a new time of informality, but I'm sure I'm not alone in being just a
bit uneasy with such a disregard for the highest American office, however small
or insignificant the gesture may be. In the grand scheme of things, putting
one's feet up on White House furniture isn't akin to the high crimes and misdemeanors
of say Watergate or even President Clinton's antics with interns and the like,
but President Obama's callous gesture demonstrates a significant lapse of
respect for our highest office.
In an effort to
prevent a final up-or-down vote on health care reform, many conservatives are
attempting to rebrand
the reconciliation process as the "nuclear option."
Today, Politico reports that Sen.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is even proposing a new bipartisan coalition to prevent
Democrats from using reconciliation, much like the "Gang of 14" that thwarted
the actual nuclear option in 2005:
Graham said Tuesday that a coalition
of Republican and Democratic senators
could rescue the Senate from an institutional disaster brought on by the use of
the parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation
to finish the health care bill.
"Many Republicans who were ready to
pull the trigger on the nuclear option on judges are now glad they didn't,"
Graham said. "This place would have
ceased to function as we know it. If they do health care through
reconciliation, it will be the same consequence. So if you are a moderate
Democrat out there looking for a way to deliver health care reforms and not pull the nuclear trigger, there is
a model to look at."
Graham's proposal relies on a false comparison. In 2005, Republicans wanted
to change the Senate rules in the middle of a legislative session to
prohibit filibusters on President Bush's judicial nominees. That was
the "nuclear option."
The current situation is far different. To begin with, the Senate already passed comprehensive
health reform under the normal rules with 60 votes. The talk now is of using reconciliation, a
relatively routine
procedural maneuver, to pass a minor budgetary fix to the Senate bill. (The
House will pass the initial package and the reconciliation fix separately.)
According to Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein
of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, this use of reconciliation is "compatible with
the law, Senate rules, and the framers' intent."
Second, Graham's warnings about using reconciliation are
completely disingenuous. He voted for Bush's tax
cuts for the rich in 2003 and the Deficit
Reduction Act of 2005, both of which passed via reconciliation and required
Vice President Cheney to cast a tie-breaking vote. Presumably, the Senate
didn't "cease to function" at that time.
Notably, even conservative Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu
(D-LA) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) are rejecting Graham's call for a new
bipartisan gang. "It's a little late to start that process," Landrieu
said. "The Gang of 14 was directed at
getting up-or-down votes," added Nelson. "This is aimed at
stopping an up-or-down vote."
During a floor speech on March 9, 2010, the Secretary of the
House Republican Conference, Rep. John Carter (R-TX), attempted to educate
Americans on the history and tradition of Senate procedure.
Carter's effort, however, quickly became a comedy of
errors. Not only did he get the facts
wrong, he repeatedly referred to "cloture" as "closure."
Watch:
REP. JOHN CARTER: They [the
founding fathers] set up a means by which the members of the Senate could do
what's called filibuster the House, the Senate.
[...]
This has evolved, but the rules
have been following that very trend and with that concept since the creation by
our founding fathers. Today, we have a process that takes place over in the
Senate which is, is sort of, if you will, imagine that there's someone standing
up and talking until you get 60 votes to shut him up. But there's not really
somebody standing up and talking, we have a rule called "closure."
[...]
One sixth of our economy teeters on
the verge of change based upon whether or not the Senate rule of closure will
be maintained as a rule, which has been in existence, and the concepts, since
the founding of the body.
Contrary to Carter's claim, the founding fathers had no role
in creating the modern filibuster rules or "closure." In fact, they
specifically granted each house of Congress the power to determine its own
rules. Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution explicitly
states, "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings."
Cloture was created in 1917 with the adoption of Rule
22. The Senate Historian's website
writes:
Three quarters of a century later,
in 1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President
Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds
majority vote, a device known as "cloture."
While the intricacies of the Senate's procedural rules are
difficult for the outsider to understand, it is more than fair to expect a
member of Congress to grasp their basic tenets -- especially if that member
dedicates an entire floor speech to discussing their history.
It really must be hard to
be David Horowitz. Aside from the
sumptuous salary he receives as head of the David Horowitz
Freedom Center,
the former
Marxist activist's dossier these days amounts to little more than character
assassination, guilt by association and logical fallacies that seem to only
make sense as part of elaborate conspiracy theories.
Horowitz hates two things
in the world above all others, Muslims and academics, who he links in an unholy
alliance. Here is his logic. Many
prominent academics speak out against torture and want to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, as do most
Muslims. And, one can assume, alleged terrorists hate being in Guantanamo Bay and they hate being tortured. They must all be part of an alliance, since
they all want the same thing: the destruction of Western civilization. Coincidence?
Horowitz thinks not.
