Now that the US has officially joined the ranks of Socialist nations, France wants to make sure that we play by the rules.

The European Union made noises last year about having the WTO verify that the U.S. auto industry assistance package doesn’t violate any international trade rules. Now French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will ask the World Trade Organization to stick their hands into the matter.

Critics suggest that this could be a diversionary tactic – Sarkozy himself was accused of violating trade rules with his proposed assistance to Renault and PSA Peugeot/Citroen. Or it could be a way to see if both the proposed French and U.S. proposals will pass the WTO test. Either way, Sarkozy and other European heads of state will meet to plan a Europe-wide response to the auto industry situation, as the E.U. continues to mull whether to bring a formal appeal to the WTO regarding the United States’ bailout package.

If another socialist nation thinks the Big Three Bailout was without merit, you know it was a bad idea. Gee, I hope they don’t call on the UN to come over here and enforce the rules.

Amen brother Leo.

I dreamt that John McCain was President last night.

I know, I know…he’s not the most Republicanny Republican and all, but think about it for a moment.

We’d have three highly qualified candidates waiting in line to be Commerce Secretary instead of Obama’s “sometimes it takes three tries to get it right.”

…yah, I am sure you think that sounds pretty smart Obammy, but I’d like to know what Michelle thinks of that.

I think you meant it takes three tries to find someone desperate enough to put “Obama Administration” on their resume knowing full well what his policies are going to do to with what’s left of “commerce” in America.

It’s why we don’t have a Titanic II. No one would want to be Captain, let alone sail on her.

If John McCain were President, we would have a cabinet packed with people that actually pay their taxes, have actually started business (vs. reading about it in a textbook), hired employees, owned homes and paid mortgages – versus trading favors with a Chicago criminal to put a roof over their head.

There’d have been no speculation of Oprah’s official capacity either.

As for the speech last night, McCain would probably have dissapointed us ala the debates been less inspiring…from a show-business sort of perspective. Not a lot of charisma or flash. Not a lot of big words. Very little emoting.

We’d have his nervous ticks instead of Obama’s sweeping, graceful poise.

…and no Hopey Changey Messiah talk.

But McCain’s math would have been better.

Obama’s Math:

Socialize Health Care

+ Cap and Trade

+ Increase Taxes on Those That Actually Pay Taxes The “Rich”

+ Halve The National Debt Deficit

= Fatal Error. Please Reboot.

Either way, we’d still have Nancy Pelosi’s assenine permagrin dental work burned into our pixels (I actually had coffee with someone this morning that had to put a towel over the right side of the TV screen last night so he could watch Obama’s sermon).

If John McCain were President, Congress would still be hashing out the “Stimulus” bill under threat of a veto, and chances are in the end there would have been less pork hanging on it’s bones – it would still be a terrible mistake, but to a lesser degree.

…and we’d all actually have some true hope for the economy and our dollar.

McCain would be fighting for government policy that might actually have a chance of stimulation, like cutting taxes to corporations, business owners and consumers, and forcing government to do more with less, like the rest of us poor saps that have the audacity to pay our mortgages, live within our means and respect our commitments and responsibilities.

As it stands, the only thing Obama has proposed to cut is military spending – in the era of the only successful terrorist attack on American soil – barely a footnote in Obama’s monologue last night.

John McCain’s speech would have been shorter. He’d be less talky-talky and more worky-worky. He would have ended his campaign once elected. Obama can’t stop his.

John McCain likely would have tackled our nation’s issues like the decorated hero/servant that he is. He’d likely have picked the most urgent, pressing target, (it’s the economy, stupid) trained his sites and directed his resources and political capital in a focused campaign dedicated to it’s destruction, and we’d have some semblance of a plan right now.

Contrast that with Obama’s reckless design to force-feed thirty years of pent up and failed liberal agendas, without regard for the timing or capacity of our economy to absorb the costs or overcome the additional friction borne by the conduct of commerce.

The President and his book-learned liberal turd-squad think you can make a train start moving again by building more track and adding more cars. McCain would feed the boiler with more coal.

In all fairness, neither President would have a clue how exactly to solve an unprecedented, systemic and global financial and credit crisis; but one would have the good sense of what not to do right now.

…but he’s still the Senator from Arizona.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

Anyone else find incredible irony in a “Republican” governor that has run his state into the ground, and is now lauding the stimuless bill?

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Schwarzenegger said he welcomes his state’s share of the massive $787 billion package, believing it could create as many as 400,000 new jobs.

“We welcome this economic stimulus package. I think it’s terrific and will help us,” the California governor said. “We were happy even though there’s…people complaining. It’s not what they envisioned, but what is? The people will give you 1,000 different answers.

“It was Obama that got elected. He put the package together, so let’s support it,” he also said.

Ahnold, I loved you in True Lies but in real life you are an “ee-dee-yot.” There is nothing “terrific” in the rest of us bailing you out after years of deficits and mismanagement of your state.

What a sad artifact of a bygone era that moniker is. Arnold Schwarzenegger circa the 2003 “total recall” election was going to sweep all before him as California governor, bringing the same élan and toughness he had on the big screen to fighting special interests and restoring his beloved state to competitiveness.

With no screenplay to save him, the much-reduced Governator simply buckled and switched sides.

