NYT: Obama thanked Collins, Snowe, Specter for their “patriotism”

Breaking: Senate centrists reach deal on stimulus? Update: No one wants to be the 60th vote; Video: 30% chance we’ll get it wrong, says Biden

Peter Schiff: The stimulus will bring about economic Armageddon

A new communique from the man who saw it all coming, warning us to prepare for Weimar II. If ever you wanted an illustration of just how inexact a “science” economics is, watch this clip back to back with The One’s assurances last night (at roughly 4:20 here) that the stimulus is the only way to avoid Armageddon. How much good has 75 years of data done us? From the NYT’s front-pager this morning on Japan’s experiment, this much:

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

But some Western economists who have studied Japan’s experience say the stimulus accomplished more than it is now given credit for. At a minimum, they argue, it saved the economy from an outright, 1930s-style collapse.

Jim Manzi is demanding that economists put up or shut up on their predictions by publicizing their models now so that they can be scrutinized in a year or two, knowing full well that no one will take him up on the challenge. In sum: We’re at a fork in the road, with plenty of scholarly opinion urging us down both paths, and either one could lead to total destruction. Anyone got a coin to flip? Click the image to watch.

Buzz up

Obama withdraws charges against Nashiri, for now

Unfortunately, this was all too predictable.  Obama had no intention of prosecuting the Gitmo detainees in the first few days of his administration.  The delay may have made it palatable for them to continue later, with a little spin, but Obama’s likely intent was to inure himself against criticism from the Right on the prosecutions by delaying and dragging out the Gitmo closing process.

This decision puts Nashiri into the very status to which Obama and the Left objected so strenuously: held without charge.  That was the status that Congress and the Bush administration worked hard to change twice in passing legislation that established the military tribunal system.  The last time, in 2007, Democrats joined Republicans in creating a system with more safeguards for defendants than our own military personnel get under the UCMJ, complete with access to the federal court system on appeal.

Andy McCarthy, who sharply criticized the judge in the Nashiri case for forcing Obama’s hand, says that Obama may not be done dropping charges, either, and welcomes back September 10th America:

On that score, it is noteworthy that, before the appointing authority acted this evening, Obama had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow afternoon with victims and families of victims not only of the Cole bombing but of of the 9/11 attacks.  At a minimum, he appeared poised to announce he was dropping the Cole charges against Nashiri.  All evening, however, it has been floated from several knowledgeable sources that the president was prepared to announce the dismissal of all the commission cases — i.e., not only against Nashiri but against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters.  That suggestion is supported by the fact that the 9/11 families were invited to the White House meeting:  there would have been no need to invite them to discuss an announcement that impacted only the Cole case.

Dismissals, if they happened, would surely be couched as “without prejudice.”  That is, Obama would be able to tell the families — whether he meant it or not — that he could always re-file military commission charges if he ultimately decided that commissions, rather than civilian trials, were the best way to go. …

Such dismissals would get the administration out from under the four-month deadline its adjournment request would have imposed.  That is, the cases would be gone instead of suspended.  Nothing further would ever have to happen, and nothing further would happen, unless and until Obama decided what to do about all the detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay.  Maybe his ultimate decision would be to transfer the war-crimes detainees for trial in civilian court, maybe it would be to ship them to some country willing to take them, or maybe it would be to continue detaining them without trial under some new legal system.  But you could bet the ranch that war crimes defendants would never again be charged in military commissions.  Obama’s antiwar base, which rejects the premise that we are at war, cannot abide such military prosecutions.

From Obama’s rhetoric and actions, it looks like Andy’s correct; we’re going back to the law-enforcement model, which failed so miserably to protect our country during the Clinton adminstration.  Andy knows this from personal experience, as he prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and his terrorist network for the first World Trade Center bombing.  For almost a decade afterwards, we pursued terrorists as though they were burglars, unwilling to grab them before they killed Americans, and obsessing over their legal status.

Will Obama drop charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 9/11 plotters, too?  What makes them different from Nashiri and the others whose plots ended in American deaths?

The road to Hillarycare is paved with incremental encroachments:

President Barack Obama made more children from middle-class families eligible for government health insurance Thursday by lifting a directive imposed by his predecessor.

In 2007, the Bush administration said it would strictly adhere to guidelines that limited the scope of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

A year later, it backed off its threat to penalize states that enrolled middle-class children without first proving they had enrolled nearly all poorer children first.

