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Better Pay? Better Benefits? Why Not Have Both?

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The Death Of The Global Warming Movement
...The truth is that there never has been an environmental issue that has enjoyed greater corporate support. Early in the global warming crusade, a coalition of corporations called United States Climate Action Partnership was formed with the express purpose of lobbying Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It included major utilities (Duke Energy) and gas companies (BP) that stood to gain by hobbling the coal industry through a cap-and-trade scheme. Meanwhile, the Breakthrough Institute, a highly respected liberal outfit whose mission is to rejuvenate the progressive movement in this country, points out that environmental groups spent at least $100 million over the past two years executing what was arguably the best mobilization campaign in history. Despite all of this, notes Breakthrough, there is little evidence to suggest that cap-and-trade would have mustered more than 43 votes in the Senate.

This means that lucre is not the only motivating force in politics. Indeed, lobbyists are effective generally when they represent causes that coincide with the will of constituents, which is far from the case here. Voters are reluctant to accept economic pain to address remote causes with an uncertain upside. Heck, they are dubious even when the cause is not so remote and has a demonstrable upside. Take Social Security and Medicare. It is a mathematical certainty that, without reform, these programs will go bankrupt, jeopardizing the health care and retirement benefits of tens of millions Americans. Even though the cost of action is far smaller compared with the cost of inaction, persuading voters to do something is an uphill battle.

Yet even in the heyday of the consensus on global warming there was never this kind of certainty. The ClimateGate scandal--in which prominent climatologists were caught manipulating data to exaggerate the observed warming--has significantly weakened this consensus. But even if it hadn't, climate change is too complex an issue to ever be established with anything approaching iron-clad certainty. Hence, it was inevitable that it would run into a political dead-end.

This is exactly what the Reid bill represents. Indeed, if Democrats backed-off from their grand designs to cut carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 with sizable majorities in Congress and a “celestial healer” in the White House there is little chance that they will ever be able to accomplish anything better at a later date. And if America--the richest country in the world and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases--won't act, there is a snowball's chance in Mumbai that India or China will. ...

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Feds demand diversity on Wall Street
A little-noticed section of the Wall Street reform law grants the federal government broad new powers to compel financial firms to hire more women and minorities — an effort at promoting diversity that’s drawing fire from Republicans who say it could lead to de facto hiring quotas.

Deep inside the massive overhaul bill, Congress gives the federal government authority to terminate contracts with any financial firm that fails to ensure the “fair inclusion” of women and minorities, forcing every kind of company from a Wall Street giant to a mom-and-pop law office to account for the composition of its work force.

Employment law experts say the language goes further than any previous attempt by the U.S. government to promote diversity in the financial sector — putting muscle behind federal efforts to help minority- and women-owned firms gain access to billions in federal contracts.

For advocates of the measure, it is a past-due shove to an elite industry that is heavily male and white — one in which Government Accountability Office studies show women and minorities have made only minimal gains in the past 15 years.

But to opponents, the provision signifies a brazen government intrusion into corporate practices, with language written so vaguely that some believe it could lead to an unofficial quota system.

“This expands exponentially the reach of the federal government in terms of auditing,” said Peter Kirsanow, an attorney and Republican appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “This is an expansion of racial engineering that we haven’t seen in a long time.” ...

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Political operatives on Journolist worked to shape news coverage
...Yglesias took some pains to couch his advocacy in the language of journalism. Jeff Hauser, a professional political operative, didn’t bother. During key moments in the presidential campaign, Hauser dropped the pretense entirely, becoming nakedly political. In the days before the first McCain-Obama debate, he straightforwardly asked working journalists on the list to skew their coverage in order to help the Democratic candidate:

The single biggest thing journolist can do is to lay the analytical framework within the media elite necessary for an actual Obama debate win to be viewed as such by a sufficient proportion of media elites that voters know it was a win.

Of course, this only works if Obama does as we expect (and McCain is a terrible debater, btw).

But even Gore’s uneven Debate 1 performance in 2000 was deemed a win initially by a viewership that was demographically to the right of the electorate (lower minority viewership in 2000 of debates, more male, more GOP, etc…)… but Bush was winning on several media narratives and thus got the benefit from the intense 72 hours of post-debate coverage.

Journolist’s greatest challenge is to make sure an actual win by Obama translates into winning the battle for political impact.

Journolist, on sexism:

Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

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Chris Hayes of the Nation wrote in with words of encouragement, and to ask for more talking points. “Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get,” Hayes wrote.

Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”

Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote. . . .

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Automakers Face Potentially Massive Race-Discrimination Class-Action Lawsuit Thanks to Obama Administration
“Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout — closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler — were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky: ‘Dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships.’ Thus, to meet numbers forced on them by the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to shutter other, potentially more viable, dealerships. The livelihood of potentially tens of thousands of families was thus eliminated simply because their dealerships were not minority- or woman-owned.”

It’s likely that these race-based closures of auto dealerships violated Supreme Court rulings like Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995), which say that the federal government can’t use race except to remedy the present effects of its own past discrimination, as I explain below. What this means is that terminated dealers could bring a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit challenging the use of race under 42 USC 1981 and the Constitution, based on cases like Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) (that Supreme Court decision let white college applicants bring a reverse-discrimination class action over a university’s use of race as a factor in admissions, even though it’s seldom clear in such cases exactly which white applicants would have gotten admitted if race hadn’t been used to admit some minorities)....

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Seven Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW
Seven Eminent Physicists; Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever (Nobel Prize), Robert Laughlin (Nobel Prize), Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg are all skeptical of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm....

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How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed The Crisis
In 2004, as regulators warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of that risky lending.

Eager to put more low-income and minority families into their own homes, the agency required that two government-chartered mortgage finance firms purchase far more "affordable" loans made to these borrowers. HUD stuck with an outdated policy that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to count billions of dollars they invested in subprime loans as a public good that would foster affordable housing.

Housing experts and some congressional leaders now view those decisions as mistakes that contributed to an escalation of subprime lending that is roiling the U.S. economy.

The agency neglected to examine whether borrowers could make the payments on the loans that Freddie and Fannie classified as affordable. From 2004 to 2006, the two purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans, creating a market for more such lending. Subprime loans are targeted toward borrowers with poor credit, and they generally carry higher interest rates than conventional loans. ...

...But by 2004, when HUD next revised the goals, Freddie and Fannie's purchases of subprime-backed securities had risen tenfold. Foreclosure rates also were rising.

That year, President Bush's HUD ratcheted up the main affordable-housing goal over the next four years, from 50 percent to 56 percent. John C. Weicher, then an assistant HUD secretary, said the institutions lagged behind even the private market and "must do more."

For Wall Street, high profits could be made from securities backed by subprime loans. Fannie and Freddie targeted the least-risky loans. Still, their purchases provided more cash for a larger subprime market. ...

