No Oil for Pacifists

President Obama exaggerated the effect of healthcare cost increases on the economy to argue that healthcare reform must be accomplished together with economic recovery. Obama also nominated Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for health secretary, who promptly completed the circle by insisting "We can't fix the economy without fixing healthcare." Are they right?

No. There's no connection between the credit collapse and healthcare. I've shown that American healthcare is quite good, and better than single-payer (Canada) and socialized (Britain, France) systems. Further, I've shown that Obama's model reform measure, adopted two years ago in Massachusetts, suffers run-away costs that now threaten to wreck that state's economy.

Could it be that America already has a reasonable healthcare scheme? Maybe we should retain our current approach, and fine tune it to increase competition by, for example, ending the tie between health insurance and employment.

Scott Atlas M.D., senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor at the Stanford University Medical Center, agrees. He published 10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care", in NCPA's Policy Analysis No. 649 (Mar. 24, 2009); here are the first six:

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America's health care system should be considered.

Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.

Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:

• Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
• Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
• More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
• Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).

Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]

Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8] . . .

Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

---

[1] Concord Working Group, "Cancer survival in five continents: a worldwide population-based study,.S. abe at responsible for theountries, in s chnologies, " Lancet Oncology, Vol. 9, No. 8, August 2008, pages 730 - 756; Arduino Verdecchia et al., "Recent Cancer Survival in Europe: A 2000-02 Period Analysis of EUROCARE-4 Data," Lancet Oncology, Vol. 8, No. 9, September 2007, pages 784 - 796.

[2] U.S. Cancer Statistics, National Program of Cancer Registries, U.S. Centers for Disease Control; Canadian Cancer Society/National Cancer Institute of Canada; also see June O'Neill and Dave M. O'Neill, "Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S.," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 13429, September 2007. Available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429.

[3] Oliver Schoffski (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), "Diffusion of Medicines in Europe," European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, 2002. Available at http://www.amchampc.org/showFile.asp?FID=126. See also Michael Tanner, "The Grass is Not Always Greener: A Look at National Health Care Systems around the World," Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 613, March 18, 2008. Available at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9272.

[4] June O'Neill and Dave M. O'Neill, "Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S."

[5] Ibid.

[6] Nadeem Esmail, Michael A. Walker with Margaret Bank, "Waiting Your Turn, (17th edition) Hospital Waiting Lists In Canada," Fraser Institute, Critical Issues Bulletin 2007, Studies in Health Care Policy, August 2008; Nadeem Esmail and Dominika Wrona "Medical Technology in Canada," Fraser Institute, August 21, 2008 ; Sharon Willcox et al., "Measuring and Reducing Waiting Times: A Cross-National Comparison Of Strategies," Health Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 4, July/August 2007, pages 1,078-87; June O'Neill and Dave M. O'Neill, "Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S."; M.V. Williams et al., "Radiotherapy Dose Fractionation, Access and Waiting Times in the Countries of the U.K.. in 2005," Royal College of Radiologists, Clinical Oncology, Vol. 19, No. 5, June 2007, pages 273-286.

[7] Nadeem Esmail and Michael A. Walker with Margaret Bank, "Waiting Your Turn 17th Edition: Hospital Waiting Lists In Canada 2007."

[8] "Hospital Waiting Times and List Statistics," Department of Health, England. Available at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Statistics
/Performancedataandstatistics/HospitalWaitingTimesandListStatistics/index.htm?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=186979&Rendition=Web.

(via Carpe Diem)

Here's something Obama wasn't planning on stimulating: handgun and military weapon sales -- up dramatically. They are not buying hunting rifles, and this isn't a knee-jerk reaction to gun-control alarmism.

People are arming themselves:

Gun sales shot up almost immediately after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential elections on November 4 and firearm enthusiasts rushed to stores, fearing he would tighten gun controls despite campaign pledges to the contrary.

After the November spike, gun dealers say, a second motive has helped drive sales: fear of social unrest as the ailing economy pushes the newly destitute deeper into misery.

Ruger handgun sales are up 42%. Smith and Wesson handgun sales are up 46%, driving a rare positive surprise on Wall Street as they beat expectations by 150%. And it isn't hunting rifles people are buying, either: "SWHC's hunting business is being negatively impacted by the economic downturn, but the company continues to selectively invest in the business while focusing on reducing the cost structure."

Mr. Market also has something to say, and it says people are going to continue to buy handguns.

Here is the chart for Smith and Wesson. Ruger's chart is nearly identical.

Now, Obama signed the so-called 'stimulus' bill into law on the 17th of February. Not only has Smith and Wesson doubled since the 17th of February; but also note the extremely heavy volume, about four to six times normal as well.

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here -- there is a causal relationship with the street reaction to the porkulus bill -- the street is betting the gun business will be robust. People are going to continue to arm themselves.

Speaking of personal protection, I prefer the FMG9. "Gets nasty? Get down to business."

(H/T to The Yeoman Farmer)

Remember how our new, Blue-state intellectual leadership would end the supposed foreign policy gaffes of those unsophisticated Republican cretins? Well Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on a diplomatic mission to Mexico last week, where she "made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers 'on behalf of the American people.'" So far, so good. But wait, there's more:

1. Amateur hour: Hillary's next step highlighted the new Secretary's cultural sensitivity:

   Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.
   
   
   source: The Anchoress
   
   After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked "who painted it?" to which Msgr. Monroy responded "God!"

   Spanish language video here.
   
   Our Secretary of State apparently didn't know, as Mollie at GetReligion explains:

   You can read more about Guadalupe here, but Roman Catholics believe that the beautiful image was miraculously imprinted on the cloak of a 16th-century peasant. It is Mexico’s most popular and important religious image and the basilica that houses it is the second-most popular Catholic shrine in the world.

