I was probably too hasty in saying that the situation in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi reactors was going to be less severe than Three Mile Island. In my defense, I was working on the available information at the time, that suggested that seawater was being used successfully to cool the reactor cores.
It seems now that those efforts have been less successful than originally suggested and that significant damage has resulted. Given the state of devastation in Japan, this is understandable. Imagine if the entire state of Pennsylvania had been devastated before Three Mile Island. Thinking of it that way puts the failures in perspective, I think.
It is one of the many tragedies about this situation that we continue to be more fascinated and absorbed by a terrible but as yet non-fatal situation than the devastation that has killed so many thousands all around. Although the risk of a serious incident has increased, we should not be bandying about terms like disaster and catastrophe: Japan has already suffered those. For continuing coverage, I recommend Brave New Climate.
On Friday night, twelve-year old Tamar Fogel came home to find both her parents, Ruth and Udi Fogel, two brothers Yoav (11) and Elad (four), and her three-month old sister Hadas murdered in their beds. They had had their throats cut and been stabbed through the heart.
That’s not shocking, either: In the broader Palestinian death cult, there are untold legions who, while disinclined to murder Jews themselves, are content to revel in the glorious victory of others.
And out in the wider world there was a marked reluctance to cover the story.
And, if not exactly shocking, that was a useful reminder of how things have changed even in a few years. On 9/11, footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets and handing out candy turned up on the world’s TV screens, and that rancid old queen Arafat immediately went into damage-control mode and hastily arranged for himself to be filmed giving blood. This time round there was no need for damage-control, because there was no damage: The western media simply averted their eyes from their Palestinian house pets’ unfortunate effusions. The Israeli Government released raw footage from the murders, but YouTube yanked the video within two hours. The hip new “social media” are developing almost as exquisitely refined a sense of discretion as the old Social Register.
A decade ago, the revelation that French ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard referred to Israel as “that shi**y little country,” was shocking. Now it is standard fare.
Today the delegitimization of Israel is all but universal: Indeed, these days Palestinian leaders pay more lip service to the “two-state solution” than Europeans. On Israel’s national day, prominent Britons of Jewish background write to The Guardian to deplore the existence of the Jewish state. And “Israeli Apartheid Week” is multiculti Toronto’s gift to the world.
Demonstrating his uncanny ability to miss the point, the head of the Canadian Jewish Congress tweeted today:
Anonymity breeds ugliness online.
You would think even this sad, irrelevant fool might have noticed that the striking feature of today’s “ugliness” is how non-anonymous it is. Year on year, the world is more cheerfully upfront about its anti-Semitism. Maybe he could ask John Galliano, or Julian Assange.
But sometimes, as when a baby has her throat slashed, what’s not said is just as telling. Recently I was talking to a Hungarian Jew who lived in hiding in Budapest during the Second World War: By 1944, the pro-German government was running short of ammo, so they were obliged to get a little creative. They’d handcuff Jews together in a long chain, stand them on a bridge, put a bullet in the ones at each end, and then push them into the Danube to let the dead weight drag down the ones in between. You have to have a strong stomach for such work, perhaps almost as strong as for killing three-month olds. But, as my friend told his tale, I thought not of the monsters on the bridge, nor even those on the banks cheering, but about the far larger numbers of people scurrying about their business and rationalizing what was going on. That’s what made the difference, then as now.
House Republicans, particularly freshman and conservative members, appear to be digging in for a bitter battle with Senate Democrats on spending.
“I think this is the moment to pick a fight with liberals in the senate,” Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) told reporters on Monday. “We’re not going to change the direction of spending in Washington D.C. without a fight.”
Members will meet in conference tomorrow morning before voting on a short-term continuing resolution that would keep the government running through April 8, cutting spending by $6 billion in the process. It is the second short-term spending bill proposed by the 112th Congress, and for some Republican members, that is at least one too many.
When the three-week resolution was unveiled on Friday, it was viewed by many with a sigh of relief, knowing that a government shutdown would once again be averted, however temporarily. But then a number of prominent conservative groups issued statements in opposition to the bill, urging Republicans to vote no.
Chris Chocola, president of Club for Growth, warned that conservatives were “walking into a spending trap” by continuing to enact short-term spending resolutions, and be demanding much more from Democrats in terms of significant, structural spending reforms. Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action, concurred. “If we blink now and allow the proponents of big government to drag out negotiations,” he said, “it will undercut our ability to fight for conservative policies and result in fewer reforms and less cuts.”
Other groups like the Family Research Council and Susan B. Anthony List objected on the ground that the short-term bill included funding for Planned Parenthood, something that the GOP’s long-term spending bill, H.R. 1, would have eliminated.
When members returned to Capitol Hill on Monday, it was clear that some had gotten the message. Several Republicans came forward to announce they would be voting against the short-term CR, most notably Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, who has considerable influence among freshman and conservative members, as well as Rep. Tom Graves (R., Ga.), a ’freshman in spirit’ and member of the GOP Whip team.
Many of those who spoke out were actual freshmen, including Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.), Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.), Allen West (R., Fla.) and John Fleming (R., La.). “We were elected to make bold changes to federal spending and to reverse our unsustainable deficits,” Huelskamp, the first to declare his opposition, said in statement. “By allowing President Obama and Senator Reid to stall a budget they should have completed 6 months ago, we are being distracted from even bigger tasks: tackling the $1.1 trillion deficit in the President’s reckless 2012 budget and negotiating real budget reform, such as a balanced budget amendment, within a debt ceiling debate.”
For their part, GOP leaders acknowledged the frustration among House Republicans at the lack of results on a longer-term spending solution for the seven months remaining in the fiscal year, but played down suggestions of a rift within the party. At a joint press availability Monday afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) told reporters that all Republicans were fed up with Senate Democrats’ refusal to engage seriously in negotiations (Democrats accuse Republicans of a similar charge) and said they “hoped and intended” that there would be no more short-term resolutions after this one. “[Jim Jordan's] problem with the bill is, he wants to finish it,” McCarthy said. “That’s Jim’s frustration, that’s Eric’s frustration, it’s Kevin’s frustration.”
“Obviously there are a lot of other issues that we’d like to see dealt with in any kind of longer term solution,” Cantor said. “But right now we are trying to position ourselves so that we can insure no government shutdown, continue to cut spending and to reach a result that I think a majority of members can go along with.”
Rep. Graves said he decided to vote no after hearing from constituents over the weekend, and that he didn’t view opposition to the short-term bill as a vote against party leadership, but rather a message to Senate Democrats to get their act together.
“There are a lot of members voting yes, and several voting no for various reasons,” Graves, who was instrumental in leading the freshman “revolt” over the $100 billion cuts, told National Review Online. “The overarching message is: It’s time to move on. We need to get this done now so that we can get on to talking about 2012.”
“Leadership is doing everything they can to provide solutions to keep the government operating,” he added. “It’s time for the Senate get involved. We’ve passed the full 2011 CR [H.R. 1], they have a bill over there which they can work with.”
Pence wouldn’t say how he would vote on Tuesday, but said he had been speaking with his colleagues and giving them the following message: “There’s no point putting it off, let’s have the fight right now… House Republicans should say ‘this far and no further.’”
“I’ve been here in Washington for 10 years, and I’ve learned that more often than not things don’t change until they have to, until you reach an impasse then real negotiations begin,” he said. “I want to have that negotiation.”
A source close to the situation tells NRO that opposition to the bill was “definitely gaining momentum” and that more ‘no’ votes would be announced Tuesday morning. That said, the short-term resolution is still expected to pass the House, not least because a large number of Democrats will likely support it. The previous short-term resolution passed 335 to 91, with the help of 104 Democrats. It will then go to the senate, where freshman Republicans like Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Mike Lee (R., Utah) and presumably several others, will vote in opposition, though Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the spending bill would, and should, pass the upper chamber.
Republicans aren’t the only ones clamoring for a long-term resolution. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said he’d vote for one more short-term bill and that’s it. At this point, the only thing the two sides can agree on is that the other side is to blame for the stalled negotiations. Neither side says they want to see the government shut down, but no one seems willing to budge any time soon. Even top White House officials are suggesting that a shutdown could be necessary to inspire real negotiations (as Pence suggested).
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald wrote this afternoon in an email to his caucus that Senate Dems remain in contempt of the Senate and will not be allowed to vote in committees despite returning from their out-of-state boycott of the budget repair bill vote.
“They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition, but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded,” wrote Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill has a new, albeit brief, foe: Doug La Follette, Wisconsin’s secretary of state.