Sadly, California may serve as a model for the rest of the nation, now following in California’s footsteps.

California Democrats are only slightly ahead of national Democrats, so the country’s fiscal future may be in preview in Sacramento.

The state has been buffeted by the housing crisis, but the ultimate cause of the mess is relentless, heedless overspending.

Sound familiar?

Sorry Mr. Kennedy-Shriver, its time to cut the mooring lines and let Caleefohnia float out to sea.

Barack Obama has a new web site…with some handy graphics too.

Recovery.gov

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be carried out with full transparency and accountability — and Recovery.gov is the centerpiece of that effort. In a short video, President Obama describes the site and talks about how you’ll be able to track the Recovery Act’s progress every step of the way.

Where is Your Money Going? (click on the graphic for more detail)

*Wealth Transfers, Political Payback and the Installment of Socialism

Eight Billion Dollars. Gone.

…all you can offer is “Other“?

Sadly the passage of the stimulus bill to an all-too-willing President serves to mark the certain end of an era.

We have become a nation ruled by a majority no longer able or equipped to face our challenges head-on, rather deferring them ever further into the future for our children to solve.

In a bygone era, we collectively strove to live our lives and suffer sacrifices to lever the rarefied benefits of freedom and enterprise for the sake of future generations in the interest of a higher standard of living.

A great many among us even risked their very lives so that America could remain free and were thus christened The Greatest Generation.

Alas, long gone are the concepts of thrift and sacrifice that faded memories of a great depression taught us generations ago.

There once was a time when the trappings of success were acquired once you were actually successful. Nowadays young people feel they deserve to pick up where their parents left off.

Indeed, our entire commercial culture is predicated on the fact that whatever you wear, whatever you drive, the very house that you live in is obsolete the day after you acquire it.

An anachronism indeed is the concept that if you can’t afford it don’t buy it. In its place: buy now pay later; you deserve it!

Is it no wonder then that our government is an apt reflection of we who sent them and are now levering the future for today?

Driven by an insatiable appetite for consumerism, enabled by institutions all too willing to lend with greater margins of risk, risk falsely mitigated by high minded liberals hell bent on gerrymandering and meddling their way to Utopia, our nation has been sowing the seeds of this crisis for decades.

Growing under the dark clouds of a three decade long supercyle of personal, corporate, institutional and government borrowing, the seeds needed only a nudge to emerge.

Now germinated, a crisis that has left our government so clueless as to the solution that it offers a larger dose of the poison as prescription.

Liberal politicians have hijacked the will of half of our electorate, skillfully conditioning their impressionable sensibilities and aligning millions behind the notion that mother government is somehow able to absolve them of their responsibilities as a citizen of a free nation.

They have been led to believe that they are entitled to the coffers, filled now only with obligations to future generations, or to be defaulted upon entirely, because they are entitled to be equal to those vilified by their choice to work hard, employ others, save and invest.

These hapless many are being reminded that all men are created equal, and entitled to remain so.

Substantiated by billions to be spent with no chance of any economic impact, this stimulus bill is the manifestation of all of this coupled with the inexorable will of liberals to enlarge our government as an instrument of their collectivism ambitions. This crisis is not seen as a challenge to solve rather it is a gift not to be squandered. The American people are vulnerable; time is of the essence for a liberal political land grab.

…all sold under the guise suffering and sacrifice are no longer modern concepts, offer no tuition and are to be avoided at all costs; even at the expense of our children’s financial future – even at the expense of our freedom as a nation.

Wars were once fought with sticks and stones but the wars of the future may very well be fought with financial instruments. The battleground may be the internet and in the financial markets. The strong, preying on the weak, especially those destroyed from within.

This battle may already be afoot.

This generation has brought our nation to its knees. Now manifested is the notion that a democracy made aware of it’s power to vote itself it’s riches will do so, and with a vengeance.

At President Obama’s El Grande Stimuloso Tour Del Mundo  New New Deal Road Show  Socialist Party Recruitment Tour Town Hall meeting in Florida this week, a downtrodden Henrietta Hughes stepped to the microphone and asked for an extra helping of Hopey Changey^© from the Messiah.

“I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in,” she said. “The housing authority has two years’ waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.”

Now, why didn’t she ask for help getting a fricken job? Why does she expect the government to skip to giving her the fish instead of helping her to catch one?

Who could be giving people the idea that that is how America works?

…I don’t even have my own bathroom – I have to share it with Mrs. Roosh – and Henrietta just got…three? Plus a study, a library, a jacuzzi, a three-car garage, and a big-screen telly-vision.

Supplied by Obammy’s handlers?

Nope.

A Democrat breaking rank and actually giving his/her own money?

Nope.

Chene Thompson, the wife of state Rep. Nicholas Thompson, R-Fort Myers, is letting Henrietta Hughes and her son stay in a house she owns in nearby La Belle rent free until they get back on their feet.

“You don’t have to be a politician to put forth a stimulus package,” Chene Thompson said during a joint interview with Hughes Thursday on CNN’s “American Morning.” “This is our own little mini-stimulus package for a person who was a stranger and now is a friend.

What? The guvment isn’t coming to the rescue?

Republicans…one voter at a time!

