Obama Scolds Nation: You’ve Gotten Soft
By Larry Elder

“The way I think about it is, you know, this is, uh, you know, a great, uh, great country that had gotten a little soft, and you know, we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last, uh, couple of decades. We need to get back on track.” — President Barack Obama.

The gall is breathtaking, even from a man who as a presidential candidate said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

This from a President who, in chastising the rich, said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

This from a man who, during the brief time he actually worked in the private sector, represented a black woman who accused a bank of redlining her out of a loan. The proximate cause of the housing bubble and meltdown is the notion that the “underrepresented” deserve a home, whether or not they qualified under traditional lending criteria.

This from a man who told a Toledo plumber that government should “spread the wealth around” by taxing “the rich” and giving the money to others, because “it’s good for everybody.”

This from a man who blasts any suggestion that young people just might be capable of investing a portion of their Social Security contribution into an account that they manage. Former Congresswoman and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, in opposing the idea, fretted for those who lack “the knowledge and the wherewithal” to handle the responsibility.

This from a flip-flopper who initially opposed the 1996 welfare reform — legislation that resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the welfare rolls, and without a corresponding increase in teen pregnancy. Then-state Sen. Obama called President Bill Clinton’s support of the federal bill “disturbing,” and a year later — on the Illinois state Senate floor — he said, “I probably would not have supported the federal legislation.” A decade later, when presidential candidate Obama was asked if he would have signed or vetoed the ‘96 reform bill, he repeatedly dodged the question, insisting that he looked to the next 10 years, not the past 10 years. Then his campaign began running ads touting the reduction of welfare cases made possible by the 1996 reforms.

This from a man who blames corporations for “shipping jobs overseas,” yet shows no concern for the high corporate tax rates — rates that would be unnecessary were the federal government to actually stick to the handful of duties permitted by the Constitution.

This from a man who thinks it’s the government’s job to “invest” in “green jobs of the future” because the private sector cannot be trusted to take risks.

To the extent America has gotten “soft,” Obama can’t mean working hours. The average American works longer hours than other people in the industrialized world, including the Japanese, the Germans and the British.

Nor does Obama, by “soft,” mean the growing and unsustainable reliance on government. In 1900, government, at all three levels — federal, state and local — took about 10 percent of the American workers’ pay. Today, if one assigns a price to unfunded federal mandates imposed on the states, government’s take approaches 50 percent. Obama and his party encourage government growth and expect Americans to depend on it for health, welfare and retirement. These are, they tell us, “human rights.”

So, let’s recap the President’s playbook.

Step one: Pursue a three-year course of extracting higher taxes; mandating costly new regulations, not least of which — in ObamaCare — represents a breathtaking expansion of federal power; and pass an FDR-like nearly trillion-dollar “stimulus” package.

Step two: Enact “look, we’ve done something!” regulations to “rein in Wall Street greed” — regulations that have nothing to do with the Freddie/Fannie/Community Reinvestment Act housing meltdown. Sign “credit card reform” laws that prevent bankers from raising fees on “the defenseless.” Never mind that banks roll their eyes and find other ways of keeping profits up. Funny how these bankers and other businesspeople seem not to consider their actions crooked. They think they operate in a competitive marketplace and owe a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize shareholder return.

Step three: Let the investment community know that — because they represent the enemy — they’re a piggy bank from which government can extract more and more without, of course, eroding the business community’s willingness to risk capital. Expect the “greedy,” “taxed-too-lightly” business community to absorb the higher taxes and costly regulation — and yet continue to make the same hiring and investment decisions even as the White House vows to impose even more regulations and raise taxes even higher.

Step four: After succeeding in undermining economic growth through left-wing, redistributionist, government-can-capably-invest-in-green-jobs-of-the-future policies, accuse the business community of engaging in risk avoidance. Hammer them for “sitting” on “$2 trillion” in money. Tell them they should “get off the sidelines and expand. … Get in the game.”

Step five: Finally, accuse the American people of failing him, not the other way around.

We end with another quote from then-newly elected Barack Obama: “I will be held accountable. … If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Obama’s Economy — Running Out of Excuses
By Larry Elder

Two and a half years into the Obama presidency, why does the economy still sputter?

The first and most popular line of defense, of course, remains to blame it on the George W. Bush administration.

Pundits like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria falsely attribute the current $1.5 trillion deficit to the “Bush tax cuts,” while Obama puts the “cost” at $70 billion a year. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz asserts that “98 percent of you” were not affected by the cuts, an odd argument considering that Obama supports extending the Bush-era rates for the very 98 percent that Schultz claims received no benefit.

Others blame the “costly” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the average annual cost of the wars — as well as the “cost” of the Bush tax cuts for the rich — come to no more than 20 percent or so of the deficit.

When considering the “cost” of the Iraq War, critics never compare it to the “cost” of another 9/11 or worse. The New York Times recently tried to put a price on 9/11 and our response: “In a survey of estimates by The New York Times, the answer is $3.3 trillion, or about $7 million for every dollar al-Qaida spent planning and executing the attacks. While not all of the costs have been borne by the government — and some are still to come — this total equals one-fifth of the current national debt.”

Did Iraq play a major role in the lack — so far — of another successful attack on U.S. soil? Ask al-Qaida.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new al-Qaida leader after the killing of bin Laden, both called Iraq the “front line” in the battle against the infidels. Bin Laden, in 2004, made this quite clear: “The issue is big and the misfortune is momentous. … The world’s millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate. … The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation.”

Retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander in charge of the Iraq invasion, said: “The Global War on Terrorism will be a long fight. But make no mistake, we are going to fight the terrorists. The question is do we fight them over there — or do we fight them here. I choose to fight them over there.”

Another excuse is that the “Great Recession” was a (SET ITAL) financial (END ITAL) recession and, therefore, lasts longer than the non-financial type. No one said anything abut a “financial recession” when Obama’s economic advisors pushed the “stimulus” as a means to prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent, while predicting that 3.5 million jobs would be “saved or created,” with 90 percent of these jobs coming from the private sector.

A recently and increasingly popular excuse: Blame unemployment on … the rise of the machines.

President Barack Obama, June ‘11: “There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy.”

Chris Matthews, MSNBC, September ‘11: “CVS used to employ a lot of people just above the poverty level, above minimum wage, and you walk in there now, it’s all machines. Now, it’s very convenient for the customer. It’s all machines. … I used to have about seven or eight cameramen. I don’t have them anymore, it’s automated, it’s all robots. … I used to go to a gas station, have — somebody would check your tires and check your oil. There ain’t anybody there. There’s nobody working in a gas station.”

Christiane Amanpour, ABC, September ‘11: “But what about the very real problem, and that is many businesses seeing precisely because of the efficiency of, let’s say, online and the new sort of technology, that it is much cheaper to buy a machine to do the job — you don’t have to train it, you don’t have to pay it wages — rather than hire a person. This seems to be the structural reality of the economy now.”

So after blaming Bush, bad luck and machines, where does this leave us?

What about the assortment of tax increases on the very people who produce jobs? Or ObamaCare and the placing of a large slice of the economy under the command and control of an inherently inefficient and wasteful government? Or the failed trillion-dollar “stimulus” program? Or the reckless, inflation-inducing printing of money? Or billions of dollars in new business regulations with a fear of more to come? Or the constant threat of not renewing the Bush-era tax cuts for the so-called rich? Or the refusal to allow oil drilling that could produce as many as more than a million jobs. Or …

Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney: Will the Republican Please Stand Up?
By Larry Elder

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney make me think of Dorothy Jones.

“Aunt” Dorothy, my mom’s closest friend, was a warm, smart, comedienne-quick funny woman from a large family. Unlike my mom’s other friends, Dorothy was single and remained so until she died. I once asked her, in the rude way only children can, why she never married.

“You know,” she said while pointing, one by one, at four imaginary men lined up in front her, “if you took the best qualities from all my sisters’ husbands and rolled them up into one man — you’d still come up short.”

This describes how it feels when trying to find a GOP presidential candidate. What are we small “L” libertarian, tea-party-type, low-tax, low-regulation, serious-about-entitlement-reform, non-”climate-change”-hysterical voters looking for?

For starters, how about someone who believes that the Constitution means what it says and says what it means, and won’t abide the “principled” Republican politician who wanders off the page in search of “compromise” to “get things done” to “do the people’s business”? Not too much to ask.