La Follette, a Democrat, has announced that he will take 10 days — the maximum waiting period — to publish the law. “We’ll just automatically do it on the tenth day,” LaFollette says. “I see no reason to divert from it.”
One possible explanation for Mr. La Follette’s behavior is that opponents of the new law are marching into court in Madison to block its publication, which could give them extra time to seek an injunction.
But there’s another theory. The 70-year-old Mr. La Follette is a descendant of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, a dominant force In Wisconsin’s adoption of Progressive Era legislation such as the graduated income tax. To see one of the Progressive Era’s crown jewels — public sector collective bargaining — substantially dismantled has apparently stirred obstructionist impulses in the current family upholder of the La Follette tradition.
Meanwhile, the unions are scurrying to sweeten their deals before the law hits the books:
School boards and local governments across Wisconsin are rushing to reach agreements with unions before a new law takes effect and erases their ability to collectively bargain over nearly all issues other than minimal salary increases.
The law doesn’t go into effect until the day after Secretary of State Doug La Follette publishes it and it doesn’t supersede contracts already in place, fueling unions’ desire to reach new deals quickly. La Follette said Monday that he will delay publication until the latest day possible, March 25, to give local governments time to try to reach agreements.
Republican Gov. Scott Walker had asked La Follette to publish the law Monday, but the Democratic secretary of state said he didn’t see any emergency that warranted doing so. La Follette opposed the bill and said he sat in his office watching parts of a weekend protest that brought as many as 100,000 people out in opposition to the law.
On a side note, this is not the governor’s first tangle with the La Follette legacy:
Wisconsin governors are typically sworn into office near the East Gallery, where a prominent bust of La Follette gazes out under the Capitol dome with the governor’s office behind him.
But not this year. Incoming Republican Gov. Scott Walker will be sworn into office near the North Gallery, meaning many in the audience will be sitting with their backs, or sides, to Fighting Bob.
The long-standing U.S.–Japan relationship has come to perhaps its most important moment, as thousands of U.S. forces swing into action to help Japan recover from the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck last week. Unfortunately, everything we and the Japanese are doing may not be enough to prevent much more widespread suffering along Japan’s ravaged northeastern coast.
Within days of the disaster, the USS Ronald Reagan reached the scene and its helicopters began assisting in search-and-rescue operations. Officials at the Japanese embassy told me that some of the Reagan’s pilots were exposed to elevated, though not dangerous, levels of radiation during their flights, all from the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors. Similarly, Marine helicopters from Okinawa have been moved north to help with ferrying supplies, while over 2,000 Marines will soon be on the ground next to Japanese Self-Defense Forces. The U.S. Air Force is flying in rescue teams and loads of supplies, and the Navy has moved nearly a dozen ships to Japanese waters. U.S. Forces Japan is coordinating much of the U.S. response with its Japanese military counterparts.
Yet given the scale of the humanitarian crisis, there is still more the United States can do. Since only helicopters can reach many of the stricken areas, every U.S. military helicopter in Japan and South Korea should either be moved to air bases in Japan’s north or be on call for immediate deployment. Further, helicopters from Hawaii should be moved to Japan. Japanese officials told me they have barely 100 heavy-lift helicopters operating right now, a number that can’t possibly ferry troops and supplies, deal with search and rescue, and evacuate injured citizens all at the same time.
Similarly, the USNS Mercy, America’s 1,000-bed naval hospital ship, is currently at port in San Diego. Given that many flooded communities are cut off from major roads, U.S. Pacific Command should consider moving the Mercy towards Japan to help with medical care for the thousands who may not be able to see doctors anytime soon. It would take at least two weeks or so for the Mercy to prepare for deployment and make the journey to Japan, but deciding to send it would be a powerful signal of U.S. resolve to do everything in our power to help our ally.
Though it will take years to recover, Japan will weather this storm with its own resources and its reserves of national strength. Still, America is playing and can play a vital role in helping bring relief to millions who are patiently waiting for the basic necessities of life that they took for granted until last Friday.
— Michael Auslin is director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
One of William F. Buckley’s favorite phrases was “invincible ignorance,” and though it has lots of domains among liberals, energy ignorance has to rank high up in the hierarchy. CNN’s Roland Martin lets out a typical blast in a column today demanding that the U.S. “get off oil.” He delivers such analytical gems as:
Embracing non-oil energy alternatives — wind, natural gas, electric and solar — can absolutely create jobs in this country, and we should require Americans to make their homes more energy efficient with products built by Americans. What’s wrong with that? How can the United States create solar technology and then allow the Chinese to become the leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels? No one alternative energy source can replace oil.
Actually, none of those sources can replace oil, because none of them power automobiles. But it is typical to hear people say we need wind and solar to help break our dependence on foreign oil.
In fact, we did “get of oil” once in the recent past — we quit using oil to generate electricity starting in the late 1970s. In the mid 1970s, oil generated over 20 percent of our electricity. High prices changed that. Now oil generates less than 1 percent of our electricity. What did we use to “get off” oil? Coal and nuclear power mostly. Oops.
Senator Lugar (R., Ind.) says if the Arab League wants one, they should pay for it. And if America is to be involved, Congress must declare war first. Here’s the full statement:
Monday, March 14, 2011
Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today issued the following statement:
On Saturday, March 12, in a consensus decision, the Arab League endorsed a no-fly zone over Libya imposed by Western nations. What was not included in the Arab League’s decision was any commitment to provide resources for the costs of a no-fly zone. Any effective no-fly zone likely would require American participation and military assets. Such an operation could cost American taxpayers millions of dollars, or more, depending on the length of time it was imposed and the depth of American commitment. The United States already incurs billions of dollars in defense costs each year stemming from security requirements in the Persian Gulf region.
Given the costs of a no-fly zone, the risks that our involvement would escalate, the uncertain reception in the Arab street of any American intervention in an Arab country, the potential for civilian deaths, the unpredictability of the endgame, the strains on our military, and other factors, it is doubtful that U.S. interests would be served by imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. If the Obama Administration is contemplating this step, however, it should begin by seeking a declaration of war against Libya that would allow for a full Congressional debate on the issue. In addition, it should ask Arab League governments and other governments advocating for a no-fly zone to pledge resources necessary to pay for such an operation.
This is not unprecedented. More than $50 billion in foreign contributions were received to offset U.S. costs in association with the first Gulf War in 1991. Much of this came from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Finally, given continuing upheaval in the Middle East, we should understand that the situation in Libya may not be the last to generate calls for American military operations. We need a broader public discussion about the goals and limits of the U.S. role in the Middle East, especially as it pertains to potential military intervention.
The respected Egyptian newpaper Al Masry Al Youmis reporting that, despite prevarications and previous hints to the contrary, a senior figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood says that its new political party will maintain the position that neither a woman nor a Christian can be president of Egypt.
It reports that Saad al-Husseini, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, its highest executive body, stated that while the “Freedom and Justice” party’s new platform must still be approved by the Guidance Office and its Shura Council, it will adhere to the Ikhwan’s position on the presidency, which has been that a woman cannot hold final power over a man, nor a non-Muslim over a Muslim. Husseini added the confusing caveat that this “does not mean we impose this opinion on the people, who have inherent jurisdiction in this regard.” This seems to mean that Egyptians may vote to have such a president, but that if the Brotherhood itself has the votes, it will not allow it.
The same paper also reports that the Brotherhood wants only small changes to the constitution and is pushing for a ‘yes’ vote in the March 19 referendum on proposed constitutional amendments, ones that still preserve a strong presidency. It is also describing the revolution begun on January 25 as an “Islamic revolution,” saying: “The revolution’s slogans, such as ‘freedom,’ ‘social justice’ and ‘equality’ — all of these can be found in Islamic Law.”
— Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
Virginia Republicans are shortchanged in the redistricting plan advanced by the state’s supposedly “bipartisan” Advisory Commission last week. A consultant to the commission, George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, presented draft congressional-redistricting maps last week. Despite thousands of plan options, McDonald’s maps would carve House Majority Leader Eric Cantor out of his congressional seat.
How curious that an “apolitical” redistricting plan would torpedo the first Virginian and Jewish man ever to serve as House majority leader. Curiouser still that a second draft plan lodged with the commission just coincidentally drew Republican congressmen Frank Wolf, Randy Forbes, and Morgan Griffith out of their districts, too.
This is not all that surprising to those of us who recently attended the annual meeting of the state association of Virginia election officials. Professor McDonald was a featured speaker at that meeting, and his first PowerPoint slide thanked the Brennan Center for Justice for its help on his redistricting work.
