Hyperinflation

Bill has forwarded me a link to an interview with Peter Schiff, an economist who foresaw the economic mess we're in today long before it arrived. He argues now that the only thing worse than doing nothing to solve our crisis would be to do what the Democrats are doing:

[N]o government action means a "terrible" recession. But the path of increased government intervention will lead to "unmitigated disaster"

He believes that we should bite the bullet and ride out the recession. Our economy will be much healthier in the long run if we do. Obama's Economic Recovery Act, on the other hand, is, he believes, almost certain to throw us into a hyperinflation depression.

This means that our currency will be so devalued that even basic staples will cost too much to buy. Imagine a loaf of bread, for instance, priced at $12 and a gallon of gas at about the same price. Most people won't be able to buy anything and consequently there will be massive job losses and enormous social disruption and dislocation as even essential services are curtailed.

Watch the video at the link and pray that Schiff is wrong.

RLC

Let Me Explain About the Fifty Ways

Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson at NRO list and explain the 50 most egregious items in the stimulus bill being debated by the Senate. Some of these are actually items I'd like to see get funded, for example $1.7 billion for maintaining national parks, but they don't belong in a bill whose purpose is to create jobs. They should be debated on their own merits in separate legislation.

Of every item in the bill it should be asked how many jobs will this create? If it will not generate jobs, private sector jobs, then it should be taken out of legislation that is being justified on the grounds that we need it to stimulate the economy.

The stimulus package spends a lot of money, $900 billion, much of which will stimulate nothing. Spruiell and Williamson explain why.

RLC

The College Loan Hoax

As you read this, high school seniors across the land are busy figuring out how they'll pay for their college education. Many of them have heard how college graduates earn over the course of their careers $1 million more than their friends who opt not to go to college, and they're anxious to spend the next four years preparing to partake of that pie.

Unfortunately, paying for their education is not easy for many students and therein lies a real hazard according to Kathy Kristoff at Forbes:

Offsetting that million-dollar income discrepancy is the $46,700 four-year cost of tuition, fees, books, room and board at a public school and $99,900 at a private one--even after financial aid, scholarships and grants. Add all this to the equation and college grads don't pull even with high school grads in lifetime income until age 33 on average, the College Board says. Even that doesn't include the $125,000 in pay students forgo over four years.

The risks are hefty. Half of students entering college never earn a degree. Six in ten African-Americans depart without one. "Hundreds of thousands of young people leave our higher education system unsuccessfully, burdened with large student loans that must be repaid, but without the benefit of the wages a college degree provides," warned a 2004 Education Trust study.

One in four college grads takes home considerably less than the top quartile of high school grads, according to a College Board study. Even some people with doctorates earn less than people without so much as an associate degree, it shows.

In other words, students often take on enormous debt to pay for their education in anticipation of securing a job upon graduation that'll enable them to pay off their loans, but that often doesn't happen. The situation, Kristoff says, is roughly parallel to the home mortgage crisis and she tells stories of students who expect to be saddled with their debt burden for the rest of their lives.

Anyone considering borrowing to pay for college should read her essay. The take home message is that college loans can have lots of hidden costs and can take decades to repay.

On the other hand, if the college loan business is indeed structured like the home mortgage business, as Kristoff asserts, maybe students should borrow all they can, even if they don't have to. If enough of them default on their loans the government will come in and pay off their debt, and they'll have gotten an education essentially for free, paid for by the taxpayers, while the chumps who worked and saved so they could pay their way without borrowing will be out $100,000, or so. Is this a great country or what?

RLC

Explain Please

Barack Obama is a Christian theist, i.e. he believes in God. He also supports completely unrestricted access to any and all abortions, even if the intended victim is born alive. So, how do we reconcile those two beliefs with this statement made today, Jim Geraghty tells us, at the National Prayer Breakfast:

"We know there is no God who condones the killing of an innocent human being."

Does this mean that he has changed his mind about either of the two beliefs we attributed to him? If so, which one? If not, then what on earth is he talking about?

RLC

Kudos for the Cap

Barack Obama has received criticism from some conservatives for his decision to limit bailout money to corporations which agree to cap salaries at $500,000. I think the criticism is misguided, and I commend the president for taking this step.