In a memorandum issued Thursday, Obama completely lifted the restrictions, which many governors and Democratic lawmakers said were nearly impossible to meet.

Obama said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services that “tens of thousand of children have been denied health care coverage” because of the directive.

Under the restrictions, at least 95 percent of poor children eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP had to already be in those programs before states could begin using federal funds to cover higher-income children.

Also, states covering higher-income children had to make sure individuals were without health insurance for one year before they were allowed to get government-sponsored coverage.

Obama’s memo was issued a day after he signed legislation that will enable about 7 million children to continue coverage through SCHIP and allow another 4 million to sign up.

“The way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through SCHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American,” Obama said Wednesday at a White House bill-signing ceremony.

Comedy gold: Tapper humiliates White House spokesman over transparency

NRO’s been dumping on Gibbs for days, wondering when Obama’s going to have mercy on him and pull the plug. Watch this and I trust you’ll agree: Hopefully never.

Tapper’s after him for information about incoming Obama appointees, specifically financial disclosure forms and waivers from the new lobbyist rules. And no wonder: There seems to be a front-page story buried in every one. Exit question: Didn’t he learn from the campaign that subjects that make The One uncomfortable are necessarily “distractions”?

Buzz up!

Graham goes nuclear on Obama over stimulus: “Scaring people is not leadership”

All links lead to the same National Review article.

VARIOUS LEFT-WINGERY:

1. $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

2. $380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program

3. $300 million for grants to combat violence against women

4. $2 billion for federal child care block grants

5. $6 billion for university building projects

6. $15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships

7. $4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion to provide “youth” summer jobs for people up to the age of 24

8. $1 billion for community development block grants

9. $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”

10. $650 million for digital TV coupons, including $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

POORLY DESIGNED TAX RELIEF:

11. $15 billion for business-loss carry-backs

12. $145 billion for “Making Work Pay” tax credits

13. $83 billion for the earned income credit

STIMULUS FOR THE GOVERNMENT:

14. $150 million for the Smithsonian

15. $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters

16. $500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities

17. $44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters

18. $350 million for Agriculture Department computers

19. $88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building next year

20. $448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters

21. $600 million to convert federal auto fleet to hybrids

22. $450 million for National Aeronautics and Space Administration

23. $600 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

24. $1 billion for the Census Bureau

INCOME TRANSFERS:

25. $89 billion for Medicaid

26. $30 billion for COBRA insurance extension

27. $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits

28. $20 billion for food stamps

PURE PORK:

29. $4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

30. $850 million for Amtrak

31. $87 million for a polar icebreaking ship

32. $1.7 for the National Park System

33. $55 million for Historic Preservation Fund

34. $7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”

35. $150 million for agricultural commodity purchases

36. $150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

RENEWABLE WASTE:

37. $2 billion for renewable energy research

38. $2 billion for a “clean-coal” power plant in Illinois

39. $6.2 billion shall be for the Weatherization Assistance Program

40. $3.5 billion shall be for energy efficiency and conservation block grants

41. $3.4 billion shall be for the State Energy Program

42. $200 million shall be for state and local electric-transport projects

43. $300 million shall be for energy-efficient appliance rebate programs

44. $400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments

45. $1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries

46. $1.5 billion for green technology loan guarantees

47. $8 billion for innovative technology loan guarantee program

48. $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects

49. $4.5 billion for electricity grid

REWARDING STATE IRRESPONSIBILITY:

50. $79 billion for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

Disrespecting Zinni

With that in mind, Zinni tried working quickly to get to Iraq, figuring that he would hear from Burns within hours about how to proceed.  When Zinni heard nothing for a day, he began making calls and got no one.  He finally tracked down Jones after several attempts to contact him, and Jones told him that Hill had the job instead of Zinni.  They offered Zinni the Saudi Arabia post as a consolation, and Zinni told them to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

So what happened to the man Democrats used repeatedly to bolster their efforts to undermine George Bush’s efforts in Iraq?  Zinni works for a company that does a lot of business in Iraq, and supposedly the Obama administration worried about how that would look in a confirmation hearing.  Another source told FP that the Obama team worried about the optics of sending two former generals as ambassadors to Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously.

However, neither of those explanations make much sense.  Given how hard Obama fought to keep Tom Daschle and his $5 million worth of work for the industry he would soon regulate, the Dyncorp position would have been hardly a burp in a Democratic-controlled Senate.  Obama’s appointed 12 lobbyists to key positions already, and an ambassadorship even to a key post like Iraq wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.   And who cares whether one general or two becomes Ambassador to war theaters?