The Brennan Center is the most consistently left-wing advocacy organization working on electoral issues. McDonald’s slide specifically thanked Justin Levitt, a Brennan Center counsel who has worked for several Democratic presidential campaigns and is the former in-house counsel for America Coming Together. Levitt has been prominent in pushing the Brennan Center’s line that voter fraud is a myth and that voter ID requirements are just a way to suppress minority voters.
In reviewing the Advisory Commission’s recommendations, the Virginia legislature should exercise extreme caution and apply some common sense and understanding to the task. They might start by questioning why the commission would use consultants so closely tied to left-wing advocacy organizations or Democratic activists who have worked to elect Democratic candidates.
True bipartisanship should not favor one particular party.
Thought you would appreciate the attached picture. My wife is a high school math teacher who also happens to be very talented at arts and crafts. Combine that with some idle time (she’s home on maternity leave), and voila — a Pi flag hanging outside of our house! She had so much fun making this one that there is already talk of making more of them next year in order to sell to the public, although hopefully for more than $3.14 per flag …
I’d say it’s worth at least $31.42, Sir. Nice work, Ma’am, and congratulations on the coming event!
Qaddafi has proven much more resilient than I expected. But I’m still a skeptic of the no-fly zone, which suffers now from the same basic defect as before — it’s not terribly relevant to events on the ground. Qaddafi has been deploying his air force against the rebels, but it doesn’t seem that it’s the decisive factor. Indeed, the only thing worse than what’s happened over the last week or so on the ground is if the very same thing had happened while we were flying overhead patrolling a mostly irrelevant no-fly zone. This would have been an intolerable humiliation and we inevitably would have ended up bombing on behalf of the rebels. We’re looking at the same choice now. Are we really just going to fly overhead to watch from above as Qaddafi continues to prosecute his dismayingly effective counter-offensive? The debate over the no-fly zone should be understood as merely a proxy for the debate over whether we are going to intervene militarily to topple Qaddafi or not.
Building on my post from last week about the cost of our debt, I have made this chart showing the changes that will occur when the Congressional Budget Office’s interest-rate assumptions are modified to reflect historical interest rates and private-sector forecasts.
Using data from the CBO’s “January 2011 Budget and Economic Outlook” and “Analysis of the Effects of Three Interest Rate Scenarios on the Federal Budget Deficit,” the above chart compares CBO baseline interest costs between 2011 and 2021 with interest costs under each of three interest-rate scenarios: 1) a scenario similar to that experienced in the 1980s; 2) a scenario similar to that experienced in the 1990s; and 3) a scenario consistent with the ten highest projections found in Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Under each of these scenarios, the cost of servicing our debt exceeds the costs projected in the CBO baseline.
This suggests that CBO baseline projections, which already show an explosion in the cost of servicing our debt, may in fact be an underestimate.
For instance, if interest rates were modified to reflect the average rates in the 1980s — a time in U.S. history when interest rates were driven up by inflation and economic uncertainty — in 2021 our interest payments would nearly triple from CBO’s projection of $749 billion to $2.0 trillion. Accumulated interest payments over this period would double from their current projected level of $5.7 trillion to $11.0 trillion. Needless to say, the impact of these increased interest costs on the deficit would be huge.
But why would interest rates increase beyond what the CBO has projected? It’s simple. A growing debt sends signals to our investors that the risk we represent is growing, too. It has consequences. What happens when you max out all your credit cards and you don’t have enough money coming in to pay your bills? One thing you do is you get another credit card and you roll over the balance. But how long before you represent such a liability that no one will give you another credit card? How long before your interest rate goes from 12 percent to 30 percent in order to get that card?
That is precisely the game the U.S. is playing right now. We are constantly rolling over short-term debt. When our lenders wise up, they are likely to increase interest rates to reflect the risk that we’ve become.
This fuels another concern: inflation. To get deficits under control, the federal government could cut spending or increase taxes (or both). Neither of these policies are popular, hence the temptation to resort to printing money (or “monetizing the debt”) to pay its bills.
However, there is no free lunch. The resulting inflation reduces the value of each one of your dollars and also introduces high levels of uncertainty. Obviously, the Federal Reserve is unwilling to take such a dramatic step today. However, investors know that other central banks have done this in the past and it could happen again, so, in exchange for extending more loans to the federal government (which has become a riskier client), lenders could soon be asking for a higher interest rate — an inflation premium.
The only way to address the increasing costs of our debt is to address the driving forces behind it — legislated explosions in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending.
I was in Phoenix this weekend, where I was stunned to read about a fight involving the Arizona city of Glendale, the National Hockey League, and a local conservative watchdog group/think tank called the Goldwater Institute. Essentially, the debt-ridden city is using intimidation tactics to try to force the Goldwater Institute to stop asking questions about a deal that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars in the name of maintaining the city’s stadium.
The fight began two years ago when the Goldwater Institute filed a public-records request asking the City of Glendale to provide all documents, current and future, related to negotiations with any potential new owner of the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team. From what I gather, the city is desperate to keep the Coyotes franchise — so desperate that they essentially want to pay Chicago businessman Matt Hulsizer about $200 million so he can “buy” the team for about $170 million. To do this, they want to borrow $116 million in taxpayer-backed bonds.
This corporate welfare can’t be good for taxpayers — if it were profitable to keep the team in Glendale, or to buy the Coyotes, no incentives would be needed. But in addition to being a bad deal for taxpayers, the transaction might also be a violation of the Arizona constitution’s gift clause prohibiting corporate welfare.
For whatever reason — perhaps due to these concerns about the deal’s constitutionality — Glendale has been reluctant to share the documents. Now, the city is threatening to sue Goldwater for up to $500 million unless they stop asking questions about the deal.
This is quite unbelievable, I have to say, and not only because it sounds like intimidation by city officials in the name of stadium welfare for millionaires.
Here is a quote from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, which sheds light on the real goal of this deal:
There are arrangements in place approved that would enable the Coyotes to live happily ever after in Jobing.Com Arena and that would ensure that the arena doesn’t go dark.
How long are city officials going to believe in the myth that taxpayer-supported stadiums and sport teams are good for them? If no buyer is willing to purchase the team unless taxpayers foot most of the bill, that should tell the city that any move on their part to keep the team in Glendale is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
For more on “stadium welfare,” see this interview with Reason magazine’s Matt Welch of stadium welfare, or thesetwo articles from the Reason archives.
Update: Here is an interview of Darcy Olson, the president of the Goldwater Institute, about the lawsuit:
While the national media has focused on Japan’s struggle to control its 40-year-old nuclear power plants, another controversial technology, high-speed rail, has been undergoing the ultimate stress test in the wake of the tsunami and earthquake.
By most accounts, Japan’s famous bullet trains have fared reasonably well. Derailment of a train traveling in excess of 150 mph has greater catastrophic potential than one moving at less than half the speed. That’s why the country’s rail planning incorporates a unique safety feature: an earthquake sensing system that gives 30 seconds or more of warning before a coming shock wave. Bullet trains automatically screech to a halt, as do some slower systems — and they did, stranding passengers for hours but avoiding derailment.
Still, some ominous reports came out Friday, early in the crisis. It is important to note that the reports may not be accurate and have neither been confirmed nor shot down:
NOBIRU, Japan — A high-speed bullet passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard was unaccounted for Friday in tsunami-hit coastal Japan, according to Kyodo News.
The East Japan Railway Co. train was running near Nobiru Station on the Senseki Line connecting Sendai to Ishinomaki when a massive quake hit, triggering a 10-meter (33-foot) tsunami, the report said. A large number of tourists [One report put the number of missing at 400 — LD] are feared drowned after the bullet train was believed to be caught in the tsunami.
Clearly, some of the country’s slower commuter trains were caught in the tsunami. There are reports, again unconfirmed, that up to four of these trains were involved. Wading through photos on the Internet, I found at least three discrete shots of derailed trains, although it is possible the passengers survived.
If indeed a bullet train was lost, it will likely be the working of the law of unintended consequences. For the most part, bullet trains north of Tokyo run inland, so these were probably out of the tsunami’s range (see this map). However, there’s a small loop seaward to Sendai, among the hardest hit areas of the island. This is pure speculation here, but given the timing of the shock wave and the following tsunami, it is possible that safety systems stranded one or more trains in the path of the killer wave. Commuter trains follow a much longer stretch of coastline, and would have been particularly vulnerable.
Once the humanitarian crisis is over, the U.S. needs to undertake a “lessons learned” study of the Japanese rail system before committing to further development of our own. California, after all, has earthquakes, and rail advocates there have already been planning how to earthquake-proof HSR. Rail deaths in Japan are real, not hypothetical future possibilities like those so often cited by opponents of nuclear power.
