Do You Suffer From the "Ignorance Hypothesis"?

As silly as it is, the “ignorance hypothesis”—the assumption that people in power would do right by their citizens if only they knew better—“still rules supreme among most economists and in Western policy-making circles,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard University political scientist James Robinson write in their new book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Nations fail, the authors argue, because “those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.” For the brutal few, hanging on to power and wealth outweighs all else.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/book-review-why-nations-fail-by-daron-acemoglu-and-james-robinson?chan=lifestyle+politics_&_policy+global_economics+channel_etc.

The Dangers of Not Understanding Keynes

The author seems not to understand that the key point of "stimulus" spending is that there is a presumption of a "multiplier" - in other words, Keynesians believe that for every dollar the government spends, there's an amount of activity stimulated equal to a multiple of the government dollars spent.  While the Keynesians believe their research shows a "multiple", the effect has not ever and cannot ever be proved.

In short, they gambled 800 billion on their assumption of a multiplier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-dangers-of-being-wrong-on-keynes/2011/07/18/gIQAIuGYMI_story.html

The author, sounding patient and sycophantic in his worship of the oh so wise Keynes, writes:

Keynes — and others who later elaborated on his work, like Hyman Minsky — taught us that although markets are usually self-correcting, they occasionally enter destructive feedback loops in which a shock to, say, the financial system scares business and consumers so badly that they hoard money, which worsens the damage to the system, which further persuades other economic players to hoard, and so on and so forth.  In that situation, the role of the government is to break the cycle. 

This bit of pap may or may not be true, we don't actually know how free market economies work because we've only had small ones in recent times, but it assumes that the Fed and massively influential economy distorting practices by the US government are not to blame for the "destructive feedback loops" such as the one we've seen since 2007 or so.  In short, the present circumstance is at least as likely to be the result of the negative unintended consequences of prior government interventions as it is a cyclical result of a free market's "destructive feedback loops."  In fact, there's simply no reason to believe that our present difficulties are anything but the result of government interventions.

What Keynes taught us is that, when faced with the perception of responsibility for making a depression ravaged economy work, Keynes and most other politicians will happily endorse a model which justifies their choice to spend other people's money "for their own good."  It is political Darwinism at its finest.

The Author's argument is, in effect, "Keynes might have been right."  My dog might have been right, too, and there's equal evidence supporting either theoretician.  I wonder if, were he alive at this juncture, even Keynes wouldn't have realized his theory does not hold water.

The author cites C. Romer's defense of the lack of impact of the 800 billion dollar "stimulus", in which she claims she just underestimated the seriousness of the recession, and the 800 billion dollars wasn't "enough".  Oh, and there's also the problem that we just don't keep enough "shovel ready" programs on hold, waiting for a downturn in the economy, so we can spend our way back out (but we should).

As I read this part, the word nincompoop came to mind.  The author's argument has now become:  "Because Keynes might have been right, we should be ready to spend a much larger amount of money next time on a stimulus - to see if he really was right.  We'll probably know how much money to spend on the stimulus next time, because we missed it so badly this time."

To whom does the author think he is writing?  We didn't all stop learning after our public school education.

Even if the Keynesian multiplier is real, no one "knows" how large it is, and no one knows how much of it will be required to provide an adequate stimulus given that no knows how bad any given recession is, or how long it will last, or ... anything that would amount to more than the pretense of knowledge about how to massage an economy back to health.  The entire Keynesian concept - that an economy is like a football team that just needs a few coaching pointers to perform correctly - is such a joke it's difficult to believe anyone fell for it.

Here's the sad part - there's just no way a politician can do what he/she should - nothing, following the dictum "first do no harm" - when there's a recession on.  The imperative to act is dominating - every President knows they must make it look as thought they know what they are doing, as thought they have the answers, and they must act - even if none of these things are true.  They must act as if they have the fatal conceit even if they are smart enough to know better.

The Faux Drama

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0618-rutten-20110618,0,434589.column

Jerry Brown risks being the third failed governor in a row. If he doesn't find a budget solution, the consequences will be dire.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/17/can-this-presidency-be-saved/

President Obama’s personal popularity remains high and the most recentRealClearPolitics poll average has him at a more than respectable 47.6 percent approval; while the President’s popularity is drifting lower, congressional Republicans have been losing ground to their Democratic rivals in recent polls, and the Republican primary field remains both uninspiring and polarized.  

