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Chinese rural migrants to the tune of TWENTY MILLION are jobless.
This is a picture of crowds waiting to get into an unemployment office in China.
Twenty MILLION. ruh roh
Good thing they have us to buy their stuff.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." ~ C. S. Lewis (Yes, even politics)
In loving memory of Mr. Z
A Health and Human Services official said Friday the administration will publish notice of its intentions early next week, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates on both sides, medical groups and the public." The rest of the article is here.
Z: Isn't a doctor who can't bring himself to kill an unborn entitled to his principles? Aren't there so many doctors who would commit abortions that this shouldn't even be an issue? "Hey, if you must, go to someone else, okay?"
Why the big move to get this rescinded? WHY FORCE SOMEONE TO ABORT ANOTHER'S BABY? What am I missing? Please help me here!
z
In 1970 a KGB operative from the USSR, an expert in Indian culture and languages, found himself disgusted with the Soviet system and made his way to the West. His migration was at great personal risk, but he had decided he must be free and so he defected to the United States.
In 1984, G. Edward Griffin conducted an indepth interview of the ex-KGB operative, Yuri Bezmenov, which was essentially a study of comparison and contrast between the United States and the USSR. A portion of that interview is in the video below. It's important, as you watch this video, to remember that this interview is from 1984 - amazing how no one heeded his warnings and we are so much further down the path to total communism/socialism than we were then.
In 1984, Mr. Griffin billed Mr. Bezmenov as "one of the world’s outstanding experts on the subject of Soviet propaganda and disinformation and active measures." And while I've been unable to find anything on or from Mr. Bezmenov within the past few years - IF he is still alive, I have to believe that this moniker would still stand.
In November of last year, Useless Dissident transcribed a different part of this same interview. It's a great read that gives you a little bit of Yuri's background and where he's coming from in making the statements he makes in the above mentioned interview.
Very early in that interview - remember this was 25 years ago - Mr. Griffin put forth the following question:
"In this country, at the university level primarily, we read and hear that the Soviet system is different from ours, but not that different. And that there is a convergence developing between all of the systems of the world, and that really it doesn’t make an awful lot of difference what system you live under because you have corruption and dishonesty and tyranny and all that sort of thing. From your personal experience, what is the difference between life under Communism and life in the United States?"
It's clear that, although few of us realized it at the time, we were already well down the path to the one world 'convergence', ne collectivism, that Mr. Griffin mentions in his question. And today we're running down that road with the blessing of a good percentage of the [uninformed] population.
It's obvious that we never did heed bezmenov's recommendations for the proper, America-appreciating education of our youth and our citizens - So is it now too late for the U.S.? What of the "force" he speaks of? Obama has been in office less than 30 days and we are further down the road to complete socialism than any could have thought would be possible after 30 months. The constitution is worse than, as Thomas Jefferson warned, a 'mere thing of wax' in the hands of the Judiciary - It is now nothing more than a wad of trash in the hands of the most horrible Congress in the history of our country. The graceless bunglers making up this current Congress is working hard to reduce our country to a country of collectivism. And if we don't stop it now, it will be too late.
You have got to believe that the California Republican base is dispirited when a delegate at this weekend's state party convention is circulating a resolution to apologize to former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis for recalling him from office.
But that is exactly what party delegate Alex Burrola is suggesting.
The resolution, underscoring some party activists' seething displeasure with "post-partisan" GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, reads as follows:
"Whereas, in 2003 a grassroots effort was begun to recall then-Governor Gray Davis from office on grounds which included gross mismanagement of the budget and finances of the State of California;
"...Whereas, candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned as a reformer and champion of fiscal discipline and responsibility who would bring change and reform to government which it sorely needed;
"Whereas, in the subsequent years Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has instead proven to govern as a tax and spend politician precisely similar to the one he campaigned to replace in the recall election;
"Whereas, the trust and confidence of Republicans has been betrayed and shattered by Governor Schwarzenegger's repeated and ongoing efforts to collaborate with Democrats in the Legislature to seek solutions to the state's fiscal crisis by irresponsible borrowing and increasing taxes and refusal to make the needed reductions in state spending;
"Whereas, Governor Schwarzenegger's current budget solution includes more than $14 billion in higher taxes on sales, income, gasoline and the car tax which he specifically attacked Governor Davis for raising;
"Whereas, it is plain that Governor Schwarzenegger has abandoned the most basic tenets of Republican ideology and rendered the whole purpose of the 2003 recall pointless;
"Therefore, be it resolved that the California Republican Party officially extends a heartfelt and sincere apology to former Governor Gray Davis for its role in recalling him from office."