...In 2003, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities. In 2004, they purchased $175 billion -- 44 percent of the market. In 2005, they bought $169 billion, or 33 percent. In 2006, they cut back to $90 billion, or 20 percent. Generally, Freddie purchased more than Fannie and relied more heavily on the securities to meet goals.

"The market knew we needed those loans," said Sharon McHale, a spokeswoman for Freddie Mac. The higher goals "forced us to go into that market to serve the targeted populations that HUD wanted us to serve," she said. ...

...But because Fannie and Freddie were buying mortgage-backed securities rather than the actual subprime loans, their involvement came too late to require stiffer standards from lenders. ...

...William C. Apgar Jr., who was an assistant HUD secretary under Clinton, said he regrets allowing the companies to count subprime securities as affordable.

"It was a mistake," he said. "In hindsight, I would have done it differently." ...

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Some insurers stop writing new coverage for kids
Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

The major types of coverage for children — employer plans and government programs — are not be affected by the disruption. But a subset of policies — those that cover children as individuals — may run into problems. Even so, insurers are not canceling children's coverage already issued, but refusing to write new policies....

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Community bank finds paranoid a smart bet
Joseph A. Petrucelli is one of the most cautious bankers in America.

In fact, Petrucelli is so cautious that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. recently criticized his bank for not lending enough.

The FDIC’s negative review of East Bridgewater Savings Bank’s loan volume is an anomaly in today’s current banking scene as lenders reel from their role in offering too many cruddy mortgage products to borrowers with weak credit.

Still, the FDIC slapped East Bridgewater Savings with a rare “needs to improve” rating after evaluating the bank under the Community Reinvestment Act....

...And then there’s East Bridgewater Savings.

Bad or delinquent loans?

Zero.

Foreclosures?

None.

Money set aside in 2008 for anticipated loan losses?

Nothing....

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Liberal journalists suggest government shut down Fox News
...The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws....

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Va. pastor charged with child abuse
Prince William County police have arrested a former youth pastor on charges that he carried on a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl in his church group.

Jason Bolton, 32, of Dumfries, began a close friendship with the girl in September 2007, police said. By early 2010, the relationship had become romantic.

Bolton, a married man with two sons and a daughter, began as a youth pastor at Potomac Crest Baptist Church in 2007. He resigned in May after the sexual allegations came to light....

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Beware Public-Safety Unions
A bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is waiting to be voted on: S 3194 Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2009, also known as "Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill." This bill is to provide collective-bargaining rights for public-safety officers employed by states or their political subdivisions. This bill will do nothing but play into the unions' power grab and put citizens at risk.

If S 3194 passes, it would grant every police officer, firefighter and emergency medical technician at the state or local level the right to form and join a labor union. It would direct local governments to recognize the employees' labor union; require local government to collectively bargain over hours, wages, and the terms and conditions of employment other than pensions; require states and municipal governments to establish an impasse resolution process; require that state courts enforce the rights established by this mandatory collective bargaining bill; and direct every state - even if that state currently recognizes employee-collective-bargaining rights - to conform to federal regulations around mandatory collective bargaining within two years of the bill's effective date, without regard to state or local laws.

How many states and local governments will sustain economic chaos and failure if this passes?

This is a dangerous, big-labor power grab, and it's just the first step toward forcing all state and local public employees under big-labor control....

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Countrywide probe snares Fannie, Freddie execs
Employees at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — including top executives — received more than 170 cut rate loans from Countrywide Financial, according to a congressional probe, the latest accusation that the lender tried to curry influence with people in power.

The investigation revealed that Fannie Mae employees — including an assistant to the CEO, a government relations lobbyist and a vice president for sales — received 153 favorable loans, while 20 VIP loans were issued to employees at Freddie Mac. Countrywide Financial collapsed in the 2008 housing meltdown and was swallowed by Bank of America, but its connections to powerful political figures continue to reverberate in Washington.

These are the same type of special loans that created an ethics controversy for Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). The senators were accused of getting VIP mortgages because of their political positions — but were later cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee.

The investigation has also uncovered what Republicans believe is evidence that Countrywide was offering loans to influential people at a loss to the company. An e-mail, obtained by POLITICO, shows Countrywide employees discussing a refinance of former Fannie Mae Chief Operating Officer Daniel Mudd’s loan, acknowledging the sensitivity and potential for financial loss.

“Make sure the branch, and RVP, understand the sensitivity of this deal,” the e-mail to a former Countrywide Vice President Daniel Rector reads. “We are already taking a loss, it would be horrible to add a service complaint on top and lose any benefit we generate.” ...

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Easy Credit, Hard Landing
... The result, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, has been reckless government extension of credit. As a remedy for downturns, this has two political advantages. First, it does not bother conservatives as much as handouts do. Second, “easy credit has large, positive, immediate, and widely distributed benefits, whereas the costs all lie in the future. It has a payoff structure that is precisely the one desired by politicians, which is why so many countries have succumbed to its lure.” You might say that the financial crisis reflects the emergence of the off-balance-sheet liabilities—the human costs—of deindustrialization.

This is an account of what ails us that is radically at odds with the familiar tale of greedy bankers in $5,000 suits. “Almost every financial crisis has political roots,” Rajan writes. The credit market—at least as regards housing—was distorted by government policy, not by a sudden and mysterious escalation in “greed.” The trends that shook the world economy came out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, out of the Federal Housing Administration, and out of their “regulator,” the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

By 2000, HUD required that low-income loans make up 50 percent of Fannie and Freddie’s portfolios. Out of “compassionate conservatism,” perhaps, the Bush administration raised that mandate to 56 percent. Rajan cites Fannie Mae’s former chief credit officer, Edward Pinto, who notes that, by 2008, “the FHA and various other government programs were exposed to about $2.7 trillion in subprime and Alt-A loans, approximately 59 percent of total loans to these categories.” Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute found that government-mandated loans accounted for two-thirds of “junk mortgages.”

Another way of looking at this problem is provided in a study done by Rajan’s Chicago colleagues Atif Mian and Amir Sufi. They found that, if you look at the period between 2002 and 2005, the number of mortgages obtained in a given ZIP code “is negatively correlated with household income growth.” In other words, lenders preferred un-creditworthy borrowers to creditworthy borrowers. In a market governed by “greed” and undistorted by government pressure, such a result would make no sense.

It is important to note that the “bubble” part of our real-estate crisis was not especially severe. U.S. housing prices, although they rose unduly, were never nearly as out-of-whack as they became in the past decade in Ireland, Spain, or the United Kingdom or as they became in the late 1980s in Japan. The problem was not so much the amount of collateral people got access to through home-equity loans; it was that they were not well-enough vetted for credit-worthiness—at any level of borrowing—to begin with. ...