   Oops!



2. Obamessiah Suck-up: As of Sunday, not a single mainstream media article mentioned the gaffe (the blogs are all over the story). By contrast, the press faithfully reported Secretary Clinton's next stop: a speech at Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national conference in Houston, where Hillary received the Margaret Sanger Award, the organization’s highest honor, named after the group’s founder. Because the press knows this Administration sees feminists as a vastly more important constituency than believers in the Virgin Mary.



3. Farce: Had George Bush (or Dan Quayle) ended their visit as follows, the press would have been all over them--but Hillary gets a free pass:

   Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, "you have a marvelous virgin!"

   Blogger Dan Riehl imagines how Monsignor Monroy should have responded:

   Yeah, I heard your husband has had a few, as well!

The gray bars are recessions:


source: BofA/Merrill Lynch

Page D2 from Friday's print edition of the LA Times:


source: Lies.com

Here's a zoomed-in version:


source: NewsBusters

It's all Greek to me (a pun for anyone who's ever been in the print business).

(via The Corner)

Though linked a few days ago, here's another quote from an editorial in Tuesday's Investor's Business Daily (links added):

Environmentalists celebrated a victory on Monday when the White House acknowledged that the Environmental Protection Agency had transmitted its proposed finding that global warming is a public health threat. The U.S. Supreme Court directed the EPA two years ago to decide that question, ruling that if it found warming to be a threat, it must under the law regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The EPA's dire finding echoes last month's testimony by Howard Franklin, who directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health, before a Senate Committee. Franklin said the CDC "considers climate change a serious public health concern" that could accelerate illnesses and deaths from heat waves, air pollution, and food- and water-borne diseases.

But warming may actually save lives. Warmer weather means longer growing seasons for both food and the raw materials for biofuels. Ironically, the push to biofuels has caused hunger and food riots around the world as crops are diverted and food prices rise. The environment is harmed due to increased biofuel cultivation and agricultural runoff.

A recent BBC report noted that 20,000 deaths are linked to the cold each year in the U.K. and that those deaths fell 3% a year from 1971 through 2003. Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied and written extensively about global warming, believes as many as 40,000 American lives would be spared each year.

At the Chicago Climate Exchange, you can trade your time share condo in the crappy North East for one with year-round jogging weather in Southern California. Ha -- no just kidding.

It will pay you not to grow crops.

By not tilling his 800 acres, Woollen by some estimates keeps 470 tons of carbon per year in the ground and out of the atmosphere. Because of that, Woollen gets carbon credits he can sell on the Chicago Climate Exchange. At first, neighboring farmers were skeptical. “They called me a tree-hugger,” Woollen said. “Then I showed them my first check.” Woollen gets about $3,000 a year from the climate exchange’s carbon-trading pilot program.

Here is another head scratcher:

In the western Virginia town of Christiansburg, the operators of a landfill sell carbon offsets tied to a project that captures methane, a powerful greenhouse pollutant, and burn it in a tall orange flare. They've made $43,000 on the Chicago Climate Exchange in just a couple of months.

But that project was put in long before the offsets were sold and for a different reason: to keep dangerous gases from accumulating in a capped landfill. So if the offset market dried up completely?

Nothing would change.

The money "is gravy to us right now," said Alan Cummins, executive director of the regional authority that runs the landfill. Even without it, he said, "we would always continue to flare."

The Chicago Climate Exchange trades in emissions of six gases: Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons. I'm pretty sure that mixture is quite close to my own flare. Should I start lighting up?

The carbon-offset idea is founded on the notion that carbon emissions are greenhouse gasses which are related to current global warming -- a debunked hypothesis. Since there is no evidence for greenhouse caused global warming, the carbon-offset is really a carbon-rip-off-set.

Then, there was this gem. My buddy in Des Moines, Iowa, says his neighbor Ed received a check from the government for over $1,000 for not raising hogs. He thinks Ed is onto something and now my buddy wants to go into the "not raising hogs business" next year. He asks:

What I want to know is, what is the best kind of farm not to raise hogs on, and what is the best breed of hogs not to raise? I want to be sure that I approach this endeavor in keeping with all governmental policies. I would prefer not to raise razorbacks, but if that is not a good breed not to raise, then I will just as gladly not raise Yorkshires or Durocs.

As I see it, the hardest part of this program will be in keeping an accurate inventory of how many hogs I haven't raised.

If anyone has words of wisdom on not raising hogs, I'll put you in touch.

On a related note, I heard that Obama is trading in hogs.

Conclusion: It is becoming insanely more and more profitable to not grow, not raise, not consume and not expend. Is this economic stimulus, Obama style?

Labels: cap and trade, carbon offset, rip-off-sets

(via reader Ken R.)

From the March 29th New York Times magazine article about Prince­ton physicist Freeman Dyson:

It was four years ago that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that "all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated." Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that "the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all" and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an "obsession" -- the primary article of faith for "a worldwide secular religion" known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s "chief propagandist," and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, "An Inconvenient Truth." Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s "lousy science" for "distracting public attention" from "more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet."

A particularly distressed member of that public was Dyson’s own wife, Imme, who, after seeing the film in a local theater with Dyson when it was released in 2006, looked at her husband out on the sidewalk and, with visions of drowning polar bears still in her eyes, reproached him: "Everything you told me is wrong!" she cried.

"The polar bears will be fine," he assured her.