In Japan, it appears that safety system worked, but did bringing trains to a rapid halt result in any injuries or deaths that have been lost in tide of tragedy elsewhere? What about construction techniques? One of the big issues in the California HSR — up to now largely about esthetics and finance — is where to put the track: on pylons overhead, at grade, or buried in a trench. In seismically active areas, the real question should be: Which system has proven to be the most robust?
Finally, liberal planners just might want to reexamine their ideological yearnings for high-speed rail, namely their conviction that it is somehow “better” for people to live in concentrated urban clumps, connected by public transit, than in diffuse, sprawling suburbs. Densely populated Japan must rely on rails to get people to and from work. When centralized systems like these fail, they fail across the board and, as appears likely in Japan, will be out of commission for a long time; aside from the track damage, electrical shortages due to nuclear-plant shutdowns are forcing service reductions. Suburbs and cars, on the other hand, are distributed systems, with inherently redundant roads and vehicles that are more resistant to natural disaster. Rescue workers aren’t taking the train to succor tsunami victims, they’re driving.
Gallup has a poll out on support for oil drilling. The two top-lines: Support for offshore drilling is up to 60 percent, rebounding from its post-Deepwater Horizon lows of a year ago:
And support for drilling in ANWR is at an all-time high:
Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, who has considerable influence among freshman and conservative members, will not support the three-week continuing resolution (which includes $6 billion in spending cuts) when the House votes on Tuesday. His spokesman tells NRO that “although he understands that there will be well-intentioned members on both sides of the issue,” Jordan will vote against the bill.
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said on CNN’s State of the Union that Republicans would “get this through,” when it came to tomorrow’s vote. However, there appears to be growing unease within the GOP ranks, particularly among freshmen, after a number of prominent conservative groups came out against the bill last week.
A source close to the situation tells NRO that opposition to the CR is “definitely gaining some momentum.” Today freshman senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) announced that he would vote against the bill, assuming it can make it past the House, which still seems likely, but as this GOP freshman class has proven in the past, you can’t take anything for granted.
Stay tuned as we find out more.
UPDATE: From Jordan’s official statement:
Americans sent us here to deal with big problems in bold ways. We’re borrowing billions of dollars a day, yet Senate Democrats have done little more than wring their hands for the last month. With the federal government facing record deficits and a mammoth debt hanging over our economy and our future, we must do more than cut spending in bite-sized pieces.
Democrats control both the Senate and the White House, and it’s time they stopped dithering. We need swift action to deal with spending for the rest of this year. We need to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, and we need to defund ObamaCare. And we need to start tackling next year’s budget, the debt-ceiling, and other challenges standing in the way of job creation. We’ve made some solid first downs on spending. Now it’s time to look to the end zone.
In addition to Jordan, freshmen Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.), Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.), Allen West (R., Fla.) and John Fleming (R., La.) have announced their intention to vote against the short-term bill.
UPDATE II: Freshman Rep. Michael Grimm (R., N.Y.) released a statement criticizing “the extreme wing of the Republican party” for opposing the short-term continuing resolution, and chiding all lawmakers who would “bow to the extreme right or left.”
“They’re not looking at the big picture,” he said. “And the last thing we want to do is become like Nancy Pelosi in the last Congress, where it was ‘my way or the highway.’”
“I know that there is some opposition to working with Senate Democrats from the extreme right of the tea party who would rather see a government shutdown than pass a short-term solution,” Grimm continued. “However, as long as we continue to cut spending each time, we are keeping our promise to the American people to reduce the deficit and fix the economy.”
UPDATE III: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) met with reporters this afternoon and acknowledged widespread frustration among Republicans about the lack of a long-term solution, but placed the blame on Senate Democrats (and President Obama) for failing to put forward a legitimate proposal from which to negotiate a compromise.
“Obviously there are a lot of other issues that we’d like to see dealt with in any kind of longer term solution,” Cantor said. “But right now we are trying to position ourselves so that we can insure no government shutdown, continue to cut spending and to reach a result that I think a majority of members can go along with.”
He said House Republicans were forced into a short-term resolution because of inaction in the senate and a lack of leadership from the White House. McCarthy said every Republican was frustrated with the situation. “[Jim Jordan's] problem with the bill is, he wants to finish it,” McCarthy said. “That’s Jim’s frustration, that’s Eric’s frustration, it’s Kevin’s frustration.”
In the end, McCarthy said, it was up to Senate Democrats, who have gone a year and a half without producing a budget, to get their act together. “The real question is: How serious are they?” he said. “They need to show some leadership.”
It’s worth noting that 104 Democrats, including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), voted for the last short-term CR, which passed overwhelmingly — 335 to 91 — and are likely to do so again, meaning that even if a number of Republicans defect, there is little danger (at the moment) of the bill being rejected.
“Let’s get serious here,” Cantor said. “Let’s make sure that we don’t shut down the government. I hope this is the last stop-gap measure and that we can finally come to some resolution.”
UPDATE IV: At a press conference this afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he thinks the three-week CR will pass, that passing it is a “good idea,” but doing so “is not going to be easy.”
The New York Timesreports on abuse in state-run homes for the developmentally disabled:
The Times reviewed 399 disciplinary cases involving 233 state workers who were accused of one of seven serious offenses, including physical abuse and neglect, since 2008. In each of the cases examined, the agency had substantiated the charges, and the worker had been previously disciplined at least once.
In 25 percent of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the state employees were transferred to other homes.
The state initiated termination proceedings in 129 of the cases reviewed but succeeded in just 30 of them, in large part because the workers’ union, the Civil Service Employees Association, aggressively resisted firings in almost every case. A few employees resigned, even though the state sought only suspensions.
As Robert Costa noted, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) is already talking about the impact the Japan earthquake had on the country’s nuclear plants and urging the U.S. to “put the brakes” on any new nuclear plants.
But as a study released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week shows, the nation’s current energy regulation is already impacting the economy. The study estimated that the 351 energy projects currently stalled or canceled because of regulatory barriers could have created 1.9 million jobs and added $1.1 trillion to the country’s GDP. (And even green energy projects are being impacted!)
“What is urgently needed now is a careful consideration of how all these permitting obstacles, uncertainties, and time delays can be addressed to speed up the processing, approval decisions, and development of many of the job-creating projects whose progress has so far been denied,” wrote Chamber president Thomas Donahue in a USA Today op-ed. “Private investors and developers are prepared to fund, build, and operate energy projects that could materially increase GDP and create many jobs — but only if policymakers remove obstacles.”
Reports from Japanese officials now that although it can’t be directly observed, it is “highly likely” that fuel rods in three of the reactors at Fukushima are melting.
Chances of a full-scale meltdown — uranium pellets breaching the containment vessel — are still remote. The New York Times has a great infographic breaking it down.
Several times in the past few weeks, I have written about the substantial underfunding in state and local governments’ pension plans. The best estimates say that the underfunding amounts to roughly $3 trillion in present value, creating an unsustainable situation. The risk for taxpayers is huge, since many state actors and activists deny the problem even exists and are unwilling to talk about reform options, which means that when state pension plans start running out of money (in the best-case scenario, as soon as 2017), states are likely to turn to the federal government for a bailout.
Unfortunately, this pension crisis isn’t the only one looming. In this paper, “The ‘Other’ Pension Crisis,” Charles Blahous explains that employer-sponsored pension plans covered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federally chartered corporation established to insure employer-provided pension benefits, feature similar financing risks. The federal government’s implicit and explicit guarantees amplify the moral hazard problems that operate within almost all defined-benefit pension plans in the U.S (including Social Security): the incentives for sponsors to hide their plan’s true funding status and to shift the risks of its underfunding to others.
Blahous provides this list of reasons for the systemic pension underfunding:
1. Inaccurate measurements of plan assets
2. Inaccurate measurements of plan liabilities
3. Inadequate funding targets
4. Unfunded benefit increases
5. Loopholes and special preferences
6. Inadequate premiums
7. Limitations upon the national pension insurer
8. Moral hazard and political economy factors
9. Periodic contribution relief
10. Inadequate disclosure
11. Barriers to funding up during good times
The analogy with the state-pension crisis is chilling. Even if employer-sponsored plans have smaller unfunded liabilities than states’ pension plans, it is still bad news for taxpayers, because if corrections aren’t made quickly, they may ultimately be asked by Congress to foot that bill.
Actually, I find this story even more depressing than state pensions or Social Security, because, in theory, private pensions should know better, and they really don’t. Of course, I should know better than to expect private actors to behave appropriately when the temptation to take short cuts exists: I’ve written about it before, here.
