Uh Oh, Buck!

Didn't I predict this? Even the New York Times is noticing that the Stimulus Bill is quickly becoming a Trojan Horse for everything the Democrats want to accomplish but wouldn't be able to without a fight. More here, from The Heritage Foundation.

UPDATE: The Wall Stree Journal weighs in with their analysis of the bill. To the Democrats this isn't a recession. This is Christmas.

I Am Standing Here Beside Myself

Dr. Mark Dybul, coordinator of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has been sacked. Selected during the Bush Administration, Dybul has done a remarkable--even heroic--job, and had originally asked to stay on for a few months during the Obama Administration until a replacement could be found.

The day after Obama's inauguration Dybul as asked to resign immediately.

This makes no sense, does irreparable harm to the cause (which I thought Democrats got behind), and smacks of the nastiest of political maneuverings--something Obama had vowed to change.

Perhaps he was not behind this. Perhaps he doesn't even know yet. Perhaps he has nothing to do with it other than hiring the rat that did it. So far, though, his promise to surround himself with good people is sounding rather hollow.

Mr. President...Tear Down This Stimulus!

James Pethokoukis presents 10 Reasons to Whack Obama's Stimulus Plan. A sample:

5) University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker doubts whether all this stimulus spending will do much to lower unemployment: "For one thing, the true value of these government programs may be limited because they will be put together hastily, and are likely to contain a lot of political pork and other inefficiencies. For another thing, with unemployment at 7% to 8% of the labor force, it is impossible to target effective spending programs that primarily utilize unemployed workers, or underemployed capital. Spending on infrastructure, and especially on health, energy, and education, will mainly attract employed persons from other activities to the activities stimulated by the government spending. The net job creation from these and related spending is likely to be rather small. In addition, if the private activities crowded out are more valuable than the activities hastily stimulated by this plan, the value of the increase in employment and GDP could be very small, even negative."

In other words, it doesn't help to create 500,000 construction jobs if there are only 100,000 unemployed construction workers. How many unemployed bank employees do you think will apply for the other 400,000? Knowing that those jobs may--and should--go away in a few years?

The more I hear about this "Stimulus Package" the more I think it's a smoke screen to get a bunch of other things pushed on America that might not have had a chance under better circumstances. Obama claimed he'd oppose any bill with pork in it, and yet this bill is designed in such a way that nothing is pork, so that's an empty threat.

Economist Stephen J Entine has this to add:

The idea is to jump-start "aggregate demand," according to traditional Keynesian precepts. Milton Friedman, on the other hand, taught us that government spending and tax handouts do not stimulate demand, because every dollar doled out by government must be first taken in by taxes, borrowing or other spending cuts. The net effect on aggregate demand is zero.

Read the whole thing. He gets quite detailed on some of the specific points.

It's a big enough concern that Obama and his team of experts are proposing all this in the first place. It's a bigger concern that they've let Pelosi and Reid write the details. It's an even bigger concern still that the conservatives aren't offering any better plans. They've had time, since the Democrats didn't ask for any help in writing their plan.

In short, our ship is sinking. Obama wants to bail with a very large sieve. Pelosi and Reid want to use a hose to pump the water from one deck to another. The GOP is standing around wringing their hands hoping no one will ask for their opinion.

Is it any wonder Consumer Confidence is at an all time low?

Yes, We Can, But We Don't Dare

Philip K. Howard has some ideas on why Obama's call for people to get involved may fall on deaf ears:

Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

That instruction to teachers is one of the reasons I did not become a teacher. As a man, I sensed very early on that the risk of lawsuit or arrest was just too great to risk touching children, even though it broke my heart.

I did a short-term teaching job at a private Catholic school for a few hours each week. The moment I stepped onto the playground the kids would come flocking up to me and wrap their arms around my legs. I longed to hug them back, and I know that some would have benefitted from it enormously. But I couldn't afford to care about their needs. The threat to my potential livlihood was greater than their need.

As long as the modus operandii in America remains "No good deed goes unpunished" we will not live up to our values, no matter who is in office. Indeed, I have to question if those are still our values anymore.

My sister-in-law is a speech therapist in the public school system--at least for a few more weeks. Part of her job is working with mainstreamed special needs students. She tells of the incessant paperwork involved in her job and the lawyers constantly looking over their shoulders looking to sue if every piece of documentation isn't completely perfect. How does that serve the students?

