Body Parts

I Don't Wish Obama Well. I Don't Hope He Succeeds. I Hope He Fails.

It is becoming common for national political commentators, who don't share Obama's political vision, to wish him well. David Brooks of the New York Times hopes he succeeds in restoring America; Peggy Noonan wishes him well. Their generosity is misplaced. We must separate the personal from the political. I don't dislike Obama personally; in fact, I don't know him personally and have no basis on which to have any opinion of him personally. I have studied his public persona, which he has carefully constructed and promoted, and some aspects of it are admirable, though under-developed. He has a somewhat conservative view of the black community, but he has not developed that part of his vision, while, alas, snuggling close to the vulgar philosophy of black nationalism and inhaling gigantic quantities of anti-semitism in the process, neither of which he has honestly repudiated.

Politically, I don't agree with his political ideology, his political economy, or his vision of America. I don't think that America is fundamentally a problem in the world.  I do not agree that the problems America has now are the result of an era of irresponsibility. I do not think that the gap between the wealth and income of the classes was the result of government policies or political robbery by Republicans. I do not agree that our foreign affairs will be suddenly made better or the world made calmer and less violent, by repudiating the War on Terror or abandoning support for Israel or abnegating our role as the world's only policeman. His first effort at dialog and charitable engagement with the Islamist forces of anti-semitism, at Durban II, failed and he has had to back off. Similar efforts with Iran, Syria, the Taliban, with Jidadists everywhere, will similarly fail--there is absolutely no evidence, no historical experience, that his naive and silly Leftist approach will succeed. His misguided efforts to implement it will severely set back the Bush administration's hard-won successes against our enemies. Why should I wish Obama well in these policies? Why should I wish him to succeed, when success would injure our allies, weaken democratic movements in the Islamic states, and encourage our enemies?

I do not agree that the solutions to our domestic problems lie in expansion of governmental power and government's position in the economy. Obama's domestic economic policies are economically ill advised and will almost certainly prolong and deepen the nation's now-deep recession and probably push it into a mini-depression. To the extent that these policies succeed, the national economy will fail. Why should I wish him to succeed in his misadventure?

His notion of "energy independence" is based on a deliberate political lie. He and his Democratic allies maintain the fiction that the US is somehow "dependent" upon "foreign" oil, implying Middle Eastern oil. But of course, we are not. We provide nearly half of our own oil needs from our own oil supply. We import oil to satisfy the remaining needs from, in this order, Canada, then Mexico, and then Saudi Arabia. Only 18% of our oil come from Saudi Arabia. It is misleading, though technically true, to call Canada and Mexico, "foreign". They are our closest trading partners. Canada is our nation's closest ally, who has stood shoulder to shoulder with the US in war and peace. Canada is our friend in a deep sense that makes it offensive to label our northern neighbor as "foreign". Mexico is, if not a  historical friend in the same sense, a special trading partner and has a special relationship with us. It is the motherland for a huge minority of our citizens and residents, most of whom would be offended to have their native land despised in the way Obama and the Democrats talk about our dependency on "foreign" oil.

The political fiction about oil dependency is simply a ruse to hide their decision to enact an anti-oil, green economic agenda. The Democrats realize that this agenda will raise the cost of living of most Americans and will, concommitently, lower their standard of living. To get away with their green warfare against America's working and middle classes, they have to disguise their agenda by saying it is to free America from the bad Middle Eastern oil despots, even though we are not enslaved to them by our consumption of petroleum. Why should I wish Obama well and hope these lie-based "oil independence" and "green" policies succeed? The policies will hurt the working and middle classes, and hurt Canada and Mexico. There are ways to transition to cleaner technologies without hurting ourselves and our friends and allies; but those ways involve capitalism and free markets. And Obama and the Democrats want to build big government, and their own power, and not the capitalists and free markets.

Do I want the recently enacted economic "stimulus" not to succeed? What "stimulus" bill? Another political lie from the President and his party. The so-called stimulus isn't, as hundreds of economists, the CBO, and many other observers, including me, have explained at length. It is simply another gimmick to expand government and give the Democratic Party more political power. I can't support something that doesn't exist.