So, in this case, how much money are we talking about? Blahous writes:
While the inadequacy of funding information provided to the PBGC renders impossible a precise estimate of all underfunding in such plans, reasonable estimates are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. PBGC’s latest annual report shows a net negative financial position for its insurance programs of more than $23 billion, of which roughly $21.6 billion is attributable to the PBGC’s single-employer insurance program. PBGC’s estimate of its exposure to reasonably possible terminations of such plans is approximately $170 billion. While these figures may appear small relative to the large potential losses in state and local plans, percentage underfunding in employer-provided plans is nearly comparable.
They reflect one number: 8.9. That is a staggering number. As the Japanese ambassador said, the last bad earthquake was 1923, which was 7.9, which means this one was ten times as powerful. And it’s a highly developed country.
The earthquake happened very near shore. A tsunami travels at ten miles a [minute]. The Japanese are extremely experienced at this but they had no time to prepare. That’s why the devastation was so unbelievable.
On the potential danger from the damaged Japanese nuclear reactors:
It’s a terrible potential. If you get a meltdown, of course, there is a catastrophe for the region.
But also every 20 years we say let’s try again with nuclear energy, it’s clean energy — it doesn’t put stuff into the atmosphere. [Now] if you get a “China Syndrome” as in 1979 … it could put the nuclear [industry] out of business for decades.
This could certainly change the dynamics of the 2012 presidential election. From the Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. jobless rate will be 7.7% in November 2012, the highest level for a presidential election month since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976, according to the average forecast of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal survey. . . .
On average, the 54 respondents—not all of whom answer every question—forecast the jobless rate will be 8.8% in June and 8.4% in December of 2011. They forecast the U.S. economy will add about 190,000 jobs a month over the next year—an improvement from the depressed level of job creation so far in this recovery, but still too low to bring the unemployment rate down quickly.
While the 7.7% rate in November 2012 would be the highest in seven presidential election cycles, analysts point out that it is often the overall trend—rather than the level of joblessness—that determines an incumbent’s fate. President Carter was defeated in 1980 by Ronald Reagan when the unemployment rate was 7.5%, lower than the level when he was elected but up from 5.6% earlier in his term. Meanwhile, President Reagan was re-elected in 1984 with the rate at 7.2%, but that was down sharply from the peak of 10.8% recorded in 1982
Today, the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on online commerce titled “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites.” The hearing and its purpose — combating a serious threat to our economy and our society — have broad bipartisan support.
Although some special-interest groups have tried to spread hysteria by screaming “Censorship!” any time Congress considers Internet security, there is almost no disagreement among members of Congress that in this Internet age, our precious First Amendment rights can coexist with our timeless values of the rule of law and common decency.
Let’s face it, every day we are inundated with virtual reality, for good and bad. A few days ago, a close friend’s 13-year-old son was exposed to hardcore pornography when another child sitting by him on the school bus pulled it up on his iTouch. Both my friend’s son and his parents are very upset by the incident and can never scrub those images from his young brain. From social networking to immersive media, all our lives are increasingly affected by the online world. However, there should be nothing “virtual” about basic morality and the rule of law online.
So why are some groups trying to give a free pass to those who prey on children or are dedicated to harming our national security or our economy merely because they operate on the Internet?
Whether it is a website operator peddling child pornography, illegal obscenity, or WikiLeaks, or counterfeiters and pirates that access our market from outside the U.S. in order to escape our laws, legal actions and proposed legislation against those who evade justice are routinely criticized by groups like Free Press, Center for Democracy and Technology, the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and others, in the name of protecting a “free Internet.”
It defies common sense and decency. In the physical world, when a storefront is peddling illegal material, law enforcement steps in to shut it down. Yet, for some reason, when that storefront is found online, these groups think these illicit businesses should be immune, because to enforce against them would mean stifling “free expression” on the Internet. Pulling from a grab bag of excuses, these groups rely on a list of phantom horribles to justify their misguided opposition to the enforcement of the rule of law: “censorship,” “violating due process,” “regulating the Internet,” and ironically, in an appeal to get conservatives to join them, “big government.”
These conveniently incendiary terms certainly resonate in the blogosphere. But they bear no truth in the real world. Stopping someone from breaking the law is not “censorship.” Going to court to obtain an order to stop a violation does not “violate due process.” Enforcing existing laws on the Internet to protect U.S. citizens should not be confused with regulating the Internet and hurting desperately needed business. Intentionally blurring these distinctions is a tactic used by those who want a virtual world “unencumbered” by the laws and rules of society.
We have a choice: Will the Internet be defined by social order or anarchy? Should defending against illicit businesses and protecting our children stop at the border of our computers? Should we allow our system of laws and protections to be rendered useless by digital law-breakers reaching in from abroad?
While the government should not regulate or control how the Internet is operated, as in the case of the FCC’s new net-neutrality rules, it should enforce the rule of law on the Internet. These are very different activities. The first is government interference. The second is the protection of our rights, which we expect and the Constitution demands. Don’t let liberal “free Internet” groups confuse the two. The Department of Justice should go after WikiLeaks and offshore websites that make child porn or illegal obscenity available or that steal American property, and Congress should make sure they have the tools they need to do so.
— Penny Nance is the CEO of Concerned Women for America.
Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) would capture 51 percent of the vote in the Senate race if the election were held today, according to a poll of registered voters released today by the Western New England College Polling Institute.
The poll compared Brown to two possible Democratic Senate candidates: Democratic congressman Mike Capuano and Obama adviser Elizabeth Warren, and found that the two of them would respectively receive 38 percent and 34 percent of the vote.
The poll also found that Brown has a 53 percent favorability rating, with 27 percent viewing him unfavorably.
Anyone who has done a little reading on the Japan nuclear crisis will know that we’re facing a less dangerous situation than Three Mile Island. The maximum exposure to radiation anyone has suffered has been 155 millirems, well beneath the proven threshold for ill effects (as I explained in my June 2008 article on nuclear power). While there is still a chance of meltdown, the fact is that this will not be a catastrophe. British tabloid editors can put away their “ATOM DEATH BLAST” headlines. For more on the physics, see William Tucker, author of Terrestrial Energy, MIT’s Josef Oehmen, or the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Yet it is unfortunate that we have to go to these authors for accurate information, because our very own secretary of energy, Steven Chu, has until this point been a vocal supporter of nuclear energy. He has the authority and the credibility to be all over our airwaves and the Internet telling Americans that their nuclear installations are safe and this terrible but extraordinary incident is no reason to slow down our move to speed up new nuclear construction. Yet he is absent without trace.
Americans expect leadership from their leaders. Chu has the track record to provide it in this case, yet he is failing to do so. If he is being hamstrung by special-interest pressure within the administration, one would expect that to be a resigning matter. I fear it is more likely that he has succumbed to pressure from his erstwhile allies, the greens, and is simply displaying a lack of backbone.
Yet he should consider what this means for his own plans. The administration’s energy plan, based on the EPA’s draconian regulations against greenhouse gas emitters, depends on a hundred new nuclear power plants being built. The administration knows that that powering America by wind and solar energy is as likely as extracting sunlight from cucumbers, which is why nuclear figures so heavily in the plan. If that option is now off the table — and the Left has been so successful in its opportunistic framing of this issue that it might well be — then there is a massive gap in the plan that can only be filled by coal or natural gas. Secretary Chu will be forced to argue that, if there is a nuclear ban, then the EPA’s beloved greenhouse-gas regulations will also have to be taken off the table. This is a circle that simply cannot be squared.
Again, it is up to Steven Chu to provide leadership here. It is his job to be realistic about America’s energy needs. If he fails to perform his duty, the American people must demand someone who is up to the job.
The recently canned P.J. Crowley, State Department spokesman, seems defiant in both his voicing anger over Bradley Manning’s confinement and his reaction to his own broadside.
He initially told a small gathering at MIT that Bradley Manning’s military confinement “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid,” and then when pressed whether such invective was for the record, reiterated, “Sure.”
And then Crowley seemed further unrepentant in his statement of resignation as excerpted:
My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values …
Some random points:
1) Crowley at no point adduced any support for any of his observations — e.g., why and how Manning’s detention was “stupid” or “counterproductive,” or how his own comments highlight any principle larger than his own ideology and lack of prudence. His resignation statement as reported in part is incoherent. Is he trying to say that there will always be Bradley Mannings everywhere — and due to their exalted principles, they will leak to other idealists, such as Julian Assange? And further, that such idealists in our “relentless media environment” will inevitably air to the public such unlawfully obtained information — and therefore security agencies must assume that anything they do, which someone in their employment does not on any given day feel is “prudent and consistent without our laws and values,” will be leaked, and should be?
