Politics, Government & Public Policy: December 2009 Archives
President Obama has taken the War on Terror to a whole new level by ordering a review of our "detection methods" in the wake of the thwarted Christmas bombing.
President Barack Obama has ordered the government to review detection methods to determine how a suspected terrorist ignited an explosive aboard a Northwest Airlines plane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day.“We are investigating, as always, going backwards to see what happened, and when, who knew what and when,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said today on ABC’s “This Week.” “There was simply throughout the law enforcement community never information that would put this individual on a ‘no-fly’ list,” she said.
Then again, does our bureaucracy really require a Presidential order to perform such a review?
Furthermore, I'd prefer if the Obama Administration referred to this as an attack that was thwarted rather than "botched".
"President Barack Obama's Christmas Day began with a briefing about a botched attack on an airliner in Detroit," began an Associated Press account published Christmas evening. "Obama's military aide told the president about an incident aboard a plane as it was landing in Detroit just after 9 a.m. here [in Hawaii]. The president phoned his homeland security adviser and the chief of staff to the National Security Council for a briefing…'We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,' one White House official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation."
All the details haven't been released yet, but from what I've read it seems to me that the bombing failed due to the heroic actions of the other passengers and was not merely "botched". Is it hard for the government to admit that the billions of dollars spend on the Transportation Safety Administration have been largely wasted on security theater and that we citizens are still and always will be our own best defenders?
It's almost as if our government exists not to protect our lives and liberty, but to transfer wealth from unfavored groups to the friends of those in power.
A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. "But we don't find any correlation." ...
Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans. “We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.
The Mercatus Center analysis also found that Democratic congressional districts received on average almost double the funding of Republican congressional districts. Republican congressional districts received on average $232 million in stimulus funds while Democratic districts received $439 million on average.
Over the centuries our government has become a gigantic Ponzi scheme, and the average citizen is always on the bottom of the heap.
I'll bring the tar if you bring the feathers.
(HT: RB.)
Last August I told you that Barack Obama's health care reform is dead, and it still is. Senators and Nelson Lieberman have stated that they will not vote for a "public option" of any kind. I suspect that many Democrats are secretly pleased, despite outrage among the base.
The progressives are, of course . . . well, livid is probably too weak a word. At this point it's hard to see them getting to sixty votes on anything. Frankly, I'm not sure that a majority of legislators want them to get to sixty votes on anything. Every time health care makes the news, its poll numbers drop further, and at 54-38 against, it's already dangerously close to "Republican landslide if you pass it" territory. Outside of coastal enclaves, Democrats cannot win the next round of elections with no one but their base. And independents, already against the plan, especially hate partisanship. This makes it especially unhealthy to pass a bill they don't like on a straight party line vote.
Health care reform is still dead, as it has been for many months. It will not happen. It has been, however, an exciting way to waste Congress' time and has prevented the Democrats from passing many potentially harmful bills that they could have mustered the votes for.
44% of voters wish we had President Bush back instead of Obama.
Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama's declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that's somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country's difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans and especially ones like Rob Portman who are running for office and have close ties to the former President.
The wife and I are especially looking forward to the results of Harry Reid's re-election campaign. The night we met another Democrat Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, lost his re-election bid.
The Senate race poll found Harry Reid trailing Republican Sue Lowden by 51%-41%, and trailing Republican Danny Tarkanian by 48%-42%.
That's a huge spread for Reid to make up in less than a year. How fun!
(HT: Politico.)
A USA Today investigation discovered that government-provided school lunches are lower quality than fast food.
In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."
That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.
And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.
For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders— KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."
If the federal government can't provide children with higher quality food than McDonald's, then a) the feds should subcontract school lunches to fast food companies, and b) we'd be crazy to let the feds take over health care.
Stephen Spruiell explains that stimulus spending has become an unfalsifiable religion.
Brian, you left out my favorite part of that CBO report: "Economic output and employment in the spring and summer of 2009 were lower than CBO had projected at the beginning of the year. But in CBO’s judgment, that outcome reflects greater-than-projected weakness in the underlying economy rather than lower-than-expected effects of [the stimulus]."The case that the stimulus is working is thus rendered non-falsifiable. Its supporters will always claim that it is working fine, but we can't see it, because the "underlying" economy (whatever that is) is so much worse than anticipated. Belief in its efficacy is a faith, at odds with sound economics.
Well, it's religion or politics: after spending so much money, it simply can't be allowed to be perceived to have failed.