So, six years later, Davis can take heart. Sorry about that, Gray.
February 20, 2009 6:03 PM
ABC News has learned that the Obama administration will begin the process of releasing a prisoner from the Detainee Center at Guantanamo Bay next week, perhaps as early as Monday.
Binyam Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian and legal resident of the UK, will be transferred into British custody, government officials told ABC News. The British will fly Mohamed back to England. The British government has signaled it intends to subject Mohamed to surveillance, but he is not expected to be arrested. (Z: Did you have read that twice, too?)
British authorities have long expressed concern that any evidence against Mohamed would be inadmissible because of alleged torture against him by Pakistani and U.S. authorities. (Z: WHAT? What if he's planning more dirty bomb attacks? He 'alleged' torture so he's clean?)
The White House had no comment. (Z: CAN WE COMMENT? I'd like to comment...PLEASE?)
Mohamed has been detained at Gitmo since September 2004. He was first arrested in Pakistan by local authorities in 2002 and turned over to U.S. military authorities a few months later.
According to the Combatant Status Review Board filings summarizing evidence against Mohamed for combatant status review tribunal recently made unclassified (see HERE and HERE), Mohamed "received paramilitary training" at the al Faruq training camp in Afghanistan. (Z: maybe that was to become a NAVY SEAL, huh? Ya THINK? Not to insult NAVY SEALS, I'm SO SO sorry)
There he learned about "light arms handling, explosives, and principles of topography." He was "taught to falsify documents and received instruction from a senior al Qaida operative on how to encode telephone numbers..."
"The detainee proposed, to senior al-Qaida leaders, the idea of attacking subway trains in the United States," the board statement says. In Karachi, Mohamed "received explosives and remote-controlled-detonator training from an al Qaida operative." An al Qaida operative also told Mohamed to go to the U.S. "to assistant in terrorist operations," the document states. He allegedly was planning to use a "dirty bomb." (Z: Read THAT AGAIN! Are we ...nuts?)
In an interview with a member of the U.S. military also recently declassified, (read it HERE) Mohamed said that his training was done before 9/11 in order "to fight in Chechnya, which was not illegal." His contacts with al Qaida were only made so he could get out of Afghanistan and back to the U.K. Mohamed also "stated that his plane ticket at time of capture was a ticket from Karachi to Zurich to England, so how could he have plans to carry out attacks in the United States"? (Z: "How could he...?" Could he not buy a ticket with cash any stop he made and change plans? WHAT? Will we EVER be more clever or cunning than our enemy?)
All terrorism-related charges against Mohamed were dropped in 2007.
The ACLU has long claimed that Mohamed's admissions were made under the duress of torture.
"This unprecedented release of an enemy combatant, who has already targeted the United States, clearly shows that despite the promises that President Obama made to keep this country safe, he may be putting political promises ahead of our national security," said Commander Kirk Lippold, Former USS Cole Commander. "The laundry list of charges against Binyam Mohamed, many of which he has admitted to, makes it blatantly clear that it is not if he will attack the United States, but only when his attack will happen." (Z: YA THINK??? Is Obama comfortable with that?)
Lippold, a Senior Military Fellow at Military Families United, called Mohamed's release "dangerous" and urged the president to reconsider.
"By Mohamed’s classification as an ‘enemy combatant’," Lippold said, "the United States is aware that he poses a threat to our country and allies. Instead of maintaining him in custody where justice can be served, President Obama is allowing him to be released to the United Kingdom without condition. This presents a danger that he may rejoin the fight to kill innocent civilians." (Z:.....never mind..what can I say?)