This is the sort of
thinking that most abandon after adolescence and don't get to publish in
books. But then there is Regnery Publishing
and it will publish anything.
And we mean anything. In his book, Unholy Alliance, Horowitz argues "that
the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic
jihadists." Since both seemingly are
opposed to neoconservatism, they must be joined at the hip. Ironically, that logic works against
Horowitz. Most extremist Muslims abhor communism and so does David Horowitz, a
self-professed former Marxist turned neoconservative. What does that say? Is David Horowitz in an unholy alliance with the terrorists?
Another gem, The
Professors, was literally laughed off by the
academic community. Many of them saw their
inclusion into the book as a badge of honor.
One of the supposed radical academics Horowitz "exposed" in his book was
Marc Becker from Truman State
University. Becker was "organizer
and media developer" for "Historians against the War" and made the uncontroversial
statement that "Indigenous peoples of the Americas" have been devastated by
the policies of some multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary
Fund. Scary stuff, right?
Horowitz's book, One-Party Classroom,
which not surprisingly beats that same dead horse, was recently included in the
American Book Review's
list of Top 40
Bad Books. Not just in 2009, but
ever. Santa Clara University academic Marc Bousquet's review of One-Party Classroom is delightfully
accurate:
This book just goes after
the syllabi, not the scholarship of the faculty, and the somnolence it produces
is hard to describe. Evidently, they should have credited Google as the third
author. The Horowitz staffers tasked with compiling this stinker simply trolled
online campus catalogs to yield course descriptions using such
democracy-undermining terms as "justice," "inequality," "race," and "feminism,"
then wrote lame descriptions characterizing the syllabi as part of a plot to
deprive William Gates and Dick Cheney of their hard-earned profits. Once I got
the concept, I briefly held the flickering hope that I could read it
ironically-as in, "hey, what a bunch of good classes I wish I'd been
able to take in college." Wrong. The relentless, narrow-minded prose thoroughly
poisoned any hope of snarky thoughtcrime. Even if you were one of the twits
sympathetic to the political angle of this failed hit job, the concrete
brutalism of its formal properties would crush your spirit in a few pages-like
reading a year's worth of your daily horoscopes straight through, or a
cookbook cover to cover.
That's
David Horowitz. Always ready to crush
somebody's spirit in a few pages.
One of the far right's
top priorities is opposing the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that "would provide basic protections against
workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender
identity." Last December, the Family
Research Council (FRC) sent a
fundraising email warning that ENDA would "impose homosexuality and silence
Christianity in workplaces." In January, FRC president Tony Perkins sent
another anti-ENDA email with the subject line: "Stop Obama's
Crossdresser Protection Bill."
Today, the
Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) turned the fear-mongering up a notch, launching
a new website devoted to convincing parents that ENDA will hurt their
children. The site, ENDAHurtsKids.com, shows young
students coloring intently while storm clouds gather in the background. Above the clouds, TVC asks, "Do you want men dressed
as women teaching your kids?"
President
Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are quietly rushing through
legislation (H.R. 3017 & S. 1584) that would actually bring cross-dressing
teachers into your child's classroom. Under the so-called, Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), your children will be trapped in classes taught
by drag queens and transgender activists. Students will be
indoctrinated that "alternative lifestyles" are no different than traditional
lifestyles. Young children will be
forced to learn about bizarre sexual fetishes - and you will have no say in
the matter. It is already happening in some states and concerned parents can't
do a thing about it - until now.
However, TVC's
allegations have no merit at all. In
fact, while ENDA does prevent discrimination based on gender identity, it
specifically dictates that employers can set "reasonable" dress and grooming
standards:
(5)
DRESS AND GROOMING STANDARDS- Nothing in this Act shall prohibit an employer
from requiring an employee, during the employee's hours at work, to adhere to
reasonable dress or grooming standards not prohibited by other provisions of
Federal, State, or local law, provided that the employer permits any employee
who has undergone gender transition prior to the time of employment, and any
employee who has notified the employer that the employee has undergone or is
undergoing gender transition after the time of employment, to adhere to the
same dress or grooming standards for the gender to which the employee has
transitioned or is transitioning.
Nowhere in the bill does it say that employers, much less schools, are
required to allow "men dressed as women" in the workplace. But don't expect the far right to let facts
interfere with its crusade against gay rights.
Vice President Joseph Biden is in Israel to kick off indirect
negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
Of course, as the Washington Post
pointed out in
an editorial today, this could be seen as "a step backward...since the two sides
have been talking directly to each other, off and on since 1991."
The
Post notes that the Palestinians have
recently "resisted direct negotiations partly out of the conviction that
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is intransigent. And Mr. Netanyahu regularly offers evidence
that this is so."