Now if someone could help find her a job…

Just so we set the record strait – since so many libs seem to have trouble getting it right – deregulation didn’t get us here (emphasis added):

CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.

Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.

Let’s recap:  Bush acted and spent like a liberal; liberal Democrats want to fix the consequences of liberal acts and spending with…more of both.

I have a headache.

Harvard Economist Robert Barro:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.

Translation: This bill sucks and won’t work (although you probably didn’t need my translation given the non-Economist descriptors “worst” and “garbage.”)

Clearly Barro recognizes giving money to people that don’t pay income taxes is being fed to us as a “tax cut.”

We are going to borrow 800 billion dollars to no economic effect, although mark my words, Democrats will take credit for the recovery that will eventually come with or without the bill. Because this is still America after all.

…at least for now.

Jim Rogers on the banking “bailout:”

The new financial rescue plan may not work and could even make things worse because it plunges the US further into debt and it is designed by the same people who failed to forecast the crisis and take measures, legendary investor Jim Rogers told CNBC Tuesday.

But Rogers said Geithner, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, “has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row,” and so was President Barack Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers, who acted as Treasury Secretary at the turn of the century.

Translation: This bailout, once it is decided upon, will suck.

“If I were on your show 15 weeks in a row and was wrong, you’d probably never invite me back. These guys have been wrong year after year after year consistently and here they are making the same mistakes again. This is not going to solve the problem, it’s going to make it worse.”

It never ceases to amaze how so many in our country expect the same people that caused the crisis will grow a brain and fix it…and with the same tools that caused it.

…on the bottom of the screen on CNN in our lobby as I type:

Delay Means “DEEPENING DISASTER”

Guess who?

Pass the Pork Package…

…or else! (Shivers should have just gone down your spine)

…another reminder that the best thing Congress and Comrade Obama could do right now is simply make sure that unemployment benefits are well funded nationwide and otherwise stay out of the way.

[Despite a tough employment report], stocks traded strong on Friday, with the Dow industrials finishing up over 200 points. Broad stock indexes are up 15% to 20% from their November lows. How can this be?

Well, the stock market is telling us that the economy’s future is a lot brighter than its past. The stock market looks ahead; the employment report looks behind.

Which is to say while this particular recession is a wee bit longer than most, it is otherwise reasonably predictable. Unemployment numbers will peak while the stock market moves up and small businesses and large corporations will start hiring again, usually before they are done laying off all that were slated for release.

By the way, in Friday’s jobs report, wages rose again, and now stand nearly 4% higher than a year ago. With zero inflation, that’s a real increase in worker purchasing power for the 92.4%, or 135 million workers, still employed.

Mr. President? Curious. I thought we were in the midst of a national catastrophe (actually we are – it started on January 20th).

…stocks may now be telling us that the gloom-and-doom crowd — and its pessimistic economic prognostications that cover all of 2009 and in some cases 2010 — is about to be proven wrong.

Or you could believe the President, what with his track record of truthiness and all. It’s going to suck to tell America “we screwed up” again and again.

The commodity markets — among the first asset sectors to respond to [the lowering of rates and increase in the money supply by the fed]  — are stabilizing. Broad commodity indexes are 6% or so above their lows. Ditto for energy.

So, let’s spend a trillion dollars any way.

Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.

That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.

Is there anything good about the Spendulus Package?

And as Art Laffer has taught us all, taxes also matter — a lot. In fact, the only real stimulative part of the behemoth stimulus package is the simple fact that marginal tax rates will not be raised.

Oh, you mean the Republican version. Gotcha.

So cheaper energy, bundles of new money creation, zero inflation and no tax hikes could very well combine to produce a stronger economy as the year progresses — to the great surprise of the majority of economic pundits.

…and to the dismay of The Little President that Cried Wolf.

Too late for that now.

…but in hindsight, if one considers our economic woes the current regime’s “9/11”, clearly America chose poorly.

While Obama is caving in…

Stopping just short of a take-it-or-leave-it stand, Obama has mocked the notion that a stimulus bill shouldn’t include huge spending. He’s also defended earmarks as inevitable in such a package. And he’s pointedly reminded Republicans about who won the November election.

…John McCain is on point:

“The whole point, Mr. President, is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “There are billions and tens of billions of dollars in this bill which will have no effect within three, four, five or more years, or ever. Or ever.”

While Obama is turning up the rhetorical amplitude, favoring expedition over the more contemplative approach that came and then went on the hill, and preying on American fears with his “National Catastrophe” rhetoric, cooler heads like John McCain are leading a growing opposition to the liberal crooks and liars that have dominated Congress for a handful of years now. Falling poll numbers for their Pork Pie stimuless package initiative (once Americans had a gander under the hood) are favoring restraint.

Congress and the Bush Administration got it wrong with the TARP monies and the Big Three bailouts. History will show neither were necessary nor effective. Both were costly and damaging to our reputation and currency. Both scenarios would have played out very differently given a more iterative approach to their design, and even moreso under the auspices of a Republican majority; but they squandered their chances for a fiscal overhaul under the Gingrich regime.

But hindsight as it were, doesn’t appear to be 20/20 for “That One.”

“They did not choose more of the same in November,” Obama said Friday. “They did not send us to Washington to get stuck in partisan posturing, to try to score political points. They did not send us here to turn back to the same tried and failed approaches that were rejected because we saw the results. They sent us here to make change with the expectation that we would act.”