Not long ago Dyson sat in his institute office, a chamber so neat it reminds Dyson’s friend, the writer John McPhee, of a Japanese living room. On shelves beside Dyson were books about stellar evolution, viruses, thermodynamics and terrorism. "The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models," Dyson was saying. "They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models." Dyson speaks in calm, clear tones that carry simultaneous evidence of his English childhood, the move to the United States after completing his university studies at Cambridge and more than 50 years of marriage to the German-born Imme, but his opinions can be barbed, especially when a conversation turns to climate change. Climate models, he says, take into account atmospheric motion and water levels but have no feeling for the chemistry and biology of sky, soil and trees. "The biologists have essentially been pushed aside," he continues. "Al Gore’s just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers."

(via Watts Up With That?)

UPDATE: below

Remember when Joe Biden predicted a foreign policy crisis early in the Obama Administration? Well, it's arriving from the East, and might be as little as a week away.

North Korea already has the bomb. And it announced that sometime between April 4-8, it will launch a rocket:

North Korea says it plans to put a communications satellite into orbit, but that claim is widely viewed as a pretext for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Taepodong-2. The U.S. director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a Senate committee that a three-stage missile of this type, if it works, could strike the continental United States.

The reach of North Korea's missiles might extend to Hawaii, but clearly threaten our allies South Korea and Japan, and would bring Alaska under NoKo's range:


source: Washington Post

In 2006, the UN condemned past and future North Korean missile tests (Resolutions 1695 and 1718) and every country in the region--including China, Russia, Japan and Korea--warned the NoKos against further testing. So has France. For those who trust in enforceable international rules, there are good arguments that downing the NoKo rocket would be lawful if it is a ballistic missile, as Senior Administration policymakers believe.

So how will the Obama Administration react? Initially, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called North Korea's plan "provocative," but ruled out any intent to intercept or shoot down the rocket. One Senate Foreign Relations staff member warned Obama against overreacting to the test. Yet, the head of the US Pacific Command said we could shoot down the NoKo missile. And a former Clinton Defense Secretary said we should--back in 2006, when that position was a critique of President Bush. Still, late in the week, the Administration positioned two anti-missile warships to international waters near Japan.

The Administration plainly wishes it could avoid a decision. They would prefer someone else take this cup from our lips. Which is possible: Japan "ordered its military on Friday to destroy a North Korean missile or its debris, if the launch fails and falling pieces of the rocket seem to imperil Japanese territory."

But what if Japan doesn't act or seeks US approval (as may have already happened)? When the NoKos launch, will Obama blink? I predict yes. Even though Obama says he supports missile defense, he only endorsed "technology [that] will protect the American public," not necessary America's Asian allies. And the President famously prefers international diplomacy to force--what he calls a "whole philosophy of persistence." Though this is a huge risk, the reluctance to use force is a position that many other countries support even should the NoKos launch. Further, he's relatively disengaged with foreign policy in general, preferring to concentrate on the economy. Finally, Obama has to be concerned that any attempted intercept would fail.

I favor clipping Pyongyang's wings. Nonetheless, if only to avoid being blamed for any subsequent NoKo response, President Obama probably will "tread softly" and merely complain to the UN. So Mario Loyola writing on The Corner is right:

Whatever else one may say, the looming North Korea missile launch may be considered the first crisis of Obama's National Security Council. How he acts may be a signal of how he intends to steer U.S. foreign policy in the years ahead.

MORE:

See the March 30th Wall Street Journal editorial:

The missile launch is an obvious test of the new U.S. Administration, and the appropriate response would be to shoot it down. Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told the Senate this month that the U.S. has the capability to do so, and that the military is "prepared to respond." Yesterday, however, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on "Fox News Sunday" that the U.S. has no plans to shoot down the North Korean missile -- though he allowed that it might consider trying if an "aberrant missile" were headed toward Hawaii or "something like that."

That tepid response won't help our allies in Tokyo, which is responding more robustly. It deployed two ships equipped with sophisticated radars and antimissile interceptors to the Sea of Japan, and one to the Pacific, where the North's long-range missile is expected to land. The Defense Ministry also announced that it has deployed Patriot antimissile units in and around Tokyo. Japan is preparing to defend itself against debris from the long-range missile, whose trajectory North Korea says will travel over Japan, and from the North's likely additional tests of short- and medium-range missiles, which could reach the Japanese islands.

All of this is business as usual for North Korea, whose ultimate objective is to use its nuclear and other military programs to extract more money and recognition from the West. It used the same tactics on the Bush Administration, despite assurances from negotiator Christopher Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the North's disarmament promises were believable.

Now Kim is trying to intimidate the new Obama team into paying again for the same promises. What it ought to do is join with Japan in shooting the missile out of the sky. It could then pull the plug on the Bush deal and enlist China and South Korea to exert new pressure on the North. The alternative is more phony diplomacy, with Kim's regime gaining more Western support to stay in power while developing even more weapons.

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

A week ago, I wrote about the failing healthcare scheme in Massachusetts. Friday, the Wall Street Journal updated the story:

Even the single-payer cheerleaders at the New York Times have caught on to this rolling catastrophe. In a page-one story this month, the paper reported on the "expedient choice" that Mr. Romney and Democrats made to defer "until another day any serious effort to control the state's runaway health costs. . . . Those who led the 2006 effort said it would not have been feasible to enact universal coverage if the legislation had required heavy cost controls. The very stakeholders who were coaxed into the tent -- doctors, hospitals, insurers and consumer groups -- would probably have been driven into opposition by efforts to reduce their revenues and constrain their medical practices, they said."

Now they tell us. What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered. But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues. Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional. Only 21,000 people have used the "connector" that was supposed to link individuals to private insurers.