We should be wary of government extending its tentacles into American business, of course, and businesses should, as a rule, be regulated primarily by the market, not by bureaucrats. Even so, and even though the bailout may be a bad idea, given that it's going to happen, it's simply obscene that corporations which are taking huge sums of money from taxpayers are giving it to CEOs in multimillion dollar bonuses - stipends which are often essentially rewards for failure.

If our tax dollars are going to subsidize a corporation, then it's simply prudent to demand that the corporation's CEOs be required to tighten their very ample belts and spend that money on making their business solvent. Those who think otherwise might ask themselves what they would do if a relative came to them for a loan to help them out of a very difficult financial situation, and, having agreed to grant the loan at some cost to themselves, they then learned that the relative decided to use part of the money to go on a Caribbean cruise.

I think they'd probably tell the relative that that's not how they understood the money would be used, but if that is what their relative plans to do with it there won't be any more of it forthcoming. Likewise, neither should the taxpayers be paying for the "Caribbean cruises" of corporate executives.

Kudos to the president for seeing the matter the same way.

RLC

How Many Jobs??

Okay. I've been convinced that we need the unstimulus package, and we need it right now. There's not a moment to lose. I didn't think that, of course, until I heard Speaker Pelosi inform the nation that we're currently losing jobs at a rate of 500 million a month. That's a lot of jobs, as you can probably surmise, especially since our total population is only about 300 million. In the last month alone we've evidently lost 200 million more jobs than we have people. That means that every worker has lost two jobs, and currently every person in the U.S. is unemployed. Or something like that.

Now I see why people are worried that the Democrat stimulus is much too stingy. That package, according to President Obama, will create only three million jobs. Even if those three million were all created in one month we'd still suffer a net loss of 470 million jobs, according to Speaker Pelosi.

Questions are being raised at Hot Air about whether Ms Pelosi's numbers include people in all 57 states or just some of the states:

Don't think too much about what I'm about to say if you're near a loaded weapon or an open window:

These people are running our economy.

RLC

Flight 1549

For those who haven't had quite enough of the story of the US Airways flight which was downed by a flock of geese and made an emergency landing on the Hudson river here's an interesting summary of that amazing event written by Rick Newman.

Unlike a lot of the coverage I've seen and read about the skill of the pilot who landed the plane, Newman spreads the credit around to the entire crew. The pilot deserves a lot of praise but so do the first officer and the three flight attendents, and Newman tells us why.

RLC

Free Pass

Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer have followed Bill Richardson's example and withdrawn their names as appointees to high positions in the Obama administration because they did not pay their taxes. Timothy Geithner did not pay his taxes eithre but refused to withdraw and was confirmed as Secreatry of the Treasury. As such he will head the IRS and make sure that you pay your taxes. Al Franken did not pay his taxes but may nevertheless be elected (sort of) to the Senate, and Charley Rangel still serves as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that writes tax law, even though he didn't pay his taxes either.

Yes, yes. Republicans can be corrupt, too, but here's the point. If these were Republican congressmen or appointees of a Republican president, would there not be serious questions raised, not only about the appointees, but also about that president's competence or his integrity? When is the media going to start to wonder out loud about the connection between these very flawed nominees and the man who is selecting them? Or do the President and his appointees, as well as the tax evading pols, get a pass because they're all liberal Democrats?

Up till now the media has been critical of the appointments, to be sure, and they've even criticized the vetting process which failed to catch the troublesome behavior, but they've been reluctant to take the final step, a step they would've eagerly taken were the President George Bush.

If the media and others are going to overlook the implications of so many ethically challenged selections, if they're going to ignore the fact that the people who will be crafting and voting on legislation that determines how much we have to pay in taxes have themselves dodged paying their own taxes, then how seriously can we take them when they claim to criticize Republicans on the basis of principles and standards that only seem to apply to Republicans?