How ironic is that statement? Three weeks in, and Obammy is calling earmarks “inevitable”, unprecedented government spending “stimulus,” lamenting political posturing while repeatedly reminding “who won in November,” and at the same time decrying the “tried and failed approaches that were rejected because we saw the results?”

How did the Bush stimulus work for us? TARP is a failure. GM and Chrysler will ultimately file Chapter 11.

Where’s our Change^© Mr. Jimmy? A few weeks in office and you’ve already succumbed to politics as usual when what we need is a man with a spine.

Someone like John McCain.

An enema with a sandblaster or a foot massage by a Pittsburgh Steelers Cheerleader?

Coming home to a raging house fire or arriving at your cabana on the beach replete with a fully stocked mini-fridge?

A hijacked jetliner crashing into the ocean off the coast of East Africa or a skillful landing on the Hudson River?

Five minutes in the ring with a folding metal chair in the hands of a steroid-ridden Jesse Ventura, or a playful moment in a pile of fallen leaves with your little girls?

Last one…don’t let me influence your choice:

A bloated pork-ridden stimulus package of some eight hundred billion (soon to be worthless) dollars including billions for liberal pet projects and paybacks or

$430 billion dollars on tax cuts.

$114 billion for infrastructure projects.

$138 billion for extending unemployment insurance, food stamps and other provisions to help “Americans in need.”

$31 billion to address the housing crisis ($11 billion for a loan modification program, $20.4 billion in tax incentives for home purchases, $50 million to temporarily increase loan limits for Freddie, Fannie and FHA)

For those of you that can’t do math (sorry Mr. President, yes I am including you) that’s over one hundred billion dollars less than the current proposal.

…and

…it actually sounds like a real stimulus package – the lesser of two evils version at least.

Sadly, Barack Obama’s flavor of bipartisanship means we probably don’t have a choice.

…and they can’t all be Republicans.

45.6% thought the [stimulus] plan was a bad idea. Meanwhile, 29.7% thought it was a good idea, and 24.7% were unsure.

“I think most of us are opposed to it because it’s a bailout in nature, and people are concerned about how it will be allocated,” said Eric Toya, vice president of Trovena LLC of Redondo Beach, Calif., which manages $400 million in assets. “It’s so anti-free-market-capitalism, which is what most financial advisers and the public believe in.”

…until they were told that they don’t believe in that any more by rockstars, the media and The Messiah.

“The fact that the size and price of the plan keeps growing should be a major concern,” said Greg Zandlo, president of The Zandlo Financial Group of Minneapolis, which has $50 million in assets under advisement.

What’s the difference between The New Deal and The New New Deal? Scale. Scope.

There’s only one thing worse than a liberal that doesn’t know what to do. A liberal that doesn’t know what to do and does it any way.

The survey also found that 36.4% of advisers did not have much confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy. Meanwhile, 31.5% said they had a “fair amount” of confidence, and 12.2% said they had a “great deal” of confidence.

About 15.5% of respondents said they had no confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy, the online survey found.

Which can only mean another “Fairness Doctrine” aimed at financial advisers is on it’s way.

…unless it’s ours.

Glenn Beck explains the folly that is our Stimulus habit…using the Al Gore method.

Conservative Republicans in Congress may out-numbered but they may still be in the majority.

The real fiscal policy battle is going to be among liberal and conservative Democrats, the “Blue Dogs” as they are known, and they seem to think Barack Obama is one of them.

“Barack totally gets it . . . He is smarter than Bill Clinton and disciplined.” So says Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper on the Thursday before Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Sitting in his office a stone’s throw from where the festivities will take place, I ask about his role in the big transformation coming to Washington. He’s one of the leaders of a gang of moderate Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They’re meeting their first Democratic president in a while, and Mr. Cooper may have a big effect on the agenda. He smiles gently and says, “If we were to ally with the Republicans, we could swing any vote in the House of Representatives.”

The Blue Dogs gang is growing and is made up of a number of Democrats that didn’t vote for the first Stimuless Package, or the Big Three (…Two…One) Bailout, are against tax increases and actually favor “targeted” tax cuts.

So far they want to play nice with Lefty Pond Scum like Frank ‘n Beans, Pelosi and Reid, but this could be the makings of a surprise and possibly epic battle for the high ground.

If they are inclined to wrangle with Nancy Pelosi and the more liberal contingent in the Democratic Party, they will drive policy, especially as a check on spending. “Ideally the White House will see things our way, so they will present legislation on the Hill that we find acceptable,” Mr. Cooper says. “If they stray too much from that or if a certain part of Congress strays too much from that, then we may have to object.”

But is Barack one of them?

Obama To Hold Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.

The question is whether Obama actually used the perjorative “entitlement” and whether his idea of “choices” is cutting benefits and/or forcing Social Security and other entitlements to do more with less…or just raising taxes.

If the Blue Dogs are right, we might actually have another Bill Clinton on our hands, one that won’t dip his pen in the company ink (Michelle would rip his head off I surmise), which given the fiscal policies of GWB, might be Change^© we fiscal conservatives can live with.

…albeit given the lack of choice in the matter for the next two to four years.