This brings us to the declared and confused GOP presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the soon-to-be declared, and confused, GOP candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Gingrich masterfully engineered the 1994 GOP takeover of the House. He came up with the Contract With America, and once called Sen. Bob Dole, the party’s 1996 presidential candidate, “the tax collector for the welfare state.” He is bright and knowledgeable, which makes some of his positions all the more indefensible.

Did Gingrich really write off Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s gutsy Medicare reform idea as “right-wing social engineering,” after having praised Ryan’s debt and deficit reduction ideas just two months earlier? Yes, he did.

Did Gingrich really cut a video with global-warming fanatic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in which they pledged to work together to fight “climate change”? Yes, he did.

Did Gingrich come out in favor of ethanol and the federal boondoggle that pays farmers to convert farmland producing edible corn into land devoted to corn for ethanol — a product that, but for mandates and subsidies, would have no market? Did Gingrich support ethanol even after Al “Mr. Environment” Gore renounced his previous support and admitted that he only supported ethanol to secure the 2000 farm vote? Yes and yes.

Did Gingrich team up with race hustler extraordinaire, the Rev. Al Sharpton, to tour the country to raise awareness of the education “race gap”? Did Gingrich team with the man who not only opposes vouchers — a serious attempt to provide alternatives to and competition against government schools — but who calls vouchers “racist”? Yes, he did.

Romney, for his part, ran in 2008 as a fiscal conservative elected in a liberal state and who, therefore, represents someone who “can reach across the aisle” and appeal to independents and “conservative Democrats” — whatever that means. Unfortunately, his signature achievement is the statist RomneyCare, a Bay State “universal health care program” that includes a mandate. It served as a model for ObamaCare.

Believers in limited government, to put it mildly, intensely dislike ObamaCare and reserve a special place in hell for the mandate that forces every man, woman and child to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily point out that RomneyCare fails to control premium costs, exceeded budget projections and “works” only because of money from the federal government.

Many Republicans encouraged Romney to call RomneyCare a blunder, and use it as an object lesson of yet another well-intended but wrongheaded government intrusion that produced unintended and hurtful consequences.

Did Romney not only refuse to apologize for RomneyCare, but praise it as a “state solution”? Did Romney defend the Massachusetts mandate while criticizing Obama’s federal one? Did Romney thus support the concept of allowing government to force people to purchase health insurance or face a fine, so long as it does so at the state level? Does Romney therefore disagree with conservatives who call RomneyCare a disaster that other states emulate at their own peril? Yes, yes, yes and yes, he does.

So much for Gingrich and Romney. Now what?

What about Thomas Sowell? The economist/writer/philosopher/limited government/free-market advocate, the most clear-headed opinionator in America, is 80. The 80 is not the problem. It is the clear-headed part that made Sowell double over in laughter when he was asked about running for office. Former left-wing David Mamet partially credits Sowell with turning him from being “a brain-dead liberal.” Yes, Sowell is that good.

Who else?

What about Margaret Thatcher, the 85-year-old fiscal conservative British ex-prime minister? Could we persuade her into renouncing her citizenship and running for president here in the States? Alas, that requires an amendment to the Constitution, which currently allows only a “natural born citizen” to become president.

What would Aunt Dorothy do?

Only Idiots Think Hillary Will Run – Let’s Hope They’re Right
by Larry Elder

Otherwise sane people speculate that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will resign her post and challenge President Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2012. But Hillary’s futile challenge would have a far more damaging effect than that inflicted on Al Gore by persona non grata Ralph Nader in ‘00. After Dems get through blaming her for Obama’s fall ‘12 defeat, neither Bill nor Hillary would be able to get a table at Fatburger.

Here are the 10 reasons why she won’t do it.

10. She’s not a fool. If she ran, she’d lose.

The Clintons couldn’t defeat Obama when he was an inexperienced freshman senator. But they’re supposed to snatch the nomination from him as an inexperienced incumbent President? Puh-leeeze.

9. The rationale behind her candidacy is exactly what?

That Obama is a confused and indecisive commander in chief? That Obama took forever to decide that the Afghanistan War is worth fighting and winning? That Obama made reckless promises to close Guantanamo Bay and to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York? That, after naively criticizing President Bush’s prosecution of the War on Terror, Obama continues nearly all of his policies?

All true. So what? The primary/caucus left-lefties like their Democrats to vacillate on foreign policy. They equate vacillation with thoughtfulness.

8. The Democrats who do the nominating love Obama.

He signed ObamaCare, while President Bill Clinton failed to pull off HillaryCare. Obama passed “stimulus,” and thus rewarded government workers who helped him win the presidency. He replaced two left-wing Supreme Court justices with two left-wing Supreme Court justices. Dems blame the undone stuff — cap and trade, union card check, raising taxes on the rich — on Republican/tea party resistance to (aka racism against) a black president. What’s not to like?

7. Hillary would make Obama spend money to fend her off — leaving him financially weakened.

With less money in Obama’s war chest, a Republican victory becomes more likely. Campaign contributions would flow from Obama and to the Republican, as the lobbyists sense blood and jump to the winning side.

6. A challenge from Hillary would provide scads of anti-Obama sound bites, quips and put-downs — all deliciously usable.

Imagine the GOP hit ad: (Baritone voice-over) “Secretary of State Clinton warned us about the 3:00 a.m. call.”

Pan to a desk clock reading 3:00 a.m. Pan to empty bed. Cut to Obama in sunny Rio teeing off on the ninth hole.

(Voice-over) “She was right.”

5. The 1968 analogy is a bad one.

President Lyndon Johnson was challenged from the left. He faced a formidable one-issue challenger in Eugene McCarthy, who had a strong anti-Vietnam War message that resonated with young people who faced a draft. And McCarthy did not win the New Hampshire primary — a surprising strong 42 percent, but second nonetheless. The damage done, Robert Kennedy jumped into the race four days later.

Facing a battle against Kennedy “royalty,” a rising Vietnam war body count and chants of “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?!” the weary Johnson stunned the nation by deciding not to run.

Clinton has no McCarthy-like stalking horse to bruise Obama — so she can swoop in and pick the carcass. Plus, Obama is not job-weary. Nor is the youth anxious over Afghanistan and Iraq, given the all-volunteer military.

4. The 1980 analogy is even worse.

President Jimmy Carter was challenged from the left. Yet even with the Jack-Bobby-Camelot glow still fairly intense, Ted Kennedy could not unseat a weak incumbent who was disliked and distrusted by his own party. Carter survived a nasty, divisive political convention. Obama’s leftist bona fides, however, remain intact.

3. The nostalgic “we’re thinking about getting the band back together” thing won’t fly.

The FOBs, friends of Bill, now work for Obama or used to or want to. Bill Clinton’s former policy advisor, Rahm Emanuel, just finished a stint as Obama’s chief of staff. Obama’s new chief of staff served as Clinton’s secretary of commerce.

2. The media still adore Obama.

They helped him get elected, and they will help him get renominated and then re-elected. Obama, alone among the major Democratic ‘08 rivals — and to the delight of the major media — opposed the “dumb” Iraq War from the start. They remember. Plus, several well-connected “journalists” left their money-losing, dead or dying publications and now work for Obama.

1. Blacks would go absolutely, positively berserk!

The 95 percent black pro-Obama 2008 voting block would crumble if Hillary even attempted to “steal” the presidency from the first (real) black president. If she somehow, some way, managed to win the nomination, blacks wouldn’t vote Republican — but they’d sure stay home.

To summarize: A Clinton challenge to Obama would inflict so much damage and intra-party angst that the Republicans could run Snooky in 2012 — and win.

So, please, Hillary, do it — for your country.

Liberals’ 50 Years of Dreadful Domestic Policy
by Larry Elder

For the past 50 years, the Democrats — and many Republicans who should know better — have been wrong about virtually every major domestic policy issue. Let’s review some of them:

Taxes.

The bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts represents the latest triumph over the “soak the rich because trickledown doesn’t work” leftists.

President Ronald Reagan sharply reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, doubling the Treasury’s tax revenue. President George H.W. Bush raised the income tax rate, as did his successor. But President George W. Bush lowered them to the current 35 percent.

President Barack Obama repeatedly called the current rate unfair, harmful to the country and a reward to those who “didn’t need” the cuts and “didn’t ask for” them. If true, he and his party ditched their moral obligation to oppose the extension. But they didn’t, because none of it is true. Democratic icon John F. Kennedy, who reduced the top marginal rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent, said, “A rising tide lifts all the boats.” He was right — and most of the Democratic Party knows it.