The ACLU says that Mohamed, after being captured in 2002, was flown from Pakistan to Morocco on a Gulfstream V aircraft, for which flight and logistical support services were provided by Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. Mohamed claims that for the following 18 months he was tortured by Moroccan intelligence officials. In 2004, Mohamed was flown to a secret U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, Mohamed claims. Again, support services for this flight were provided by Jeppesen.
"In Afghanistan Mohamed was tortured and inhumanely treated by United States officials," the ACLU says. "Later that same year Mohamed was rendered a third time by U.S. officials, this time to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba where he is presently."
Mohamed is one of several detainees who have attempted to sue Jeppesen Dataplan, a suit fought by both the Bush and Obama administrations because of "state secrets." (Z: and if he wasn't tortured but is lying about it, we'll err on his side, as usual, right? I wonder how much of our tax dollars he'll get.)
In a statement the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Mohamed "will be returned as soon as the practical arrangements can be made."
"Mr Mohamed’s return does not constitute a commitment by the Home Secretary that he may remain permanently in the UK," Miliband said. "His immigration status will be reviewed following his return and the same security considerations will apply to him as would apply to any other foreign national in this country . As always, all appropriate steps will be taken to protect national security." (Z: OURS?)Hillary Clinton in China: "Because our economies are so intertwined the Chinese know that in order to start exporting again to its biggest market, the United States had to take some very drastic measures with this stimulus package," Clinton said.
"We have to incur more debt. It would not be in China's interest if we were unable to get our economy moving again."
Clinton added: "The US needs the investment in Treasury bonds to shore up its economy to continue to buy Chinese products." (didn't we once say BUY AMERICAN?)
(Old picture, old plans?) z
Take Joe Martinez of Bristow, Va., who fits the profile of the "responsible" homeowner Obama cited in the plan. The government contractor and his wife thought they did everything right when they bought their brand new $600,000 house two years ago. They put 5% down and got a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage they could afford.
Others in their neighborhood, however, couldn't keep up with the payments. As foreclosure rose, the value of the couple's home plummeted to $450,000, leaving them doubtful they'd ever recover their investment.
Martinez called their lender to try to get into the Hope for Homeowners program, which would reduce their loan balance to 90% of the home's current value. But they were turned down because they weren't in default....
z
Oh well. Back to the “it just looks bad” argument.
A Pentagon review of conditions in the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Convention but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction with each other, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document.
The report, which was ordered by President Obama, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House. Obama requested the review as part of an executive order on the planned closure of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba…
Walsh concluded that … force-feeding, which involves strapping prisoners to feeding chairs and forcing tubes down one nostril and into their stomachs, is in compliance the Geneva Convention’s mandate that the lives of prisoners must be preserved, the government official said.
Actually, insofar as this gives The One a handy alternative to expanding our renditions program, it does mean good news for him — or rather, it would if the left still cared about renditions, which they haven’t since January 20th. Exit question: With opposition to closing Gitmo already near majority levels, the media had better keep this as quiet as possible, huh?
z; oh, dear. What a problem for the Left..
"Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.
"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing."
RuhRoh. Put aside the POINT of this (human rights) for now, how fast do you think she'll cave to her buddies, the 'activists' who are 'shocked'? Did they really think EVERYTHING Obama's administration would do is payback? They supported him, so he's got to play their game to our possible peril? Do you think this stance will last?
Of course, if Hillary STILL doesn't understand that the 'global climate change crisis' is something she REALLY needs to learn more about before putting human rights second to it, then that IS a problem. But "economic crisis"? "security crisis?" Yes, I think we might want to put those in front of Tibet for a while...at least until some of these crises are dealt with, or at least negotiations with China, NO?
OR does this mean we're caving into them because at least we HAD the human rights situation hanging over them for negotiation purposes...? OR did our Left make it so that OUR human rights have been painted to be so inferior (Gitmo, Haditha, etc.) that we don't have any moral authority on that anymore?
What're your thoughts?
On a personal note, I think I might forgo wearing RED in CHINA....what about you? (heh)
z
LANGLEY PARK, Md. – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 24 Hispanics at a convenience store in Baltimore two years ago after their supervisor told them to "bring more bodies" because they were behind their annual quota of 1,000 arrests per team, according to an ICE report released Wednesday.
