IN THE MAIL: From Mark Levin, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America. It’s a followup to his bestseller Liberty and Tyranny, which in many ways kickstarted the Tea Party movement. I’ve read an advance copy, and it’s worth your time.
Archive for 2012
January 16, 2012
JOEL KOTKIN: Martin Luther King, Economic Equality, And The 2012 Election. “The biggest question is whether the current progressive agenda supports minority upward mobility. From its inception the Obama administration’s focus has been on the largely white information economy, notably boosting universities and the green-industrial complex based in places like Silicon Valley. The Obama team’s decision to surrender working class whites to appeal to what Democratic strategists call the ‘mass upper middle class’ makes political sense but could lead to problems for an American working class that is itself increasingly minority. An emphasis on green industries and strong across-the-board regulation often works against traditional industries like heavy manufacturing, warehousing and fossil fuel development that historically have employed many minorities. Opposing development of new petrochemical plants and such things as the XL Pipeline — opposed by many greens and their allies in the Obama Administration — could reduce new opportunities for minority workers, many of them unionized, particularly in the heavily African-American, and increasingly Latino, Gulf region. Modern-day progressivism’s primary laboratory, California, tells a cautionary tale.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: California Rail Fail: Captain Brown and the Great White Train.
California’s bullet train is going off the rails, and the overseers are running for cover. The WSJ reports that Roelof van Ark, the chief executive, and Thomas Umberg, the chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, announced they will step down from their posts as the odds against the project grow longer.
The highly indebted, cash strapped state has commitments of $3.3 billion of federal money in hand against the roughly $100 billion that the train is now estimated to cost (the price will certainly go even higher). Voters authorized almost $10 billion in bonds in a referendum, but that was when the train looked much cheaper and more federal funding was available. Since then the cost estimates more than doubled to $99 billion, ridership estimates have been slashed indicating that the completed system will require unending subsidies, and Congress has stopped voting new funds for high speed rail.
To make matters even worse, the federal funds that are available can only be used for a “spur” out into the Central Valley, rather than the main line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The “spur” is the least needed, least wanted and least useful part of the system and will never generate significant traffic. There are, in other words, federal funds to help with the part of the system that nobody really wants, and the heavily indebted state must find at least $70 billion to fund the rest.
In other words, the usual story. Mead’s conclusion: “The blue social model can’t produce great results anymore. If you want to think big, you can no longer think blue.”
SCOTT WALKER is a threat to the status quo. “How dare this man keep campaign promises, govern soberly, balance the budget, and refrain from raping the taxpayer?”
CALLING OUT TO the better angels of the legal profession.
TODAY ONLY: 50% off Lucky Brand Jeans, for men and women.
WELL, THE FIX WAS IN FROM THE BEGINNING: Harkin Set to Release For-Profit Schools Report Amid Controversy. “The website Daily Caller obtained a series of emails and memos detailing how Harkin and his staff had pressured the GAO, demanding the inclusion of detail after detail even after the deadline to the report drew close. One staffer even explained that these detail demands were heavily responsible for the GAO report’s gross innaccuracies . . . . When asked about the emails and messages, Harkin couldn’t remember the time frames and denied having influence over the report. Later investigations, though, showed that not only had Harkin had a significant hand in altering the report, but that his staff may have been involved in coaching the testimony of a key witness after one person who testified in front of Congress was unable or unwilling to give them the testimony they were looking for without ‘help’ from outside special interests.”
Well, a guy who’ll lie about his “Vietnam service” can’t be trusted on much. More here.
THE ONE PERCENT: ELIZABETH WARREN CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. “The only thing that could make her a more hypocritical class warrior is if she anchored a yacht in Rhode Island.”
LARRY KUDLOW: Hey, maybe America needs a turnaround artist. “There’s a very troubled company out there called U.S. Government Inc. It’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And it badly needs to be taken over and turned around. It probably even needs the services of a good private-equity firm, with plenty of experience and a reasonably good track record in downsizing, modernizing, shrinking staff and making substantial changes in management. Yes, layoffs will be a necessary part of the restructuring.”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Only Obama and Big Green oppose Keystone pipeline.
It’s not often that Big Labor’s James P. Hoffa and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue agree on something, but once in a while an issue comes along that unites these two gentlemen. Such an issue is the Keystone XL pipeline that would link refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast and Canada’s oil-rich tar sands. All that stands between the start of work and the creation of thousands of good-paying jobs in America is a green light from President Obama. But Obama fears angering thousands of campaign contributors and workers associated with the Big Green environmental movement, which rabidly opposes Keystone. So he’s waffled and delayed a decision until after the November 2012 election.