Update: And speaking of supposed conflicts of interest, wouldn’t it matter more that the Secretary of State’s spouse took in millions from foreign sources than Zinni being the #2 man at a business that sells product in Iraq?

McConnell on the stimulus: $1 million a day since the birth of Christ

A soundbite for the ages (literally). No need to check his math; Politifact and I have already done it. A cool mil a day since the birth of JC doesn’t even get you to $750 billion, actually. With a trillion dollars to spend, you could push things back to the time of Homer and the start of western civilization proper. No wonder Maverick’s ready to kill it.

I know the three atheists who read this site are wondering so I’ll spare them the trouble of calculating: It’s roughly $13.7M a day since Darwin.

So much for the Greatest Transition Evah^TM

Ever since the election, the media has tried to convince us that Barack Obama’s transition effort was unparalleled in history.  They heaped praise on him for having picked his Cabinet before his inauguration, as if that had never happened before, and for setting a clear path for their confirmations, as though a Democratic Senate would create much of a hurdle.  Since the inauguration, though, a series of errors ranging from technological (e-mail and phone systems) to key personnel have grabbed headlines and shown Barack Obama as a bumbler in his honeymoon period.

Clearly, the Obama transition team doesn’t do its homework.  The tax problems of all three, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, should have been caught months ago, especially for a transition team and effort as highly praised as this one.  The investigation into Bill Richardson came to light last August.  Didn’t anyone bother to even Google these candidates?  Worse, even after the tax problems came to light, Obama acted as if it meant nothing until it became obvious that he was the only person in the country who didn’t understand how it looked to put tax cheats in charge of major federal bureaucracies.

And how do we know that the rest of Obama’s appointments are clean?  After all, Obama promised a new era of government free of conflicts of interest, and then in two weeks appointed at least 13 lobbyists to key positions within his administration, including Daschle, who avoided registering as one.  After months of demonizing lobbyists, Obama has quickly found ways to jump into bed with them, compounding the optics of cheerleading for tax cheats.

The Gitmo alumni on Saudi Arabia’s Most Wanted list

The Saudis want people to know that most of the people who have completed their rehab process have not gone back to al-Qaeda … at least not yet.  More than ten percent of them have already, though, and those are just the ones they’ve confirmed.  The rest may or may not return to terrorism, with AQ or another affiliated group.

We have released less than 500 detainees from Gitmo over the last few years.  Sixty-one have returned to terrorism, and that means we have to expend the same effort all over again to apprehend and detain them to keep them from killing Americans.  That’s a recidivist rate of over 15% so far, and a burden on our counterterrorist operations that we simply can’t bear in the long run.  If we capture terrorists just to release them, what’s the point in defending ourselves at all?

These aren’t common criminals returning to a life of burglary.  These terrorists have vowed to kill Americans here and abroad, and will do so whenever they see an opportunity.  Quit playing games with American security and take the threat seriously.

Formerly perfect being admits: “I screwed up”

The more the American people learn about President Barack Obama’s [1] Trillion Dollar Debt Plan, the more they don’t like it. According to a [2] Gallup Poll released today, 54% of Americans either want Congress to reject Obama’s debt plan entirely, or they want major changes to it. Only 37% support the plan in its current form. A full 78% of Americans are significantly concerned that the plan will not stimulate the economy fast enough and 53% of Americans believe the plan will not have an effect at all. 

There is a reason [3] even Democratic Senators are calling Obama’s [4] Trillion Dollar Debt Plan the “[5] so-called stimulus” bill. There is very little in the plan actually designed to stimulate the economy. [6] Only $137 billion of the $884 billion in the bill is is devoted to infrastructure spending. That is just 15%. The rest of the bill is filled with short and long term efforts by the far left in Obama’s party to [7] permanently redistribute spending and power away from the private sector and toward government.

The Pork

The real problem with Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan is the permanent new [8] education and [9] health care spending disingenuously passed off as “temporary stimulus.” But all of the non-stimulus line items in the bill make for a more vivid demonstration of what the left is trying to accomplish. The pork in this bill includes: [10] $1 billion for Amtrak, $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts; $400 million for global warming research; $2.4 billion for clean coal; $650 million for even more digital TV conversion coupons; $600 million for new government cars; $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings; $150 million for the Smithsonian; [11] $345 million for Agriculture Department computers; $870 million to combat the flu; $400 million to fight STDs; [12] $3 billion for after school programs; $1 billion Community Oriented Policing Services; $1 billion to help states collect child support; $400 million for NASA to compile climate change research; $400 million for the Department of Commerce to fund habitat restoration projects at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and $400 million for the Social Security Administration to replace its computer system.