Why we let ourselves become emotionally engaged in the fate of politicians is amazing to me.  These are people who serve, above all else, their own ambition.  We're all natural born fools to think their political fates matter at all.  I can't believe it ever became "normal" for the average citizen to think that these folks should be trusted with any amount of the coercive power of the State.

A Couple of Links

It's most unsettling to the cluckers of climate change when one of their own leading adherents, who formerly toed the line, becomes skeptical and drop-kicks the "science."
Meet David Evans.
A scientist with six university degrees, Mr. Evans consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (today's Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He studied carbon in plants, debris, forestry and agricultural products.
But while aboard the global-warming train, he found that the wheels got increasingly wobbly.
"The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings," he says. "I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic."

Read more: Off the 'gravy train' - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_739762.html##ixzz1O3qRzkve

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/01/government_against_blacks_110051-full.html
Williams elaborates in a new book, "Race and Economics." A chief culprit, he insists, is the minimum wage.
"Let's not look at the intentions behind minimum wage," he said. "We have to ask, what are the effects? Put yourself in the place of an employer who must pay $7.25 no matter whom you hire. Will that employer hire a person who can only add $3 or $4 of value per hour?" 
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/01/recovery_summer_part_deux_110050.html
Buy American! A conventional, well-intentioned, patriotically affirming sentiment. We've heard it all our lives. But unless you crave less competition, fewer choices and higher prices, it's also a completely irrational one.
Naturally, then, as we kick off "Recovery Summer! Part Deux," the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee says that buying homemade cars is a matter of national importance. "If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explained while defending the protectionist auto/union bailout. "They would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes." (And by "we," Wasserman Schultz, proud American, is talking about herself and her sweet Japanese-made Infiniti FX35.)
**I have to say, could there be anything worse than an ignorant, pandering politicians clothing themselves in the robes of good intentions while they use your money and mine to further their political careers?  Contemptible.
He will not. And so fewer young people get hired and "get their feet on the bottom rung of the economic ladder." This hurts all young people, but black teens most, he says, because "many of them get a fraudulent education in the public school system. So a law that discriminates against low-skill people has a doubly negative effect on black teenagers. The unemployment rate among black teens today is unprecedented in U.S. history. In the '40s, black teenage unemployment was less than white teenage unemployment."
And yet a Pew survey says 83 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage.
"People have the misguided notion that the minimum wage is an antipoverty tool."

What This Proves

I heard the President say something in regards to the finding and killing of OBL that went something like this:  "If we can find and kill OBL, we can do anything we put our minds to."

Interesting proposition.  Does that mean then that we have not "put our minds to" ending the unbelievably common fraud in medicare? 

Does that mean we have not "put our minds to" accounting for the DoD budget which has never been adequately reconciled? 

I realize it isn't fair actually subjecting a politician's words to an objective analysis, and that the whole point of political speech is to say as little as possible using the most vague, meaningless words imaginable.  I know that only morons expect politicians, especially once elected, to say anything but drivel.  Sorry.  Couldn't help myself.

I have thought many times that the President (who seems to me to be a man who truly believes that government can do good and the only question is whether or not the right people can get enough power to change enough stuff to do that good) could build unlimited credibility if he could reduce the fraud rate in medicare or social security checks or welfare payments to a rate equivalent to businesses (MC/VISA fraud rates reportedly under 1%, Medicare reportedly between 10-40% fraud).

In fact, I think the leader that could make that happen would be legend.  Why isn't that part of the game?  Seems to me the obvious answer is that they know it cannot be done, but they must ignore that fact of these glaring failures in the existing government systems to get elected and appear useful. 

Following the Lead of Iran and North Korea?

Would it help our "economy" if we forced each other via the coercive monopoly of the government to only buy products "we've" made in "our" country?  If so, then shouldn't we also restrict sales to only those things made within our own state?  Why not our own county? 

This plan has worked well for Iran and North Korea - I mena, it has worked well for keeping the masters of these nations weathy and relatively unchallenged in their tyranny. 