...To inquire too closely into borrowers’ creditworthiness would leave bankers in danger of falling afoul of antidiscrimination laws, particularly after Bill Clinton vowed to crack down on alleged “red-lining” (racial prejudice in mortgage lending) in the 1990s. George W. Bush’s decision to raise the quotas for low-income lending from 50 to 56 percent of loans certainly strikes us today as foolhardy. But can there be any doubt he would have been pilloried as a racist had he sought to lower them? The Indian-born Rajan never enunciates the unavoidable conclusion, but he is constantly walking much closer to it than any American-born academic would dare to: The finance crisis also reflects, in part, the emergence of the off-balance-sheet liabilities of a kind of affirmative action....

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Opinion: Memo to Deficit Commission: It's the Spending, Stupid
This week, federal red ink topped $1 trillion. And there's still three months to go before the government's accounting year finishes. To put that in some perspective, the entire federal budget didn't reach $1 trillion until 1987.

So what to do in the face of these gargantuan deficits? Raise taxes? Cut spending? Hope the economy grows fast enough to close the gap? All of the above?

President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan commission to look at the options, and it made some news this past weekend when its co-captains spoke to the nation's governors. But you don't need a commission to know what the solution is. You just need a calculator.

The simple fact is that deficits are out of control right now because spending is out of control. That's the pretty obvious lesson drawn from looking at the past 60 years of federal budget data.

As the chart nearby shows, since 1950, tax revenues have been remarkably stable. Despite endless machinations, reforms, tweaks to the tax code, new breaks, tax hikes and tax cuts, tax revenues as a share of the total economy (called gross domestic product, or GDP) have stuck steadily at right around 18 percent.

What has changed is spending....

...The Obama administration is putting the country on a course over the next decade to spend at levels unseen since World War II, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of Obama's budget plan. By 2020, the CBO expects federal spending to account for 25.2 percent of GDP -- higher than any year in modern history, except three during the war....

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American politics has caught the British disease
...What is more startling is the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) "enlightened" class with the poor and deprived.

America, in other words, has discovered bourgeois guilt. A country without a hereditary nobility has embraced noblesse oblige. Now, there is nothing inherently strange or perverse about people who lead successful, secure lives feeling a sense of responsibility toward those who are disadvantaged. What is peculiar in American terms is that this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.

Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".

The petit bourgeois virtues of thrift, ambition and self-reliance – which are essential for anyone attempting to escape from poverty under his own steam – have long been derided in Britain as tokens of a downmarket upbringing. But not long ago in America they were considered, even among the highly educated, to be the quintessential national virtues, because even well-off professionals had probably had parents or grandparents who were once penniless immigrants. Nobody dismissed "ambition" as a form of gaucherie: the opposite of having ambition was being a bum, a good-for-nothing who would waste the opportunities that the new country offered for self-improvement.

But now the British Lefties who – like so many Jane Austen heroines looking down on those "in trade" – used to dismiss Margaret Thatcher as "a grocer's daughter", have their counterparts in the US, where virtually everybody's family started poor. Our "white van man" is their Tea Party activist, and the insult war is getting very vicious. It is becoming commonplace now for liberals in the US to label the Tea Party movement as racist, the most damaging insult of all in respectable American life. ...

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A Dangerous Disaffection
...The immediate cause is the fact that the Obama administration and its Congressional allies have embarked on an ambitious, left-wing program that seeks to transform America into a country quite different from what most Americans want. Elections have consequences, as the Democrats never tire of telling us. The problem is that the Democrats, most notably Barack Obama, did not run on the divisive, far-left program they are now trying to implement. Obama postured himself as a rather centrist, post-racial figure. His style as President has been the opposite.

So it is no wonder that most Americans believe they have gotten a government that they didn't vote for.

I think the more significant cause, however, is the general one--a growing conviction that America is governed by a political class that has its own agenda, involving its own enrichment as well as the endless expansion of its own power, and that this political class is contemptuous of the opinions of ordinary Americans and is determined to impose its will regardless of how Americans vote. I think this perception is in fact true. ...

...There have been several occasions when the American people have voted for smaller government; most notably in 1972, 1980 and 1994. But it really doesn't matter. You can vote for limited government, but you can't get it; the political class won't let you. This is not to assert the silly proposition that there is no major difference between Democrats and Republicans. The fiscal disaster that we have witnessed since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 proves the contrary. But still: experience shows that voting for Republicans hasn't been enough to offset the power of the political class....

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America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution
... Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all. So was "social engineering." Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government. ...

... The most widespread answers -- by such as the Times's Thomas Friedman and David Brooks -- are schlock sociology. Supposedly, modern society became so complex and productive, the technical skills to run it so rare, that it called forth a new class of highly educated officials and cooperators in an ever less private sector. Similarly fanciful is Edward Goldberg's notion that America is now ruled by a "newocracy": a "new aristocracy who are the true beneficiaries of globalization -- including the multinational manager, the technologist and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." In fact, our ruling class grew and set itself apart from the rest of us by its connection with ever bigger government, and above all by a certain attitude.

Other explanations are counterintuitive. Wealth? The heads of the class do live in our big cities' priciest enclaves and suburbs, from Montgomery County, Maryland, to Palo Alto, California, to Boston's Beacon Hill as well as in opulent university towns from Princeton to Boulder. But they are no wealthier than many Texas oilmen or California farmers, or than neighbors with whom they do not associate -- just as the social science and humanities class that rules universities seldom associates with physicians and physicists. Rather, regardless of where they live, their social-intellectual circle includes people in the lucrative "nonprofit" and "philanthropic" sectors and public policy. What really distinguishes these privileged people demographically is that, whether in government power directly or as officers in companies, their careers and fortunes depend on government. They vote Democrat more consistently than those who live on any of America's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Streets. These socioeconomic opposites draw their money and orientation from the same sources as the millions of teachers, consultants, and government employees in the middle ranks who aspire to be the former and identify morally with what they suppose to be the latter's grievances.

Professional prominence or position will not secure a place in the class any more than mere money. In fact, it is possible to be an official of a major corporation or a member of the U.S. Supreme Court (just ask Justice Clarence Thomas), or even president (Ronald Reagan), and not be taken seriously by the ruling class. Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity -- being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs. Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts.

If, for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, Harvard professor of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can "write" your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and the other parts are found to be verbatim or paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was "inadvertent," and you can count on the Law School's dean, Elena Kagan, to appoint a committee including former and future Harvard president Derek Bok that issues a secret report that "closes" the incident. Incidentally, Kagan ends up a justice of the Supreme Court. Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded. By contrast, for example, learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about "global warming" to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps.

Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France's ruling class are bright people -- certifiably. Not ours. But didn't ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn't most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d'Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France's ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America's "top schools" is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile. American secondary schools are generous with their As. Since the 1970s, it has been virtually impossible to flunk out of American colleges. And it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority. ...

...Our ruling class's agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a "machine," that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels' wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges -- civic as well as economic -- to the party's clients, directly or indirectly. This, incidentally, is close to Aristotle's view of democracy. Hence our ruling class's standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government -- meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc. Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class's solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes, global cooling and global warming. A priori, one might wonder whether enriching and empowering individuals of a certain kind can make Americans kinder and gentler, much less control the weather. But there can be no doubt that such power and money makes Americans ever more dependent on those who wield it. Let us now look at what this means in our time. ...

... By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support. Thus in the 1990s and 2000s, as Democrats and Republicans forced banks to make loans for houses to people and at rates they would not otherwise have considered, builders and investors had every reason to make as much money as they could from the ensuing inflation of housing prices. When the bubble burst, only those connected with the ruling class at the bottom and at the top were bailed out. Similarly, by taxing the use of carbon fuels and subsidizing "alternative energy," our ruling class created arguably the world's biggest opportunity for making money out of things that few if any would buy absent its intervention. The ethanol industry and its ensuing diversions of wealth exist exclusively because of subsidies. The prospect of legislation that would put a price on carbon emissions and allot certain amounts to certain companies set off a feeding frenzy among large companies to show support for a "green agenda," because such allotments would be worth tens of billions of dollars. That is why companies hired some 2,500 lobbyists in 2009 to deepen their involvement in "climate change." At the very least, such involvement profits them by making them into privileged collectors of carbon taxes. Any "green jobs" thus created are by definition creatures of subsidies -- that is, of privilege. What effect creating such privileges may have on "global warming" is debatable. But it surely increases the number of people dependent on the ruling class, and teaches Americans that satisfying that class is a surer way of making a living than producing goods and services that people want to buy.

Beyond patronage, picking economic winners and losers redirects the American people's energies to tasks that the political class deems more worthy than what Americans choose for themselves. John Kenneth Galbraith's characterization of America as "private wealth amidst public squalor" (The Affluent Society, 1958) has ever encapsulated our best and brightest's complaint: left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping. Americans drive big cars, eat lots of meat as well as other unhealthy things, and go to the doctor whenever they feel like it. Americans think it justice to spend the money they earn to satisfy their private desires even though the ruling class knows that justice lies in improving the community and the planet. The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy, that their dietary habits must improve, that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get, that they must divert more of their money to support people, cultural enterprises, and plans for the planet that the ruling class deems worthier. So, ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are the main wrenches by which the American people can be improved (and, yes, by which the ruling class feeds and grows).

The 2010 medical law is a template for the ruling class's economic modus operandi: the government taxes citizens to pay for medical care and requires citizens to purchase health insurance. The money thus taken and directed is money that the citizens themselves might have used to pay for medical care. In exchange for the money, the government promises to provide care through its "system." But then all the boards, commissions, guidelines, procedures, and "best practices" that constitute "the system" become the arbiters of what any citizen ends up getting. The citizen might end up dissatisfied with what "the system" offers. But when he gave up his money, he gave up the power to choose, and became dependent on all the boards and commissions that his money also pays for and that raise the cost ofcare. Similarly, in 2008 the House Ways and Means Committee began considering a plan to force citizens who own Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) to transfer those funds into government-run "guaranteed retirement accounts." If the government may force citizens to buy health insurance, by what logic can it not force them to trade private ownership and control of retirement money for a guarantee as sound as the government itself? Is it not clear that the government knows more about managing retirement income than individuals? ...

... In America, the process by which party has become (almost) as important began with the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr which, by setting the single standard "one man, one vote" for congressional districts, ended up legalizing the practice of "gerrymandering," concentrating the opposition party's voters into as few districts as possible while placing one's own voters into as many as possible likely to yield victories. Republican and Democratic state legislatures have gerrymandered for a half century. That is why today's Congress consists more and more of persons who represent their respective party establishments -- not nearly as much as in Britain, but heading in that direction. Once districts are gerrymandered "safe" for one party or another, the voters therein count less because party leaders can count more on elected legislators to toe the party line.

To the extent party leaders do not have to worry about voters, they can choose privileged interlocutors, representing those in society whom they find most amenable. In America ever more since the 1930s -- elsewhere in the world this practice is ubiquitous and long-standing -- government has designated certain individuals, companies, and organizations within each of society's sectors as (junior) partners in elaborating laws and administrative rules for those sectors. The government empowers the persons it has chosen over those not chosen, deems them the sector's true representatives, and rewards them. They become part of the ruling class.

Thus in 2009-10 the American Medical Association (AMA) strongly supported the new medical care law, which the administration touted as having the support of "the doctors" even though the vast majority of America's 975,000 physicians opposed it. Those who run the AMA, however, have a government contract as exclusive providers of the codes by which physicians and hospitals bill the government for their services. The millions of dollars that flow thereby to the AMA's officers keep them in line, while the impracticality of doing without the billing codes tamps down rebellion in the doctor ranks. When the administration wanted to bolster its case that the state of Arizona's enforcement of federal immigration laws was offensive to Hispanics, the National Association of Chiefs of Police -- whose officials depend on the administration for their salaries -- issued a statement that the laws would endanger all Americans by raising Hispanics' animosity. This reflected conversations with the administration rather than a vote of the nation's police chiefs.

Similarly, modern labor unions are ever less bunches of workers banding together and ever more bundled under the aegis of an organization chosen jointly by employers and government. Prototypical is the Service Employees International Union, which grew spectacularly by persuading managers of government agencies as well as of publicly funded private entities that placing their employees in the SEIU would relieve them of responsibility. Not by being elected by workers' secret ballots did the SEIU conquer workplace after workplace, but rather by such deals, or by the union presenting what it claims are cards from workers approving of representation. The union gets 2 percent of the workers' pay, which it recycles as contributions to the Democratic Party, which it recycles in greater power over public employees. The union's leadership is part of the ruling class's beating heart. ...

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Signs of Risky Lending Emerge
...Fannie Mae, seized by the U.S. government in 2008 to avert the mortgage company's failure, launched an initiative in January that allows some first-time home buyers to get a loan with a down payment of as little as $1,000. Securities firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a brokerage operation jointly owned by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., is offering some clients home-equity credit lines of as much as $2.5 million.

Credit-card issuers mailed 84.8 million offers of plastic to U.S. subprime borrowers in the first six months of this year, up from 43.7 million a year earlier, estimates research firm Synovate. Nearly 8% of loans for new cars in the latest quarter went to borrowers with the lowest range of credit scores, up from 6.2% in 2009's fourth quarter, according to J.D. Power & Associates and Fair Isaac Corp....