All of this spending may have merit on its own, but none of it belongs in an economic stimulus bill.

The Waste

Even the actual infrastructure spending in the bill is rife with leftist priorities that guarantee the money will be wasted instead of creating public goods capable of helping the economy grow. The Trillion Dollar Debt Plan includes $9 billion for expanding broadband to rural areas of the country. But a [13] report last month by Pew shows one in three Americans not currently on the internet have no interest in going on line now regardless of the cost. As the New York Times reports, this makes the Debt Plan’s broadband effort “[14] a $9 billion cyberbridge to nowhere.”

Other popular infrastructure items like school construction are also destined to be wasted. The Milwaukee Public Schools would reap $88.6 million over two years for new construction under the debt plan [15] even though the district has 15 vacant school buildings, a large surplus of property and no plans for new construction. And don’t forget the ‘Buy American’ provisions that big labor is pushing. Not only could they start [16] a Great Depression style trade war, but as Dartmouth professor of economics Doug Irwin demonstrates, they will also [17] add billions in unnecessary construction costs to otherwise cost-effective infrastructure projects.

The Cost

Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan is [18] larger than the combined total cost of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The borrowing Obama’s plan requires will shatter post-WW II records for deficit spending. It will [19] more than double the previous debt to G.D.P ratio record set in the 1980s. If all families were asked to equally shoulder the burden of the $819 billion stimulus package, it would be like asking them to take on an amount of [20] debt equivalent to what they spend on food, clothing, and health care or most of what they spend on shelter for an entire year. By even the most optimistic estimates debt-ratios of this size [21] will drive interest rates up by 0.7 and 1.1 percentage points. Such increases in interest rates would significantly weaken the economy further and delay for many months any hope of significant recovery.

For What?
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimates, Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan will [22] only create 1.2 million to 3.6 million jobs, and most of the jobs would only replace those lost to the recession. It is not just conservatives that see fundamental problems with Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan. President Bill Clinton’s budget director, Alice Rivlin [23] told the Senate
there are two risks with including all of the left’s permanent spending priorities in what is supposed to be an economic stimulus bill: “One is that money will be wasted because the investment elements were not carefully crafted. The other is that it will be harder to return to fiscal discipline as the economy recovers if the longer run spending is not offset by reductions or new revenues.”

As we showed above, this bill is rife with “not carefully crafted” spending that will be wasted. And the leftist elements in control of Congress have no track record of reducing spending. By their own criteria, Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan is destined to fail. But if you don’t trust us, here is what [24] John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1942:

"Organized public works, at home and abroad, may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid organization (and above all cannot be reversed or undone at a later date), to be the most serviceable instrument for the prevention of the trade cycle."

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

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/03/morning-bell-a-trillion-dollar-bridge-to-nowhere/

NY Times calls for Daschle’s withdrawal

As the Times notes, the American tax system relies heavily, although not completely, on voluntary compliance.  The IRS does not have the personnel to go door to door to demand financial records of every person living in America, nor should they.  High-profile tax cheats undermine that system of voluntary compliance as an army of Hot Air commenters have noted.  If Daschle and Geithner (and Al Franken and Charlie Rangel) can skip paying taxes with no penalties and still get high public office, why should any of us pay?

The Times takes a rather remarkable tone in this editorial as well.  They don’t buy the explanation Daschle has offered at all — that he had no idea that he owed the taxes.  The editors note that Daschle didn’t bother to actually pay the taxes until months after he supposedly began thinking about the problem.  That only happened after Team Obama starting noticing some unrelated oddities in Daschle’s taxes during the vetting process.

And that brings up another point.  The Obama transition team knew full well that Daschle had significant tax problems when that vetting process began.  Why did Obama insist on keeping Daschle at HHS?  Daschle had spent the last few years as a high-profile lobbyist for the industry Obama wanted him to regulate, which is exactly what Obama promised not to do during the campaign.  So now we have a lobbyist and a tax cheat rolled up into one person, whom Obama insists should run Health and Human Services, and he knew all of this well before announcing Daschle and submitting his name for confirmation.  It’s not like Obama can claim to be surprised.

Even Obama’s biggest cheerleaders object to the stink of Daschle.  Perhaps Obama may start thinking about Plan B.