Which brings us to Washington, where Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are about to try their own Bay State bait and switch: First create vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later take the less popular step of rationing care when it's their last hope to save the federal fisc.

The consequences of that deception will be far worse than those in Massachusetts, however, given that prior to 2006 the state already had a far smaller percentage of its population uninsured than the national average. The real lesson of Massachusetts is that reform proponents won't tell Americans the truth about what "universal" coverage really means: Runaway costs followed by price controls and bureaucratic rationing.

According to Politico, the Obama State Department is:

more restrictive than its predecessors. This may not be by accident: One government official said State and the White House have been discussing reducing the amount of information the State Department releases about the secretary’s words and meetings, which by long tradition is more expansive than what’s released by some other agencies.

(via Instapundit)

Now this, in Italy last week, was an eye-opening protest:

A panty-clad Italian porn star shook up the Milan stock exchange Tuesday by accusing flummoxed financiers of "stripping Italians of everything but their underwear".

Laura Perego, 22, crept into the bourse in a cloak and threw it off as she jumped onto a table in her panties and body paint in the Italian national colours, shouting: "I want to launch a message to all those who mismanaged our savings".

Perego, a Sicilian who says she "wants to use (her) body to send messages", repeated her accusation several times to the bemused brokers before being bustled out of the building.

She was held in a police station for over an hour, emerging to tell reporters: "They might press serious charges because I tried to climb on top of their car too, but several officers complimented me and told me I was fighting for a just cause".

(via Instapundit)

From Tom McMahon's 4-Block World:


source: 4-Block World, March 20th

From Don Easterbrook's presentation at the Heartland international climate conference earlier this month, called "'Global Warming' Is Over: Geologic, Oceanographic, and Solar Evidence for Global Cooling in the Coming Decades" (page 17):


source: Easterbrook

Similarly, Joseph D’Aleo's Heartland presentation (page 52):


source: D'Aleo

As Powerline's John Hinderaker observes:

Due to the efforts of Heartland and others, the public is beginning to catch on to the cosmic scam that Al Gore, James Hansen and others--mostly not scientists--have been perpetrating. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, seemingly determined to inflict the maximum possible damage on the economy in the shortest time, is trying to ram a cap-and-trade carbon tax through Congress before opposition can be mobilized. It's easier to do that, of course, when you know that Congressmen won't read the statute before they vote on it. So our only hope is an informed citizenry.

See also Bob Foster's Energy & Environment editorial "Natural Drivers of Weather and Climate," text reprinted here.

(via William Teach at Right Wing News, ICECAP, Watts Up With That?)

As documented here on many occasions and over time, our military adequately is recruiting and retaining soldiers. For example, as of September 30th, the end of Fiscal Year 2008:

Active Duty Recruiting Fiscal 2008. All services met or exceeded their recruiting goals for fiscal 2008.

- The Army had 80,517 accessions, making 101 percent of its 80,000 goal.

- The Navy had 38,485 accessions, making 100 percent of its 38,419 goal.

-The Marine Corps had 37,991 accessions, making 100 percent of its 37,967 goal.

- The Air Force had 27,848 accessions, making 100 percent of its 27,800 goal.

Active Duty Retention. Army and Navy exceeded their fiscal 2008 targets. Although the Marine Corps retained far more first term personnel than last year, it did not meet its ambitious first term reenlistment goals and it achieved 95 percent total retention. Air Force missed its end-of-year mission in each reenlistment zone. We expect to see Air Force retention rates improve gradually through fiscal 2009, and we anticipate that Air Force will meet its fiscal 2009 end strength mission.

Reserve Forces Accessions . . . All six reserve components met or exceeded their accession goals for fiscal 2008.

- The Army National Guard brought in 65,192 accessions, 103 percent of its 63,000 goal; the Army Reserve brought in 39,870 accessions, 106 percent of its 37,500 goal.

- The Navy Reserve brought in 9,134 accessions, 100 percent of its 9,122 goal. The Marine Corps Reserve brought in 7,628 accessions, 100 percent of its 7,628 goal.

- The Air National Guard brought in 10,749 accessions, 126 percent of its 8,548 goal, while the Air Force Reserve brought in 7,323 accessions, 105 percent of its 6,963 goal.

The most recent February 2009 figures showed all services meeting or exceeding quotas in recruiting, retention, and reserve accessions, including Marine and Navy retentions.

This enrages elite lefties and the media. Many respond by flat-out lying about the numbers or slandering our soldiers.

But that's nothing compared to Berkeley California. At best, the town's hostility is reflected in city council declarations that the local Marine recruiting office "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders." Then local left-wing wackos practically rioted in front of the office, amid claims of police brutality, and protests have persisted for months. Last week, Berkeley's peace-loving progressives showed their commitment to pacifism via violence:

The United States Marine Corps Officer Selection Office in downtown Berkeley came under attack once again Wednesday night when a group of vandals broke the building’s windows with sledgehammers and splashed them with red paint.

Officers at the recruiting center at 64 Shattuck Square were not able to say whether the incident was related to protests taking place throughout the rest of the country on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel said the police received a call at 8:54 p.m. Wednesday from an eyewitness who reported that three suspects were breaking the Marine Corps office’s plate-glass windows and splashing them with red paint.

Eyewitnesses saw the suspects leave the scene immediately after the crime, Frankel said. Berkeley police officers combed the neighborhood for suspects and talked to eyewitnesses but were unable to find the culprits. . .

Staff Sergeant Matt Deboard. . . said that, according to eyewitness accounts, a group of vandals attacked the recruiting station around 8 p.m., hitting its windows with sledgehammers and "slopping gooey thick red paint on them."

Pictures here.

