Words of Wisdom, Excellently Spoken!

Here Daniel Hannan, MEP, addresses UK prime minister Gordon Brown at a session of the European parliament. Do you, like me, long for such eloquent plain talk in D.C.?

Tales from Higher Education

Here's a content description of a course at Temple University in Philadelphia, entitled "Urban Society: 'Race,' Class, and Gender in the City" from Front Page ezine:

"Take Professor Melissa Gilbert, an Associate Professor of Geography at Temple University, whose course “Urban Society: ‘Race,’ Class, and Gender in the City” teaches students that gender and race are “social constructions” designed to oppress nonwhites and women; that American society is structurally “racist;” and that all whites are racist, sometimes unconsciously so (which is itself a racist claim). How this can be justified as an academic course, and how it relates to the professor’s professional credential, which is “geography,” remains shrouded in mystery – unless of course one accepts the perversion of academic studies as ideological propaganda."

You really should read the entire article at http://tinyurl.com/c8bwjo especially if you are paying a student's tuition at Temple (about $21,500 a year). And if you are not paying this, maybe you should mull federal subsidies for higher education.

Half a Glass or Half Empty?

After President Obama's prime-time-televised press conference last night, I'm wondering how many more he will want to subject us to. Frankly, I agree with Bill O'Reilly. It was boring. And I thought he sounded a lot like an Economics 101 or 102 student making a class room presentation.

But I may be wrong. Most of the conservative talking heads disagreed with Bill and thought Obama had stayed on message and made his point well: We are in "dire" straits," the worst straits since the Great Depression, so we have to do something as quickly as possible. How do you rate the logic of such an assertion?

The stimulus bill has grown in the Senate. Many of the social reprogramming contained in the House bill is still there. I'm thinking about health care especially. Although government health care is sold as a benefit, what would the result be? Would you believe possibly lowering the age expectancy...and definitely the "quality" of life of the elderly? Read what Hudson fellow Betsy McCaughey has to say on Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs#

And here's how government care is working in Canada:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413701032661445.html

One Canadian responded to the Journal, writing "I'm in Newfoundland, Canada, 74 years old and in need of a hip replacement as it's bone on bone. I have an appointment to see a doctor on October 20th of this year. Meanwhile I carry on the best I can. I would be better off if I was a dog in need of a vet” (Robert McCrindle).

I realize it is also true that many in the U.S. can't get hip replacement surgery because they can't afford it and don't have good health insurance coverage, but shouldn't the answer be to expand coverage rather than to limit proceedures and apply the rule of equal discomfort for all?

McCaughey reports, "the health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry." She tries to imagine limiting "growth and innovation" in the electronics industry during this downturn. Moving this back a few years, try to imagine life without the IPOD, smart phones, Kindle etc., to say nothing about the amazing expanding internet.

President Obama claimed he is "a perennial optimist" toward the end of his designed-to-alarm press conference. Before his administration tackles the best health care in the world, I hope his spirits rise, and he sees more good outcomes to increase than hardships to impose.

Light My World!

I used to muse, when we lived in Port Townsend, Washington (a quaint, touristy Victorian seaport, harshly split between granola crunchers from California and PT-born paper mill workers and others scrambling for a living) that a Hollywood Video store, complete with garish pink and orange neon, was needed on the main street, Water Street—or at least on the road into town—to add a bit of reality and discourage further migration from the south.

Now I learn that Las Vegas wants stimulus money for more neon—off the strip—because there’s not enough glitz “off the beaten path,” says the Wall Street Journal. The project “will revitalize a blighted neighborhood,” says the city’s spokesperson.

Now, I think I was wrong in my earlier thinking. Neon won’t necessarily scare away Californians and others who want to change communities…always for the better, of course. Neon won’t provide many additional jobs for locals in blighted neighborhoods in Vegas, but it might light their way home at night.

Sheep's Clothing

I was feeling a little yucky earlier this week…like the economy, I guess, but in my case due to a new chemotherapy. I’m hoping the chemo is better targeted to shrink my lymph nodes than is the current version of the stimulus package to wake up the economy.