But what of the monster stimulus package? What doth the Chien Bleu say of that?

“…I think there are infrastructure things that are legitimate to spend money on,” like the interstate highway system. “For the stimulus package to work in the economy, you have to have long-term credibility. If people think we are inviting inflation back in, or if we’re not going to prudently manage the nation’s finances, the stimulus package is largely a waste of time.”

A great thing about Mr. Obama’s plan, he says, is the tax cuts. “I think stimulus can come in a variety of forms, but I think the key message is Democrats are not for tax increases. Democrats can be for tax cuts when appropriate, when needed, when targeted. We can argue about the type of cut, but the key element of this proposal was facing the payroll tax. That is the most regressive, most antijob tax in America and very few presidents in American history have touched it. And Barack is touching it in this package. That is an achievement of immense proportions in and of itself.”

I’m still not convinced this stimulus will stimulate anything and I remain skeptical of Barack Obama’s definition of a “tax cut.”

In the mean time, check out these quotes…from a Democrat no less…Blue Dog Cooper:

[The deficit is] even worse than most people think, he says, because of dodgy accounting used by the federal government.

“The U.S. government uses cash accounting,” he says. “That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam.”

Barack Obama is inheriting over $60 trillion of problems. This is not counting the bailout, or Social Security or anything.”

Standard & Poor’s reported that the U.S. Treasury bond would lose its AAA rating by 2012 because of the way Washington has been carrying on. America would have the same credit rating as Estonia and Greece, and then the same as Poland and Brazil, and then it would be like . . . Mexico. “Yet no one knows about this,” he says.

We will be watching Congressman Cooper and his Dogs.

Let the battle begin.

For most of human history, humans have had to reproduce as fast as they could; children were the only 401K, and infant/child mortality was harder on that retirement plan than the recession is on your Roth IRA today.
Capitalism and the generalized prosperity that’s attended it in the past 150-odd years has changed that dynamic. In a sense relative to the rest of the world throughout history, capitalism and general prosperity has taken human  life from “nasty, brutish and short” to “relatively civilized, at least modestly comfortable, and where obesity is the biggest health problem among the poor“.

One of the blessings that’s attended these changes is the existence, throughout the world, of “cheap food”.  When I say “cheap”, I’m not talking about supermarket shelf price, by the way; 500 years ago, over 95% of the world’s population worked from dawn to dusk six or seven days a week trying to subsist.  Do you work two shifts seven days a week just to feed your family and live in a hovel?  Who does?  No – food is incomparably cheap these days, historically speaking, even if the price of eggs is getting kinda out of hand.

“Cheap food” has enabled the parts of the world still governed by dictators, petty overlords and warlords to sustain populations that would have been mathematically and logistically impossible 100 years ago.  Of course, the lack of actual personal prosperity, and the attendant uncertainty of life, has kept the birthrates in these places high (albeit lower than when I was a kid).  The presence of global media, communications and markets have also made life safer in the parts of the world run by despots, warlords, and amok bureaucrats; it’s a truism that no famine can take place in a nation with a free market and a free media (every famine in the past 100 years has taken place in places with neither); the globalization of communications and markets has made it possible for weathy nations (with their epic surpluses of food) to ameliorate the worst ravages of famines, the great population-leveler of days gone by.

So on the one hand, a tide that has been rising since the birth of the modern world has been lifting all boats.
On the other, this has led the world into two basic demographic paths:

1. “First World” countries, with safe, practically-boundless supplies of food and historically-unprecedented prosperity, find it unneccessary to reproduce as much – even, in the case of Western Europe, to fall below replacement level, leading in just a few generations (from the end of WWII to today)  to the specter of being demographically “upside down”, with average ages creeping up into the forties and retirees outnumbering working citizens, and thus having to choose between economic shrinkage (with its attendant ravages on taxes to support  “service”-heavy governments – but let’s not digress) or importing working-age labor from…
2. “Third World” countries, for whom the relative affordability of food (historically speaking) but the relative scarcity of economic freedom has led to populations that are booming, young (average age less than twenty in many countries) and, since they live in despotic, anarchic or socialist countries, underemployed and poor.

This might lead to a vicious cycle – as we’re starting to see in Western Europe, where ageing populations, which for almost two generations have been at zero or negative native population growth are having to import labor from other younger, poorer countries.  Who are changing the political face of these countries – sometimes against immense resistance from the natives, and all of the attendant strife.

(There are actually two vicious cycles:  overpopulation in the world’s current context happens when populations in un-free nations continue pre-prosperity growth rates; there’s a reason that Paul Ehrlich, overpopulation alarmist of the sixties and seventies, is largely a risible figure these days; widening prosperity (in a historical context) obsoleted his theory in many countries that he’d used as case studies.  Remember when people expected India to become a famine-ridden wasteland?).
The US’ average age is still relatively low – partly due to immigration, partly because our national birth rate is above replacement levels (and even moreso outside the “blue” states – which could reflect anything from lower standards of living or greater optimism in the red states, depending on your point of view, and it’s a digression we won’t follow in any case), but we have a “baby boom” moving through the pipeline that’ll drag things upward a bit in short order.  Still, the US is faring better than most, controversies over illegal immigration notwithstanding.

