Daily Read - 2/12/10

Peter Wehner,a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, talks about three theories about the Democrats failure to pass their agenda in a Wall Street Journal editorial.  Theory #1 is that "American people are too stupid to govern," characterised by Slate's Jacob Weisberg who calls Americans "childish, ingorant...dodos." (here)  (Side Note: Can you imagine if someone said the education system in the US was failing because kids were "too stupid"?)  Theory #2 is that the Republican Party has "adopted an agenda of pure nihilism for naked political gain." (Michael Cohen in Newsweek, here)  Theory #3 is that the Senate is "ominously dysfunctional" and "no longer consistent with a functioning government."  (Paul Krugman in the NY Times, here)  Krugman seems to think that a party with supermajorities and the Presidency should be able to do whatever they want, and Weisberg and Cohen seem to be intent on offending as many people as possible.  I prefer Wehner's more simple explanation: "leaders championing unpopular causes find their agenda stalled and eventually defeated."  Why?  "The Founders set up a system of government that put a premium on slowing things down, on compromise, and on controlling passions. They intentionally made passage of massive legislation time consuming and difficult."  In America, a key to "functioning government" is that it does not over-reach.  Wehner says "No, America isn't 'Ungovernable'", but America is not meant to be over-governed.

Peggy Noonan, also writing on the WSJ editorial page, on the declining value of Obama not being Bush:

In the 2008 general election, appealing for the first time to all of America and not only to Democrats, they had one great gift on their side, the man who both made Mr. Obama and did in John McCain, and that was George W. Bush...But now it is 2010, and Mr. Bush is gone. Mr. Obama is left with America, and he does not, really, understand it.

Daniel Stone of Newsweek argues pork barrel politics is a good thing, if "done right."  He cites the common statistic that "about 2 percent of federal spending goes to isolated projects," but ignores the reasons I hate earmarks: 1) although an individual earmark may not have a large dollar value attached, it indicates that the Congressperson receiving the earmark may not have voted for the bill without it.  Therefore, the bill might pass based on these favors for local interests and not on the merits of the actual bill for the nation as a whole.  How many bills have passed on the basis of earmarks?  How much have those bills cost?  Until someone can answer these questions, the 2 percent number is meaningless;  2) earmarks do serious damage to the transparency and accountability of government.  People always tell me they know exactly what a politician believes because their voting record is online.  But, why they voted for those bills is not.  What if they made that vote in exchange for a pork project, or in exchange for a vote on another bill?

A debate about whether record-setting snow in Washington DC and much of the Northeast US has anything to do with global warming has been brewing.  Global-warming believers say deniers are confusing weather with climate, and that short-term trends don't matter.  The WSJ's "Best of the Web Today" blog says "for years, global warmists have claimed that the weather proved their claims about the climate."  Examples provided here, here, and a collection of clips here.  Therefore, deniers should not be attacked for pointing out the flaws in the case for manmade global warming based on discrete weather events.

While the massive amounts of snow in the Northeast don't disprove global warming, Nolan Finley's blog in the Detroit News points out another benefit of the snow: "With lawmakers stuck in their homes, they have not been able to adopt new spending bills for their friends and supporters, contemplate new taxes or order new regulations that intrude on our individual rights."


All Michigan day-care providers are now government employees and union members, and "union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them."  Why?  "6,000 day-care providers out of 40,000 voted" in an election conducted by mail.  (John Stossel)  No word on what conditions would cause a state-wide childcare strike, or any benefits provided by the union, AFSCME, which is likely to use a lot of the money for political contributions and lobbying.