2) It is ironic that P.J. Crowley’s comments to a private, sympathetic media group at MIT were made public by one of the attendees in just the sort of full-disclosure “relentless media environment” that Bradley Manning sought to manipulate. Would Crowley agree that because his trashing of his own government and military to an outside group could be seen as not to be “prudent and consistent without our laws and values,” it therefore rightly was made public — and he rightly was canned?
3) The media used to highlight the Rice/Rumsfeld, State/DOD tension, but I don’t think anyone ever went so far as to attack the other’s agency, in an open forum, as acting in a “ridiculous,” “counterproductive,” and “stupid” fashion.
4) What is “ridiculous,” “counterproductive,” and “stupid” is Crowley’s remarks, which suggest far more sympathy to the perpetrator of the leaks than to the hundreds that may well be hurt or killed by his actions.
5) If George W. Bush were president and Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense, all of the above would be a major news story, offered as further proof that the Bush-Cheney nexus had dispatched yet another principled critic into the preventive-detention American gulag.
Manning allegedly leaked 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables, as well as military correspondence and videos. In some cases, the lives of covert agents and their contacts may well have been endangered. He is being kept in solitary confinement, pending a military trial. Given the severity of the charges against him, given his ability to use electronic media, and given the large network of sympathetic supporters who in the past have facilitated his alleged treasonous actions and in the present are on record as supportive of his actions, it hardly seems cruel and unusual punishment to keep such an alleged felon in solitary confinement and away from as many visitors and electronic appurtenances as possible, pending trial. Under current detention, Manning can be monitored and prevented from harming himself or being hurt from irate military inmates, cannot get near a computer, cannot further his cause of leaking sensitive information by talking to sympathetic journalists and bloggers, and can serve as an example to others that there will be severe and immediate consequences to this sort of action.
The House will vote Tuesday on a three-week continuing resolution that would cut federal spending by $6 billion. It is the second short-term resolution proposed by the 112th Congress. And though it is expected to pass the House comfortably, a number of conservative groups have come out against the measure.
Republican freshmen like Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.) have said they will vote against it, arguing that a short-term spending bill forestalls a broader debate over meaningful budget reform and deficit reduction, and expressing concern that the pending measure does not contain any of the policy amendments including in the House’s long-term spending bill, H.R. 1, e.g., the defunding of the EPA and Planned Parenthood.
Today, freshman Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) announced that he “will no longer support short-term budget plans.” In a sternly worded press release, Rubio decried the spending debate in Washington as “absurd political theatre.” He slammed Democrats in Congress for failing to pass a budget last year and for refusing to propose meaningful spending cuts in recent weeks, and an “absent” President Obama for his “lack of leadership.”
“All this has led to a very predictable outcome: Washington politicians of both parties scrambling to put together two and three week plans to keep funding the government, while not fundamentally changing the behavior that has gotten us into this mess to begin with,” he said. “Running our government on the fumes of borrowed spending is unacceptable, short-sighted and dangerous. I commend the efforts of House and Senate Republican leaders to deal with this, but I did not come to the U.S. Senate to be part of some absurd political theatre.”
As Congress prepares for another recess next week, Rubio said lawmakers “should feel ashamed if they have to go home again, look their constituents in the eye, and explain why nothing is being done about our debt crisis.” They ought to be focused on a long-term solution for the remainder of the fiscal year so that the “real debate” can begin over how to save entitlements and reign in the skyrocketing federal debt.
“If we deal with these issues seriously and immediately, we can leave our children with a country better than the one we grew up in,” he said. “If we don’t, we will be the first Americans to leave our children worse off than ourselves.”
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, liberal hypocrisy manifested itself most acutely in their practical choices about minorities, for instance sending their own kids to exclusive private schools while supporting forced busing for middle-class families of lesser means. This was best memorialized in Phil Ochs’s classic folk tune, “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” —
. . . and I love Puerto Ricans and negroes,
As long as they don’t move next door!
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.
Ah, the people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame.
Now I can’t understand how their minds work,
What’s the matter — don’t they watch Les Crane?
But if you ask me to bus my children,
I hope the cops take down your name.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.
This hasn’t changed, of course: Rich liberals still send their kids to exclusive private schools while steadfastly opposing school choice for low-income minorities. But the new face of liberal hypocrisy is environmental, Al Gore’s private plane trips and energy-hogging mansions being well-known examples.
Elizabeth Rosenthal offers a splendid piece on the subject in the Sunday New York Times entitled “Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard.” She notes how widespread is liberal opposition to wind-power projects, bike lanes, and other things green that they want the rest of us to embrace. Rosenthal seems a little befuddled by it all:
Policymakers in the United States have been repeatedly frustrated by constituents who profess to worry about the climate and count themselves as environmentalists, but prove unwilling to adjust their lifestyles or change their behavior in any significant way. In Europe, bike lanes crisscross cities, wind turbines appear in counties with high-priced country homes and plants that make green energy from waste are situated in even the wealthiest neighborhoods. So what is going on here?
One difference is that the U.S. allows environmentalists to block or slow up anything with a lawsuit. Europe and Canada don’t tolerate this. By one recent count, there are at least 70 proposed wind-power projects being held up by environmental lawsuits. Meanwhile, there are multiple lawsuits blocking several solar-power projects in the California desert, one of the few places where solar power might — perhaps — make some sense. And Al Gore wonders why people don’t take him seriously?
There was an important congressional hearing last week that got overlooked in the crush of headlines from Libya, Japan, and elsewhere. And no wonder: It was a hearing of the less than scintillating House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law.
The hearing concerned the proposed REINS Act, which is an acronym for “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act,” and it would require that Congress vote on any proposed regulation that would impose a cost on the economy of $100 million or more. Imagine — making Congress take direct responsibility for the regulations it imposes on us through administrative agencies. The Left is naturally at DefCon1 against this. You can watch the hearing here, or download the excellent testimonies of pro-REINS witnesses Eric Claeys of George Mason law school and David Schoenbrod of NYU law school. Keep your eye on this one. The REINS Act would be an important measure to slow up the regulatory state.
Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Governor Mitch Daniels champions the idea of scholarships for low-income families.
[Voucher] is a common term for it… But, I prefer to think of it as a scholarship that the money really is for the child and for the child’s education.…The responsibility of the State is to try to make certain that every child can have a high quality education. We trust families to decide for themselves where that can best be achieved for their child.
Mark, I agree completely with you and John Hinderaker, that President Obama would be much more comfortable as a monarch without too many demanding duties, thus leaving him plenty of time for golf, hoops, trips to the winter palace in Hawaii, and, of course, vacations and down time.
In fact there’s something of a precedent for this. It happened in San Francisco, back in the 19th century, when an Englishman named Joshua A. Norton declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Norton was as nutty as a fruitcake, but the good people of San Francisco loved him and played along with his whims and summary proclamations for more than 20 years, right up to his death in 1880, which was mourned by a crowd of 30,000. There was a lot to like. By decree, he abolished Congress, eliminated political parties, and ordered that San Francisco and Oakland be connected via a bridge. Truly, a visionary genius and a role model for the current occupant of the White House, who would finally get a job commensurate with his talents and work ethic.
Did the French actually touch off the Great Depression? That’s the argument of this paper by Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin, which notes that France was the most aggressive hoarder of gold between 1927 and 1932. Irwin argues that in the absence of French hoarding, the world would likely have avoided massive deflation. Herbert Hoover not available for comment.
Yes, that headline sounds like an oxymoron, but Jennifer Rubin calls our attention to where it may really be taking place: Morocco. This bears watching.
My colleague Kevin D. Williamson has a piece today about how hard it would be to close the $1.1 trillion budget gap by taxing “the rich.” I spent some time this weekend going through more detailed IRS data, and they support his conclusion.
Liberals believe, more or less, that once someone’s income reaches the “rich” threshold, they have little right to keep any additional dollars they make. Starting with that assumption, I set out to find how much “extra” money people really have. You can see my results here.
The best numbers I could find came from IRS returns in 2008 (Excel spreadsheet). Unfortunately, the cutoff the IRS uses is $200,000 rather than $250,000, which is the level at which Obama promised no tax hikes. But if anything, counting more taxpayers as “rich” — and thus making more money available for government plundering — will bias the results against Kevin’s argument.
The first question is: How much do these folks make in total? The answer is about $2.5 trillion.
If we wanted, we could stop here: You’d need to grab almost half that to finance the deficits Obama’s talking about, and for many of these taxpayers, the other half is already taken in federal and local taxes. No one works for free. But even if we can’t completely eliminate the deficit, maybe we can mitigate it substantially. So it’s worth going a little farther.