Welfare for the “underclass.”

When President Lyndon Johnson launched his “War on Poverty,” the poverty rate was trending down. When he offered money and benefits to unmarried women, the rate started flat-lining. Women married the government, allowing men to abandon their moral and financial responsibilities.

The percentage of children born outside of marriage — to young, disproportionately uneducated and disproportionately brown and black women — exploded. In 1996, over the objections of many on the left, welfare was reformed. Time limits were imposed, and women no longer received additional benefits if they had more children. The welfare rolls declined. Ten years later, The New York Times wrote: “When the 1996 law was passed … liberal advocacy groups … predicted that it would increase child poverty, hunger and homelessness. The predictions were not fulfilled.”

Education.

The federal government’s increasing involvement with education — what is properly a state and local function — has been costly and ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Title I, a program begun 45 years ago to close the performance gap between urban and suburban schools, burns through more than $15 billion a year, and the performance gap has widened. The feds spend $80 billion a year on K-12 education, as if money is the answer. States like Utah and Iowa spend much less money per student compared with districts like those in New York City and Washington, D.C., with much better results.

Where parents have choices — where the money follows the student rather than the other way around — the students perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. But the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party continue to resist true competition among public, private and parochial schools.

Gun control.

Violent crime occurs disproportionately in urban areas — where Democrats in charge impose the most draconian gun control laws.

Over the objection of those who warn of a “return to the Wild West,” 34 states passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. Not one state has repealed its law. Professor John Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime,” says: “There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate: As more people obtain permits, there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent and robberies by over 2 percent.”

“Affirmative action.”

Race-based preferences have been a disaster for college admissions. Students admitted with lesser credentials are more likely to drop out. Had their credentials matched their schools, they would have been far more likely to graduate and thus enter the job market at a more productive level.

Preferences in government hiring and contracting have led to widespread, costly and morale-draining “reverse discrimination” lawsuits. Where preferences have been put to the ballot, voters — even in liberal states like California — have voted against them.

Minimum wage hikes.

Almost all economists agree that minimum wage laws contribute to unemployment among the low-skilled — the very group the “compassionate party” claims to care about.

Economist Walter Williams, 74, in his new autobiography, “Up from the Projects,” describes the many low-skilled jobs he took as a teenager. “By today’s standards,” he wrote, “my youthful employment opportunities might be seen as extraordinary. That was not the case in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, as I’ve reported in some of my research, teenage unemployment among blacks was slightly lower than among whites, and black teens were more active in the labor force as well. All of my classmates, friends, and acquaintances who wanted to work found jobs of one sort or another.”

ObamaCare.

This ghastly government-directed scheme will inevitably lead to rationing and lower-quality care — all without “bending the cost curve” down as Obama promised.

Any party can have a bad half-century. Merry Christmas.

Bush Tax Cuts: From Bipartisan to Evil
by Larry Elder

A mere nine years ago, 12 Democratic senators voted for the current tax rates, as well as for a complete phaseout of the estate tax. Twelve! By contrast, ObamaCare and the $800 billion “stimulus” package secured votes from zero Republican senators and zero Republican senators, respectively. The media call them the “Bush tax cuts” or the “Bush-era tax cuts” — but never the “bipartisan” Bush-era tax cuts. Had President Barack Obama crossed The Aisle to attract 12 Republican Senate votes, the Commission to Chisel Obama’s Face on Mount Rushmore would be interviewing stonemasons.

When did lifting the top marginal income tax rate paid by the rich — currently at 35 percent — become a matter of morality, justice and decency?

To the agenda items supposedly of concern to “the little guy,” add another: maligning the rich as wicked, greedy and undeserving. Stick this on the left-wing list-of-grave-issues, along with global warming/climate change, cap and trade, union card check, “investing in green jobs of the future,” renewable biofuels, overturning “don’t ask, don’t tell,” gay marriage, the DREAM Act, suing Arizona for doing something about the problem of illegal aliens, and the First Lady’s war on fat kids.

The tax rate deal worked out between President Obama and the Republican leadership keeps — not lowers — the current income tax rates for two years. It exempts from taxes estates worth less than $5 million — after which a 35 percent tax kicks in. Horrors! Republicans didn’t even consider lower tax rates or pushing for a deal to dramatically lower spending. Ending, or at least suspending, ObamaCare wasn’t even an afterthought.

Obama, in exchange, gets extensions of unemployment compensation and a payroll tax “holiday” for employees. He also gets a slew of what he slickly calls “tax cuts” — tax credits, actually, or welfare money for those who pay nothing in federal income taxes.

And what of the “cost” of keeping the same rate for the rich? Before and immediately after the November GOP takeover of the House and pickups in the Senate, Obama railed about the alleged unaffordability of giving the rich a “$700 billion” tax break. But this is over 10 years. That comes out to $70 billion per year, or about 5 percent of the estimated $1.3 trillion annual deficit.

All this end-of-year tax-dealing has the left-left of the left acting like prisoners drumming their tin cups on the cafeteria tables and yelling, “Attica! Attica! Attica!”

“Odious,” read a New York Times editorial on the tax deal. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., joined those calling Obama the compromiser-in-chief: He went “from zero to compromise in 3.5 seconds.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said the deal makes Obama not only unelectable but un-nominatable. He pleaded with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to challenge Obama in 2012.

Self-described socialist and quasi-Democrat Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont took to the floor, where he spent 8 1/2 hours berating the deal. Sanders slammed greed, billionaires and income inequality. One of his greatest concerns was that of children who grow up poor. What does this have to do with a 35 percent income tax rate? In 8 1/2 hours Sanders said nothing about personal responsibility, choices or the degree to which government subsidizes harmful behavior. Not one word.

Child poverty is almost exclusively a function of young — late teens and 20s — mostly uneducated, disproportionately minority women having children out of wedlock, as well as the young, mostly uneducated, disproportionately minority men who impregnate them. To avoid poverty, as UCLA public policy professor James Q. Wilson explained, do three things: Graduate from high school; don’t have a child before the age of 20; and get married before having children.

Sanders’ soliloquy served as yet another teachable moment for Democrats’ most dependable constituents: black voters. Is the biggest issue facing “the black community” that of the rich getting richer or the widespread damage done by irresponsible breeding?

Rattled by the intraparty uprising, Obama trotted out former President Bill Clinton during a press session to remind his party how to tack toward the center when voters send leftists a message. Clinton effectively said: “If you don’t like this deal, wait ’til the GOP becomes the House majority next month. Then you’ll really be unhappy.” Clinton noted approvingly that conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, “a brilliant man,” thinks the GOP got hoodwinked. It wound up supporting another large wealth redistributionist “stimulus” — despite the pledge to the tea party-minded that it would not.

The whole Obama-to-Clinton handoff was freakish. Obama even left the room, allowing Clinton to fly solo and take questions for 30 minutes. Imagine what would have been said had President George H.W. Bush, during a time of political difficulty, pulled a pupil/teacher and brought out Ronald Reagan — and then dashed off. “Wimp.” “Not ready for prime time.” “Who’s your daddy?”

But Clinton got it right. This deal — or much of it — will survive. Obama is the political winner. What about the nation?

President Barack Obama: Job Killer
by Larry Elder

President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office in January 2009 during a severe economic downturn led by a meltdown in housing prices — and promptly made things worse.

By bailing out banks, insurance companies and auto firms — done to a lesser extent by the previous administration — Obama rewarded poor performers and punished their better-managed competitors. Prevented from pouncing on wounded rivals and thus increasing market share or buying the assets of the wounded at fire sale prices, Ford, for example, watched GM and Chrysler get a cash infusion from taxpayers. Despite GM’s recent “successful” public offering, taxpayers lost billions of dollars.

Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities passed a nearly trillion-dollar economic “stimulus” package and then proceeded to award fiscally irresponsible states with “stimulus” funds, helping postpone the day of reckoning when states must meet their budgets by reducing spending and cutting the size of government. Stimulus supposedly “saved or created” 3.5 million jobs, but it merely succeeded in transferring money from the pockets of producer taxpayers into the pockets of others.

Obama spends billions to “invest” in mythical “green jobs of the future.” Investing is the job of the private sector, which uses private funds to produce a product that addresses a need or desire. Success is determined by the willingness of the consumer to pay good money for said product. A bad bet means somebody loses his own money — a possibility that the private investor weighed before he chose to risk his capital.