Do I oppose the national infrastructure rebuilding programs in the economic so-called stimulus? Nope. I wish they had been separated out in the Congressional bill that brought us the stimulus. I expect some of them to have a positive effect on the nation; but they will not stimulate economic recovery. Indeed, their cost will lower the national growth rate for decades to come (thank you, CBO, for this analysis). And many of the infrastructure projects simply have not been examined, cost-benefit analyses applied, and argued over. Have we prioritized our infrastructure needs? What kind of America do we want to have in thirty years that the infrastructure projects will help bring? Are all the projects of equal value? Do we need tax-payer funded high-speed rail lines in the US? For what? For whom? For the 6% of Americans who use mass transit? It would be better that the infrastruture sections of the so-called stimulus fail and we start again with better thought out and analyzed projects.

Do I support the President's plan to increase taxes on everybody--on the "rich" directly and on everyone else indirectly through the increased prices of carbon emissions cap and trade? Nope. Class warfare taxation is inimical to a just society. I hope that these policies fail and fail quickly, can be abandoned, and better ways found to fund social programs and environmentalism.

As more proposals for health care and education eject from the White House, I will have more opportunities to repeat my hope that the President fails. No one should hope that bad policies, ill-advised programs, and lie-based disguised grabs for more political power succeed. We should all hope the President fails. I don't wish him politically well.

Update. March 2, 2009. Not unrelated sentiments from Matthias Reyholds  and Edmund Wright in American Thinker.

Update. March 2, 2009. AP writers report on economists' efforts to define a "depression". Hint--we're getting close.

Off To Afghanistan

A friend is about to be deployed to Afghanistan; literally, "about to". A matter of hours. He is the boy friend of a young woman close to our family. He's a Navy Seabee stationed at a Navy training base on the coast. At her request, he has stayed with us when he comes inland to visit his girl friend.

He's twenty years old. He joined the Seabees to learn a construction trade. He has. He will use it. He's being sent to a forward area in Afghanistan where Marines are shortly to be sent. He and his platoon will build barracks, mess hall, administration, and other base buildings. We had planned to have a farewell dinner--it's certainly is not good-bye; but the military, as it is, kept changing his deployment date. Suddenly, it's departure time before we could have the dinner party. Good luck to him and his comrades. He'll get  his favorite meat loaf when he returns. We're grateful.

The Obama Revolution: Shifting Consumption From Tangible Goods To Social Services

The Obama program will dramatically shift private income from spending on tangible goods, such as personal computers, refrigerators, and home furnishing, to social services, such as medical care and education. This shift will be accomplished by taxation policy. Money will be taken from households and funnelled through government social welfare programs. I don't believe for a minute that households with less than $200,000 annual income will be exempt from this shift. The programs and deficits are too large for taxation on the upper 5% of households by income to fund. Somehow, everybody will have to pay (e.g., as by sales taxes). The decline in material consumption will deciminate America's manufacturing sector and associated businesses. We will have a severe contraction in that sector, resulting in more business bankruptcies and millions of more unemployed workers. Consumer oriented manufacturers, such as Dell and Apple, will shrink dramatically. Watch the stock market; it will telegraph the change to come. The Obama program will be a stimulus to America's economic decline, just as similar programs stimulated both Britain's and France's declines after the 1950s.

Update. February 27, 2009. Charles Krauthammer also sees Obama heading toward the EU model.

Update. February 27, 2009. As a federal tax, the carbon cap and trade program will do the trick. Carbon emitters will be compelled to pay for their emissions and accept a cap on them. It's a sales tax on carbons.

Update. March 4, 2009. Obama knew all along that the carbon cap and trade would be a heavy expense for all American families. See this discussion by Gateway Pundit. Obama is not bringing a tax cut to 95% of American households; he is bringing a huge, hidden, transfer of wealth from them to his industrial friends in the green industries.

Update. March 7, 2009. The energy industries have finally realized that the cap and trade scheme is simply a way to tax household to raise the money to fund a social welfare state. Kimberley A. Strassel, "The Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets", The Wall Street Journal, Saturday, March 7, 2009.

I Don't Gloat That Newspapers Are Crashing

I'm not happy that newspapers, even liberal newspapers whose editorial bias infects their news stories and whose editorial pages read like Stalinist era Soviet newspapers reciting the Party line, are crashing. I don't think that intellectual debate is vigorous and thoughtful on television or the Internet or cell phone text messaging. Real debate about big issues needs print. People need to learn, our culture to re-learn, how to read and think through extended argument, analysis, and evidence. With books and pamphlets dead as democratic media for political discussion, only newspapers are left.  I hope that declining newspapers somehow figure out how to survive, clean up their acts, and become true beacons of intellectual freedom and checks on power. If they do, maybe I'll renew my subscription to the Los Angeles Times.