...Fannie Mae said its low down-payment initiative requires borrowers to put down $1,000 or 1% of the purchase price, whichever is greater. The mortgage company said it faces limited financial risk because the loans are made through state agencies, which have a solid underwriting history and are on the hook to buy back certain loans that go bad....

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Prominent pastor charged with sex crime
A prominent Southern Illinois pastor and community leader has been charged with a child-sex crime and is jailed.

The Rev. Bill Vandergraph, pastor of Full Gospel Pentecostal Church and president of the Friends of the Cross fundraising organization, was taken into custody Wednesday night after an investigation by the Illinois State Police and Union County Sheriff's Office, according Union County State's Attorney Tyler Edmonds.

Vandergraph, who was arrested Wednesday evening, is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, a Class X felony. He remained jailed Thursday afternoon in lieu of $500,000 bond. He is to appear in Union County Court this morning before Judge Mark Boie....

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Dodd-Frank is not “financial reform,” it’s more Big Government lunacy
...A front-page Wall Street Journal article this week noted that “far from Wall Street, President Barack Obama’s financial regulatory overhaul … will leave tracks across the wide-open landscape of American industry.” The Journal notes that “the bill will touch storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers.”

But one thing it will leave totally untouched are the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which new research by Congress’ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and other bodies shows was even more of a prime factor in the subprime boom than originally assumed. The Federal Housing Finance Agency now reports that Fannie and Freddie purchase 40 percent of of all private-label subprime securities in 2003 and 2004. Indeed, according to Edward Pinto, housing scholar and Fannie’s former chief credit officer, millions of mortgages to borrowers with credit scores of less than 660, considered by prominent researchers to be the dividing line for subprime loans, had been labeled by Fannie and Freddie as prime going back as early as 1993....

...n addition, the bill contains provisions that will empower special interests at the expense of ordinary shareholders and that may exceed the limits of the U.S. Constitution. The bill’s “orderly liquidation” authority will allow the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department not just to bail out firms whose failure is deemed to be a threat to “financial stability,” but to actually seize firms that are not even asking for a bailout. The “proxy access” provisionswould override longstanding state rules in corporate director elections and force companies and their shareholders to subsidize director elections by special interest-shareholder — such as unions, enviromentalists and others. This would give these groups leverage to cut deals with management to push through agenda items, such as the “card check” abolition of secret ballots in labor in labor election and carbon cap-and-tax reductions, that they can’t get through the halls of Congress....

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The disintegration of the welfare state
Democracies produced Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fulfilling the expectation of Socrates and Machiavelli that democracies end in tyranny. Now democracies are fulfilling the complementary expectation of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman that democracies end in bankruptcy. Put a democracy in charge of the Sahara, Mr. Friedman once said, and sand itself will become scarce. Democracies are indeed profligate trustees – or have been for the past 30 or 40 years. Mr. Friedman’s primary fret, though, was the tendency of democracy to centralize political and economic power in the same hands. Most critiques of democracy reflect this elemental distrust. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb,” Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, “voting on what to have for lunch.”

Democratic self-deprecation isn’t quite as funny as it once was. Mobs have already taken to the venerable, iconic streets of European states, notably among them Greece, birthplace of Athenian democracy. It’s apparently easier to give wealth away than it is to take it back. Democracy assembled the welfare state peaceably enough. Can democracy dismantle it as peaceably? No, it can’t. The mobs are not finished.

In a disturbing analysis titled Democracy, Debt and Disorder, prophetically published early in 2008, two Italian economists assert that Italian governments have accumulated so much debt that it’s essentially impossible to avert the disintegration of the country’s social contract. Giuseppe Eusepi and Luisa Giuriato, of Sapienza University in Rome, do not specify violent insurrection as a consequence. They do specify an end to Italy’s welfare state – and to the “disorder” that will arise when government divides the spoils....

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Calling in the World Court against the Gun Trade
Just before the holiday I sent off to Encounter Books the manuscript of my next book, tentatively titled Schools for Misrule: Law Schools and an Overlawyered America. One of the themes the book explores is how, after years of arguing that courts should read the U.S. Constitution as requiring the adoption of the liberal policy agenda of the moment (welfare rights, free health care, or whatever), cutting-edge law school thinking now promotes the idea that international human rights law requires the adoption of that same agenda. Thus the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973) and Milliken v. Bradley (1974) that the U.S. Constitution does not mandate (respectively) “Robin Hood” school finance redistribution and school busing across district lines; now it’s argued that both decisions need to be revisited and overturned as contrary to (ever-evolving) conceptions of international human rights. Similarly, there are said to be internationally recognized rights to government-provided housing, day care, and even (at least in Europe) tourism.

These notions are at odds with longstanding ideas of sovereignty and national independence, as held by (among many others) the Founders of this Republic. That they could also pose more direct dangers to individual liberty is suggested by a news item that drew only passing attention a few weeks ago: Chicago Mayor and long-time anti-gun advocate Richard Daley convened an assembly on global issues at which (per the Chicago Sun-Times) he “convinced more than a dozen of his counterparts from around the world to approve a resolution urging ‘redress against the gun industry through the courts of the world’ in The Hague.” According to another local news report, Daley “said American gun manufacturers should be held responsible in the World Court, since American-made guns are used in violent crime elsewhere in the world.” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and the mayor of Mexico City were among those endorsing the idea....

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Obama's debt commission warns of fiscal 'cancer'
...The commission leaders said that, at present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. "The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans -- the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries," Simpson said.

"We can't grow our way out of this," Bowles said. "We could have decades of double-digit growth and not grow our way out of this enormous debt problem. We can't tax our way out. ...

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‘We Will Not Be Silenced’: Democrats Produce Documentary Alleging Rampant Vote Fraud by Obama Campaign vs. Hillary in 2008 Primaries
...As Americans, we expect certain liberties and rights that were granted us by our forefathers, who wrote documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “We the people” expect that these fundamental rights will always be protected. However, in the current Democratic Presidential Primary, this has not been the case. We believe The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made a grave error by depriving American voters of their choice of Hillary Clinton as Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, by all accounts, except caucuses, won the Primary Election and, therefore, should be the 2008 Democratic Nominee. That didn’t happen, due largely to illegitimate and illegal acts. We have interviews of many accounts from caucus states recounting threats, intimidation, lies, stolen documents, falsified documents, busing in voters in exchange for paying for “dinners,” etc. There are at least 2000 complaints, in Texas alone, of irregularities directed towards the Obama Campaign, that have lead to a very fractured and broken Democratic Party....

