Links and Minifeatures 2009 02 12 Thursday

Happy Birthday to Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born 200 years ago today.

The title of this article is "Our Clever President" but a better title would be, "Our Intellectually Corrupt President and the Sycophantic Press That Loves Him"

President Barack Obama's first presidential news conference was performed feebly by the once-ferocious White House press corps and shrewdly -- if deceptively -- by the president. In the six years I did communications on former President Ronald Reagan's White House staff, I don't recall a single news conference in which there were no follow-up questions, no challenges to anything the president had said recently, no assertions of fact that the president was challenged to deal with. In fact, I don't remember former President Bill Clinton, either, ever getting a full 45-minute prime-time news conference pass.

More on the politicization of the US Census: Let Statisticians, Not White House, Conduct the 2010 Census

Unfortunately, it is now clear that a new agency is not what the White House officials have in mind and that, indeed, having the Census Director report to someone on the president's West Wing staff is exactly what that they have in mind. (Note what the White House press secretary says)

and

First of all, the White House and its Congressional allies are wrong in asserting that the Census in the past has reported directly to the president through his staff. Directors of the Bureau often brief presidents and their staffs, but, as a former director (under President Reagan), I don't know of any cases where the conduct of the Bureau was directly under White House supervision. That includes Clinton in 2000, Bush 41 in 1990 and Carter in 1980.

They also are dead wrong about the feasibility of using sampling and computer models to make adjustment a credible way to improve the accuracy of the population count for purposes of reapportionment and redistricting.

I am in favor of counting every single warm body. In fact, I demand it. But I want to actually count the ones there are, not risk creating others out of thin air. If some people are worried that some people will somehow slip through the cracks, get them out to be counted. And if they're in the country illegally, and therefore aren't counted because they worry they might be deported, I don't see that as a problem. Anything other than counting actual warm bodies is both wrong and a violation of the Constitution, which does not say "every ten years we'll take a guess at how many people there are" or "every ten years we shall estimate how many people there are." It says, "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years".

Enumerate:

e·nu·mer·ate (-nm-rt, -ny-)
tr.v. e·nu·mer·at·ed, e·nu·mer·at·ing, e·nu·mer·ates
1. To count off or name one by one; list: A spokesperson enumerated the strikers' demands.
2. To determine the number of; count.

In short, we've got to count actually people in order for them to count. If you think there are more people hiding out in some places, you've got to find them in order to count them. Question: Why do you think it is that in some congressional districts, all supposedly of approximately equal population, 60,000 votes is enough to win election, while in others it takes three times that? Could at least part of it be traceable to creating imaginary people out of thin air?

Remember This Catchphrase: "Maybe Too Little, Always Too Late"

The eight previous recessions and when stimulus was passed by the government. In all but one case, the recession had already abated, but we couldn't see it until later.

Stimulus Plan Caters to the Privileged Public Sector

So what's not to like? Well, nothing - if the Roman Empire or China's Qing Dynasty is your idea of a historical role model. Those regimes epitomize what happens when most of a nation's wealth goes to support an ever-expanding bureaucracy and associated private-sector rent-seekers at the expense of both private commerce and public infrastructure. Look in the dictionary under the word decline.

We can already see its early signs. Across the country, cities are being forced to choose between maintaining their basic infrastructure and honoring the medical, retirement and other pension obligations owed to retired public workers. The head of the Atlanta Fire Fighters' Pension fund described groups like his as "the 800-pound gorilla in the room." This primate has the power to stomp on the ability of states, cities and counties to put money into improving much of anything or even considering lowering taxes.

Stimulus Bill Abolishes Welfare Reform and Adds New Welfare Spending

A major public policy success, welfare reform in the mid-1990s led to a dramatic reduction in welfare dependency and child poverty. This successful reform, however is now in jeopardy: Little-noted provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate stimulus bills actually abolish this historic reform. In addition, the stimulus bills will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. This new spending amounts to around $22,500 for every poor person in the U.S. The cost of the new welfare spending amounts, on average, to over $10,000 for each family paying income tax.

Economic suicide. As I said last week, do some research into why the Roman Empire fell. The real reasons are all economic in nature, and we are replicating every single one of them.

Testing Economic Hypotheses

The differences between residential and commercial real estate provide the means to test the hypothesis that government intervention or the lack thereof caused the housing bubble and subsequent collapse of the financial system. We can compare the two markets because the same institutions ultimately make residential and commercial loans. They make loans in the same communities and regions. Changes in the economy affect both types of real estate at the same time and to the same rough degree. The only major difference between the two markets lies in the degree of government intervention

When you compare and contrast the system with larger amounts of regulation (residential loans) with system with smaller amounts of regulation (commercial) it is plain to see that lack of regulation did not cause this meltdown. Government created distortions of the market did.

Hat tip: Q and O

Who will investigate the Obama administration?

Rep. Darrell Issa is not working from a position of strength. As the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa wants to exercise some, well, oversight when it comes to the Obama administration's controversial decision to transfer control of the Census Bureau from professionals at the Commerce Department to political aides in the White House. But as a member of the minority party on Capitol Hill, Issa doesn't have the power to compel the administration to do anything.

The press won't - they're too busy getting tingles up their leg because 90% plus are Democratic partisans. The Republicans can't - they'll be defeated on party line votes. Nobody else has the resources.

This is what the next two years are going to look like, folks. It's not like this should be any news to anyone who watched Congress in 2007 and 2008. But nothing can defeat the awesome power of blind wishful thinking at the ballot box. The congressional elections of 2010 will be our next chance to see some accountability in government. Let's hope the mechanisms for accountability aren't completely dismantled or circumvented by then.