...If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day. Forget the inaugural balls; we can't afford them. Forget the grandstands; we don't need them. Just get me a Supreme Court justice and a Bible, and let's swear in Barack Obama right now -- by choice -- with the same haste we did -- by necessity -- with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One.

Unfortunately, it would take too long for a majority of states to ratify such an amendment....

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The same charge was made by Democrats well into 2001. "I think what we're seeing is a talking down of the economy," then House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said that March. "I think that kind of economic leadership is irresponsible."

Big media also chimed in. "It is important for President Bush to quit talking down the economy in order to build congressional and public support for his tax cut," said the New York Times. "A high-risk bid to win support for his tax cuts" is how Time put it.

Gene Sperling, a key economic adviser to President Clinton, said "it is very possible that the president's continued drumbeat on talking down the economy has become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Pretty damning, if true. Except that Bush and Vice President-elect Cheney were right: The economy was on the front edge of a recession in December 2000 — it started in March 2001 and ended that November — and his tax plan almost certainly helped make it one of the mildest downturns on record.

Fast forward to this week. In announcing his Treasury pick, Obama painted an exceedingly grim picture — that of an economy "trapped in a vicious cycle," "likely to get worse before it gets better" and in danger of losing "millions of jobs" next year.

Not a peep, however, has been heard about Obama "talking down the economy" to serve his political interests.

The new president stands a better chance of enacting his agenda if the public believes the economy is on the edge of the abyss. And if things don't turn out as bad as he's saying, Obama can later claim credit for preventing a catastrophe.

Having the president, congressional leaders and the media continually talking about depressions, catastrophes, historic crises and vicious cycles is a good way of making sure it all comes true.

The Heritage Foundation;

Even though Congress has failed to pass global warming legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to bypass the legislative process and impose onerous new regulations on greenhouse gases anyway.

The proposed regulatory scheme "is nothing less than the most costly, compli­cated, and unworkable regulatory scheme ever pro­posed," Heritage Foundation expert Ben Lieberman argues in a new analysis.

"Virtually every concern heightened by the eco­nomic downturn, especially job losses, would be exacerbated under" the proposed rules, he continues.

According to Heritage research, the EPA's plan would:

• Cost the American economy nearly $7 trillion by 2029;

• Result in millions of job losses, especially in the manufacturing sector; and

• Impose burdensome new rules on families, businesses and ordinary regulations.

There is much talk these days of how conservatives need “new ideas” in these troubled economic times. And as we look at our nation’s troubled landscape, there is much work that needs to be done if we are going to return economic prosperity to the country. But as we sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends and family, recalling the true story of the Pilgrims should remind us all that the core principles that have made this nation great are unchanging, and that we risk ruin if we abandon them.

Most children learn that the Pilgrims’ salvation at Plymouth Colony stemmed from the generosity of local Indians. And while there is no doubt that the American natives did help the immigrants through some early tough times, it was not until the Pilgrims rediscovered the importance of private property that the colony began to thrive and was able to give thanks for their own blessings. When the Pilgrims first arrived, they attempted a form of, in Gov. William Bradford’s words, “[1] community” or “[2] commonwealth.” In other words, they attempted to “[3] spread the wealth around” by destroying private property and replacing it with a communally owned property system.

The result was disastrous. According to Bradford, this system bred “[4] confusion and discontent” and “[5] retarded much employment that would have been to [the settlers’] benefit and comfort.” Unable to produce their own food, some settlers  “[6] became servants to the Indians,” cutting wood and fetching water in exchange for “[7] a capful of corn.” It was not until the colony changed course and allowed the private ownership of farmland that prosperity returned. Bradford reported, “This had very good success for it made all hands very industrious. … [M]uch more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. … Women went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn.”

A profoundly religious man, [8] Bradford saw the hand of God in the Pilgrims’ economic recovery. Their success, he observed, “[9] may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients and applauded by some of later times … that the taking away of property … would make [men] happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.” Bradford surmised, “[10] God in his wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”

Article printed from The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/26/morning-bell-giving-thanks-for-the-free-market/

Consensus dissipating on global warming?

The global-warming movement exists to provide cover for statists who demand central control over energy production.  That’s an inconvenient truth that has begun to emerge as global temperatures fail to meet expectations of increase.  Rather than admit that more research is needed, global-warming activists have increased the hysterical tone of their efforts, demanding immediate action and giving dire predictions of catastrophe without it.

Their cause did not get helped by the Goddard Institute’s mishandling of data.  Not only did they mistakenly use the wrong month’s data, they failed to catch the error before publication.  In the controversy that erupted, Goddard — the primary source for the most hysterical global-warming advocates — admitted that they don’t do any independent verification of the data they receive, making their conclusions all but worthless.

Over 31,000 scientists have now signed onto the Global Warming Petition Project, demanding more skepticism and a return to scientific inquiry into climate change rather than political propaganda.  They face an uphill battle in convincing the beneficiaries of research dollars from Washington to risk their funding by acting like scientists.

Posted By Barry Ritholtz On November 25, 2008 @ 7:19 am In Bailouts, Markets, Taxes and Policy | 40 Comments

Article printed from The Big Picture: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog

URL to article: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/big-bailouts-bigger-bucks/

URLs in this post:

[1] Bailout Nation book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071609059/thebigpictu09-20

[2] Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=an3k2rZMNgDw&

[3] Data breakdown is here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=avimage&iid=i0YrUuvkygWs

Great news: Obama and McCain agreed to move forward on immigration, says Reid

• [19] California officials will investigate the Mormon church for its role in defending marriage in California.
• With President-elect Barack Obama set to take power, [20] there is no recession for lobbyists in Washington.
• While Obama is considering a $700 billion stimulus, [21] British officials announced a $30 billion economic stimulus package Monday.
• The chairman of the committee in charge of writing our nation’s tax laws has been [22] illegally claiming a D.C. homestead exemption for more than a decade.
• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has helped raise $11 million for a school of public service [23] to be named in his honor.
  

Article printed from The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/25/morning-bell-the-fairness-doctrine-20/

This perception, however, was always skewed. The new administration will soon discover from its review of the Guantánamo files what motivated its predecessor: The scope of the terrorist threat was far greater than anyone knew on September 11, 2001. But for the Bush administration's efforts, many more Americans surely would have perished.

This conclusion is based on a careful review of the thousands of pages of documents released from Guantánamo, as well as other publicly available evidence. In 2006, the Department of Defense began to release the documents to the public via its website. The files had been created during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearings held for nearly 600 detainees. This unclassified cache includes both the government's allegations against each detainee and summarized transcripts of the detainees' testimony. Although the documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Associated Press, the intelligence contained in the files was largely ignored by the mainstream press for more than two years. Thus, the New York Times reported only the day before the recent presidential election that the files contain "sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees."

When the Bush administration sent the first detainees to the U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay in 2002, it was improvising-understandable in a situation without precedent. The captured jihadists and terrorist agents were not conventional prisoners of war, and they were not ordinary criminals. In the ensuing seven years, the administration failed to replace its stopgap measure with an institutional response seen as legitimate. Bush's successors should remember, however, that he took the steps he did in the context of a war against enemies who are still seeking to attack our homeland. President Bush, whatever his faults, protected America after September 11, 2001. Shortly, it will fall to President Obama to do the same.

Does FOCA mean an end to Catholic health care?