Unsurprisingly, the local radical press celebrated the vandalism (spelling in original):

At 9PM on March 18th, the eve of the 6th anniversary of the war in Iraq, a group of persons wearing masks smashed the windows and splattered red paint at the U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley, California.

The center has been the target of protests for the last 18 months, and stands as a symbol of U.S. militarism and imperialist wars. The act of property distruction stands alone as the embodyment of frustration of a people whos government does not listen to or care about them.

Police have not made any arrests but are reviewing the tape, said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. A sledgehammer and a crowbar were found in a nearby garbage can nearby, and are being reviewing as evidence. After breaking windows and improving the Marine Corps logo at the center, the group wearing masks and dark clothing scattered in three different directions, police said.

As of the time of this posting, no one involved has been arrested. The act was easy. You and a few friends could have pulled it off any day.

NO MORE IMPERIALIST WARS!!!

NO MORE GOVERNMENT!!!

SMASH THE STATE!!!

Zomblog reprints the article should the Indybay link die. And see the similar attack in New Zealand, whose deployment in Iraq amounted to a single observer and 61 engineers who left in 2004.

Despite their occasional denials, many progressives hate our troops and our country. Yet, as Cassy Fiano observes on Wizbang, they're too cowardly to take the troops on directly:

Of course they didn't vandalize it when the Marines were inside. They'd get their asses kicked and they know it.

Scratch a liberal and find a fascist--and a wimp.

From Investor's Business Daily:


source: IBD, March 24th

IBD says:

The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat. . .

The irony here is that wealthier societies are the healthier societies, and attempts to regulate emissions are attempts to restrain economic growth. Kyoto and its descendants are recipes for global poverty that hurt the very populations they purport to help.

According to a Heritage Foundation analysis, "using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases will be very costly, even given the most generous assumptions." Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases "could spur additional investment," Heritage acknowledges, but "this investment was completely undermined by the higher energy prices."

So much so, says Heritage, that "cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion with single-year losses of nearly $650 billion." Annual job losses would exceed 800,000 for several years, with some industries experiencing job losses exceeding 50%.

See also MaxedOutMama.

(via Planet Gore)

Writer Michael Lewis says the "mass hysteria" over AIG bonuses obscures the underlying financial facts:

Every recriminatory bone in the political body is aroused; the one thing you can do right now in Washington without getting an argument is to rail against the ethics of AIG’s bonus payment.

Apart from Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times, it occurs to no one to say that a) the vast majority of the employees at AIG had as little as you or I to do with its quasi-criminal risk taking and catastrophic losses; b) that the most valuable of those employees can easily find work at AIG’s competitors; and c) that if the government insists on punishing those valuable employees they will understandably leave, and leave behind a company even less viable than it is, and less likely to give the taxpayer back his money.

And also -- oh, yes -- that if the government can arbitrarily break contracts made by firms in which it has taken a stake no one in his right mind will ever again make a contract with one of those firms. And so all of the banks in which the government has investment will be damaged.

From this episode we can observe several general truths about the financial crisis, and the attempt to end it:

1) To the political process all big numbers look alike; above a certain number the money becomes purely symbolic. The general public has no ability to feel the relative weight of 173 billion and 165 million. You can generate as much political action and public anger over millions as you can over billions. Maybe more: the larger the number the more abstract it becomes and, therefore, the easier to ignore. (The trillions we owe foreigners, for example.)

2) As the financial crisis has evolved its moral has been simplified, grotesquely. In the beginning this crisis was messy. Wall Street financiers behaved horribly but so did ordinary Americans. Millions of people borrowed money they shouldn’t have borrowed and, not, typically, because they were duped or defrauded but because they were covetous and greedy: they wanted to own stuff they hadn’t earned the right to buy.

But now that taxpayer money is on the line the story has changed: innocent taxpayers are now being exploited by horrible Wall Street financiers. The guy who defaulted on mortgages on his six spec houses in the Nevada desert has turned himself into the citizen enraged by the bonuses paid to the AIG employees trying to sort out the mess caused by his defaults.

. . .Since the beginning of the crisis I’ve wondered why the government has found neither the will nor the way to attack the root of the problem -- the people who borrowed money to buy homes they shouldn’t have bought.

Now I think I understand. It would be too simple. People would understand a lot of small payments to the guy down the street who doesn’t deserve them, and become outraged. Far better to throw trillions at opaque corporations, the inner workings of which no one still really understands.

Agreed.

(via TigerHawk)

From xkcd:



source: xkcd

Earlier this month, MaxedOutMama and I debated whether the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 contributed to the current financial crisis and whether its return would help prevent another. Under G-S, commercial and investment banking were separated; the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed companies (and affiliates) to do both (subject to some limits).

At last take, M_O_M (to some extent) and I agree that the economy became too dependent on financial sector profits (and capital gains) instead of income (or GDP, which is the same thing). I see less need to re-impose line-of-business restrictions on investment banks or insurance companies--not, in theory, insured by the government--though the fact that we bailed out some IBs and insurers because of the risk to counterparties worries M_O_M (due to the potential moral hazard). But, I conceded that the existence of taxpayer-guaranteed deposit insurance make the risk-taking--and thus scope of activities--of commercial banks (and CB affiliates) a legitimate regulatory concern. And M_O_M sometimes seems to say that risk taking, in the age of modern securitized paper, is difficult to value or insure--though it should have spread, and thus minimized, the risk.

I'm not smart enough to be certain on the last point. But I read someone who is: Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto, who someday will win an Economics Nobel; he addressed the question in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration has finally come up with a plan to deal with the real cause of the credit crunch: the infamous "toxic assets" on bank balance sheets that have scared off investors and borrowers, clogging credit markets around the world. But if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to prevent a repeat of this global economic crisis, his rescue plan must recognize that the real problem is not the bad loans, but the debasement of the paper they are printed on.