The immigration rights group CASA de Maryland, which has accused ICE of racial profiling in the 2007 raid, released the agency's internal investigation report and said it shows that the agents acted improperly.
The report contradicts some sworn declarations made by ICE agents involved in the sweep, prompting the agency's Acting Assistant Secretary John Torres to ask for an investigation into inconsistencies, ICE spokeswoman Ernestine Fobbs said Wednesday. Meanwhile, CASA officials have called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to review the agency's enforcement policies.
"Government agents should not be in the business of judging people based on the color of their skin, clothing and employment, which is what seems to have occurred here," the Rev. Simon Bautista Betances, vice president of CASA's board of directors said Wednesday. (Z: What else can they do to round out as many ILLEGALS as possible?)
CASA officials have charged that ICE agents ignored blacks and whites at the 7-Eleven store as they rounded up all of the Hispanics, even crossing the street to detain Hispanics waiting at a bus stop. (Z: Is this the same guys who ignore dark swarthy skinned people at the airport and question Finnish grandmothers so it they're not profiling? How many blacks and whites are illegal in comparison with Hispanics?)
Soon after the raid, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) asked for an investigation into whether the ICE officers racially profiled the people they arrested. ICE's internal probe found the allegations to be unsubstantiated, Fobbs said.
"I have confidence that the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will fairly address this and other immigration issues," Mikulski said in an e-mailed statement in response to Wednesday's report. (Z: Ruhroh)
Of the 24 men arrested in the raid, one proved that he was in the country legally, 19 were deported or voluntarily returned to their native countries and four remain in immigration proceedings, said Justin Cox, an attorney with CASA representing some of the men.
The ICE agents involved in the raid are part of the agency's fugitive operations program, which tracks down violent criminals living in the country illegally. Agency records from the program show that beginning in 2004, the teams were assigned to arrest at least 125 fugitive immigrants. In 2006, each team's quota was increased to 1,000 fugitive arrests. (Z: isn't that a GOOD THING?)
"Our current enforcement of the immigration policy based on quotas lead to the separation of families and civil rights violations," said Gustavo Torres, CASA's executive director. "The evidence speaks for itself." (Z: Wait..so if an ILLEGAL snuck into our country, it's our responsibility not to separate him from his family? Couldn't they maybe STOP breaking laws if they were threatened with separation? They don't seem to mind separation when the men come here without families, which is what's normally done)
The debate over the raid centers on whether the agents had probably cause to detain the men or whether agents targeted them simply because they were Hispanic.
In sworn declarations, some officers said they stopped at the 7-Eleven to take a break after several hours of arresting fugitive immigrants in neighboring counties. When the agents arrived, they said Hispanic day laborers surrounded their vehicles asking for work and, when questioned, admitted they were in the country unlawfully.
However, in the report, some officers later told ICE investigators that the men mumbled or said nothing when asked about their status. Some also said that their supervisor had instructed them to beef up their arrests, the report said.
Cox said some of the day laborers testified that agents did not ask them about their status and ignored non-Hispanics passing through the store. (Z: Are they supposed to stop EVERYONE??)
"I think that this validates all the concerns that the immigrant rights community has been expressing for the past couple of years," Cox said.
Z: Are they kidding? Is this a JOKE? Does anybody have concerns about what illegal immigrants have DONE to our country? They're not happy? WHAT? I COME from immigrants..we ALL do....but my people are VERY new here...not telling how new for privacy sake; I LOVE immigration. My grandfather came at 9 and had the language licked in 3 months and became a successful man. My people never went on welfare, even the ones who weren't as successful as Grandpa. My people love this country and my mother made the King Family Entertainment Specials during the Bicentennial look underdecorated! We had STANDARDS in America regarding immigration then. We had laws, and stringent requirements! WHAT HAS HAPPENED? And THE ILLEGALS HAVE CONCERNS? ??
z
NEWS broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undisclosed ethics problems. (Z: News broke LAST WEEK? Did you hear about that 'last week'?)
One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant, Freddie Mac.
Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.
During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)(Z: Wait. Not the same Greenberg in whose home he lived free?!! What a coincidence, huh?!)