But government “investments” are driven by politics, with decisions made by bureaucrats operating under rosy scenarios with romantic wish lists. When taxpayer money goes down a rathole — as is far more likely than with privately invested money — nobody gets fired, but the country is impoverished a little bit more.

ObamaCare puts 30 million Americans on the rolls of the medically insured. Since its passage, insurance companies — citing the cost of ObamaCare mandates, rules and regulations — jacked up their premiums and cut coverage. Over 100 waivers have been granted to companies and organizations that, but for these waivers, would have had to drop coverage, increase copays or reduce medical benefits. Nice to have friends in high places.

The AARP, a staunch proponent of ObamaCare, announced a reduction in benefits for its own employees, lest the tax kick in for so-called “Cadillac plans.” To “bend the cost curve,” ObamaCare promised cuts in Medicare reimbursement. So doctors are dropping their Medicare patients.

The administration signed into law new banking and financial regulations that keep intact the very government agencies that helped precipitate the housing meltdown — Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Under policies aimed at allowing everyone with a pulse and a dream to buy a home, these “government-sponsored entities” allowed the players in the housing market — banks, borrowers, investment banks and buyers of “exotic securities” — to play with taxpayer money.

The Obama administration’s various government efforts to “keep homeowners in their homes” are floundering, serving only to postpone the necessary market re-pricing of homes that are now worth less than they once were. Cash for Clunkers induced people who were going to buy cars anyway into making their purchases earlier. When the program ended, car buying slumped. The result was more taxpayer dollars removed from the hands of producers and put into the hands of recipients.

The administration, with some Republican support, increased the minimum wage and several times extended unemployment compensation — both well-intended policies, but job killers nonetheless.

Obama promised to raise taxes on the rich, who, under Bush, got tax cuts they “didn’t need” and “didn’t ask for.” So the rich sit on their money, not knowing whether they will be allowed to spend or save or invest it — or whether Washington has other ideas. Most Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and if not extended, rates will go up on income, capital gains, dividends and estates.

The recent Republican takeover of the House and loss of the Senate’s Democratic supermajority likely mean that the rates will be extended for all — including the dastardly, job-creating rich. But businesspeople cannot plan — and are thus reluctant to hire — until they know whether their taxes are going to increase.

Candidate Obama demagogued against trade agreements that “shipped jobs overseas,” and promised to tweak the Bush administration-negotiated treaty with South Korea. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the pact would create 250,000 jobs in America and it would open up exports to a NAFTA-sized market. But during his recent trip to Asia, Obama failed to get the South Koreans to go along with his changes aimed at benefiting the American auto and beef industries. The South Koreans said no, insisting that they had a deal and that if the U.S. won’t do business with them, other countries will.

For two years, Obama has practiced Obamalism: Spread the wealth; redistribute income; punish success; reward ineptitude; and encourage the victicrat-entitlement mentality by making the lack of health insurance the responsibility of others.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tea Party: Why the Left Doesn’t Get It
by Larry Elder

“Hello, fellow racists.”

That’s how I greeted the gathering at the Tax Day Tea Party rally in Sacramento, Calif. Several people dropped their hoods and sheets in laughter. After a thorough search, I can report that I detected no secret handshake, security guards or minority-sniffing German shepherds to alert blacks that our presence was unwanted.

An MSNBC reporter at another Tea Party rally actually asked a black man whether he “felt uncomfortable.” “No,” he laughed. “No, these are my people — Americans.” The man appeared far too polite to ask, “You ever felt uncomfortable working for MSNBC?” I once appeared on a television show where a black pundit accused former President Ronald Reagan of racism. When I asked for proof, he said that Reagan “was uncomfortable around black people.” I replied, “I’m uncomfortable around you. What does that make me?” So in the black tea partier’s case, his presumed discomfort around whites made them racist. In Reagan’s case, his presumed discomfort around blacks made him one. It does get confusing.

A more serious criticism of the Tea Party movement goes like this: When George W. Bush and the Republicans controlled the House, Senate and Oval Office, where were the complaints about spending?

One TP critic put it this way: “During these Tea Party protests conservatives are showing why the word ‘hypocrite’ should be part of the dictionary definition of conservative. They said nothing and did nothing while Bush and the Republican Congress were getting the country into deeper and deeper trouble. The conservatives who organize the Tea Party protests sat on their hands and did nothing. They did nothing when the balanced budget was destroyed, nothing when Bush exploded the deficit, nothing when Bush cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for the war he started.”

As to Bush’s non-defense, non-homeland security domestic spending, people did complain — lots of them and frequently. Why isn’t this more widely recognized? When a conservative criticizes Rush Limbaugh, that’s news. The left hates Limbaugh. When a conservative criticizes Bush’s spending, that’s not news. The left loves domestic spending. For liberals, Bush’s No Child Left Behind program “wasn’t fully funded.” The prescription bill for seniors contained a “doughnut hole,” which made it insufficiently generous.

Conservatives, pundits and talk show hosts routinely blasted Bush for domestic spending. In 2003, after the passage of the Medicare prescription bill, a member of The Heritage Foundation said, “The president isn’t showing leadership, and conservatives are angry.” Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said, “The conservative, free-market base in America is rightly in revolt over this bill.”

In 2003, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., made a bizarre accusation, condemning Bush for “undoing the New Deal.” That December, I wrote: “Does she not see the steam blasting from the ears of principled conservatives flatly astonished by President George W. Bush’s and his Republican colleagues’ willingness to spend, spend and spend? During Bush’s term in office, excluding defense and homeland security, non-war government expenditures increased at a rate faster than under former President Bill Clinton. By this time in his term, Reagan vetoed over 20 bills, Bush none.”

So if people were unhappy with Bush’s spending, then why are folks only now assembling, carrying signs and holding rallies in opposition to bigger government?

Fair question. Better late than never. More importantly, things are much, much worse. Government bailouts, “stimulus,” ObamaCare, etc., now push the nation’s deficit to record non-World War II levels and debt to an all-time high.

Bush-bashing left-wing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman inadvertently explained why today things are different. In March 2006, he wrote about Bush’s (nonexistent?) conservative critics who were “rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Bush.” But he pointed out that a lot of Bush’s increased domestic spending came from entitlements on automatic pilot. He accused Bush’s critics of creating a “false impression” that Bush was a “big spender”: “The great bulk of this increase was accounted for by increased spending on defense and homeland security, including the costs of the Iraq war, and by rising health care costs.” In other words, as to increased domestic spending, Krugman argued that Bush wasn’t as bad as his conservative critics claimed.

Bush, the so-called fiscal conservative, irresponsibly increased domestic spending, including the decidedly non-fiscally conservative prescription benefits bill. But under Obama, the Democrats and some unprincipled Republicans, Americans now bear dramatically increased, brand-new domestic spending. With ObamaCare, taxpayers now support 30 million people who are guaranteed health insurance. Taxes must go up, and the middle class is not spared. Economics adviser Paul Volcker, along with others, even floats the idea of a European-style value-added consumption tax — on top of the current taxes.

Tea Party supporters, at least many of them, did complain about the size of government pre-Obama. Now things have changed — for the worse. Government is larger than ever — with no sign of abating unless and until this administration is stopped.

As Vice President Joe Biden so eloquently put it, “This is a big f—ing deal.”

Bayh’s Good-Bye: Here’s the Real Reason
by Larry Elder

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “shocked” President Barack Obama and his party by announcing his plan to retire from the Senate. Appearing on CBS’ “The Early Show,” Bayh explained: Washington suffers from acute partisanship. Washington doesn’t work. It is broken.

How noble — a principled position against “divisiveness.” Let us honor a good man standing tall against the lack of “bipartisanship.” Pass the barf bag.

When has Washington, D.C., not been “divisive” under a president pushing unpopular ideas — whether the war in Iraq, the Senate “amnesty” bill, partial privatization of Social Security or Bill Clinton’s attempt to allow gays to serve openly in the military?

Could it be that the “fed-up” senator feared losing re-election? Don’t ask. CBS didn’t. The possibility that Bayh faced a tough re-election wasn’t even hinted at. But imagine Bayh, who explored a 2008 presidential bid, running for re-election while justifying to skeptical Hoosiers his votes for “stimulus,” TARP, the auto bailouts and ObamaCare.

Here’s the big underreported story.

