Unless they’ve got a job at a Washington think tank, it’s difficult for conservatives (a tribe best known for working hard and supporting their family) to find the time to rebut every piece of misinformation coming from the left and their allies in the mainstream media. Thus, when you hear about the wonders of socialized medicine in Canada or Great Britain, you may instinctively know that the claims are inaccurate but not immediately be able to rebut them. This is why God created Thomas Sowell.
In his newest column, the Sage of Palo Alto takes aim at some of the most pernicious health care fallacies. Consider for instance, his rebuke to misinformation on American life expectancy:
… the media spin is that various countries with government-run medical systems have life expectancies that are as long as ours, or longer. That is very clever as media spin, if you don’t bother to stop and think about it.
Author Sally Pipes did bother to stop and think about it in her book, “The Truth About ObamaCare.” She points out that medical care is just one of the factors in life expectancy.
She cites a study by Professors Ohsfeldt and Schneider at the University of Iowa, which shows that, if you leave out people who are victims of homicide or who die in automobile accidents, Americans live longer than people in any other Western country.
Doctors do not prevent homicides or car crashes. In the things that doctors can affect, such as the survival rates of cancer patients, the United States leads the world.
Sowell’s ability to pierce liberal shibboleths through sheer empiricism is second to none. Read the whole column and then consider picking up a copy of his “Economic Facts and Fallacies” to further build your arsenal for your next encounter with a liberal friend.
It’s hard to appreciate the consequences of government policies when you’ve never had to make a payroll. Noting that the Obama Administration has no person in senior management with business experience, AOL contributor Marty Robins says the most troubling deficit in Washington, D.C. is a lack of ideas from people who’ve actually had to work in a free market economy.
What we need more of in Washington are those who combine a broad understanding of the nuances and “macro” implications of public policy with an appreciation of what makes the private sector tick on a “micro” level, and what constitutes good and bad assistance and incentives.
We need those who have successfully built or built up businesses and been personally invested — in a financial and an emotional sense — in such efforts, so that they can appreciate what government can and cannot do.
With all the craziness coming out of Washington, D.C. these days it’s a joy to find political commentary that uses humor – and politicians’ own words – to make devastatingly accurate points. Such is the case with Politizoid.com, an online creator of digital cartoons that use actual sound bites of elected officials.
Check out this episode called “Obamafeld,” a segment introduced with the caption: “The endless banter, the self-absorbed complaining it sounds like Seinfeld but with our liberal leaders it’s just another day of the politics of meaninglessness.”
In CFIF’s Liberty Update last week, we highlighted how President Obama isn’t so much “pulling us out of the ditch,” but rather setting our nation’s car on fire. Instead of spending his time claiming credit for our inevitable cyclical rebound, Obama should recognize that his policies of higher spending, taxation, regulation and debt are only subduing it. To illustrate, we contrast the remarkable gross domestic product (GDP) growth during the Reagan recovery delivered by tax cuts, reduced regulation and a stronger dollar versus our current stagnation and possible “double-dip” recession.
Comparing unemployment trends then versus now provides another vivid illustration of the toxic effect of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid economic agenda. From December 1982 to June 1984 – the first 18 months of the Reagan recovery – U.S. unemployment plummeted rapidly from 10.8% to 7.2%. In contrast, over 13 months since our current economic rebound commenced in July 2009, U.S. unemployment has stagnated from 9.4% to its current 9.5%. Of course, it is theoretically possible that unemployment will plummet by three percentage points over the next five months to match the Reagan recovery, but not even Joe Biden is silly enough to predict that.
It’s no mystery how to unleash America’s economic vigor and bring recovery: less government and more economic freedom. It’s just a matter of electing leaders who will actually pursue it.
Finally, some above-the-fray bipartisanship! Tomorrow former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) will support Congressman Joe Sestak’s (D-PA) bid to enter the body Hagel once inhabited. On the surface, the endorsement can be rationalized. Both men served in the military (Hagel in the Army, Sestak in the Navy), and neither could be confused with a strong ideological commitment to forceful shows of American power.
However, there’s probably something more to Hagel’s otherwise ineffectual endorsement. (He is virtually unknown to Pennsylvania voters, and his refusal to back Republican Pat Toomey won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Hagel’s moderate record.) With Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates (another middle-of-the-road-Republican) retiring at the end of next year, look for Hagel to get extra attention to replace him.
On the other hand, there could be genuine benefit for Hagel — albeit symbolic. Hagel is rightly understood as trying out for a Cabinet job and the more he can show a willingness to put party aside to do what he believes is the right thing, the more attractive he will be to President Obama and his inner circle.
It will be interesting to see if — and where — Hagel chooses to insert himself between now and Nov. 2 and what benefit, if any, he accrues in the eyes of the White House for those endorsements.