RLC

Gaza in Microcosm

People sometimes wonder what is the difference between Hamas and Fatah, the two organizations contending for control of the Palestinian people. As far as I can tell the difference is that Hamas wants to kill Israelis now and Fatah wants to hold off until they have a better chance at actually succeeding. This video, taken at a pro-Palestinian rally in Minnesota last month, illustrates why the Palestinian people suffer so. They're cursed with leaders like the people you see here:

May God help the Palestinian people. Their leaders sure won't.

RLC

Another Milestone in Iraq

Of course the situation could deteriorate in the future, but as of now Iraq looks like it's on its way to becoming a stable, vigorous, and prosperous democracy. To almost no media fanfare the Iraqi people went to the polls Saturday to participate in an election that many congressional Democrats predicted would never happen and some did their best to insure wouldn't happen.

The same people who insisted a year or so ago that the war was lost and that we should abandon Iraq forthwith, people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are stonily silent now that the war appears to be just about won.

The surge has worked and the Iraqi people, at least for now, are living in relative peace. For that almost miraculous state of affairs much credit must go to President George Bush and General David Petraeus (whom the sophomoric lefties at Move On.org fatuously labeled General Betray Us because he was Bush's point man in bringing peace to the people of Iraq).

The Iraqi election spotlights some historic achievements - a major defeat of al Qaeda, the liberation of 25 million people from tyranny, the success of Bush's philosophy of promoting freedom and democracy, the capability of America to accomplish what no other nation on earth could have succeeded in doing, and the intellectual and moral discrediting of the left which opposed Bush every step of the way - all of which goes to explain, perhaps, why the major news media outlets have had so little to say about it.

RLC

Rogue's Gallery

Bill sends along a link to an article in the Guardian which profiles the twenty-five people most responsible for our current economic woes. At the head of their list is former chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan.

It's an interesting list, and I'm sure everyone on it deserves to be to one extent or another. My only reservation is that it reflects too much the Guardian's left-wing, anti-free market bias. There are a lot more Democrats who should have made the list, but didn't. Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, for example, should have been given due recognition for their valiant efforts to obstruct closer oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So, too, should the former CEOs of these two lending organizations, Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson. Moreover, groups like ACORN have a legitimate gripe about being denied due recognition on the Guardian's list. These community activists often pressured banks under threat of lawsuits to make loans to "ninjas" (No Income, No Job Applicants). They deserve at least an honorable mention.

Moreover, if the Democrats are successful in saddling our children and grandchildren with another trillion dollars of debt from the current $900 billion unstimulus package we'll be able to add Barack Obama and the entire Democratic Congressional delegation to the list as well.

It's a big tent and everybody who deserves it should be given credit for their efforts.

RLC

Super Bowl Commercial

Okay. So it's become de rigueur to render an opinion on the Super Bowl commercials. For what it's worth here's my favorite:

Everyone of these E-Trade baby spots makes me laugh when I see them. The game itself was pretty good, too.

RLC

Bush and Obama: War Criminals

I'm sure the LA Times has this story wrong. I can't believe that after all the huffing and puffing throughout the campaign about the need for HopeandChange in the way we treat terrorist detainees, after all the assurances that an Obama administration would follow a different, more law-abiding, more human-rights-sensitive course than did the Bush administration, after all the caterwauling by the left over the abuses of detainees' dignity by the CIA, after all the fretting and fuming about torture of said detainees, that the Obama administration is, well, here's the LA Times' headline:

OBAMA PRESERVES RENDITIONS AS COUNTER-TERRORISM TOOL

Rendition, for those who are just tuning in, is the practice of sending captured terrorists back to their country of origin rather than holding them in prison ourselves. The practice began, it is often forgotten, under the Clinton administration as a way of inveigling certain intelligence from terrorists who resisted giving it up when questioned by American agents who were able to do little more to elicit information from recalcitrant killers than look at them sternly. Sending them back to countries like Egypt and Pakistan where the Geneva conventions on torture are printed on their bathroom tissue guaranteed that the information would be forthcoming in short order.

Many thought this was a dastardly move by the Bush forces to circumvent the law against torture. They raised a great hew and cry and insisted that this policy would not stand under a Democrat administration, and certainly not under the aegis of an apostle of Human Rights such as Barack Obama. They want to bring Bush to trial even now for this "war crime."