In a hypothetical race against undeclared candidate Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. — according to a recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters — Bayh was down 3 points. Against another possible opponent, former House Republican John Hostettler, he was only ahead by 3 points. Welcome to the new normal. No Democrat or squishy Republican is safe.

By a 2-1 margin, more people call themselves politically conservative than liberal. Self-identified “independents,” who outnumber both the Dems and the Republicans, have turned against Obama with a vengeance. This center-right country now realizes it elected a left-winger for president. And voters don’t like what they see or what he’s doing.

Even Bayh, perhaps inadvertently, let on that he believes the “stimulus” failed to stimulate. “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business,” he said, “that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

Politicians face voters upset with spending, borrowing and an ever-increasing federal government. The Constitution’s framers wanted “gridlock,” with laws deliberated at length before vote and implementation. Government was never designed for “change” or to “solve problems” — if this means bigger government. Our government was designed to be limited.

Democrat Martha Coakley, just two months before the Massachusetts special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, was ahead by 20 points. She lost. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in deep trouble in Nevada. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is retiring, as is Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. In California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer leads her possible Republican opponent by only 4 or 5 points. In New York, former Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Democratic replacement faces stiff opposition. Obama’s Illinois seat is up for grabs.

Florida’s Republican governor/Senate candidate, Charlie Crist, who hugged Obama and supported the bailouts and the “stimulus,” is down in the polls against a more conservative Republican. Even Sen. John McCain, 2008’s GOP presidential candidate, faces vigorous opposition in his primary against a self-described “consistent” conservative.

In Bayh’s case, how embarrassing would it be to outspend your opponent … and lose? Makes it tough for donors to kick in for a presidential run. Why take the chance?

If he bows out now, with the traditional media helpfully painting him as a lock for re-election, Bayh can go around the country unshackled. He can make news on his terms — staying visible without having to show up somewhere, vote and create a record that requires defending. To keep up his profile and broaden his base, he could shoot for a gig on Fox. Fox News chief Roger Ailes has probably already sat him down for schnapps.

If Obama’s popularity continues to erode, Bayh won’t be quite as tethered to him. If he stays in the Senate and votes with Obama — as he has so far — how can he criticize? He becomes “part of the problem.” If he votes against Obama, he invites the wrath of his party’s liberal base (a redundancy). Retired, he can criticize and distance himself from unpopular policies.

For now, things look grim. Despite some positive signs, most people feel the economy remains in the tank. Home foreclosures figure to rise, with commercial real estate not far behind. Soon the Bush tax cuts expire, resulting in tax hikes during a weak economy. The spending and borrowing will eventually spark high inflation. The debt and deficit get bigger.

If Obama loses in 2012, Bayh becomes better-positioned for a presidential bid. He can say, “I would have done this or that differently.” So he pulled the rip cord. Got out on top. He can cool his heels, make some jack and get set for the 2016 campaign — tanned, rested and ready.

Better to bow out like Rocky Marciano than Muhammad Ali.

Krugman: Bush’s Deficit Bad, Obama’s Deficit Good
by Larry Elder

Left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hates deficits in tough economic times — when the president of the United States is named George W. Bush.

Krugman, in a November 2004 interview, criticized the “enormous” Bush deficit. “We have a world-class budget deficit,” he said, “not just as in absolute terms, of course — it’s the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world — but it’s a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there.”

The numbers? The deficit in fiscal year 2004 — $413 billion, 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.

Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit “comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country. … The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10 percent.” Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and “we’re running at a deficit of more than 6 percent of GDP, and that is unprecedented.”

He considered the Bush tax cuts irresponsible and a major contributor — along with two wars — to the deficit. But he also warned of the growing cost of autopilot entitlements: “We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits. … If there isn’t a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before (the next decade), then I think the financial markets are going to say, ‘Well, gee, where is this going?’”

Three months earlier, Krugman said, “Here we are more than 2 1/2 years after the official end of the recession, and we’re still well below, of course, pre-Bush employment.” In October 2004, unemployment was 5.5 percent and continued to slowly decline. At the time, Krugman described the economy as “weak,” with “job creation … essentially nonexistent.”

How bad will it get? If we don’t get our “financial house in order,” he said, “I think we’re looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future.”

Fast-forward to 2010.

The numbers: projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 — over $1.5 trillion, more than 10 percent of GDP.

This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration’s optimistic projections of the economic growth fall short, things will get much worse. So what does Krugman say now?

We must guard against “deficit hysteria.” In “Fiscal Scare Tactics,” his recent column, Krugman writes: “These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.”

He continues, “And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.” Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today’s deficit.

Questions: Didn’t Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit “enormous”? Wouldn’t he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10 percent of GDP mega-normous? Didn’t he describe the economy with 5.5 percent unemployment as “weak”? Isn’t the current economy, at 9.7 percent unemployment, even weaker? If the 2004 deficit was “comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country,” wouldn’t today’s much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: “The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.” The deficit “should be bigger”?!

Long term, Krugman says, we’ve got concerns about revenue and spending. But as for now? “There’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade.” In 2004, Krugman warned that without a “clear path towards fiscal sanity” before “the next decade,” we faced a “crunch.” Presumably, we now have this “clear path.”

Let’s review. In 2004, an unhappy Krugman criticized Bush’s “weak” economy and “miserable” job creation. Running an “enormous” deficit was a bad thing. Times were awful — “by a large margin” the worst job crash and performance since Herbert Hoover. Today the deficit is four times as large in an even weaker economy with much higher unemployment. Times are awful. Now, though, the deficit is a good thing and should be even bigger.

Krugman’s flip-flop on the deficit demonstrates a modern economic equation. Hatred of Bush + love for Obama = intellectual dishonesty.

ObamaCare: Freedom on Life Support
by Larry Elder

Ignore, for the moment, the ludicrous claim that giving 30 million Americans health insurance actually lowers the cost of health care. What happened to freedom, to the opposition to an intrusive federal government?

Ask a liberal what he most dislikes about the “right”? “I resent the attempt to tell me how to live my life,” he’ll say. He’ll mention abortion and say that the decision belongs to a woman and her doctor. He’ll mention same-sex marriage and say that government should not prevent two people of the same sex from marrying, especially if one objects based upon religious grounds. He’ll argue that a Supreme Court “stacked” with right-wingers threatens his liberty.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gives liberals hot flashes. He is religious. He calls the Constitution a “contract,” not a “living, breathing” document on which one can discover or project nonexistent rights. He is a “strict constructionist,” or an “originalist,” who believes that the literal words in the Constitution have meaning. He thinks his job is to figure out what the original Framers meant, not what he would like them to have meant.

Ask a liberal how Scalia and those who share his “conservative” philosophy think the Supreme Court should decide issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and doctor-assisted suicide? He’ll say, “Scalia would impose his religiously based worldview on society — anti-same-sex marriage and anti-abortion — because the federal government should always preserve life.”

No, Scalia would not. In fact, Scalia has publicly said these issues are none of the Court’s business. He’s said that however he feels personally about these contentious matters, the Constitution gives the Court neither the authority nor the expertise to decide them — and such matters are ideally left to the states.

This brings us to ObamaCare.

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?

Recall the anger at former President George W. Bush, who, to fight the war on terror, “trashed” and “shredded” the Constitution. The same people who railed against the Patriot Act, the terror surveillance program and “illegal” torture happily unleash the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth for ObamaCare, a socially desirable objective. Never mind the absence of authority in the Constitution.

The left tells us that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Surely the Constitution says so. No, it does not. Article I, Section 8 details the limited power, duties and responsibilities of the federal government. Extracting money from your paycheck and giving it back to you when you retire — Social Security? Not there. Taxing workers to pay for the health care of seniors — Medicare? Not there. Mandating that employers pay workers a minimum wage? Not there.

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. This infuriated FDR. He threatened to expand the number of Court justices, adding jurists who saw the Constitution the way he did until he got the kind of decisions he wanted. Intimidated, the Court blinked. Actions by the federal government that the Court once had deemed illegal suddenly became permissible.

A liberal once asked me: “What should society do about the poor? Is your attitude ‘just (expletive) them’?” I said: “Allow me to rephrase your question. Because of someone’s plight, is he entitled to money from you?” “No,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.” Yes, a moral, compassionate society cares for those who cannot care for themselves. This is, however, an entirely different matter from using the power of government to take from someone who has, to give to someone who doesn’t. The Constitution does not provide that authority. Nor has it been amended to do so.