But here’s the question:  how does the “First” world react to the demographic fact that prosperity itself renders its populations older and less capable of continued economic growth?

1. The French model – work to pound immigrants into line behind a national set of standards set by the dominant culture (which, culturally, resists assimilation of immigrants)
2. The Dutch model – try (at least in theory) to carefully regulate and balance immigration to provide needed labor and skills without overly diluting the national culture (which is marginally less resistant to assimilation than France)
3. The American model – work to assimilate immigrants into a cultural system comprising a set of ideals rather than ethnic cultural norms
4. The Japanese model – actively reject all but the most desperately needed immigrants, and aggressively marginalize the few that do get in.
5. The Russian model – wallow in cultural depression and drink oneself into a stupor, and let your nation’s underworld fleece, terrorize, brutalize and co-opt the immigrants into a permanent, but distracted, underclass.
6. The Finnish model – watch your national median age skyrocket – but live in a place to which nobody actually wants to migrate.
7. The (ahem koff koff) model – subsidize fecundity.  Give tax breaks and/or other rewards to families that reproduce above the replacement rate, promoting measured growth and helping to keep the nation’s median age down to a reasonable level, to ensure future economic growth and national viability in everything from defense to beach scenery.

What’s a hypothetical, ageing society to do?

(more…)

Barack Obama has outlined his plans to create jobs in America via speeches during his inspiring campaign and his calming and reassuring tone as Occupier of the Office of the President Elect.

As economic conditions have evolved and Obama’s confidence in his magical powers has grown, he has revised his goals and ambitions for job creation over the past year.

In an effort to be a progressive source of economic guidance and as a public service, we have gathered and cataloged the President-Elect’s “Job” Creation Goals as outlined in his many and factual addresses to the nation.

Using the same mathematics and economic theory* employed by Obama’s advisers and cutting-edge spreadsheet technology, we have analyzed and extrapolated Barack Obama’s “job” creation predictions.

Here is a sampling of the data and its sources (emphasis mine-JR):

Feb 13, 2008 WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that as president he would spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, as he tried to win over economically struggling voters.

Obama’s investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create 5 million so-called “green collar” jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.

December 24th, 2008 Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama is still four weeks away from inauguration, and already the size of government is growing. His initial goal of creating 2.5 million new jobs has been upped to 3 million, rising in lockstep with a proposed economic stimulus package.

We know money buys influence. Now we find out it can buy jobs as well.

If only it were that simple.

Jan 10, 2008 Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama said his two-year plan to boost the U.S. economy will generate up to 4 million jobs, higher than his previous estimates, the biggest portion of them in construction, manufacturing and retail.

Here is our analysis:

As you can see, by this time next year, Barack Obama will have predicted the unprecedented creation of over 32 Million Jobs by the end of 2011. This is cause for great rejoicing and a renewed confidence in our political system.

The surplus of new jobs will actually allow many workers to choose more than one, although experts predict an executive order will limit job selection to two per worker and three per household for American citizens and  three per worker and five per household for illegal aliens undocumented workers that can document a contribution to the Obama ’08 campaign.

We will revise our estimates as new data is made available to us via the media.

*Hopey Changey^©

John Candy (God rest his soul) probably couldn’t have anticipated that world events would transform his 1995 film Canadian Bacon into a docu-drama.

Among the most unthinkable scenarios for most Americans is the unthinkable idea that the United States could become the disunited or turn into divided states. Even though this union accumulated very slowly in the first place, and against all odds — in other words it was not inevitable — the fact that the USA will not always be as united, or at least united in the way it is now, is considered, well… unthinkable.

But as Juan Enriquez notes in his amazing PopTech talk, based on his book “The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future”, no US president has ever died under the same flag that he was born under. That is, the borders of the United States has constantly shifted even in modern times. The last state was added in 1959 (after I was born!) and more could be added still. Americans are comfortable ADDING states, but it might not take much to subtract one. The outcome of the US Civil War has biased Americans to disbelieving in subtraction, but that might change.

In these scenarios, Minnesota becomes part of Canada, which of course we Minnesotans have known all along.

Right? 

The upside: The Canadians will put an end to all this outdoor stadium foolishness.

HT Althouse

Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar economic and job creation stimulus is a Trojan Horse for his Grand Vision of Mass Transit and The Battle for the Planet.

Obama wants a large portion of the money spent on mass transit but exactly how does the expansion of infrastructure that requires permanent public subsidy to serve a small segment of society qualify as a stimulus? You could argue that highways are of the same ilk, but highways are used by everyone in the food chain whereas mass transit requires the majority to subsidize the minority that are it’s patrons.

The states that would be in receipt of these ill-borrowed billions have it right.

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — Missouri’s plan to spend $750 million in federal money on highways and nothing on mass transit in St. Louis doesn’t square with President-elect Barack Obama’s vision for a revolutionary re-engineering of the nation’s infrastructure.

Utah would pour 87 percent of the funds it may receive in a new economic stimulus bill into new road capacity. Arizona would spend $869 million of its $1.2 billion wish list on highways.

The argument is a labyrinth of cautionary tales.

Speaking of digging holes, Obama also wants to spend $60 billion to “provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation.” He says “these projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.”