Funny how the “right thing” in this scenario is calculated to boost Hagel’s chances at landing one of the most important jobs in the United States government. Hey, we can’t all be political martyrs – right, Pat Toomey?
With the Ground Zero Mosque raising the hackles of some of the loudest and most cloying voices on both sides of the political aisle, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find a pundit of any ideological persuasion who can put together a reasoned position on the proposed house of worship.
A glaring exception comes courtesy of Christoper Hitchens’ piece on Slate today, where he highlights some of the darker views of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the group looking to build the mosque. Foremost among them is Rauf’s unapologetic embrace of the radical regime in Iran — a position that Hitchens rightly notes can’t be squared with any authentic belief in democracy or liberalism.
That’s particularly ironic when you consider how much Rauf and company have wrapped themselves in the flag of tolerance as they push forward on the mosque project, a tactic brilliantly dissected by Hitchens:
Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything “offensive” to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …
Unless you’re looking for it there isn’t much stateside coverage of the political revolution going on in Britain under the country’s Coalition Government. The stories that to poke through, however, are well worth the read, as is this article in today’s Christian Science Monitor. A sample:
The final sight – and this is the most difficult to see – is the coalition’s attempt to create a “big society,” or a bolstering of social groups, charities, and entrepreneurs to step in as government withdraws from much of its role. The best example of this altering of Britain’s social fabric are preparations to enlist 16-year-olds into national volunteer service.
The big society is Cameron’s vision, one that assumes people are ready to shed decades of dependency on London and step in to help others.
The concept could be almost as difficult as the biggest of the budget cuts, due in October, which will test the coalition’s finely woven political compromises. And will the private sector be ready to fill the holes left by the cuts.
So, the biggest gamble in the Coalition Government’s plan to reduce the size of England’s central bureaucracy isn’t the “austere” budget reductions or even the controversial referendum to change a century’s worth of election law. It’s whether Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” program can inspire enough of the private sector to step into the social services breach created by the receding government.
American conservatives and libertarians have long said that private charity and other civil society institutions are much better at creating a social safety net. With Britain’s budget forcing policy makers into decisions they would never dream of implementing in good economic times, now is the moment for limited government types to seize the opportunity to deliver a better, more efficient version of the social safety net. Otherwise, liberals and socialists will be quick to remind voters of all the needs that went unaddressed when government grew “too small.”
In short: the key struggle with Islam is not inter-communal, and certainly not between Americans and Muslims. It is intra-communal and going on across the Muslim world. The reason the Iraq war was, is and will remain important is that it created the first chance for Arab Sunnis and Shiites to do something they have never done in modern history: surprise us and freely write their own social contract for how to live together and share power and resources. If they could do that, in the heart of the Arab world, and actually begin to ease the intra-communal struggle within Islam, it would be a huge example for others. It would mean that any Arab country could be a democracy and not have to be held together by an iron fist from above.
Considered in the most favorable light, this was the hope propelling former President George W. Bush’s decision to depose Saddam Hussein. If Iraq could be successful, then the path would be open to other Arab nations to trade the strong man model for stronger civil society.
So far, the jury is still out; especially with Iraqi politicians locked in disputes over a power-sharing agreement after an inconclusive national election. (Perhaps if the U.S. State Department had exported our winner-take-all system instead of the Europeans’ proportional scheme, the Iraqis would at least be able to get on with governing after they vote.)
Friedman’s column is a welcome addition to the debate about how the United States can best remake other countries. As of August 2010, probably not much. At the end of the day, the solution to what ails the Muslim world lies in the ingenuity and statesmanship not of some “great man” ready to play the part of George Washington or Nelson Mandela, but in the collective will of the Iraqi people.
In a fascinating article published in today’s Guardian(UK), British newsman Will Hutton gives an eyewitness account of how the free love socialism of the 1960s ultimately led to the unfettering of the Western financial industry. Faced with the decision of managing capitalism or destroying its constraints, Baby Boomers chose chaos over order.
It was an inevitable victory, but it meant that the movements of the 1960s no longer had a political champion for industrial and economic change from below. The liberalism of the great social movements would transmute into economic liberalism – and when Labour lost the 1992 general election the rout was complete. Capitalism had lost every check and balance. There was no Labour movement and no idea of socialism. There was no political party committed to reforming capitalism. There was not even the cultural acceptance of restraint, the need for rules and proportion. (Emphasis mine)
The result has not been pretty. Short-sighted policies in the housing and derivatives markets fueled the excessive tendencies of an entire generation. The spike in paper wealth ushered in the kind of largesse only a self-defining rich nation thinks it can afford: lavish public pensions; diversity czars; a McMansion for every college graduate.