What about the poor? Through economic freedom and competition, we make goods and services cheaper, better and more accessible. Health care is less affordable because of well-intentioned rules and regulations. When government officials go beyond passing laws to protect us against force or fraud, they raise costs and hurt the poor.

Finally, what of charity? Americans are the most generous people on earth. The religious and those who believe in limited government are the most generous of all. By design, the federal government plays a limited role. The rest is up to us. Our country was founded in opposition to tyranny by government.

Today we submit to it.

An Olympics We Can Believe In
by Larry Elder

Close your eyes, and pretend it’s still the George W. Bush administration.

In Afghanistan, more American service members died in August than in any month since the war began. His top military commander says that without more troops, we run the risk of losing the war. Iran admits operating a second previously undisclosed nuclear facility. Unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, with consumer confidence lower last month after a brief uptick. An important domestic initiative — one he campaigned on — faces a likely make-or-break month in Congress.

What does the President do? He flies to Copenhagen to personally lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the Olympics to Crawford, Texas.

During Hurricane Katrina, critics accused President Bush of showing insufficient concern. CNN’s Bush-hater-in-chief, Jack Cafferty, lit into him. Insensitivity! Lack of empathy! Poor sense of priorities! When the Iraq War started going badly, critics pounced on Bush for allegedly “failing to listen to his generals” about the troop strength necessary to secure that country.

Fast-forward. Americans elected Barack Obama, an “elegant and eloquent” liberal president. And my, how things change.

Iran’s second — now acknowledged — nuclear facility appears to have but one purpose: to make a bomb. For good measure, over the weekend, Iran test-fired medium-range missiles with the distance to reach Israel.

Obama, during the campaign, called a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable.” The President now demands that Iran come clean, or else. Or else … what? Face “stiff sanctions.” Never mind that our country’s sanctions against Iran have been in place for 30 years. Ratcheting them up to include, say, energy embargoes requires the approval of U.N. Security Council members China and Russia. Who do you think assists Iran in the construction of its nuclear program? China and Russia.

The President, in August, called Afghanistan a “war of necessity.” Obama’s chosen top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wrote — in a report requested by the White House — that the conflict “will likely result in failure” without an increase in troop strength within the year. Obama sat on the report for a month, after which it was leaked to The Washington Post. He told the general to scrub the additional troop request because he now wants to reassess the entire mission.

Let’s revisit.

After we helped expel the former Soviet Union from Afghanistan, we left. Afghanistan became a haven for terrorists, who were protected, sponsored and encouraged by its government. From there, al-Qaida conceived and directed 9/11, an attack against America that resulted in the loss of 3,000 lives. We attacked Afghanistan and toppled its Taliban government. After that country approved a constitution and established a government, we promised to remain until it could defend itself and serve as an ally in the war on terror.

A failure in Afghanistan would allow a safe haven for more attacks and would threaten to destabilize next-door Pakistan, a country that possesses nuclear weapons.

Our enemy seeks to impose theocratic governments in the Middle East and the Arab world. Then it seeks to subjugate (SET ITAL) all (END ITAL) non-Muslim peoples. In July 2007, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, outlined the terror group’s objectives. There is a near-term plan to globally target “Crusader” (U.S., NATO, etc.) and Jewish interests. The long-term plan has two parts: overthrowing “corrupt” non-Islamic governments and “hurrying to the fields of jihad like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, for jihad preparation and training. Thus, it is a must to hurry to the fields of jihad for two reasons: The first is to defeat the enemies of (Islam) and repel the Zionist Crusade, and the second is for jihadi preparation and training to prepare for the next stage of the jihad.” He failed to define “the next stage.”

Obama, despite previous statements to the contrary, apparently considers a nuclear-armed Iran preferable to U.S. military action. And now that the majority of Democrats want out of Afghanistan, the “war of necessity” no longer seems necessary.

The picture now comes into sharp focus. Americans voted for president a man who thinks that government creates wealth; that “greed” caused the current economic crisis; that taxpayers should provide health insurance for those who don’t have it; that a government-induced housing and financial crisis can only be addressed by more government; that government can more efficiently and profitably run businesses than can the private sector; that “global warming” requires the imposition of job-killing and price-hiking action against emitters; and that government should “spread the wealth” by taking from those who have “too much” and giving to those who have “too little.”

National security is, as always, job one. We are at war against Islamofascists. To accomplish their ends, they seek chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This is a conflict that, not unlike the Cold War, will likely take decades.

For now, though, President Obama intends to fly to Copenhagen to personally lobby to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Iran and Afghanistan can wait.

‘45 Million Americans’ — Who Are Those Guys?
by Larry Elder

About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance. Or do they?

A pro-”universal health care” television host recently cited this widely accepted “fact.” The number is bogus.

Here’s the skinny.

Start with the math. We have 300 million Americans. Subtract the 45 million — 15 percent of us — with no health insurance. That leaves 255 million Americans, or 85 percent, with it.

And the insurance is lousy, right? Not according to a 2006 ABC News/Kaiser Family Foundation/USA Today survey. It found that 89 percent of Americans were satisfied with the quality of their own health care.

Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone. With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation video of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings.

These Gen Xers copped to dropping money on clothes, booze, nightlife, the latest tech gizmos and other things of interest to them. With a change in priorities, these young folks — far more representative of those without insurance than the forlorn husband and wife sitting on a porch swing — could both afford and qualify for health insurance. They simply consider it a low priority.

Millions more can access health care — through SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), Medicaid or other government programs. But for whatever reason, 11 million people simply refuse to take advantage of them.

Several million other Americans who want insurance do, indeed, go without it — for a time. Many are, however, between jobs, and most — at some point — will find employment that either offers health insurance or pays enough so that they can buy it. Millions more work at companies that offer health insurance, and for a few dollars out of every paycheck, they could add family members. They choose not to.

What about criminals without insurance? More than 2 million Americans — with access to health care, by the way — use jail, prison or penitentiary mailing addresses. And for every one behind bars, how many live among us who survive by theft, drug dealing, prostitution or some similar career path? Taxpayer health insurance for them, too?

So now we’re down to the Americans without health insurance on a persistent, long-term basis. This is approximately 10-15 million, a big number to be sure. But does this warrant a government takeover of the entire health care system?

Lacking health care insurance is not the same as lacking health care . By law, most emergency rooms must provide health care — to both legals and illegals. Yes, they stand in line, but no health insurance does not equal no health care.

Government (aka taxpayers) already pays half of our health care dollar, with programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and other federal and state plans. The stated goals are accessibility and affordability. Congress passed Medicare in 1965. In the 20 years before the program’s inception, the cost of a day in a hospital increased threefold. In the 20 years following Medicare, a day in a hospital increased eightfold — substantially higher than inflation over that period. Because of cost controls on government plans, providers increased the cost on everybody else.

So here’s the question.

Do we allow a complete government takeover of the section of health care it doesn’t already run, for 10-15 million or so without health insurance on a persistent basis? Again, 255 million Americans already have it. Many millions more could get it if they wanted to. And 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with the care they now receive.

What to do? Unleash the free market. Allow greater competition among health care providers. Decrease costly regulations that increase the price tag. Enable consumers to purchase insurance plans across state lines. Allow non-government-licensed paraprofessionals and others — currently prevented by law from offering any medical services — to provide low-cost care.

What about poor care and negligence? We have laws against force and fraud, as well as a common-law duty of care. That’s why God created lawyers. (Just give us “loser pays.”)

What about those who cannot afford it? What about those with pre-existing illnesses whose insurance applications carriers turned down? What’s wrong with charity — people helping people? America remains the most generous nation on the face of the earth. We donate more of our time and money than countries like England, Germany and Japan. During the Great Depression, before the New Deal, charitable giving skyrocketed. After the New Deal, charitable giving continued, but not at nearly the same rate. People expected government to address the problem, and taxpayers felt they gave at the office.

We can provide such “universal” coverage at a “low cost” — through rationing. That means long lines, lower quality and less innovation for services that Americans currently take for granted.

Economists call it T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

President Obama: Neo-Marxist
by Larry Elder

The topic: “The Future of Capitalism.”

Time magazine, to discuss this, assembled a “stellar cast.” One such “honoree” works as a Public Broadcasting Service/National Public Radio host. The tax dollars produced by the capitalism he criticizes help pay his salary. (The irony was apparently lost.) At least other “business roundtable” panelists — commentator/publisher/author Arianna Huffington and singer John Legend — make their money the old-fashioned way, by enticing consumers to buy what they sell.