It doesn't. The best special education teachers are quitting in droves, because they got into the job to help children, not file paperwork and fend off lawyers. But the job has become all about the latter and not the former. So they leave. In their place school administrators are forced to hire lesser-skilled stand-ins who are good at neither helping nor paperwork. In the end no one is served.

But it's not about helping people any more. It's about extorting money from the system. It's about "getting yours" regardless of who you have to crush in the process. It's about forcing people to do what's right, even if the definition of "what's right" is unclear or even contradictory.

The very people who are accusing churches of trying to legislate morality are doing just that themselves. Only they can't even get that right, because they have no moral compass of their own. Common Sense has become an oxymoron. Common decency has been replaced with lowest common denominator.

The problem is going to take much more than a sharp-dressed president with a bag full of platitudes. His community organizer tactics won't work here. America needs more than a bandaid, and he's offering little more than to kiss our owie better.

Why Yes, Yes I Do...

Richard Rahn at the Washington Times is asking "Feel like a chump?:"

While you may have thought you are required by law to pay taxes on all your income, you learn the "important" folks in Washington seem to think paying taxes is optional. Chairman Charles Rangel of the House Ways and Means Committee responsible for writing tax legislation has admitted he did not pay the required income taxes on some of his private income (Caribbean rental properties, etc.); and the proposed Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, did not pay the required income tax on part of his income from the International Monetary Fund, where he worked for several years.

I thought Obama was going to hold government accountable to higher standards. It turns out (surprise, surprise) a politician lied to us...again. Geithner gets excused for his "goof". Rangel and Dodd will not be investigated by their respective Ethics Committees. At least Bill Richardson had the decency to remove himself from consideration. He probably would have gotten a pass from the Administration as well. So ironically the one politician with some integrity will NOT be part of the administration.

If I failed to pay taxes the IRS would have me in jail. Ignorance of the law would not be a valid excuse. Why is it only the "important people" don't have to obey the law? And why aren't more people worried that the current Administration is filling up with law-breakers?

"Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!"

John Stossel has an article in the Weekly Standard making the case that there is no reason for the panic we're seeing over the economy right now:

But people are losing their jobs! President Obama frets that "the unemployment rate could reach double digits." Yes, that would be bad, but in the recession of '82, it reached 10.8 percent. Yet no one even remembers the "crisis" of '82. Today's 7.2 percent unemployment rate is higher than we've grown used to, but we've experienced that rate 16 times over the past 35 years. And it pales in comparison to the 25 percent rate of the Depression era.

"The bad news is that our economy is broken and there is nothing the government can do to fix it," economist Peter Schiff told the Wall Street Journal. "The free market does have a cure: It's called a recession."

Have we become so fragile that we can't handle any recession? The 11 recessions since World War II are part of the "creative destruction" that ultimately drives our economy, yet today politicians act as if they can insulate us from pain with bailouts and "stimulus packages."

Or, to quote from my favorite quotable movie: "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

I don't want to make light of the problems many people are facing right now. And I say this as someone working in a company that has announced pending lay-offs. But the government has been throwing money at the problem with no visible result so far. I don't think solution at this point is "More cowbell!"

We're in this mess, as someone pointed out, because people have gone havily into debt to make questionable investments and spend as if the bill will never come due. So why would the answer be to go heavily into debt to make questionable investments and spend as if the bill will never come due? I've only got an MBA, mind you, so perhaps I'm just not smart enough to see it.

I don't mind the government putting out a safety net to help those in need. I may be relying on that net myself in the next few months. But as someone who has scrimped, saved, and spent responsibly I'm still waiting to see a reward for positive behavior. And I'm not seeing that much of a punishment for bad behavior, either. In a world of no consequences one should not hope for change.

Speaking Truth To The Lesser-Powered

Andy Lew offers some sage advice to conservatives, including:

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.

DON’T pretend you’re being brave when you criticize your government. Not while people in other countries actually, y’know, DIE, when they do that.

DON’T use the phrase “speaking truth to power.” EVER.

DON’T say or do everything in your power to drive this country apart and then claim you want unity when it’s your guy in power. This is like the convicted felon who conveniently finds God when he’s up for parole.

DON’T automatically think people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. Some of them are, of course. But most of them aren’t, and you might actually learn something if you listen to them.

And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.

Hear, Hear! Read the whole thing.

He also gets in a swipe at Tom Hanks:

DON’T call people un-American one week, and then talk about how “We are not blue states or red states, we are the United States” the next. (This rule may only apply to Tom Hanks, but I put it in just to be safe.)

Further proof that most calls for unity from celebrities and the left (did I just repeat myself?) are little more than "We have you now! Surrender!"