But pressure across the political spectrum is steadily growing to persuade Obama to put the needs of thousands of Americans seeking jobs ahead of his own political concerns.
Well, we can hope.
Related: Rex Murphy: Thou must not question Big Environment.
The greatest advantage the greens have had is the relative absence of scrutiny from the press. Generally speaking, it’s thought to be bad manners to question self-appointed environmentalists. Their good cause, at least in the early days, was enough of a warrant in itself. And when it was your aunt protesting the incinerator just outside town, well that was enough. But when it’s some vast congregation of 20,000 at an international conference, or thousands lining up to present briefs protesting a pipeline, well, let’s just say this is not your aunt’s protest movement anymore.
There is no such thing as investigative environmental reporting — or rather very precious little of it in the established media. Environmental reporters rarely question the big environmental outfits with anything like the fury they will bring to questioning politicians or businesspeople. Advocacy and reportage are sometimes close as twins.
And so the great thing I see about Resource Minister Joe Oliver’s little rant against Northern Gateway pipeline opponents a few days ago — asking whether some groups are receiving “outside money” or if they are proxies for other interests — is not so much the rant itself, but rather the fact that at last some scrutiny, some questions are being asked of these major players. Big environment, however feebly, is being asked to present its bona fides. And that’s a good thing: The same rigor we bring to industry and government, in looking to their motives, their swift dealing, must also apply to crusading greens.
Where does their money come from? What are their interests in such and such a hearing? What other associations do they have? Are they a cat’s paw for other interests? Do they have political affiliations that would impugn their testimony? In hearings as important as the ones over the Northern Gateway pipeline, with the jobs and industry that are potentially at stake, the call to monitor who is participating in those hearings is a sound and rational one.
Indeed.
GINGRICH ATTACKS HELPING ROMNEY? I think so. And although there’s a worry that “Barack Obama … can now say, ‘Even Republicans called Mitt Romney a vulture capitalist,’” if I were Mitt I’d respond with a commercial showing Newt’s face with Obama’s voice coming out of it, or maybe vice versa.
BYRON YORK: Jon Huntsman: A Boutique Candidacy That Didn’t Sell. “Huntsman’s problem was that, whatever his position on some key issues, he sent out political and cultural signals that screamed NPR, and not Fox News, that screamed liberal, and not conservative. Even though conservatives agreed with Huntsman on many things, they instinctively sensed he wasn’t their guy. It wasn’t hard for them to figure out.” Huntsman was the Republican candidate for Republicans ashamed of being Republicans. Shockingly, there aren’t that many people like that who vote in the Republican primaries.
A BOLD ROMNEY PREDICTION from Mickey Kaus.
PRIVATE EQUITY HYPOCRISY: “Deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter wrote a memo last week blasting Mitt Romney for leading a private equity firm. . . . But apparently Cutter wasn’t always so opposed to private equity firms: she previously worked as a spokeswoman for J.C. Flowers … a private equity firm.”
SO SINCE GPS ISN’T A DONOR, IT MUST GO: Advisory Board Says Lightsquared Can’t Coexist With GPS.
THE HILL: In fight over Keystone pipeline, jobs are the key battleground.
When U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue proclaimed that the Keystone XL pipeline would create 250,000 jobs, he touched a nerve in the environmental community.
“That’s just not true,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program, told reporters Friday, calling Donohue’s jobs estimate “wildly inflated.”
It’s a familiar refrain from the environmental community, which has been working overtime in recent weeks to counter Republican and industry claims that the 1,700-mile pipeline would create a mini-job boom in the United States.
Sounds “shovel-ready” to me.
LAMAR SMITH UPDATE: Irony Alert: Congressman Who Wrote SOPA Violated Copyright Law.
Related: Backlash over piracy bill.
CIVILIZATION has not yet come to New Jersey.
SO MY BROTHER LOVES THE SOUNDFLY: “This is the first FM transmitter device I’ve used that actually sounds good, and that doesn’t get overwhelmed by the slightest hint of a commercial transmitter. And, the fact that you can just stick an SD Card full of music in it and go is totally fab. I’m now rollin’ with my own 5,000 tune radio station.”