Obama Controls The Narrative

Obama is not simply blaming America's financial and economic crises on "Bush", he is also developing a powerful storyline about America's recent history. His careful and restrained expression of anger about an era of irresponsibility that, he claims, generated the crises and produced social injustice will, as he works the themes over in the next months, have a powerful political effect. He has the bully pulpit, he carries a big stick, and he doesn't speak softly. It seems clear (I sure hope) that he is not going to move America toward socialism--at least not toward a true socialism, with diminishment of democratically distributed private ownership of property, with government ownership of capital, and social programs for all for which all, rich and poor alike, pay and all benefit. True socialism would deprive him of his real complaint, the notion that capitalism with the unequal division of wealth is socially unjust. He wants the few to pay and not receive benefits; and the many not to pay and to take all the benefits. It's class warfare, true, but not by mistake; he wants class warfare. Obama's temperament is more that of a revolutionary--anger, revenge--than that of a parliamentarian. He is quite prepared to be ugly. Republicans have a lot of work to do to blunt his attacks and, alas, no clear, charismatic leader to command the field. Blood--political blood--will be spilt.

I Don't Watch Or Listen To Obama's Speeches; I Read Their Texts Afterwards

You'd be amazed at how his powerful speaking style acts as a bright light shining in your face, preventing you from seeing what is really going on, what he is actually saying. As texts, his speeches are weak, cliched, uninspiring, puffed generalities. I think the best speech he has made was his Father's Day's speech in June, in which he called for African American fathers to pick up their responsibilities. It had some courage in it, as he was addressing his main political constituency who might have been offended by having their dirty linens displayed in public; none of his other speeches did.

Israel Killer Drone Can Take Out Iran's New Russian Anti-Air Missiles

Iran is acquiring and setting them up to protect its nuclear plants and weapons program. Israel's drone is an effort to neutralize Iran's air defenses, thereby leaving the plants open to IAF assault. Well done, IDF! (From DEBKAfile.)

New Running Record

28 intervals in 6 miles in 1 hr 15 minutes. The mileage equals my Monterey record. 28 intervals is two better than my previous record of 26 intervals.

Federal Taxes To Increase Dramatically

In the next two years, Obama and the Democratic Party are going to push America into their long-sought dream, to make America more closely resemble the democratic social welfare states of Germany and France. Health care, pensions, employment insurance, and many other government provided or underwritten social benefits that are now available to special groups on a limited basis will be universalized. The bottom fifty percent of American families, classed by income, will not have to pay any federal income taxes. Education through college will be free for them. Government owned infrastructure, such as railroads, city civic centers, and other public facilities, will be greatly refurbished and expanded. Many cities will have bright, impressive public ceremonial centers and government office buildings, like Washington, D.C., though surrounded by slums that are not on the tourist paths. 

How will this transformation of American national life be paid for? An increase in the progressive tax structure at all levels is a foregone conclusion and is already, as in California, underway. This is a long sought goal of the Democrats, who, though more than Republicans represent the rich and elites, affect a political camaraderie with the populist masses. Quietly, the cap on employee to Social Security and Medicare contributions will be raised to $200,000 or so and the employer's contributions will also be raised. But these measures will not begin to pay for the vast cost of the social democratic revolution, which is estimated at over $60 trillion over the next thirty years (as I recall the estimate from somewhere). This sum can only be paid by a new federal tax. Since the President and the Democrats are looking to Europe for guidance, we can be assured that they will impose a federal sales and/or a value-added tax. With our national economy generating $14,280 billion, that is, $14 trillion dollars, annually (1), a total federal sales tax or VAT of 10% would bring $1.4 trillion dollars in new tax revenues. If federal spending were to level off, this new tax revenue would pay for most of the Obama and Democrats social renovation of America. And that is why this new tax will be imposed.

Obama's Background Includes No Experience With or Understanding of the Creation of Wealth

Not only does Obama have no experience with or understanding of the creation of wealth, he doesn't care. He has the tunnel vision of a neighborhood street radical, who can only see the benefits of stealing money out of the big house at the end of the street and handing it out to members and kin of the 'hood. This sounds cruel? Disprove it. We knew this of course. Heather Higgins reminds us of the salient and sad fact of this man who is President and presiding over this worsening crisis.