Well, not only is President Obama continuing the practice, according to the article he's actually going to expand it. In fact, he's left himself little choice. Since he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo our options with prisoners taken in the War on Terrorism are either release, rendition, secret military tribunals, or execution. Guantanamo gave us a fifth option, but the left insisted we close it down, for reasons which to me were never very clear and I doubt were clear to anyone else either.

Well, they're getting their wish so now we're left with rendition or secret trials (or execution, if you're a hard-liner), but the left opposes both.

Anyway, perhaps the most amusing line in the Times article was this one:

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

Funny how what's evil when Bush did it becomes a necessary "tool" when Obama does it. It's nice to know that human rights organizations and advocates are politically and ideologically neutral.

RLC

Bring Back the Untouchables

Evidently, anyone hoping for a high position in the Obama administration would do well to have on his or her r�sum� the fact that one is a tax cheat. The Democratic motto seems to be that paying taxes is for chumps. When you're an RIP (Really Important Person) you need not be bothered with the duties that burden mere citizens.

First it turned out that Timothy Geithner, Obama's selection for Secretary of the Treasury, did not pay his own taxes until he was about to be nominated to be our nation's chief tax collector. Now we read that the President's choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, also "overlooked" a measly $83,000 of consulting income in 2007. When was the last time you forgot about making $83,000?

Isn't this the sort of thing they sent Al Capone to jail for? Where's Elliot Ness when you need him? Does not the Obama team vet these people, or is it that they just don't care?

RLC

Serenity Under Fire

J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker writes an excellent reprise of the awful treatment George Bush's opponents sought to inflict upon him:

It can be stated without fear of serious argument that no previous president has been treated as brutally, viciously, and unfairly as George W. Bush.

Bush 43 endured a deliberate and planned assault on everything he stood for, everything he was involved in, everything he tried to accomplish. Those who worked with him suffered nearly as much (and some even more -- at least one, Scooter Libby, was convicted on utterly specious charges in what amounts to a show trial).

His detractors were willing to risk the country's safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him. They were out to bring him down at all costs, or at the very least destroy his personal and presidential reputation. At this they have been half successful, at a high price for the country and its government.

Although everyone insists on doing so, it is impossible to judge Bush, his achievements, or his failings, without taking these attacks into account. Before any serious analysis of the Bush presidency can be made, some attempt to encompass the campaign against him must be carried out. I hope no one is holding his breath.

Dunn goes on to discuss the reasons for this treatment, and comes to some interesting conclusions. He argues that a large part of it is ideological. The three most vilified presidents in recent history have been Republicans and, although Dunn doesn't say this, throughout the last two centuries, starting with the communists, indeed with Marx himself, people who gravitated to the far left have often been people who are personally vicious. It seems that a predilection for left-wing politics goes hand in hand, like linked genes, with a predilection for personal invective.

I've known people on the right to be uncivil, to be sure, but it seems to be almost a prerequisite for membership in the secular left. Check your local letters to the editor columns in the paper. The most unkind, churlish writers are almost always people whose politics are both secular and off on the left end of the political spectrum. Conservative writers may be angry, but the ones who are just mean are usually lefties.

For some reason that perhaps a psychologist could explain these folks often delight in the personal misfortunes of their political enemies and not infrequently hope that harm will befall those they oppose. Read Dunn's column. If you're new to the political battleground it'll be an eye-opener.

RLC

Redemption in the Movies

Christianity Today lists their ten most "redemptive" movies of 2008 plus a lot of honorable mentions. Winning top honors is Wall-E. How many of their ten have you seen?

RLC

Prevent Gonorrhea, Stimulate the Economy

Maybe this clip doesn't give Speaker Pelosi's full answer to the question of how $335 million in the unstimulus bill for STD prevention will actually stimulate the economy. At least I hope it doesn't because if it does then this country is in very deep trouble with such as Ms Pelosi at the helm:

I can't help but wonder what she said next. Perhaps it was that with fewer STD victims laid up there'd be more people out in the malls spending money to jumpstart the economy. Now, I take a backseat to no one when it comes to finding awful consequences of the sexual revolution, but it never occurred to me that one might be that it has resulted in a contraction of the marketplace.