“I don’t think that left to its own devices,” the taxpayer-supported broadcaster/pundit said, “capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody’s got to look over the shoulder of that child.” Good grief.

Every dollar spent by government is one less dollar spent by taxpayers. Money comes from somewhere — taxes, borrowing (taxes on layaway) or printing, which, if not offset by productivity, causes inflation, a stealth tax on everyone. Who can spend, save or invest more efficiently and humanely, you or some tenured bureaucrat in D.C. who’s never run so much as a hot dog stand or lent himself out as a United Way volunteer?

Private enterprise is the most proficient job- and wealth-creating “system” ever designed. But many, if not most, Americans think only government can and should build and run “infrastructure” and that government “investment” creates jobs of which the private sector is incapable of creating. Really?

People point to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s construction of the interstate highway system. It is, they say, an example of both an appropriate and productive federal government expenditure and an obviously legal role of the federal government necessary to spark economic growth.

In the early 1900s, a businessman, Carl Fisher, owned the Prest-O-Lite headlight company. He organized an association to finance coast-to-coast paved roads so that motorists could drive both day and night, ideally using his headlights. The association soon disbanded, when Congress passed the Federal Road Aid Act of 1916. What would have happened had government not built an interstate highway system? A consortium of truckers/gas stations/hotels/motels/roadside restaurants would likely have built one with their own money in order to make more money. They would have charged tolls for maintenance. Motorists actually using the roads would bear their costs.

Private business built the first leg of the New York subway system. And it made money — at least before local government used taxpayer money to build competing systems and undercut the fare charged by the private operator. Tax dollars hid the true cost, allowing the city-owned service to charge less. Ultimately, the private operators sold out to the city.

Did Eisenhower have the constitutional authority to build the interstate highway system? Yes, but not to improve economic development — and he knew it. In fact, the official name of the interstate highways is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Ike argued that the country needed paved highways to move missiles around to protect the country. From a military standpoint, the argument was dubious. Missiles could be launched from fixed positions, as technology continually increased range, speed, accuracy and power.

The Founding Fathers identified a handful of allowable federal duties, not least of which is national security. But what about economic development? President James Monroe cast his only veto when Congress appropriated money to expand the Cumberland Road — even though the road went through and would have helped his home state of Virginia. The Constitution, said Monroe, prohibits spending money for this purpose.

Rather than expanding “entitlements,” they must be dealt with — and eventually ended. What about selling land (the fed is by far the largest landholder) and using the proceeds to pay for current and near-term obligations to Social Security and Medicare — with a view toward complete eventual privatization? What about private charity instead of Medicaid? What about a free market approach to making health care more accessible and affordable? This means IRA-type accounts; cutting health care insurance regulation; allowing nonlicensed practitioners to perform tasks now done only by government-licensed doctors and other medical practitioners — which shuts out competition and keeps prices high; allowing health care plans to be purchased out of state; allowing individuals to deduct their health care premiums as businesses do now; and adopting an English-style “loser-pays” legal system, which would likely minimize the incentive for doctors to practice expensive “defensive” medicine.

Even if all of this makes sense, the toothpaste is out of the tube, right? So let’s just try to stop things from getting worse. Unraveling the welfare state can be done. Indiana, for example, just leased one of its highways to a private consortium that charges tolls for maintenance and profit.

Obama’s anti-capitalist, Big Government, command-and-control economic vision exceeds mere “childishness.” It is dangerous. After 100-plus days, the jury reached its verdict.

Obama is a neo-Marxist.

The 100-Day Assault on America
by Larry Elder

Has it really been 100 days?

Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism.

Obama — to use one of his favorite expressions — doubled down, no, tripled and quadrupled down on Bush’s “stimulus” and “rescue” packages, spending trillions of dollars to “bail out” financial institutions, too-big-to-fail businesses, and even deficit-running states. Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue “responsible homeowners” — whatever that means — from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses.

Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on “creating or saving” — whatever that means — 4 million, 3.5 million or 2.5 million jobs. Pick a number. Given the government’s vast business expertise, Obama proposes spending gobs of money to “invest” in green jobs. And he’s just warming up. He wants taxpayers to guarantee, presumably to all who request it, a “world-class education” — whatever that means.

Firmly in charge of much of the domestic car industry, Obama effectively fired the CEO of General Motors. He threatens to fire still more executives in the parts of the financial services industry currently under the management, direction or control of Uncle Sam — that eminent, well-regarded banker.

Obama blames the financial crisis on “greed” and the “lack of regulatory oversight.” Funny thing about greed. Celebrated investor-turned-Obama-supporter/adviser Warren Buffett says, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” Apparently, some practice good greed, while others engage in greedy greed.

As for regulation, the SEC already heavily regulates most of the troubled financial institutions. The world’s largest insurer, AIG, operated under heavy regulation. The government-sponsored entities Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — blamed for irresponsibly buying, packaging and selling bad mortgages — are regulated by a government agency, called the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Its sole responsibility is to oversee those two agencies. OFHEO, shortly before the government takeover of Freddie and Fannie, gave them two thumbs up.

Did the President, after campaigning against pork and earmarks, really sign bills that include both? Yes. Will the President’s new budget really triple and quadruple the annual deficit? Yes. Will the President’s budget really double the national debt within a few years and then increase still more beyond that? Yes. Do the President and members of Congress, many of whom never operated so much as a T-shirt concession booth, really believe that they can “modernize” health care, thus “saving” taxpayers buckets of money? Yes.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone’s going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism — or, at least, we used to.

Today’s global downturn reflects too much borrowing and too much lending. But would borrowers and lenders — at least in America — have engaged in the same kind of behavior but for artificially low interest rates under the Federal Reserve System? Would borrowers and lenders have acted as precipitously but for the existence of Fannie and Freddie, which bought up their mortgages? Would banks have so readily lent money to those who clearly could not repay it but for the Community Reinvestment Act? That law pressured banks into relaxing their normal lending standards to help low-income borrowers.

Now let’s turn to Job No. 1 — national security. We no longer call the War on Terror the “War on Terror.” We no longer call Islamofascist enemy detainees “enemy detainees.” The President embarked on an I’m-not-Bush and we’re-sorry-for-being-arrogant international tour. To the receptive, admiring G-20 nations, the President flogged America, calling us domineering and overbearing. What did the swooning leaders give in return? Virtually nothing. He wanted more assistance in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The NATO members offered more advisers and trainers, all, mind you, out of harm’s way and only on a temporary basis.

The President offered a new relationship with Iran, provided Iranians “unclenched their fist.” The President even sent a shout-out video to the Iranians on one of their holidays. What did he get in return? Iran promised to continue its march toward the development of a nuclear weapon and called Israel the “most cruel and racist regime.”

Obama offered North Korea a kinder, gentler foreign policy. What did he get in return? The North Koreans, in violation of a United Nations resolution, attempted to launch a long-range missile. The President condemned the act. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session. What happened? Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. North Korea kicked out the U.N.’s nuclear inspectors and announced the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. And North Korea, along with Iran, arrested and imprisoned American journalists.

On the other hand, Washingtonian magazine graced us with a spiffy, Photoshopped cover of a fit and toned swimsuit-wearing President Obama. So all is not lost.

At least he looks good.

Tea Parties: “Calling All Racists!”
by Larry Elder

Did you know that only racists turned out for the recent nationwide “tea parties”?!

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about,” actress/comedian Janeane Garofalo said on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. “It’s not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks.”

Oh.

A few days after Garofalo’s analysis of why many Americans took to the streets in protest of the Obama administration’s borrowing, spending and upcoming tax hikes, I sat in the chair at my barber’s shop. A black customer came in, sat down and asked me whether I watched the coverage on the tea parties.

“Some,” I said.

“Well,” he responded, “it looked like a Klan meeting.”

“Excuse me?”

“I looked at my television,” he said. “I saw a bunch of white folks. It looked like a Klan meeting.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“No, it was nothing but white people. Looked like a Klan meeting.”

“Really? I sometimes go to West Angeles (a large inner-city church with a predominately black congregation). Suppose a white guy walked into a Sunday service there and said, ‘Looks like a bunch of Bloods and Crips to me.’”

“That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? A bunch of people — some blacks included — came together in protest over this bailout stuff. But because most of them were white, you compared it to the Klan. News flash, my friend — not all white folks belong to the Klan.”