The
same Washington Post piece recalls
that Netanyahu recently "appeared too rule out Israeli withdrawal from the
Jordan Valley [the part of the West Bank adjacent to Jordan, and furthest from
Israel] which previous Israeli governments have conceded to a future
Palestinian state, and he allowed new Jewish settlement construction to proceed
in the West Bank despite the 'freeze' he announced several months ago." He also has ruled out yielding any part of
Jerusalem (a municipality Israel unilaterally expanded to three times it
original size) and has even pledged to hold on to Ariel, a city of 20,000 smack
dab in the middle of the West Bank.
Consider
this. Pre-'67 Israel,
without the territories occupied during the June 1967 war, constitutes 78% of
historic Palestine. (The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which Palestinians insist must be their Palestinian
state, equals 22% of historic Palestine.) So every settlement built or town declared
not negotiable comes out of the 22%. In
fact, when it is claimed that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat
90% or 95% of the territories, we are talking about 90% or 95% of the 22%.
Bottom
line: there is very little left of Arab Palestine to negotiate over. And every time the United States winks when another
settlement is announced, there is even less. And, guess what, on the very day Biden arrived
in Israel,
Netanyahu's
government announced plans for 1,600 new housing units for settlers.
That
is why this
particular statement by Biden today is troubling. While ignoring the latest provocation, he
praised Netanyahu for already haven "taken
significant steps including the moratorium that has limited new settlement
construction activity. And you [Netanyahu] have significantly increased
freedom of movement across the West Bank....
It's easy to point fingers, particularly in this part of the world, at what
each side has not done. But it's also important to give credit where
things have been done in order to be able to move forward. Mr. Prime
Minister, the United States
will always stand with those who take risks for peace. And you're
prepared to do that. "
Maybe. But so far Netanyahu has been, to use the Post's label, "intransigent." Hopefully
this administration won't make the blunder Bush #43 did when he called former
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "peacemaker."
But hope springs eternal. And maybe Netanyahu will come around. But, at this point, Biden's take is somewhere
over the rainbow. Way up high.
UPDATE: Vice President Biden is now strongly condemning the Israeli
move. That did not take long and may
indicate new US
resolve.
Economist Milton Friedman was never a fan of government
regulation, or for that matter, of government itself. He once wrote,
"I have gradually come to the
conclusion that antitrust laws do far more harm than good." While conceding that government had a
role to play, he nonetheless quipped, "hell hath no
fury like a bureaucrat scorned."
An overzealous believer in an unfettered and unregulated
free market, Friedman is perhaps most famous for advising notorious Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet to put the Chilean economy through "shock therapy." Of course, little
prosperity occurred during Pinochet's reign. Before Pinochet, 20% of Chileans lived in
poverty. After Pinochet, that number was
40%. Much of Chile's economic growth occurred
after Pinochet, under the control of the center-left Concertación coalition. Under the demoniac Pinochet junta, more than 3,000 people were either
murdered or disappeared (read: murdered). But those are facts and facts have long been accused of having a
center-left bias.
No doubt, Friedman's legacy will forever be marred by his association
with Pinochet. While some have overzealously
distorted that relationship to paint Friedman as an enthusiastic supporter of
Pinochet, others have completely sought to rationalize it, or worse, excuse it
away by claiming that Chile's
present economic prosperity is wholly due to the economic model that Friedman
set up in Chile. This argument has reemerged in the last week,
as conservative commentators at the Wall
Street Journal and now at the Heritage Foundation, have seemingly rewritten
the history books to argue that Chile's
ability to cope with the earthquake is due to its economic freedom.
In a
post, a Heritage Foundation researcher writes:
"More economic freedom will allow
developing countries to actually develop and build houses and buildings more
resistant to natural disasters. Take the recent tragic setbacks in Haiti and Chile, for instance. In the 2010
Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, Chile ranks 10th and is categorized
as 'mostly free.' Haiti
ranks in the 'mostly unfree' category at 141st. Income per capita is much
higher in Chile
and its citizens can afford soundly-constructed infrastructure. Although the
earthquake that hit Chilean land was stronger than that of Haiti's, there was
far less casualties and structural damage because 'Chileans,
on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel
skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.'"
First of all, Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom is wholly
arbitrary and for that matter, meaningless.
The freest economies are both city-states (Singapore
and Hong Kong) and several of the "most free"
states are generous welfare states. As
Matt Yglesias has
highlighted, Heritage's index seems to contradict the group's platform on a
myriad of public policy issues, including health care reform.