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Inflated Federal Pay: How Americans Are Overtaxed to Overpay the Civil Service
Salaries and benefits—for identical jobs—are 30 percent to 40 percent higher in the federal government than in the private sector. Claims that this dramatic discrepancy in compensation is warranted because of government workers’ high skills are unjustified, as this study shows. Equally unjustified is the fact that federal workers can rarely be fired, no matter how poor their job performance. Congress should align federal salaries and benefits with market rates—a simple, and fair, move that could save taxpayers nearly $47 billion in 2011. Heritage Foundation labor policy analyst James Sherk provides detailed data on why Congress should not overtax all Americans to overpay the privileged workers in the civil service....

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Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model
...It's likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

"There's got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

"We can't continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

"At some stage we're going to hit a breaking point."...

...Ontario says healthcare could eat up 70 percent of its budget in 12 years, if all these costs are left unchecked....

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Lack of jobs increasingly blamed on uncertainty created by Obama’s policies
There is one word being mentioned by business leaders and economists more frequently when the conversation turns to why jobs are not returning more quickly to the U.S. economy: uncertainty.

“By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses,” said Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg at a speech in Washington in late June.

Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh said in a recent speech in Atlanta: “Owing to a less-than-assured economic outlook and broad uncertainty about public policy, employers appear quite reluctant to add to payrolls.”

Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said in an interview, “The whole tax situation is very much in flux, very uncertain. It makes it hard to plan.”

“It’s clear that firms are not yet hiring. A lot of them are sitting on big bundles of cash,” Williams said, citing the examples of Google and Apple, which are both hoarding about $30 billion in cash instead of investing it or using it to expand.

Seidenberg’s comments last month were a significant political moment. The Verizon CEO has been one of President Obama’s strongest allies in the business community, and as president of the 170-member Business Roundtable, he had tried to cooperate with the Obama administration on its trademark agenda items – health care, financial reform and energy legislation.

But, Seidenberg said he was “troubled” by Obama’s agenda, so much so that he had “reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore.”...

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Racial, Gender Quotas in the Financial Bill?
...What did I find but Section 342, which declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry.

In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors.

What would be the mission of this new corps of Federal monitors? The Dodd-Frank bill sets it forth succinctly and simply - all too simply. The mission, it says, is to assure "to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion" of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting.

How to define "fair" has bedeviled government administrators, university admissions officers, private employers, union shop stewards and all other supervisors since time immemorial - or at least since Congress first undertook to prohibit discrimination in employment....

...With the new financial regulation law, the federal government is moving from outlawing discrimination to setting up a system of quotas. Ultimately, the only way that financial firms doing business with the government would be able to comply with the law is by showing that a certain percentage of their workforce is female or minority.

The new Offices of Women and Minorities represent a major change in employment law by imposing gender and racial quotas on the financial industry. The issue deserves careful debate - rather than a few pages slipped into the financial regulation bill.

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Local sex sting nabs Ocala pastor, Texas teacher
An Ocala-area pastor and a high school teacher from Texas are the latest to be nabbed in sex stings by Orange County detectives, the Sheriff's Office said Friday.

Investigators announced the arrests after they traveled to Marion County and arrested pastor Kenneth Kleckner at his church — Ocala West United Methodist — on charges of soliciting a minor for sex and transmitting harmful materials to a minor....

...The 44-year-old pastor, who is married and has four children, exposed himself via a web camera and talked about meeting the girl, Graves said....

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Obama's Unconfirmed 'Recess' Appointee to Run Medicare Advocated Rationing, Redistribution of Wealth
...Berwick is known for his staunch defense of Great Britain’s government-run National Health System (NHS)—which he has hailed as a model for the world-- and his penchant for comparing the U.S. health-care system unfavorably to the British system.

In the July 26, 2008 issue of the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ), Dr. Berwick published an article praising the NHS on its 60th birthday and urging Great Britain to reject free enterprise in health care. In the United States, he argued, competition among rival health-care providers had produced an excess supply of health care.

“Please don’t put your faith in market forces,” he said (italics in original). “It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I find little evidence that market forces relying on consumers choosing among an array of products, with competitors fighting it out, leads to the healthcare system you want and need. In the US, competition is a major reason for our duplicative, supply driven, fragmented care system.”

Berwick argued that purposely provided an inadequate supply of health-care—as Britain’s health-care system does—is superior to allowing the market to provide an excess.

“In America, the best predictor of cost is supply; the more we make, the more we use—hospi­tal beds, consultancy services, procedures, diagnostic tests,” Dr. Berwick wrote. “… Here, you choose a harder path. You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too lit­tle of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.”...

...When the interviewer for Biotechnology Healthcare said to Dr. Berwick that critics had said that federal Comparative Effectiveness Research would “lead to rationioning of healthcare,” Berwick responded: “We can make a sensible social decision and say, ‘Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit [new drug or medical intervention] is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.’ We make those decisions all the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.”

In his BMJ article celebrating the 60th birthday of Britain’s government-run National Health System, Berwick said: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. … The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavours of modern times.”

Berwick expressed his belief that it was important for the NHS to continue because it was the model health-care system for the world.

“The only sentiment I feel for the NHS that exceeds my admiration is my hope,” he said. “I hope you will never, ever give up on what you have begun. I hope you realise and reaffirm how badly you need—how badly the world needs—an example at scale of a health system that is universal, accessible, excellent, and free at the point of care—a health system that, at its core, is like the world we wish we had: gener­ous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just. Happy birthday.”...

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The Massachusetts Health-Care 'Train Wreck'
President Obama said earlier this year that the health-care bill that Congress passed three months ago is "essentially identical" to the Massachusetts universal coverage plan that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law in 2006. No one but Mr. Romney disagrees.

As events are now unfolding, the Massachusetts plan couldn't be a more damning indictment of ObamaCare. The state's universal health-care prototype is growing more dysfunctional by the day, which is the inevitable result of a health system dominated by politics.

In the first good news in months, a state appeals board has reversed some of the price controls on the insurance industry that Gov. Deval Patrick imposed earlier this year. Late last month, the panel ruled that the action had no legal basis and ignored "economic realties."

In April, Mr. Patrick's insurance commissioner had rejected 235 of 274 premium increases state insurers had submitted for approval for individuals and small businesses. The carriers said these increases were necessary to cover their expected claims over the coming year, as underlying state health costs continue to rise at 8% annually. By inventing an arbitrary rate cap, the administration was in effect ordering the carriers to sell their products at a loss. ...

...Mr. Dynan added that "The current course . . . has the potential for catastrophic consequences including irreversible damage to our non-profit health care system" and that "there most likely will be a train wreck (or perhaps several train wrecks)."

Sure enough, the five major state insurers have so far collectively lost $116 million due to the rate cap. Three of them are now under administrative oversight because of concerns about their financial viability. Perhaps Mr. Patrick felt he could be so reckless because health-care demagoguery is the strategy for his fall re-election bid against a former insurance CEO.