The more I read about the proposed stimulus, the more I think a paraphrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is in order: “How much do I hate thee? Let me count the ways….” And then you can take your pick:

1. It won’t work. The Wall Street Journal estimates that business tax cuts ($20 billion) plus $90 billion of genuine stimulus spending add up to only 12 cents of each of the 825 billion dollars in the package. And $825 billion is (a.) “almost equal to the entire cost of annual federal spending under Congress’s discretion” and (b.) more than the entire cost of Bush’s Iraq War. Maybe the public could find this a little more palatable if Congress took an extended furlough for eight years (without pay).

2. It’s more about changing us than changing the economic doldrums. The remaining 87% of the stimulus package fulfills a wish list of socialist and “green” projects from $4.19 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities” (read ACORN and agitprop) to $8 billion for renewable energy funding (exclude nuclear) to $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts to $400 million for chimerical research into global warming to $335 million for STD prevention etc. etc. etc.

The objection here moves beyond “can we afford it?” or “will it work?” to “do we want it?” Read Kimberley Strassel’s “Democratic Stealth Care” ( http://tinyurl.com/djvqgr ) on the bill’s major enlargement of government’s foot print in our lives…to be accomplished without public (or Congressional) debate.

How many who voted for Barack Obama last November intended to move on to socialism? Maybe it’s the 42% (Rasmussen Poll) who support the stimulus plan, or maybe it’s the (my guess) 10% or so of these who have actually looked into it…or the 0% (including Congress and the president) who have actually read its 647 pages?

3. It’s more of the same, not change we have hoped for. Wish list projects include $66 billion for education. Consider this a great big thank you to the National Education Association for its endorsement of Barack Obama in November’s election (and to those who still believe, naively, that throwing money at schools improves education). This is money to shore up the status quo, and the status quo is dismal. Our schools need seed money to support change, not billions to support stagnant administration and frustrated or lethargic teachers, to say nothing about state governments whose “for the children” projects need a bailout.

4. It tackles problems backwards. The wish list contains $2.1 billion for Head Start or pre-K childcare, yet studies have shown the Head Start program has had little lasting benefit in educational results, according to The Heritage Foundation (http://tinyurl.com/ca846g). Why not consider instead the Republican proposal to increase the child deduction on the income tax to $5,000 per child…or even the $7,500 that Head Start currently spends per child. This would put money into parents’ pockets, and they could spend it as they determine is best for their kids’ development.

5. It paints a picture of The Ugly American and encourages tit for tat. Before I grow tired of listing its faults, I’ve got to mention the stimulus bill’s adverse effect on world trade. “Buy American” is a you-can-guess-how-poor a way to thrive in a world economy. Look at China’s economy before its despotic rulers opened the door to commerce with the rest of the world. Like it or not, it’s a world economy today, not simply a national economy. And because the U.S. economy is so big, what we do here has serious effect internationally.

Barack Obama was elected on creating a more positive attitude toward the U.S. overseas. He may discover that allowing Democrat protectionist policies to disrupt trade and hit foreign partners in the pocketbook may win fewer friends than overthrowing a genocidal tyrant in Iraq.

And there’s domestic pain as well. Democrats have been more than indifferent to passing a free trade agreement with Columbia that would greatly benefit, for one, Caterpillar, manufacturer of heavy construction and mining equipment, with customers in 200 countries around the world (according to the company website). To sell an earthmover to Columbia without the dormant-or-dead Columbia free trade pact, the company must pay in the neighborhood of $100,000 in tariffs, hardly profitable. Recently, Caterpillar has sought to move into the Chinese market to offset the slowing U.S. economy, but a growing chilliness over trade jeopardizes this venture and the company’s earnings have suffered, threatening the jobs of 12,000 American workers and 8,000 American contractors, according to Investor’s Business Daily (1/26).

This list could go on and on. Robert Samuelson writes in IBD (1/30) that “the decision by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders to load the stimulus with so many partisan projects is politically shrewd and economically suspect. The president’s claims of bipartisanship were mostly a sham…Obama’s political strategy fails to address adequately the economy’s present needs while also worsening the long-term budget outlook…. There were tough choices to be made—and Obama ducked them all.” Well said, n'est-ce pas?