There's just so much to learn from our political leaders. It's going to be a very edifying and exciting four years.

RLC

Why the Goose Might Get Cooked

If the people of this nation ever decide to kill the goose (capitalism) that has laid the golden eggs (American prosperity) it will be largely the result of two quite different influences. The first is the righteous anger provoked in people by the sheer greed and opulence flaunted by the modern captains of industry. Maureen Dowd gives voice to this execrable insensitivity in a recent New York Times column:

Despite losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees the corporate Marie Antoinettes at Citigroup went through with plans to purchase a new $50 million corporate jet.

Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.

The former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, handed out over $4 billion in bonuses as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.

"If you don't pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise," Thain reasoned, "and they'll go elsewhere." So, these guys are rewarded by Thain with billions of dollars of investor's money for losing $15 billion in three months for their clients.

Meanwhile, Thain himself spent $1 million to renovate his office. Big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a "Roman Shade" for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a "custom coffee table" for $16,000, an antique commode "on legs" for $35,000, and a $1,400 "parchment waste can."

Socializing financial institutions and industries would be a terrible move, but the anger that causes people to no longer resist it is certainly understandable. The goose has brought it upon himself.

The other factor that will lead us to kill the goose is the fact that so many people in this country are the recipients of government largesse, and so few, relatively, provide it. When a large percentage of the population in a democracy really have nothing to lose by socializing the economy and much to gain they will eagerly favor more government largesse. What do they care if the people who have the wealth are squeezed if it means more benefits for themselves? Neither capitalism nor democracy will survive a large lower class comprised of poor, uneducated, unmotivated people living at the expense of those above them on the socio-economic ladder. The lower classes will always vote for those who'll provide more benefits and those who seek their votes will be only too willing to oblige them.

The GOP is looking for a Moses to lead them back to the political Promised Land. What they need is someone who has a plan for teaching the poor that they have a stake in capitalism and freedom and someone who can shame the corporate "Masters of the Universe," to use Tom Wolfe's phrase in Bonfire of the Vanities, into setting an example of frugality and modesty for the rest of the society which has bestowed such good fortune upon them.

RLC

Rush's Plan

Rush Limbaugh has a serious, and very interesting, plan to restart the American economy, and to underscore his seriousness he presents it in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It's not only a genuine bipartisan compromise it's also a great empirical test of two conflicting philosophies on how best to deal with recessions. I suspect that it's going to attract a lot of attention from both the right and center left. A lot of honest people, not just among Republicans but also in the Democrat party, are dismayed by what they see as a welfare/pork barrel bill masquerading as an economic stimulus measure.

Here's the heart of Limbaugh's proposal:

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There's no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There's no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There's no reason to insist that recovery can't happen quickly, because it can.

In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn't know the difference. This is about jobs now.

I'd prefer we cut the pork and transfer payments out of the bill altogether, but that's not going to happen with the Democrats in control of everything. So, why not give Rush's plan a go and settle the question for the next three generations of whether it's better to inflate the currency and throw money around like we're frantically bailing water out of a sinking boat or to cut tax rates and let businesses and private citizens kickstart the economy by creating more wealth.

RLC

Winter Irruption

This winter has seen a major irruption of several boreal species of birds into the northeastern United States. One such species that's being seen at backyard bird feeders everywhere this winter is the pine siskin:

The yellow on the wing is distinctive and helps to distinguish the siskin from a lot of other brown birds with streaked breasts. The siskin feeds primarily on nyjer seed.

Another more unusual bird that has been seen almost everywhere there are stands of spruce trees with healthy cone crops is the White-winged crossbill. The mandibles of this unusual bird are crossed rather than parallel. This allows it to peel away the hard bracts of conifer cones to extract the seeds that lie at their base. A crossbill will eat up to 3000 seeds a day, which requires an awful lot of work.

I was lucky enough to see about a half-dozen of these lovely creatures yesterday morning in some spruces along the Susquehanna river in York County, Pennsylvania.

RLC