First of all, not all of that money is “extra.” I assume that when Obama talked about raising taxes on the rich, he didn’t mean he’d tax people who made $250,000 so much that they ended up with less than people who’d made $200,000. So, in this analysis, not only is he limited to taxing people who make over $200,000, but he’s limited to taxing the amounts that exceed $200,000. Of the aforementioned $2.5 trillion, only about $1.6 trillion is left after we subtract every rich filer’s first $200,000.
And of course, the federal government can’t take money it’s already taken, so we need to factor in taxes. Because we counted out the first $200,000 each person earned, we also have to count out the federal taxes on that income — about $50,000 per person. When we calculate the taxes paid beyond that, and subtract that number from the $1.6 trillion above, we end up with less than $1.3 trillion.
And then we have to knock off state and local taxes, which probably average 5 to 10 percent. All told, we’re left with about a trillion dollars — dollars that belong to people who already pay high taxes and are good at hiding money when taxes go higher.
Bottom line: If we can’t raise taxes on anyone who’s not rich, the income tax can’t be of much help in increasing revenue.
Weeks after Ramesh, the New York Times profiles former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. In the page-one story, Pawlenty takes a shot at contenders who “grab for the wind” and “flop around.”
Unlike Newt Gingrich, he does not have the political scars that come with a long career under intense scrutiny. He does not enjoy the intensity of support directed at Sarah Palin, nor does he generate the passion of her detractors. And Mitt Romney’s efforts to remake himself as more of a social conservative provide an object lesson in handling questions about authenticity.
“I think the people who get tossed around in this process are people who don’t have their compass set, who don’t have their feet firmly planted on the ground,” Mr. Pawlenty said in an interview. “And then they start to just grab for the wind and they flop around. That’s not me.”
The “Romney alternative” narrative continues:
Mr. Pawlenty is positioning himself as a leading alternative to Mr. Romney, who starts the race with a significant fund-raising advantage in his second bid for the party’s nomination. But that is the most sought-after role in the Republican field, one that Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi is also hoping to fill.Mr. Pawlenty has benefited from Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana opting to stay out of the race. But his efforts to win Tea Party support may be complicated by a fellow Minnesotan, Representative Michele Bachmann, who spent the weekend in New Hampshire, testing her own presidential bid.
Living in New York City, one is confronted with a daily feast of cultural opportunities, just about every form of beauty created by man. This is especially true of the city’s plethora of religious services, some of which offer world-class beauty in worship. (St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, with its famous choir school, is just the most conspicuous example.) But it’s good to be reminded that ordinary folks — men and women whose voices will never appear on a CD — can, with a little work and the right spirit, make a truly joyful noise. That’s what happened today at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Between the sermon and the liturgy of the Eucharist, about a dozen people — including a bright-eyed and clean-cut young couple who had been sitting right behind me — left their places in the pews and filed unassumingly to the front of the altar, where they launched into Handel’s anthem “Lord I Trust Thee.” (You can find another rendition of it here.) They finished the piece, and filed just as unassumingly back to their places, but not before having reduced me to tears with the sincerity and beauty of their rendition.
When you go to a lot of religious services, the temptation is to become a theological and aesthetic critic: This liturgical text was well written, that sermon was awful, this choir is better than that schola, etc. And indeed, there were a couple of things in today’s service that I would object to: I am allergic to politics (left or right) in sermons, so the fact that a substantial portion of Pastor Heidi Neumark’s sermon was devoted to lobbying Congress not to cut the foreign-aid budget didn’t appeal to me. And one of the hymns — the lovely text “O Bread of Life from Heaven” — was delivered in such a lugubrious and lackluster manner that the pastor cut in and ended it before the final verse. (It is the custom in mainline Protestant services to sing hymns in their entirety.) But these things are important only in that they serve to remind us that we all bring our failings into church with us. What’s crucial — what I will remember about this particular service — is that ordinary people, again, people like us, can become utterly transparent to the divine. I saw it happen, a Real Presence, and I am grateful for it.
Al-Qaeda has launched a women’s magazine that mixes beauty and fashion tips with advice on suicide bombings.
Seriously. What else is in there?
Readers are told it is their duty to raise children to be mujahideen ready for jihad.
And the ‘beauty column’ instructs women to stay indoors with their faces covered to keep a ‘clear complexion’.
They should ‘not go out except when necessary’.
You can have it all! It’s like Cosmo for Waziristan.
Still, what with the collapse of American newspapering, I thought I might as well submit a possible cover story, “Ten Ways To Drive Him Wild In The Bedroom”:
Number One: Say “Darling, I thought I’d borrow the car today.”
The magazine is delivered to your house shrink-wrapped, just like the women.
Here is House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) explaining the nature of the debt crisis in the United States, on Fox News with Mike Huckabee:
Huckabee: “What does this debt mean to America’s future?”
Ryan: “It means we have a diminished country. It means for the first time ever in the history of this country, we will give our children and our grandchildren a lower standard of living… we will sever the legacy of leaving our children better on. And all of this deficit and debt today actually slows down our economy… because every time we have these big deficits like we have now, that simply means big tax increases and big interest rate increases tomorrow… So it’s not just damaging the future for our children, it damages the economy today.”
As Ryan points out, the Congressional Budget Office’s own computer simulation model predicts that if nothing is done, our debt “actually, literally crashes our economy” in 2037.
What’s causing our debt problem?
Ryan: “The reason we have all this debt is because too many politicians have been making empty promises to Americans about all of this borrowing and spending, and this is going to catch up with us. The question is: Will we get honest leadership and fact-based budgeting, stop the accounting gimmicks and all the fiscal sleight of hand and actually address this issue, fix this crisis before it really gets out of hand and out of our control?”
Exactly much have politicians over-promised?
Ryan: “The Government Acocuntability Office tells us we have about $88.6 trillion of unfunded liabilities. That means we are $88.6 trillion short of being able to fulfill government’s promises that are being made to everybody in America today.”
The biggest drivers of that deficit — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (in that order) — are projected to ultimately consume 100 percent of tax revenue within the next 30 years. Absent meaningful reform, our entitlement programs are simply unsustainable.
Ryan explains: “We’re going from 40 million retirees in America to 77 million retirees in America. And these are pay-as-you go programs — current workers pay current taxes for current beneficiaries. So when you have a 100 percent increase, virtually, in beneficiaries, but only a 17 percent increase in workers paying into those programs , that’s part of the problem.”
A problem that is getting worse to the tune of $10 trillion per year. That is why Republicans plan to step up and lead on the issue, by releasing a 2012 budget that includes meaningful reform to entitlement programs. President Obama, on the other, has decided to sit on the sidelines and issue languid proclamations about the need for a “conversation” about entitlements, after completely ignoring the recommendations of the bipartisan deficit commission that he appointed to do just that.
The importance of acting now, Ryan says, is to ensure that current and near-retirees will not be affected. If we wait any longer, that won’t be the case. Deep and sudden cuts will be imposed on us the way they were imposed on countries like Greece.
Ryan: “If you’ve already retired or you’re about to retire and you’ve organized your lives around Medicare and Social Security, what we will do is preserve those benefits for you just like they are today and then reform them for future generations so that they can actually rely on them, because they are going bankrupt… If we do it now, we do it on our terms, meaning we don’t change anything for people in and near retirement. But if we wait, if we keep delaying and kicking the can down the road, then it will look like Europe — bitter austerity. Cuts will happen to current seniors, and that’s what we want to avoid.”
Ryan is on a mission now to educate not only the American public, but also Republican lawmakers, particularly freshmen, as to the size and scope of the debt problem and how to go about solving it, and perhaps more critically, how to sell those solutions to their constituents. To that end, he has been conducting “listening sessions” with House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), which I wrote about here.
To see the slides Ryan uses in his presentations, go here.
This morning, P.J. Crowley resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (i.e. spokesman) at the State Department. According to POLITICO, Crowley had a sour relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the State Department had been prepping Michael Hammer, Obama’s National Security Council spokesman, to succeed him. But Crowley’s remark at MIT on March 10th that the Defense Department’s treatment of Bradley Manning — who is suspected of leaking diplomatic cables to Julian Assange — was “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid,” quickly accelerated his ouster. After his comments, Crowley faced criticism from the Department of Defense and President Obama, who said he had been assured that Manning’s treatment was appropriate.
Crowley submitted a statement with his resignation this morning:
The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime under U.S. law. My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values…
Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the Department of State.
Hillary Clinton accepted Crowley’s resignation “with regret” and said “P.J. has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian.”