To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before - but each new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly generous with his roommate.
Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable "hospitality" between colleagues. Hospitality - for five years? (Z: for a millionaire?)
Some experts suggest that it was also taxable income: Over five years, the free rent could easily add up to more than $100,000. (Z: "some experts suggest?" H&R Block knows this! Heck, I KNOW this!!)
Nor is this all that seems to have been missed in the Obama team's vetting process. Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.
The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for "failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces. (Z: and Oh, brother, are WE paying for that now)
The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.
Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie "service." Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency's PAC gave his campaign $25,000 - its largest single gift to a House candidate.
That's what friends are for, isn't it?
Now Rahm Emanuel is in the White House helping President Obama dig out of the mess that Freddie Mac helped start.
The president's chief of staff isn't subject to Senate confirmation, but his ethics still matter. Is this the change that we can depend on? (Z: CHUMP CHANGE)
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGrath
OKAY....Sometimes, people do the wrong thing...RIGHT? Now picture this: ANYBODY on Bush's staff did anything CLOSE to all of this and what would the media be doing?! Ya, I know, too.
z
Until now, most people assumed that the US conducted its Predator strikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets from bases in Afghanistan. Now, however, Senator Dianne Feinstein has exposed a Pakistani partnership on Predator launches that the previous administration tried to keep quiet. Her offhand remark may put the entire program in jeopardy:
A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.
The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s northwest border.
“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said of the planes.
Until now, that was a closely guarded secret. The drone attacks are incredibly unpopular among the Pakistani public, and the US didn’t want to undermine the current, democratically-elected government in Islamabad. They wanted to give the Yousef Gilani government deniability on their cooperation with the American military in order to keep our options for attack open.
This isn’t the first time Feinstein has blown a sensitive operation by opening her mouth, either. Californians will recall that Mayor Feinstein called a press conference to discuss the Night Stalker case, a string of violent rapes and murders that terrified the entire state. She divulged previously-confidential information about Richard Ramirez’ shoes and gun — and on hearing it, Ramirez promptly dumped them into the bay on his way out of town, eliminating key evidence in the case.
This exposure will cause much greater damage. The Pakistani public will almost certainly demand an end to these Predator flights, which have been highly successful at decimating terrorist leadership in inaccessible areas of the Pakistani frontier. Without that kind of tactic available, we will have to fall back to more intrusive and potentially less effective overflights from Afghanistan. This could allow our enemies breathing room to rebuild their networks in the region, and put us on a collision course with Islamabad on our efforts to fight them. At the very least, Feinstein has just complicated the diplomatic situation for Barack Obama by an order of magnitude. Ed Morrissey * Hot Air
RUHROH......... JUST what we needed. Thanks for the tip. Joey.
z
Here’s something new: instead of the customary attempts to put an optimistic gloss on the state of the economy, our governments are doing exactly the opposite. Over here Ed Balls tells us, more or less, that this is the worst recession since dinosaurs roamed the primordial swamps. Meanwhile President Barack Obama declared last week that “if we don’t act immediately, our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse”. As The Economist commented, with some alarm: “The notion that [America] might never recover was previously entertained only by bearded survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition in remote log cabins.”
Obama’s dire assessment was on the surface the more surprising – wasn’t he supposed to be the great uplifter of the national mood, in the spirit of Franklin D Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? It seems all the odder because Obama has explicitly drawn on folk memories of FDR’s New Deal, telling television viewers to “keep in mind that in 1932, 1933 the unemployment rate was 25%”.
Obama is probably right to assume that those same memories have it that the massive state interventionism of the New Deal triumphantly restored America to full employment. That’s why he felt comfortable in asserting, on the eve of the launch of a $2 trillion (or so) injection of taxpayers’ money, “There is no disagreement that we need . . . a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy.”
He might, therefore, have been surprised to see an advertisement in the national papers, signed by more than 200 eminent economists, which declared: “With all due respect, Mr President, that is not true. Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians . . . we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.” The sorry facts bear this out. The unemployment rate in the US was still 19% in 1939. Over the following four years the number of unemployed workers declined dramatically, by more than 7m. This had a very particular reason: the number of men in military service rose by 8.6m.