Fixing a bridge, widening a highway or building a light rail system may or may not make economic sense. But the fact that it involves paying people to operate jackhammers and pour concrete does not make it any more worthwhile. If creating jobs can justify transportation projects, why not fill the country with bridges to nowhere?

Consider:

• Government stimulus packages in and of themselves are dubious in their value when you consider the increase to the national debt, their evanescent nature and the precipitate inflation. If only they worked.
• Congress can’t and won’t spend this money without an agenda; without earmarks; without wasteful pork. “Why did you sting me?” said the turtle to the scorpion.
• Mass transit isn’t any better for the environment than cars are as our compatriot Bike Bubba has made serially and mathematically clear.

We all know what a Liberal means when they use the word “innovative.” It condescends whatever their over-educated “elite” brains deem shall be the object of increased government spending. It’s how socialism became “progressive.”

In proposing a stimulus plan that could total as much as $1 trillion, Obama has promised a new federal infrastructure program that would dwarf President Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system that began in 1956. Obama told reporters at a Dec. 7 news conference that his effort would go beyond “roads and bridges” and fund more innovative projects.

I wonder if anyone has considered that the value of our national interstate system was not the temporary and transient jobs it created but rather the stimulus it created for the economy via efficiencies and freedoms it afforded capitalism and the consumer?

We are fast realizing that Obama isn’t any more innovative than any of his liberal predecessors in the White House. His ideas are warmed-over versions of Eisenhower’s and FDR’s and differ only in scale. What glory after all could be gathered to the bosom of the motherland by a project “half as big” as Eisenhower’s?

If, as widely expected, Barack Obama faces a recession when he takes office in January, many Americans will expect him to deliver on his promise to “create jobs.” They probably will be disappointed, because Obama seems to view job creation not only as something the government does with taxpayers’ money but as an end in itself. That’s a recipe for wasteful spending that will divert resources from more productive uses, and ultimately for higher unemployment than would otherwise occur.

Obama says he will “transform the challenge of global climate change into an opportunity to create 5 million new green jobs,” which he likens to the economic activity triggered by the personal computer. This rosy way of looking at global warming is a variation on the “broken window” fallacy dissected by the classical liberal economist Frederic Bastiat, according to which the loss caused by smashing a window is offset by the employment it gives the glazier.
Leaving aside the desirability of “energy independence” and the merits of Obama’s approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions (which has the government, rather than the market, picking the most efficient methods), the fact that he lists “jobs that can’t be outsourced” as a distinct goal is troubling. Paying people to dig holes and fill them in again also creates “jobs that can’t be outsourced,” but that doesn’t mean it’s a smart investment or an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.

Obama’s job fetish is apparent even when he talks about spontaneous economic activity. “Businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs,” he declared in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In a free market, businesses exist because they provide goods or services that people value. A business that makes job creation its overriding goal will not be employing anyone for long.

The preclusion is that stimulus packages in the whole (pun intended), and especially those spent on social engineering projects or contrived global crises aren’t worth it.

All Hope^® for Change^® is lost.

I used to hate these bumper stickers.

Now I want one.

Visiting with business-owner and otherwise conservative clients these past few days, I have found a consistent level of puzzlement at best – ire more often – with President Bush’s move to override Congress, a GOP filibuster, and public opinion with his move this week to issue a bailout for GM and Chrysler in the waning days of his Presidency.

Why, Mr. President, Why?

To divide the GOP even further?

…exit the White House on a positive note (one that resonates only with other liberals)?

Use it or lose it? Did George Bush feel the need to spend his last dollar of political capital?

Conservatives are more pissed off with Bush than ever before.

Ford says “No Thanks.” Henry would be proud.

Cerberus, Chrysler’s privately-held owner says “You first”, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.

Cerberus Capital Management…said Friday that it would put $2 billion from Chrysler Financial into the automaker’s operations after being granted a $4 billion government loan.

Cerberus…previously resisted making further investments in Chrysler, citing its obligations to its investors (who must not be taxpayers?-JR). But Friday, after the government announced emergency loans for Chrysler and General Motors, Cerberus relented.

“In connection with the loan to be provided by Treasury, Cerberus has agreed to utilize the first $2 billion of proceeds from Chrysler Financial to backstop the loan allocated to Chrysler automotive,” the firm said in statement.

As for General Motors, Chapter 11 is the best and inevitable option – the only way to force true restructuring of the nation’s largest automaker.

As for you George, Don’t let the door hitcha’.

Rick Wagoner, CEO and G.W. share the same fate as their careers wind down.

They are both on the wrong side of public opinion. Bush is also on the wrong side of the aisle.

Good for GM, Good for America?

The Washington Post reports that its poll finds 55% of Americans oppose the Detroit handout, while only 42% support it. Democrats have become the party of corporate welfare, with 52% supporting the bailout; majorities of Republicans (69%) and independents (57%) are opposed.

Most surprising finding: “Union households are no more apt than those without a union member to favor the plan, 44 percent compared with 42 percent.” The United Auto Workers wants government money so as to protect the work rules and artificially high emoluments that have helped make Detroit uncompetitive.

Wagoner argues that without a bailout, GM will have to go Chapter “Belly Up” and won’t survive it. At the same time Bush is circumventing a Republican filibuster and overwhelming public opinion to open up the TARP checkbook for the Big Three; two of which don’t need the money; one of which has resorted to begging.