The deeper problem is that price controls seem to be the only way the political class can salvage a program that was supposed to reduce spending and manifestly has not. Massachusetts now has the highest average premiums in the nation.

In a new paper, Stanford economists John Cogan and Dan Kessler and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia find that the Massachusetts plan increased private employer-sponsored premiums by about 6%. Another study released last week by the state found that the number of people gaming the "individual mandate"—buying insurance only when they are about to incur major medical costs, then dumping coverage—has quadrupled since 2006....

..."If you're going to do health-care cost containment, it has to be stealth," said Jon Kingsdale, speaking at a conference sponsored by the New Republic magazine last October. "It has to be unsuspected by any of the key players to actually have an effect." Mr. Kingsdale is the former director of the Massachusetts "connector," the beta version of ObamaCare's insurance "exchanges," and is now widely expected to serve as an ObamaCare regulator.

He went on to explain that universal coverage was "fundamentally a political strategy question"—a way of finding a "significant systematic way of pushing back on the health-care system and saying, 'No, you have to do with less.' And that's the challenge, how to do it. It's like we're waiting for a chain reaction but there's no catalyst, there's nothing to start it."

In other words, health reform was a classic bait and switch: Sell a virtually unrepealable entitlement on utterly unrealistic premises and then the political class will eventually be forced to control spending....

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Obama's CEO problem -- and ours
...The Federal Reserve recently reported that America's 500 largest nonfinancial companies have accumulated an astonishing $1.8 trillion of cash on their balance sheets. By any calculation (for example, as a percentage of assets), this is higher than it has been in almost half a century. Yet most corporations are not spending this money on new plants, equipment or workers. Were they to loosen their purse strings, hundreds of billions of dollars would start pouring through the economy. These investments would probably have greater effect and staying power than a government stimulus. ...

...Economic uncertainty was the primary cause of their caution. "We've just been through a tsunami and that produces caution," one told me. But in addition to economics, they kept talking about politics, about the uncertainty surrounding regulations and taxes. Some have even begun to speak out publicly. Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, complained Friday that government was not in sync with entrepreneurs. The Business Roundtable, which had supported the Obama administration, has begun to complain about the myriad laws and regulations being cooked up in Washington.

One CEO told me, "Almost every agency we deal with has announced some expansion of its authority, which naturally makes me concerned about what's in store for us for the future." Another pointed out that between the health-care bill, financial reform and possibly cap-and-trade, his company had lawyers working day and night to figure out the implications of all these new regulations. Lobbyists have been delighted by all this activity. "[Obama] exaggerates our power, but he increases demand for our services," superlobbyist Tony Podesta told the New York Times.

Most of the business leaders I spoke to had voted for Barack Obama. They still admire him. Those who had met him thought he was unusually smart. But all think he is, at his core, anti-business. When I asked for specifics, they pointed to the fact that Obama has no business executives in his Cabinet, that he rarely consults with CEOs (except for photo ops), that he has almost no private-sector experience, that he's made clear he thinks government and nonprofit work are superior to the private sector. It all added up to a profound sense of distrust. ...

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A (very late) review of Skoble's DELETING THE STATE
“Centralized, coercive political authority--the State--is not necessary.”

So writes Aeon Skoble, a philosopher possessed of an all-too-rare combination of rigorous logic, empathy, and imagination. This opening line ably and honestly captures the essence of his 2008 book, Deleting the State.

Something in me--at some level--says that Skoble’s desire for political anarchism must be wrong. But, admittedly, I have a hard time finding what it is, no matter how hard I try after reading Deleting the State. Not only can Skoble write very well (and, for an academic, very clearly), but he writes in such an earnest and intellectual manner, that it’s hard to disagree with him. ...

...History has demonstrated the horrors of the State. It is, after all, responsible for murdering nearly 205,000,000 innocents in the 20th century. Add another 50,000,000 soldiers to the stats, and the 20th century ranks as the single bloodiest century in human history....

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Seeking black jurors
...But Callahan -- a Caucasian who has eight adopted African-American children, and who had announced at the outset of jury selection his determination "to have a jury that represents the racial composition of Wayne County" -- wasn't convinced the defense team's motives were racist. He thought defense lawyers were being sincere when they expressed concern that the twice-widowed Greene, who was also mourning the recent death of her mother, might be overly sympathetic to the plaintiff's loss of a loved one.

And so, in a moment of on-the-record candor that he may be regretting, Callahan said he was simultaneously 1) rejecting the plaintiff's argument that Greene's exclusion was racially motivated and 2) seating her over the defendant's objections.

The law requiring him to permit peremptory challenges unless they were overtly racist was too narrow, the judge complained. "Until either removed from the bench by the disciplinary committee or ordered to have a new trial," he declared, "I am going to seek to have this proportional representation on the juries that hear cases in this court."...

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Robert Byrd and the Privileges of Aristocracy
...As Mike Riggs points out, Byrd was a committed opponent of the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He wasn’t just a member of the Ku Klux Klan – he was part of its leadership. Within the last few years, he made statements that could at best be characterized as “racially insensitive,” which means “instantly fatal to the career of any Republican who said them.”...

...Benjamin Jealous is saying that Byrd’s activities in later years completely erase the stain of racism from his energetic membership in the KKK. Several years after joining, Byrd told a Grand Wizard that “the Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia, and in every state of the nation.” He was not a confused teenager when he made this statement. We are now assured that it doesn’t matter at all. His signature on the Democrat policy agenda was the baptism of an entirely different Robert Byrd.

Is there any way such indulgence would be granted to a private citizen?

Of course not. This moral barter system is available only to the aristocracy. The NAACP will mercilessly destroy the career of any private individual who violates its posted ordinances against racial insensitivity, but they are easily paid off by spending a few billion dollars of other peoples’ money. The transparent cynicism of this arrangement, made clear by the spectacle of wretched old Robert Byrd lying in state while his past is lovingly airbrushed by “journalists” at the New York Times, transforms the moral revulsion of racism into an instrument of tyranny.

The NAACP, and similar groups, gain prestige and authority through the patronage of politicians. In return, they offer precious moral capital to the politicians they endorse. This is a completely closed system, accessible only by members of the political and cultural elite, who support the agenda of increasing government power… with very expensive associate memberships available to well-heeled donors of compatible ideology.

When we observe that no Republican could hope to have his biography re-written to transmute bitter racism into championship service in the cause of civil rights, we aren’t merely clucking our tongues at the unfairness of partisan dirty pool. We’re watching one of the supreme moral judgments of our society become another sharp fang in the jaws of the leviathan State. Few indictments in our culture are more devastating than the charge of racism… and this charge is applied, or neutralized, almost entirely on the basis of the target’s usefulness to the State.