Today's global crisis -- a loss on paper of more than $50 trillion in stocks, real estate, commodities and operational earnings within 15 months -- cannot be explained only by the default on a meager 7% of subprime mortgages (worth probably no more than $1 trillion) that triggered it.¹ The real villain is the lack of trust in the paper on which they -- and all other assets -- are printed. If we don't restore trust in paper, the next default -- on credit cards or student loans -- will trigger another collapse in paper and bring the world economy to its knees.

If you think about it, everything of value we own travels on property paper. At the beginning of the decade there was about $100 trillion worth of property paper representing tangible goods such as land, buildings, and patents world-wide, and some $170 trillion representing ownership over such semiliquid assets as mortgages, stocks and bonds. Since then, however, aggressive financiers have manufactured what the Bank for International Settlements estimates to be $1 quadrillion worth of new derivatives (mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps) that have flooded the market.

These derivatives are the root of the credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other property paper, derivatives are not required by law to be recorded, continually tracked and tied to the assets they represent. Nobody knows precisely how many there are, where they are, and who is finally accountable for them. Thus, there is widespread fear that potential borrowers and recipients of capital with too many nonperforming derivatives will be unable to repay their loans. As trust in property paper breaks down it sets off a chain reaction, paralyzing credit and investment, which shrinks transactions and leads to a catastrophic drop in employment and in the value of everyone's property.

According to De Soto, modern free markets "only work if the paper is reliable." So De Soto recommends systems for recordation, standardization and disclosure of such "new derivatives," akin to perfecting a security interest in assets used as collateral for loans.²

Recently, I read an argument--perhaps from MaxedOutMama herself, though couldn't quickly find it--that the current crisis was a function of divergence of the holders of securitized debt obligations from the underlying assets, and the consequential inability of the holder of the paper to assess the underlying risk of default (for non-recourse debt). If so, De Soto's proposal would seem to help.

Question: Assume mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, etc., are standardized, recorded and transparent, as De Soto suggests. What would be the minimum prohibitions necessary to impose on commercial banks to stop the financial system from, as M_O_M says, "privatiz[ing] profits and nationaliz[ing] losses"? Note that I understand that limiting commercial banks to the traditional "business of banking" (e.g., by re-imposing Glass-Steagall) would accomplish M_O_M's objective; I'm posing a more narrow question leading, I hope, to a less invasive rule.
____________________________

¹ As M_O_M has explained, the current crisis isn't limited to sub-prime mortgages, but includes Alt-A, other commercial mortgages, consumer credit, etc.

² For personal property, that's accomplished by filing what lawyers call a UCC-1; the acronym is pronounced "you-see-see." Folks like me, who hated the law school "Secured Transactions" course, call it the "uck." I refused to study that topic for the bar, and merely guessed at most such answers on the bar exam. I've expanded my understanding in the subsequent decades.

(via reader Ken R.)

Jonah Goldberg in the April 6th National Review on dead tree (page 6; subscription-only for now):

What the hell is Barack Obama talking about?

On almost any given day, Obama insists that his predecessor caught small children in a butterfly net and cooked them in hot oil. Oh, wait, sorry; that’s Bill Moyers. What Obama goes on and on about is how President Bush was a tightwad who refused to spend a dime on vital domestic priorities. Here’s Obama responding to the charge that he’s doing too much: "To kick these problems down the road for another four years or another eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point."

In his address to Congress, Obama constructed a Potemkin army of straw men, and they were all Republicans and conservatives: "I reject the view that . . . says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity." In another speech he boldly rejected "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government — this constant rejection of any common endeavor — cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges."

Ah, yes, I believe it was Milton Friedman who said, "Bridges must never be rebuilt." Just for the record, I reject a philosophy that says we must spend trillions to stimulate the economy just because vests have no sleeves and cats bathe themselves with spit.

Anyway, Obama often goes on to lament the deficit he "inherited" from George W. Bush, suggesting that if only someone like Barack Obama had been at the helm these last eight years, things would be better.

So here’s what I don’t get . . .. Spending under George W. Bush went through the roof: education (up 58 percent), Social Security (17 percent), Medicare (51 percent), health research and regulation (55 percent), highways and mass transit (22 percent), and veterans’ benefits (59 percent). Spending grew twice as fast under Bush as it did under Clinton. But Obama thinks that amounts to laissez-faire.

To recap: Obama says Bush ignored necessary spending, which is why our new president needs to borrow $7 trillion just to spend enough money to catch up to where we should be. But he goes on to suggest that if he -- or some other responsible party/messiah/lightworker type -- had been running the show, we wouldn’t have this Republican-fueled deficit that he inherited, because Democrats would have spent two, three, or ten times as much money as Republicans. Something doesn’t compute there.

From Michael Ramirez in the Weekly Standard:




source: March 30th Weekly Standard

Nadine Rosa-Rosso, who calls herself an "independent Marxist," thinks "European leftists suffer from a debilitating failure of imagination, particularly acute when it comes to Islamist resistance"--and so advocates increased support for Hamas:

Another cause of paralysis in the anti-imperialist struggle is the fear of being associated with terrorism. . .

A message an Israeli receives loud and clear, the European left completely fails to grasp; rather they find 'indefensible' the necessity to take by force what has been stolen by force. Since 9/11, the use of force in the anti-colonial and the anti-imperialist struggle has been classified under the category of ‘terrorism': one cannot even discuss it any more. It is worth remembering that Hamas was placed on the proscribed list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations' by the United States in 1995, seven years before 9/11. In January 1995, the United States elaborated the ‘Specially Designated Terrorist List (STD)' and put Hamas and all the other radical Palestinian liberation organisations on it.