A few minutes ago Crowley tweeted: “Mike Hammer will do a great job as my successor at State. He and I worked together 12 years ago on the NSC staff at the White House.”
Days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) is calling for a temporary moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants. “The reality is that we’re watching something unfold,” he said in an interview on Face the Nation. “We don’t know where it’s going with regard to the nuclear power plants in Japan right now.” In the short term, he urged lawmakers to “put the brakes” on building new plants “until we understand the ramifications of what has happened in Japan.”
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell disagrees. “This discussion reminds me, somewhat, of the conversations that were going on after the BP oil spill last year,” he said on Fox News Sunday. “I don’t think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy.”
On ABC’s This Week, George F. Will, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, dismissed Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) as a potential presidential candidate. “She is not among the serious contenders,” he said. “We know who settles presidential elections, they are independent voters. Independent voters are not inflamed, and not inflamed in the way of the marginal Republican candidates.”
Will, in his erudite way, also wondered about Bachmann’s knowledge of American history. Bachmann, in a visit to New Hampshire on Saturday, suggested that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H. “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord,” she said to a Manchester crowd.
Will, when asked for his thoughts, simply quoted “Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord. He recited the first stanza, with gusto, as his fellow panelists looked on:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
This all happened, he said drolly, by “Concord bridge in Massachusetts.”
Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, in a low-key appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, was mum about a potential 2012 presidential bid. “I have agreed to consider it,” he said, but did not sound enthusiastic about the prospect. “Others have said over the course of the last year and a half that I ought to consider something that had never entered my mind.”
With regard to a timeline for his decision, Daniels has “no idea.” He did not shoot down moderator Chuck Todd’s question about waiting until the summer. “I am completely committed to the job I am in now,” he said. “If deadlines pass, they do.” Besides, he mused, it is a “blissful occurrence” that the presidential horse race has been slow to start.
Daniels praised the emerging field of contenders as he sidestepped questions about his own intentions. “There are some really good people running,” he said. “I like them all. I am hoping that our party will simply step up to the issues of the day, and it could be any one of those folks.”
Yet many of those same candidates criticized Daniel indirectly last week at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s spring kick-off. In a series of speeches, White House hopefuls such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum argued that social values should be the keystone of the GOP platform.
Daniels last year proposed a “truce” on social issues, hoping to see Republicans focus on fiscal problems. On Meet, he shrugged off the criticisms. “I happen to share their views and respect their passion,” he said. “Some of it, however, comes to this: Are you more committed to results or rhetoric?”
“I don’t sit around calculating the political pluses and minuses of every little word I utter,” Daniels said. If Beltway leaders want to achieve meaningful fiscal reform, he added, they are “going to have to get together people who disagree on other things.”
Daniels, who served in the Bush administration as director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, also weighed in on the budget debate brewing on Capitol Hill. “To see them arguing over nickels and dimes like this,” he said, is “almost comic,” especially as entitlement spending soars.
Daniels then wagged a finger at House Republicans, who have attached politically-tinged amendments — often dubbed “riders” — to recent spending bills. “As a general rule, it is better practice to do the people’s business, try to concentrate on making ends meet, which Washington obviously has failed to do for a long time, and have other policy debates in other places,” he said. Still, when pressed by Todd, he did not criticize House Speaker John Boehner for enabling such “riders” to be brought to the floor.
Turning toward Hoosier State politics, Daniels offered hearty support to Sen. Dick Lugar, who is facing Tea Party opposition in the run-up to the 2012 GOP Senate primary. “I’m for Dick Lugar, he’s the role model I’ve had,” he said.
Daniels, who once served as Lugar’s chief of staff, emphasized that he would not meddle in the primary. Voters, though, will know where he stands. “Folks in Indiana know that I am for him and that I admire him and think if he wants another term, he ought to have one,” he said.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, told NBC’s Meet the Press this morning that he will support House Republicans’ short-term stop-gap resolution to keep the government running. “I’m for it,” he said, calling the deliberations a “cause for optimism.”
Obstacles remain, however, for a long-term fiscal package. Schumer is willing to negotiate but will not endorse deep cuts — things that “cut into our seed corn.” Democrats, he said, want to wield a “smart, short scalpel, not a meat ax.” He challenged House Speaker John Boehner to build a “coalition” around legislation that could pass in both chambers. “We only have six months left,” he said. “We should get it done already.”
Oddly, Schumer referenced the tsunami in Japan as he explained his party’s “smart, short scalpel” approach. “Just parenthetically, the tsunami shows that as well,” he said. “We proposed cutting some earmarks out of the funding of [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], which has the regulation and watching-out for tsunamis. They cut so much out of NOAA, which funds the tsunami-warning center, that there would have to be furloughs there. So we are sticking to where we are at.”
Meanwhile, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday, warned that Democrats’ unwillingness to make a “credible effort” to address long-term fiscal problems will have consequences.
“I do not intend to support raising the debt ceiling, and I don’t believe any Senate Republicans do, unless we do something important related to spending and debt,” McConnell said. “It is going to have to carry something with it that the markets, foreign countries and the American people believe is a credible effort to get a handle on spending and the debt.”
The embarrassing revelations from Cablegate, combined with, in recent weeks, the accidental killing of nine Afghan boys and, most recently, Hamid Karzai’s cousin, appear to have indeed strained diplomatic relations with the Afghan president. Karzai earlier today asked that U.S. forces cease military operations in Afghanistan, but then later backtracked, or hedged, saying he meant only those which caused civilian deaths. Rod Nordland of the New York Timesdescribes it:
In an emotional speech on Saturday in the eastern city of Asadabad, in Kunar Province, the Afghan president told relatives and neighbors of civilian victims that he sympathized with their plight. “With great honor and with great respect, and humbly rather than with arrogance, I request that NATO and America should stop these operations on our soil,” he said. “This war is not on our soil. If this war is against terror, then this war is not here, terror is not here.”
Mr. Karzai’s remarks were made at a memorial service for the victims, in the presence of local officials as well as the second highest ranking American general in Afghanistan, David M. Rodriguez. “Our demand is that this war should be stopped,” Mr. Karzai said. “This is the voice of Afghanistan.”
Whether his remarks were premeditated, taken out of context or just an emotional overstatement, his speech was another symptom of a deteriorating relationship between the Afghan president and the United States military command.
American officials were angered by Mr. Karzai’s remarks, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dispute with the Afghan president. Officially, NATO refrained from any direct response. But a spokesman, who said he could speak only on the condition of anonymity because of orders from superior officers, said the NATO force in Afghanistan “shares President Karzai’s concern about civilian casualties, and we will continue working to reduce civilian casualties to an absolute minimum.”
A few hours after the speech, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omer, said the president’s remarks had been in the context of two recent cases of civilian casualties in Kunar Province, one of which NATO conceded had killed nine children in error. In the other case, Afghan officials maintained that 65 civilians had been killed, but NATO officials still insist the victims were insurgents, although an investigation is under way.
It’s a week or two old now, but the warning that runs through this article from the London Spectator is still worth pondering:
Here’s an extract:
As a hint of what might be in store for Egypt, consider the city of Alexandria. Once it was a cosmopolitan summer resort famous for its secular, carefree atmosphere. Now it is about the least fun place to live in North Africa. All Muslim women in the city are veiled, among the young often for fear of otherwise being labelled a whore; and violence between local Christians and Muslims is commonplace (23 Christians were killed by a bomb planted in a Coptic Orthodox church on New Year’s day). Most bars have stopped serving alcohol. The only women to be found on the beaches, even in the height of summer, are those taking care of their kids — and they are invariably covered from head-to-toe in black.
Just another reminder of the mistake that Mubarak (alas no Ataturk) made in ceding so much of the religious and cultural arena to the clerics…
And then there’s this:
It is a great mistake to assume that democracy is an enemy of Islamism. When the gift of democracy is unwrapped in the Arab world, Islamists frequently spring out of the box. The jihadis may be despised by most Muslims, but often in Arab countries only about 20 to 40 per cent of the population vote. It is by no means impossible for the Islamists to secure a majority from the minority, because their supporters are the most fanatical. Whatever the theory of democratisation in the Arab world, the history is clear. Where democracy, however tentatively, has already been introduced, it is the Islamists who have come to power.
Egypt Watch Saudi Troops Enter Bahrain
Shock headline from the New York Times this morning: "Saudi Troops Enter Bahrain..." But don't worry: it's cooperative. Or, at . . .Go
David Calling The Fruits of 'Concern'
President Obama’s responses to the Libyan crisis are deeply mysterious. What does he want, and how does he envisage the . . .Go