You might say that it is always possible to find 200 economists to disagree with anything, but in fact the practitioners of the dismal science are genuinely divided on this one. When the US Journal of Economic History polled economists on the proposition that “Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression”, 49% agreed. These would be the ones who might have recalled the damning remark of FDR’s own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau. In 1939 he confided: “We have tried spending money . . . it does not work . . . we have just as much unemployment . . . and an enormous debt to boot.”
The trouble, 70 years on, is that America’s debt is already enormous, even before Obama’s “jump-start” has begun to hoover up the taxpayers’ trillions.
Perhaps Obama will not repeat some of the errors of the New Deal. Roosevelt (and indeed Hoover) recalled the anger caused by the wage cuts during the depression of 1920-1 and cajoled employers to keep wage rates stable, even as output dropped. This is a policy supported by the Keynesians of today, who argue that lower wages lead to lower demand, which leads to lower output, which leads to more unemployment, and so on ad infinitum.
In practice, however, if labour costs do not come down in a recession, then employers are even less willing to hire staff. The US government of the 1930s augmented this error with protectionist tariffs – designed to keep out imports from countries that had not sought to maintain wage rates, regardless of profitability.
Unfortunately, it may be that Obama will indeed leap into the same elephant trap: the president issued an executive order this month requiring federal agencies to put in place agreements that set “wages, work rules and other benefits” when awarding big construction projects. Perhaps this is payback for the unions’ support for Obama during the election. Admittedly the White House has sought to strip out many of the “buy America” clauses that Congress had attached to its stimulus bill, but when the gold-plating of federal contracts reduces any beneficial effect they might have on overall employment rates, we can be certain that the protectionist chorus will then belt out again, fortissimo.
This fear was not the reason the Dow Jones index plunged by almost 5% between the moment the Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, began to announce the details of the “rescue” package and when he had finished speaking. There was a stunning lack of detail in the plan to inject up to $2 trillion into the financial system – prompting the observation even from a firm supporter of his, the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, that it reminded him of “an old joke from my younger days: what do you get when you cross a godfather with a deconstructionist? Someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand”.
How would the Treasury secretary invest the hundreds of billions earmarked to “rescue” the housing market? “We will announce details in the next few weeks.” How, exactly would he construct the announced $1 trillion public-private partnership to absorb the banks’ “toxic debts”? “We are not going to put out details until we have the right structure.” With apologies to Obama the author, this might be described as the opacity of hope.
It is, in fact, a dangerous mix of messages, and not just because it erodes the public’s sense that the administration knows what it is doing with all the billions it is throwing at the banking system – a complaint which over here is proving ever more damaging to our own government’s fading prospect of reelection.
You simply can’t tell the public on the one hand that there is an imminent danger of economic meltdown if your plans are not implemented – and on the other, give the impression that those plans are little more than scribbles on the back of an envelope. Obama is much more able to get away with such a mismatch between promise and practice – he has a fresh mandate and the high level of opinion poll support which tends to attach to that. Yet, for the same reason, he will never have had a better opportunity to harness popular goodwill to political action.
By contrast, the $787 billion fiscal stimulus that passed through Congress last week was almost too prescriptive, since Obama had allowed the House Democrats to write the cheques themselves: so, for example, there was $335m for STD prevention, $400m for research on global warming, $198m for Filipino veterans of the second world war. Noble of them, I’m sure, but how much is all of that guaranteed to “get America back to work”? Yet Obama mocked those who made such complaints: “You get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill; this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point.”
In other words, Obama is backing the most primitive interpretation of Keynes’s theories: that any form of government spending amounts to an economic stimulus. He is almost blind to supply-side economics, which suggests that if you want to encourage profitable job creation, you should concentrate on reducing companies’ payroll taxes – and then leave individual businesses to decide how best to employ the funds released.
Instead, the young president seems to want to take us back to some of the failed policies of the 1930s, under the mistaken impression that they were a great triumph. He illustrates with dreadful clarity George Santayana’s most-quoted aphorism: those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
Z: Fasten your seatbelts, everyone...it's going to be a bumpy ride.
z
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