“OK, maybe you got a point.”

“Maybe?” I asked. “What would you say if white people said that given President Barack Obama’s 20-year relationship with his whack-job pastor, Obama is the one who’s racist?”

“What? Are you calling Obama racist?”

“No, I said one could make a stronger argument about that than your argument about the ‘racist’ tea parties.”

“But Obama’s a really smart guy. He didn’t know about those things Rev. Wright said.”

“Oh, no? When Obama announced his candidacy for president in Springfield, Ill., Rev. Wright was supposed to deliver the invocation. At the last moment, Obama called Wright and canceled him. But Obama didn’t know that his pastor was controversial?”

No response.

“And after the cancellation, Wright said something to the effect of, ‘Well, once people find out what I’ve done, the Jews could cause Obama some problems.’”

“That still doesn’t mean Obama knew about the reverend’s views.”

“Did you read Obama’s book? The first one?”

“No.”

“Obama wrote about attending the sermon where Wright talks about the ‘audacity of hope.’ The reverend talked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities America bombed to end World War II. My dad, a Marine, was stationed on the island of Guam when we assumed Japan would have to be invaded. Instead, we ended the war by dropping those bombs — saving probably a million Japanese and American lives. Wright compared this to what happened in South Africa in 1960 in a place called Sharpeville. Do you know about Sharpeville?”

“No.”

“Over 250 innocent black men, women and children were killed or wounded when the apartheid government opened fire on unarmed protestors — a lot of them shot in the back. Now, Obama attended that sermon and had no problem with Wright comparing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Sharpeville. Outrageous! And Obama used ‘The Audacity of Hope’ as the title of his second book and as a slogan when he ran for president. You want it both ways. Obama is so bright, but he was clueless about the stupid ideas of his pastor.”

“Well, he isn’t responsible for what his reverend says or believes.”

“Never said he was. We’re talking about whether Obama knew that Wright thought 9/11 was about the ‘chickens coming home to roost’ and that Wright implied that government was behind the drug epidemic by supplying the drugs.”

Again, nothing.

“Suppose John McCain attended a church whose pastor — a man he referred to as his spiritual adviser — made racist comments about blacks and other people. The press would have been all over it, and McCain wouldn’t have gotten his party’s nomination. And if it came out too late for that, he would have been slaughtered in the election.”

“You know,” he conceded, “I guess when you like somebody, you tend to make excuses for them.”

“That’s what I’m saying. One more point. Nobody, by the way, stopped you, as a black man, from going to one of those tea parties. You didn’t have to flash a secret sign. There was no registration fee. Nobody posted guards, stopping people at the gate. You try walking into a Klan meeting.”

He laughed. As I got up to leave, we shook hands.

“One small step for man,” I told him. “One giant leap for mankind.”

“You take care,” he said.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Political Courage – British Style
by Larry Elder

The Republicans finally found a leader. Too bad he’s a Brit.

Daniel Hannan, who represents South East England in the European Parliament, stood up in that chamber and forcefully addressed Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“Prime Minister,” MEP Hannan said, “I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidized, where you have not nationalized outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words. Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G-20 country.

“The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around 20,000 pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging — in other words, to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the waterline under the accumulated weight of your debt. We are now running a deficit that touches 10 percent of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure — more than Pakistan, more than Hungary, countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologizing; like everyone else, I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, willfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. … In the last 12 months, 100,000 private-sector jobs have been lost, and yet you created 30,000 public-sector jobs.

“Prime Minister, you cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm,’ I have to tell you (that) you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know and we know — and you know that we know — that it’s nonsense!”

The British prime minister’s “solutions” resemble those of President Barack Obama, the Democrats and some Republicans — solving a spending and borrowing crisis by spending and borrowing. Yet Obama brazenly calls his budget “A New Era of Responsibility.”

Obama believes that merely raising taxes on the so-called rich will be sufficient to fund all of his programs. He believes that the behavior of the so-called rich will be unaffected by the fact that they will keep a lot less than what they make. He believes that the same government of unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare — the same government that runs the now-broke post office and “managed” disaster relief after Katrina — can “create” and “invest” in health care, “green” jobs and education. He does not pay the slightest attention to the founding principles of this country — a limited government and a maximum of responsibility by its citizens.

On a recent cable newscast, a pundit actually said that “capitalism” no longer works. And he was a former top aide to then-Republican House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich! The future of this country, at least in my lifetime, has never seemed more frightening and uncertain.

While President Obama busies himself changing the very foundation that made America great, he might sign an executive order — granting immediate citizenship to Daniel Hannan.

A Front-Page Story: President McCain’s First 50 Days
by Larry Elder

Suppose Sen. John McCain, rather than Sen. Barack Obama, won the presidency but made the same decisions and pursued the same goals to turn around the economy.

The following is a hypothetical front-page story:

After more than 50 days in office, the new President, even to some of his supporters, seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems he faces. Though he calls the economy job one, he confounds critics and supporters alike with the most audacious, ideologically driven agenda since the Great Depression, if not in the history of the republic.

He plans to change the role of government in virtually every aspect of society — from education to health care to job creation to research and development to fighting “climate change” — all of which call for drastically higher taxes and spending.

Since the President took office, the Dow Jones industrial average has plummeted, and unemployment keeps rising. Yet one of his top economic advisers recently said, “The fundamentals (of the economy) are sound” — an assessment that drew sharp criticism during the campaign, when the economic picture looked better.

The President expects his plans to “create or save” millions of jobs. But by saying “create or save,” he virtually protects himself against failure. During a recent hearing, a senator asked the secretary of Treasury, “What’s a saved job?” The secretary gave a vague, meandering response about a “rise in unemployment avoided.”

The President promised to end earmarks but signed a pork-laden stimulus bill that he proclaimed “free of earmarks.” Then days later, the President signed a $410 billion continuing operations budget that contains almost 9,000 earmark projects.

The President’s stimulus package, the constantly changing bailout package and this year’s budget threaten to triple the annual deficit. The President’s new budget (ironically entitled “A New Era of Responsibility”) shows a total federal debt swelling more than 50 percent from 2008 to 2011 — almost equaling 2011’s gross domestic product — and continues rising through 2019, the last year in the budget. Yet the President insists that he crafted the recovery plan “not because I believe in bigger government. I don’t.”

During then-President George W. Bush’s final weeks in office, Congress authorized spending $700 billion to prop up banks, purportedly to buy these troubled or toxic assets. (As chairman of the New York Fed, the current Treasury secretary actually helped design that package.) But the banks receiving the most money actually reduced lending, the opposite of the intended purpose. More troubling, especially for an administration that promised transparency, the current White House cannot or will not definitively say how the money was spent and who received it.

Not all bankers even wanted the Troubled Asset Relief Program, with some critics arguing that without government intervention, the financial system could have self-corrected. The CEO of Wells Fargo complained that the government forced his bank into the program and that its mandates restrict his bank’s ability to raise private funding. “Is this America,” said Chairman Richard Kovacevich, “when you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions? If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time.” As for the President’s plan to “stress test” banks in order to isolate those worthy of bailout money, Kovacevich called it “asinine.”

The President promised to rein in unreasonable executive compensation, but insurance giant AIG — which received more than $170 billion in bailout money — plans to pay out $165 million in “guaranteed” bonuses. An outraged public prompted the President to ask his Treasury secretary to again attempt to stop or reduce bonuses that AIG’s CEO acknowledged as “distasteful” but defended as legal obligations.

The President’s Treasury secretary, who received bipartisan confirmation despite nonpayment of some taxes, seems confused, not unlike a deer caught in the headlights. To make matters worse, the new secretary works as a one-man band. Of the 18 important undersecretary positions, none has been filled, with only three nominations currently under consideration. Two highly regarded undersecretary nominees abruptly withdrew their names, including one who many felt possessed significant expertise necessary to help the Treasury secretary explain and implement the administration’s policies.

The failure to staff may be an unintended consequence of the President’s executive order restricting the conditions under which former lobbyists can serve in government. The President has granted — so far — two dozen waivers to this policy. Yet the head of Britain’s civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, tried, by phone, to contact key Treasury personnel in preparation for the upcoming G-20 summit. The phones just rang. “There is nobody there,” said O’Donnell.

The President’s supporters speak of his enormous “popularity.” But his sliding favorability numbers put him on par with former President George W. Bush at this point in their initial terms.

Americans, more and more, find themselves saying, “There is nobody there.”