Capitulation on this question by a great part of the Western left, however, only really got going after 9/11, after the launching of the aggressive response by the Bush administration. The fear of being classified ‘terrorists' or apologists of terrorism has spread. . .

I have a concrete suggestion to make: let the left launch an appeal to remove Hamas from the terror lists. At the same time we must ensure that Hezbollah are not added to the terror list. It is the least we can do if we want to support the Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab resistance. It is the minimal democratic condition for supporting the resistance and it is the essential political precondition for the left to have a chance to be heard out by the millions of people involved.

I'm not presuming Israel is blameless. But is it too much to ask that lefties reject the right to murder unarmed innocents? Or that they stop putting the word terrorists in "scare quotes"?

(via Normblog)

(via reader Ken R.)

Figure 1 from Craig Loehle's article "Cooling of the global ocean since 2003," Energy and Environment, Volume 20 (2009) (abstract only; similar figures in Loehle's Heartland presentation, pages 22-24):


source: ICECAP

As Jennifer Marohasy explains:

Craig Loehle has analysed the data from only the profiling floats for ocean heat content from 2003 to 2008. In a paper recently published in the journal Energy and Environment he has concluded that there has been ocean cooling over this period. . .

Dr Loehle’s findings are consistent with satellite and surface instrumental records that do not showing a warming trend over recent years.

(via ICECAP March 20th, Watts Up With That?)

From xkcd:


source: xkcd

I argued here that, among other things, the AIG brouhaha is just another example of how Obama and the Congress, goaded by the so-called mainstream media (SCMM) are destroying the economy with arbitrary laws that seek a fanciful economic and social justice. All the swirl creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty is preventing recovery and destroying the economy. I argued there is nothing wrong with letting AIG run its business the best way it knows how, including paying bonuses to retain its employees. I concluded that if the government crosses the line and enacts a special bonus tax aimed at creating 'social justice' or 'economic justice' against AIG bonus recipients then it would not stop. The witch hunt for the big incomes will be on, and it will be Game Over. The Obama policy is 'social justice at any cost'.

Others see through the SCMM created fog. Let us start with Terence Corcoran of the Financial Press in Canada, who wants to know: Is this the end of America?:

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

The monumentally dysfunctional US Congress shocks the world:

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

He concludes with the observation that our clueless lawmakers are ageing self-serving demagogues who have spent decades warping the U.S. political system for their own ends and our law-making that is riddled with slapdash, incompetence and gamesmanship. Well, that could be true about a lot of places, but we cannot afford it, nor should we tolerate it. It is arguably still the golden age of Rome in the US, but for how long? Corcoran does not believe we have long, as he is tuned into the the end game of the Obama domestic policy:

Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.

Powerline sees the incompetent bumbling and wonders if we still even have a constitution: Are We A Banana Republic?

I'm stupefied to find that some people are defending the constitutionality of Nancy Pelosi's discriminatory, confiscatory and retroactive tax on people who receive bonus income from companies that got TARP money. I would have considered it a bright line rule that the government can't identify a class of unpopular people and impose a special tax on them. What's next? A 100% income tax on registered Republicans, retroactive to last year? If Pelosi's bill passes muster, why not?

If the Pelosi bill is actually enacted into law (which I still think is doubtful) and upheld by the courts, there is no limit to the arbitrary power of Congress. In that event, we have no property rights and there is no Constitution--no equal protection clause, no due process clause, no impairment of contracts clause, no bill of attainder/ex post facto law clause. Instead, we are living in a majoritarian tyranny. ...--imagine, say, Congress enacting a surtax on the incomes of all homosexuals in response to a notorious case of homosexual molestation--then the idea that the Constitution affords us any sort of protection against arbitrary government power is an illusion.

Even the Vice President's Economic Adviser says the plan "may go too far in using the tax code as a tool for retribution."

On the appropriateness of the bonuses: I argued that AIG needs to retain those employees to succeed, and the economy hinges on their success. Powerline also agrees there is nothing wrong with the AIG bonuses:

• All of these payments, as to AIG's troubled financial products division, are retention bonuses, not performance bonuses.
• The money is not going to anyone responsible for the implosion of AIG--those people, who were in the credit default swap area, are gone.
• These retention bonuses were promised to AIG employees who are responsible for winding down the company's financial products division. At the beginning, this division had a potential exposure of $2.7 trillion. Winding down AIG's book of business in this area was a dead-end job, and there was a great likelihood that the people responsible for the work, who knew the most about the products involved, would take jobs elsewhere.
• In late 2007 or early 2008, AIG made a deal with these employees: if they would stay at AIG until specified conditions were met, i.e., either certain business was wound down or a given period of time had elapsed, they would receive a specified retention bonus.
• As to all of the employees involved, they satisfied the terms of the bonus by wrapping up a portfolio for which they were responsible and/or staying on the job until now. As a result of the efforts of this group, AIG's financial products exposure is down from $2.7 trillion to $1.6 trillion.

Krauthammer on the appropriateness of the bonuses: he sees no problem with the bonus money going to "the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built."

Krauthammer also weighs in on the looming disaster for our country as well and believes our "$14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of (a) a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, (b) a hopelessly understaffed, stumbling Obama administration, and (c) $165 million." On the imminent failure of AIG under continued pressure:

...we are going to poison the well for any further financial rescues, face the prospect of letting AIG go under (which would make the Lehman Brothers collapse look trivial) and risk a run on the entire world financial system?