The Democrat Party represents the State (and is increasingly disinterested in representing anyone else.) The life and death of Robert Byrd demonstrate that loyalty to the Party and its agenda provide total inoculation against offenses which are completely inexcusable for the rest of us. As we saw in the aftermath of Ted Kennedy’s death, faith in the State leads to miracles of moral transformation....

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Clinton on Byrd’s KKK membership: Hey, he was just trying to get elected
As painfully lame as this is, I’m sort of impressed that Clinton felt obliged to acknowledge Byrd’s Klan past as frankly as he did. Jake Tapper’s complained more than once this week on Twitter about lefties giving him grief for daring to note that the former president pro temp of the Senate is also a former sheethead. The Chappaquiddick rules apply, it seems: When a liberal icon dies, it’s simply ungracious to recall moments where he might have, say, left someone for dead or burned a cross on someone’s lawn. Accentuate the positive, America.

Also, contra Billy Jeff, Byrd’s association with the Klan wasn’t exactly “fleeting.” He joined in 1942; four years later, he was still babbling about his hope for a KKK renaissance in West Virginia. And 18 years after that, he famously filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nothing necessarily racist about opposing a statute, of course, but then that logic didn’t save Rand Paul a few months ago when he raised libertarian concerns about a single section of that same law (before reiterating that he would have voted for it anyway). Exit question: How bad, precisely, do your actions have to be before the “he was just trying to get elected” defense doesn’t cut it?...

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Calif. state workers brace for minimum wage
Some California state workers are preparing to tap into their savings while others already are cutting expenses as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's minimum wage order moved one step closer to reality.

On Friday, the Schwarzenegger administration won an appellate court ruling saying it has the authority to impose the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour on more than 200,000 state workers as California wrestles with its latest budget crisis. It was not immediately clear if the state controller, who cuts state paychecks on a decades-old payroll system, will comply. The office says its computers are unable to make the change until an upgrade is completed in two years.

The effect, however, was chilling for state government workers, many of whom say they have to prepare as if the pay cut will happen....

...A cut to a minimum wage would mean state workers would make the equivalent of $15,000 a year. The average state worker makes $65,000 annually, according to the state Department of Personnel Administration....

...The minimum wage fight stems from a budget impasse two years ago. Schwarzenegger issued the order, but it never took effect because state Controller John Chiang refused to go along with it. That prompted the legal fight that led to Friday's ruling from the California 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

It concluded that Chiang cannot ignore the governor's minimum wage order. In a statement after the appellate court ruling, Chiang said he interpreted the decision to mean that his office would not have to comply with Schwarzenegger's executive order if the office had "system limitations."...

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EDITORIAL: Media blackout for Black Panthers
...All these allegations stem from what should have been a slam-dunk voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party videotaped in menacing behavior outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. The Obama Justice Department dropped or seriously reduced all the charges or penalties in the case after it already effectively had been won. Mr. Adams' former colleague, longtime award-winning civil rights lawyer Christopher Coates, has been reported on multiple occasions to have backed Mr. Adams' version of events and of the Obama team's openly discriminatory policy.

If the department's motives are not racial or racist, Justice officials surely appear political. One of the Black Panthers against whom the department declined to press charges was an official poll watcher for the Democratic Party and an elected local party official. The department dropped charges just four days before another election, allowing him again to serve as a poll watcher.

Mr. Adams says the official most directly involved in dropping the case, Steven H. Rosenbaum - whose ethics have been subject to judicial sanction - refused to read his own team's legal briefs before deciding to dismiss the case. Mr. Adams accuses Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, of providing false answers in testimony to the Civil Rights Commission.

On a parallel track, The Washington Times has reported strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that department officials may have consulted the White House before dismissing the case. That possibility, too, cries out for investigation....

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It Takes A Pillage
Retirement: Argentina nationalized private pension funds in 2008 under the guise of shielding them from the economic meltdown. But the funds have been used by lawmakers. That couldn't happen here, could it?

Socialist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said the state was protecting private retirement from "policies of plunder." By moving tens of billions from the private sector and placing it in the public fisc, she claimed to be providing "an example" for others to follow as the global financial crisis heated up....

...based on what she had read in the Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, Connie Hair wrote in Human Events that "the radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of private 401(k) plans for government disbursement."

The selling point for these plans would be much like the fiction that was peddled in Argentina: The funds would go into a pot that the government would protect from economic decline before they are distributed to retirees....

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In Clarence Thomas's gun rights opinion, race plays a major role
He hardly ever speaks during oral arguments, often appearing asleep on the bench. But in his written opinion Monday supporting the right to bear arms, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas roared to life.

Referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Thomas wrote: "It was the 'duty' of white citizen 'patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.' If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black 'to the nearest justice of the peace' whereupon he would be 'severely punished.' " Never again, Thomas says.

In a scorcher of an opinion that reads like a mix of black history lesson and Black Panther Party manifesto, he goes on to say, "Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence."

This was no muttering from an Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. His advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He even cites the slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner -- implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression. ...

...What Thomas has created, however, is a legal defense of the Second Amendment so thoroughly original and starkly race-based that none of the white justices would even acknowledge it, as if it were some blank sheet crafted by an invisible man.

That ought to be a clue enough for black people that this document is at least worth a look. You may not agree with his conclusion, but there'll be no mistake about where he's coming from.

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Short-term insurance buyers drive up cost in Mass.
The number of people who appear to be gaming the state’s health insurance system by purchasing coverage only when they are sick quadrupled from 2006 to 2008, according to a long-awaited report released yesterday from the Massachusetts Division of Insurance.

The result is that insured residents of Massachusetts wind up paying more for health care, according to the report.

“The active members subsidize some of the costs tied to those individuals who terminate within one year,’’ the report says....

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KOPEL: Sotomayor targets guns now
...The Breyer-Sotomayor-Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissent urged that Heller be overruled and declared, "In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense."

Contrast that with her Senate testimony: "I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller." And, "I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans."

Yet her McDonald opinion shows her "understanding" that those many, many Americans are completely wrong to think they have a meaningful individual right.

To the Senate Judiciary Committee, Justice Sotomayor repeatedly averred that Heller is "settled law." The Associated Press reported that Sen. Mark Udall, Colorado Democrat, "said Sotomayor told him during a private meeting that she considers the 2008 ruling that struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban as settled law that would guide her decisions in future cases."

So by "settled," she apparently meant "not settled; should be overturned immediately."

In the McDonald case, the Breyer-Sotomayor-Ginsburg dissent recapitulated various arguments that had been made in Heller by the dissenting justices. The dissenters also said Heller should be overturned because some law-review articles had criticized Heller. If criticism by a handful of law-review articles were the criterion for overturning a precedent, almost every major Supreme Court precedent would be overruled....