We keep hearing the argument, originally put forward last month by Rick Wagoner, GM’s delightfully named CEO, that people won’t buy cars from companies that have filed bankruptcy, for fear that parts and service will become unavailable. Are consumers really so stupid that they would have more confidence in a company that goes on welfare to support an unsustainable business model than in one that is being restructured through bankruptcy court?

It turns out the Unions aren’t as pro-bailout and foreign competitors may be more pro-bailout than one would imagine.

One major problem is that Japanese carmakers in the United States share many of the same parts suppliers. If a Detroit automaker were to collapse, suppliers would likely follow, setting off a chain reaction that could wreak havoc for Japanese production in a vital market.

More broadly, the U.S. crisis could lead to huge job losses and further weaken consumer spending, especially for big-ticket items such as automobiles. Together, the three big American automakers employ 239,000 workers in the United States.

I have teetered back and forth on this issue. Not unlike the unfolding of the financial system crisis, the more time that elapses, urgency fades in favor of clarity, and the more prized clear-headed thinkers become.

Let GM file bankruptcy. Let Cerberus feed their child so we don’t have to. Let Ford Navigate the waters unfettered by bailout dollars and the restrictions they would entail.

Let capitalism do what capitalism does: make stronger companies.

As long as health insurance is predominantly accessed through a third-party payer – employers – most Americans will have to rely on their them to shop for them. This has been a great deal for those who suffer from preexisting conditions as the insurance provider takes on the employer group in toto.

It’s also been a great deal for those whose conditions are of their own volition, or lack thereof as it were, as they are able to average in their morbidity and get a break.

Politicians talk of a health care crisis and how a country as prosperous as ours should not allow anyone to be without health care. It’s a right, not a privilege; a matter of dignity.

Fact is, our national health care “crisis” is not being caused solely by the insurance companies, nor the current delivery system but rather by the insureds themselves. In a way, our prosperity is our downfall. Everyone can afford Twinkies and smokes.

Experts say that upwards of 40 percent of U.S. medical costs are linked to obesity, smoking and other lifestyle factors — a statistic not lost on the nation’s employers. As a result, more than half of large corporations now use incentives to get employees to shape up, a 2008 survey found.

America is fat, and still surprisingly smoky too. Health insurers have been prodding consumers to get off their duffs, join clubs and live healthier lifestyles to no avail. Have you seen the insipid television commercials?

Now employers want a crack at it.

Sheila Kromer doesn’t want any help.

She enjoys smoking and she doesn’t want to quit.

Nor does she want advice on how to eat right. Or how to exercise. “I’m smart enough to take care of myself,” she says.

As a chemist at 3M, she’s had plenty of chances to join health and fitness programs on the job. But like many Minnesotans, she’s simply chosen not to.

Smart is as smart does. As it stands Sheila, you’re a jackass, and you’re gonna pay for it. Now and later.

(more…)

…so that we can load it up with the most useless projects we can devise…but we’ll call them “Infrastructure,” and taxpayers will look the other way.

From a couple posts ago…

“We understand that we’ve got to provide a blood infusion to the patient right now to make sure that the patient is stabilized. And that means that we can’t worry short term about the deficit. We’ve got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving,” he said.

Let’s dissect what Mr. Jimmy just said. We have to make sure to print and/or borrow so much money that the economy will have to get better?

Obama’s words rang out like a dog whistle for liberals everywhere.

And not surprisingly, the term “Infrastructure” gained a new, broader meaning.

On Monday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors went to Capitol Hill to ask for a handout, or as they put it: “We are reporting that in 427 cities of all sizes in all regions of the country, a total of 11,391 infrastructure projects (emphasis mine-JR) are ‘ready to go.’ These projects represent an infrastructure investment of $73,163,299,303 that would be capable of producing an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010.”

…it turns out $73 Billion is “capable” of producing 847,641 temporary jobs.

A wish list that is 11,391 projects strong! What vital infrastructure projects would cash-strapped taxpayers get for their $73 billion? Here’s a sampling:

– Hercules, Calif., wants $2.5 million in hard-earned taxpayer money for a “Waterfront Duck Pond Park,” and another $200,000 for a dog park.

– Euless, Texas, wants $15 million for the Midway Park Family Life Center, which, you’ll be glad to note, includes both a senior center and aquatic facility.

– Natchez, Miss., “needs” a new $9.5 million sports complex “which would allow our city to host major regional and national sports tournaments.”

– Henderson, Nev., is asking for $20 million to help “develop a 60 acre multi-use sports field complex.”

– Brigham City, Utah, wants $15 million for a sports park.

– Arlington, Texas, needs $4 million to expand its tennis center.

It’s a simple fact. Liberals can not be trusted with the nation’s checkbook. In a time of world financial crisis, their solution is to spend more taxpayer money on even more useless pork.

The government does have a role to play: stimulate the economy by creating incentives for growth, incentives that will be permanent, paid for by cutting government down to size. But liberals would entertain that notion. Liberals seek to justify and extend government largess, not reduce it to it’s rightful weight.

Instead of stimulating the economy, Barack Obama and his faithful liberal lunatics in Congress aspire to become the economy.