And on the legality of AIG's action, and the arbitrary and capricious nature of Congress:

And there is such a thing as law. The way to break a contract legally is Chapter 11. Short of that, a contract is a contract. The AIG bonuses were agreed to before the government takeover and are perfectly legal. Is the rule now that when public anger is kindled, Congress will summarily cancel contracts?

Well said, and Krauthammer also agrees that Obama has "been far more interested in his grand program for reshaping the American social contract in health care, energy and education" than the economy."

Tom over at OpinionForum says it better than I do:

These bonuses are a small issue compared to the totality of the economic crisis. Yet we have the President and Congress seizing on it to whip up the public because, it would seem, they don’t have a clue what else to do. Our leaders are playing a mass violin concerto while the economy burns.

There’s no excuse for the ignorance that characterizes the people sending threats to AIG and the people lobbing firebombs across the blogosphere, not to mention the politicians instigating them. All the information necessary to understand what’s really happening is readily available in the media, including media outlets not normally considered to be pro-business.

In a separate article, published at the start of the circus on March 17th Tom had already accurately captured the salient facts:

President Obama is outraged, Senator Chris Dodd is threatening to tax the people receiving those bonuses at a 90 percent rate, Representative Barney Frank is mumbling something unintelligible, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to subpoena AIG’s records, Senator Chuck Grassley suggested that AIG executives commit suicide, and the company is receiving threats.

The AIG bonuses are meant to keep key executives, and we probably need that to happen. The bonuses are provided for in contracts that were in place and known to exist before the bailout took place. The legislation itself provides that existing contracts will be honored. The amount of money involved is a minuscule percentage of the bailout money AIG received, and it’s small compared to the AIG bailout money that’s going to other businesses, some overseas (money laundering, anyone?).

All of this information is available in the media. Does the Obama Administration and Congress think we just won’t notice–that we won’t pay attention to anything other than their histrionics?

I argued that perhaps we should never have bailed out AIG, that bankruptcy would have been preferable. Not only are bankruptcy proceedings the usual method for dealing with situations like AIG's, but they routinely approve retention bonuses. But now that we have bailed them out, we must not let Congress meddle or let the SCMM goad them into meddling, as continued harassment of AIG will only lead to its failure. The position that I argued the government should take is:

‘We knew about these bonuses. We explicitly gave AIG the bailout money with that knowledge. Moreover, we are not going to retroactively tell AIG how to run its business. If we had any doubts about AIG’s success, we would not have bought the company.’

If Obama and Congress had doubts about AIG, its management or future, but still mortgaged our grandchildren to the tune of $200 Billion, then why do we still leave Obama and the other 'tards in power? Throw them out. Every one of them.

I also dragged the CRA into the morass: I implied then and say now that the outrage, both genuine and invented, about how AIG is running its business is misplaced. I implied that bonuses do not reward the people who caused AIG's problems, and -- Carl and I may differ on this point, but -- I blamed the government forced (CRA) lending to unfit borrowers as the cause of the current economic decline. I enjoy Mark Perry as he expands on this argument.

Bobn disagrees on the CRA responsiblity for the economic decline. I am unmoved by Bobn's analysis. Bobn essentially argues that the bad debt is not overwhelmingly sub-prime, so the CRA isn't the cause of the problem. I say that it is irrelevant whether the bad debt is sub-prime, the bad-debt was created by the bursting of the real estate bubble caused by wild speculation. The speculation was fueled by, among other things, the CRA. The tipping point phenomena applies. However, I have opened my eyes to the myraid of causes for the recession, and so I put CRA in the category of 'significant contributor' for the time being.

Finally, here OBAMA is on Leno; this is why the SCMM loves him:

MR. OBAMA: And, you know, the immediate bonuses that went to AIG are a problem. But the larger problem is we've got to get back to an attitude where people know enough is enough, and people have a sense of responsibility and they understand that their actions are going to have an impact on everybody. And if we can get back to those values that built America, then I think we're going to be okay.

Obama is king of the 30 second soundbite. A vague statement about a problem and says we need to change our attitude. You could drive a truck through that. However I agree with this one -- we should get back to the values that built America. They are based on freedom and opportunity, not tax and spend.

Those who decry the AIG bonuses are missing the real outrage: Obama's 'social and economic justice' agenda, and his willingness to drive the country to depression to achieve that end. Indeed, if he didn't not have a crisis to address, there would be no opportunity for his 'social and economic justice' reform. If the crisis didn't exist, he would invent one. He loves the SCMM for priming the AIG bonus pump, and the SCMM loves him. And they are willing to do anything to protect him, as Fred Barnes notes in the March 30th Weekly Standard:

His allies are moving to protect the president. In a political emergency, this is the highest obligation of everyone in the administration. The president must be distanced as far as possible from decisions that led to the problem, even if he is made to look out-of-touch or actually incompetent.

In the AIG case, Obama is like a cuckolded spouse, portrayed by administration officials as the last person to learn about the bonuses, though he signed the economic stimulus legislation with a provision assuring they'd be paid. A front-page account in the Washington Post played along, absolving the entire administration of blame. Attributed to "government and company officials," the story said Federal Reserve officials were at fault, having failed to alert anyone in the administration, much less Obama, in a timely fashion.

The Wall Street Journal correctly worries this isn't a trivial issue:

When does a single policy blunder herald much larger economic damage? Sometimes it's hard to know ahead of time. Few in Congress thought the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a disaster in 1930, but it led to retaliation and a collapse of world trade. The question amid Washington's AIG bonus panic is whether Congress's war on private contracts and the financial system is a similarly destructive moment.

Sobering thought.