Consider the point they seem to be making, namely, that Haiti's
relatively "unfree" economy contributed to the disaster there. Haiti is wholly underdeveloped and
no doubt, that played a big part in the disaster. However, the logic employed
by Heritage seems to go against the data from its own index. For example, Cuba
is ranked towards the very bottom of the index, barely beating out North Korea and Zimbabwe. But every time a large hurricane hits Cuba,
it sees relatively little damage and relatively fewer people die. What does that say about the relationship
between economic freedom and natural disasters?
The more important point is that rules and
regulations go against the unfettered free market that Heritage has long
championed. Chile was prepared for an
earthquake not because of free markets, but rather because of government
regulated and mandated building codes. Chile's modern
building codes were implemented in 1972, before Pinochet and again strengthened
in the 90's, after Pinochet. Such codes,
requirements and minimum standards are routinely opposed by free market
ideologues who see regulation as an intrusion on liberty and freedom. Building codes are, after all, a government
takeover of the construction industry.
Last week, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's group Keep America
Safe released a desperate ad questioning the loyalty and patriotism of
officials in the Obama administration's Department of Justice for once representing
suspected terrorists. Luckily, a hoard of
fair-minded Republicans scolded the group for the "unjust" and
"destructive" charges made in the ad.
While the ad has been successfully refuted, it is just the
most recent attempt by the right to reclaim what they view as their territory:
national security. For decades, Republicans have controlled the national
security debate. Not because they've
been successful, but because they have been aggressive and appeared "pro-America"
to voters with a limited knowledge of intricate foreign policy and defense
issues.
Yet after decades of dominating the national security
debate, a new
Democracy Corps poll shows that Republicans' advantage may be slipping
away.
Obama is rated better than Bush on
national security and terrorism and the handling of terror suspects -
the central front in the national security battle with the Cheneyites right
now.
[...]
[T]he poll shows clearly that there's
no justification whatsoever for the Dems' strategy of receding meekly into the
background on these issues, rather than vocally allying themselves with Obama
on them.
Jackson Diehl, one of the Washington Post's resident neoconservative hawks, offers a uniquely
silly take on President Obama's relationship with foreign leaders in
his column today.
In his column titled, "A Lonely World for the King of Cool,"
Diehl lists a whole slew of world leaders with whom Obama has a "cool"
relationship. His argument is that Obama, contrary to what most of us think, is
not that popular abroad, at least not with foreign leaders.
Interesting. When
George W. Bush was president, many conservatives and neoconservative took it as
a badge of pride that Bush was so universally disliked abroad. That showed he
was a "real" American.
But if Obama has put off foreign leaders by not cultivating
them enough, it just shows that Obama's "coolness has its cost."
The good news is that Diehl's argument is utterly specious.
The leaders who, according to Diehl, don't cotton much to Obama
are: President Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Brown of the United Kingdom, President Karzai of Afghanistan, Prime Minister Hatoyama of Japan, Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq, and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel.
However, in each case, there is either a policy difference
between the US
and the respective country or there is nothing at all that attests to Diehl's
thesis. Diehl writes about Prime Minister Gordon Brown that "Obama has been portrayed
as dissing him since he presented him with a gift of DVD's as a gift during
their first meeting in Washington
a year ago." Really? With all Brown's problems, he just can't get
over those DVD's. Please!
As for the others, one by one:
Diehl writes that Sarkozy is mad because of "several
perceived snubs." Medvedev and Obama have not "cinched" an arms control deal
and (horror of horrors) Obama holds Vladimir Putin "at arm's length." (If
George W. Bush had kept him at arm's length he might have missed looking into
his soul.) Hayatoma is unhappy about a military base agreement. Karzai does not
like being pressured into being more aggressive with the Taliban, although
Obama's pressure has clearly been effective. Al-Maliki misses the joint video
conferences he used to have with Bush. And
Netanyahu does not like being told to stop building more settlements.
Bottom line: President
Obama has policy differences with some of the leaders of other countries. As for his "coolness" being a problem,
Diehl's story would not have made it into a good high school newspaper because
the faculty adviser would have kept asking, "what's your evidence for that?"
But Diehl has none, and he knows it. He just does not like an administration whose
foreign policy tends to prefer diplomacy to force, at least as first resort.
His conclusion tells the real story:
An argument can be made that none of this matters. Bush,
after all, was often criticized for depending too heavily on personal
relationships -- remember how he looked into Putin's soul? -- and his pals didn't save
his administration from being universally condemned as
"unilateralist." The Obama administration, in contrast, can argue
that it has done pretty well in lining up European support on key matters such
as Afghanistan and Iran. And
Obama's personal popularity continues to provide leverage with leaders around
the world, whether they hit it off with him or not.
It really must be hard to
be David Horowitz. Aside from the
sumptuous salary he receives as head of the David Horowitz
Freedom Center,
the 
Economist Milton Friedman was never a fan of government
regulation, or for that matter, of government itself. He 