Fewer kids are not the answer

This morning’s Drudge Report has Nancy Pelosi saying “birth control will help the economy.” This is because, she claims, and a Democrat spokesman on Fox News just echoed her claim, that fewer children will “reduce costs to the states and federal government.”

This idea is a fallacy, of course, and one The Wall Street Journal does not tackle in its own editorial “The Stimulus Time Machine.” The Journal points out that the Democrat controlled Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found only 2/3 of the $355 billion dollar stimulus package would be spent in the critical first two years of the plan and noted in passing that this report has disappeared from the Congressional website, soon, perhaps, to reappear revised more positively.

The Journal’s second point is that $1 spent by the government on stimulus won’t result in a Keynesian $1.50 economic boost, adding that if it did, why not simply “spend $10 trillion” so we could “all live in paradise.” In reality, says the Journal, $1 in government spending takes $1 from the private economy and will only multiply if the government spends it more productively than the private economy—which is a giant oxymoron.

In fact, the Journal finds, the stimulus spending is “about promoting long-time Democratic policy goals, such as subsidizing health care for the middle class and promoting alternative energy.” And let me add promoting “family planning” (which, preponderantly, means abortion) a word Pelosi, a little out of character, studiously avoided, using instead “contraception.”

Where does anyone get the idea that contraceptives are unknown and hidden from the “sexually active” teens and young people most likely to produce children who require aid from the state and federal government? Condoms are handed around like candy, and used for a variety of purposes (water balloons come to mind) but don’t make much of a dent in the out-of-wedlock birth rate, nor, apparently, does the pill. This is the practical argument against spending millions of the billion-dollar stimulus on “contraception” (especially contraception internationally that would have no effect on the U.S. economy).

The ethical argument is that “family planning” really means providing abortions.

Americans are deeply divided on the issue of abortion, most falling into the indecisive middle… “I don’t like abortion; it is killing, but….” The “buts” comprise, mainly, disruption in the life of the mother, i.e., inconvenience, but a few do support abortion to reduce government welfare spending and because of the fallacious belief, dating from Thomas Malthus and particularly from the 1968 book The Population Bomb by doomsayer and entomologist (specializing in butterflies, according to Wikipedia) Paul Ehrlich, which claims the world is overpopulated.

Statistically, this is hogwash. Birth rates are declining worldwide, especially in the developed nations of the West. In 2002 the United Nations predicted world population would peak in 2050 at 9 billion. Current estimates place the population peak at 7.5 billion in 2040. And world population has shifted from the developed West, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (32% of world population in 1950, according to WorldNetDaily.com, to 12% in 2000). The shift has been to the underdeveloped third world. Obviously, as Reason magazine pointed out in 2004, “[f]ertility does not correlate with food availability.” The more food available, statistics show, the smaller the population increase. Indeed, population increase swings into the negative in almost half the nations of the world. For example, Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare has predicted a population of fewer than 500 people in 3000 if the country’s average birth rate of 1.4 children per married couple continues, says WND.

The birth rate required to replace population is 2.1 children per hopefully-married couple. Most European nations fail to meet this standard. The United States barely replaces population, but does so only because of immigration. Index Mundi (http://tinyurl.com/5kx9ot) lists the top ten countries in total fertility rates as Mali, Niger, Uganda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The U.S. ranks 125th out of 220. No European nation matches us (The UK is 172nd; Germany, 190th; Spain 203rd, and Italy 204th.), but every Middle Eastern nation exceeds us. Of course this has a few strategic implications.

And then there is economic fact. A falling fertility rate means an aging population. Fewer children growing to be working adults means social spending programs for the elderly (Social Security, Medicare etc.... the same programs Democrats pledge to shore up) must be paid for by fewer and fewer younger workers. And there is less innovation. When Nancy Pelosi says fewer children mean less cost for the states’ and federal governments, she is extremely myopic…and dead wrong. The inconvenient truth is we need all of our children to continue to prosper as a nation. And we need all of our children to continue to exist as a moral nation.