Though he ends his article with the wistful hope of a purer form of new socialism, Hutton strikes upon the deeper current driving the waves of voter discontent in the Western world. The collapse of the economic order was the tipping point that made people aware of how much the rise in wealth over the last twenty years papered over the decline of Western culture. No nation is immune. After two decades of enjoying money for nothing, citizens of the West are finding that what they really have is nothing to show for all their money.
Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.
…
Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at the debate about how to respond to legal and political opposition to the moratorium.
They show the new top regulator or offshore oil exploration, Michael Bromwich, told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that a six-month deepwater-drilling halt would result in “lost direct employment” affecting approximately 9,450 workers and “lost jobs from indirect and induced effects” affecting about 13,797 more. The July 10 memo cited an analysis by Mr. Bromwich’s agency that assumed direct employment on affected rigs would “resume normally once the rigs resume operations.
The reason is simple: it’s just too hard to compete for votes and money when running against candidates from the two established parties. Far better, the columnist suggests, to turn the Tea Party’s attention to city and county races where much of the real world of governing takes place.
Mike Alexander and the Pasadena (CA) Patriots couldn’t agree more. Like Mike’s wife Patricia likes to say, “Starting at 6 a.m. on November 3rd, we are going to focus on all the municipal elections here in Los Angeles County: county supervisor, city council, school board, you name it.” Tea Party enthusiasts would do well to check out Alexander’s TEA PAC organization for ideas on how to turn activist energy into winning elections.
One could make the argument that Didier’s explicit positions on spending, taxes and abortion contributed to his distant third place finish in the recently concluded primary. It’s also conventional wisdom that Tea Party members are more likely to vote for a Republican than a Democrat if given the choice.
But that assumes that Tea Party members think that that must vote for either of the two remaining candidates; in this case Rossi or incumbent Senator Patty Murray (D-WA). That’s a false assumption. Many Tea Party members are active in the movement precisely because they think conventional Republicans like Rossi can’t be trusted. If Rossi fails to woo a majority of Didier’s supporters, this November will be his third – and likely last – statewide defeat. The Tea Party will just stay home.
As Didier points out, he’s not trying to back Rossi into a corner, but rather deliver him votes. It’s time establishment Republicans realized that the Tea Party isn’t a slice of the electorate that can be ignored in favor of the ephemeral “middle” – it’s the conservative base.
You know it’s shaping up to be a bad year for Democrats when the congressman most associated with pressuring banks to accelerate the growth in subprime mortgages says he hopes government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dead within a year. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) told CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow that he no longer supports “pushing lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford…”
So what could be motivating Frank’s flip-flop? Kudlow thinks it could be the rare example of a politician admitting his mistake. I’m betting it has more to do with the rise of Sean Bielat as a serious contender to challenge Frank in the upcoming general election.
The same week Frank offered his mea culpa to Kudlow, Frank’s campaign staff circulated information that Bielat was formerly a registered Democrat before switching to the Republican Party. The implication is that Bielat can’t be trusted because he switched parties.
But in an impressively worded explanation, Bielat manages to highlight his resume as a former House page, Marine and Harvard graduate, and why at each step along the way he was more and more conflicted with the Democrats’ liberal agenda. There’s even a polite reminder that Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat until its leftward tilt helped him discover his inner conservative.
Frank is obviously concerned about Bielat’s appeal this year because of his line of attack on Bielat: Don’t vote for Sean; he used to be a Democrat. Too bad for Barney, though, because he still is.
Ohhhh, so ~now~ they tell us? White House allies are instructing operatives to abandon the claim that ObamaCare will reduce healthcare costs and the deficit. Instead, they now seek to persuade the electorate that we can “improve it.”
According to Politico, the messaging conference call and PowerPoint presentation acknowledges the failure of the promises shamelessly fed to the public by ObamaCare advocates:
The presentation’s final page of ‘Don’ts’ counsels against claiming ‘the law will reduce costs and the deficit.’ The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.”
If this doesn’t make you angry and ready to line up at dawn to vote this November, have your pulse checked.
Prior to ramming ObamaCare through Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously pledged that they had to pass the bill in order for the American people to learn what’s in it. Now that the dust has settled, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses what we’ve “learned.” It’s not pretty.
So it appears that baseball legend Roger Clemens will be indicted for lying to Congress during his 2008 testimony over alleged steroid use. While we agree with Congressman Darryl Issa (R – California) that perjury is a serious offense, it raises an interesting question: If Congress can hold citizens legally accountable for such things as lying about private behavior by professional athletes, why not hold Congress similarly liable for lying to citizens about matters of public concern?
After all, isn’t what’s good for the goose also good for the gander? It might also clean up Congress quicker than even term limits could do.
In an interview with CFIF, Historian Lee Edwards discusses his book, William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement, and offers firsthand insight into what motivated and inspired the man behind the modern conservative movement.
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