That aside - assuming we only got coercion in who we could buy and sell from and not in other arenas - would "buying American" help or hurt?
"If we restricted trade to just the 50 states, what would happen immediately -- and would increase over time -- would be a huge reduction in our standard of living, because we wouldn't have access to the cheap goods we get from other countries," Perry said. "We also wouldn't have any export markets, so companies like Caterpillar and Microsoft would have a huge reduction in sales and workforce." (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)
what do we make of heartfelt pleas to save U.S. manufacturing by buying American, or the many websites (see one here) that catalog U.S. sources for an array of products? Or the Buy American Act, which curbs government purchases of products that are made overseas?
Do such efforts actually hurt the country they're trying to help?
Marc Kruskol, 53, a publicist based in Palmdale, Calif., goes out of his way to purchase products that are made in the U.S. because of his concern over the decline in manufacturing employment.
"I truly believe that we could go a long way towards fixing the economy if we would just put people to work making things in this country that are made in other places," said Kruskol, who spends hours scouring made-in-America websites or visiting brick-and-mortar stores in search of U.S. products.
He recently spent $10 on a pair of salad tongs made in America, which he tracked down in a restaurant supply store, after rejecting 99-cent foreign-made tongs. And he was happy to spend $650 on a domestically produced barbecue grill rather than a $450 imported one, just to support his countrymen.
http://money.msn.com/how-to-budget/what-if-you-had-to-buy-american.aspx
It might be argued that over time "we" would develop domestic manufacturing capacity that "we" don't have now.  But it leads to the question of why it's so expensive to make things in "our" country that someone else can make things thousands of miles away, pay to export them, pay to ship them, and still get the products to market at a price "our" manufacturers cannot match?  OSHA, a sluggish, expensive, over-regulated, unresponsive to consumer needs power system, artificially high labor costs including the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, expensive and ineffective public schools, a remarkably foolish tax system for a nation which states it wants more manufacturers making more products with "US" workers, and a psychotic regulatory scheme that meets politicians needs to be re-elected while repressing business activity and confusing good intentions with environmental care.  Much of the political landscape is schizophrenic as it on the one hand decries tax subsidies for those who "off shore" manufacturing, while claiming to be outraged when a "wealthy" corporation makes money and doesn't pay massive taxes, and then arguing for hokey nonsense like "cap and trade" which will do nothing for carbon emissions but will again ratchet up the incentives to hire folks elsewhere to build things for our markets. 
In short - the "buy American" argument is as economically illiterate as the rest to the discussions taking place in our political gestalt.  We have a literal case of the economically blind leading the economically blind.

They Won't Vote For Us If We Don't Do Something

Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, said confidentially to fellow Democrats in 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work."
As for the Federal Reserve today, a headline in the Wall Street Journal of April 25th said, "Fed Searches for Next Step."
That is a big part of the problem. It is not politically possible for either the Federal Reserve or the Obama administration to leave the economy alone and let it recover on its own.
Both are under pressure to "do something." If one thing doesn't work, then they have to try something else. And if that doesn't work, they have to come up with yet another gimmick.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/05/03/fed_up_with_the_fed_109730.html

Nevermind that it's not their money they are playing with, and in a sense, it doesn't matter what they do - just that they do "something" so that when the economy turns - which is to say if they don't do so much damage that they extend the downturn, if not for lack of trying - they can claim the credit.  This is the evil of political calculus, as in the end, those in power will always say, Trumplike, "Look what I did" whether or not they did anything that helped - and those who wish to believe in the omnipotence of political leaders will do so.

Harsanyi: The Pres Should Be Cheering

Harsanyi's latest is as good for a laugh as always:

The left's "energy" initiatives of the past decade -- the entire purpose of energy policy, in fact -- have been aimed at artificially driving fossil fuel prices up to incentivize the bitter clingers to embrace the government's Utopian energy schemes. No secret has been made of it. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama was asked by CNBC's John Harwood, "So could the (high) oil prices help us?" Obama: "I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment." Sudden spikes are bad (politically speaking), but gradual price spikes? Helpful. That same year, current U.S. "Energy" Secretary (then just a zany professor) Steven Chu clarified that "somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

Who says this administration doesn't get things done?

What we need are clean energy investments, properly inflated tires, Chinese-style rail systems -- all free of the distraction of capitalism. Also, we must rid the nation of oil subsidies. This I completely support, as long as the funds are reinvested into projects beneficial for the struggling American worker, say, bike paths or public service announcements.

This is the Darwinian political calculus of the Left:  We sell our souls to unions to appeal to the "workers", while we sell our souls to the Greens to get their votes, and we lie like a rug to cover up the cognitive dissonance required to be "for" both groups while working against both of their interests.  But whichever group they coopt, the results is more government control.

Recognizing a True Believer

That the FDA allows the industry to infuse it with so many evident poisons stands as an epic failure of public oversight.
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-16-aspartame-soda-caramel-BPA-diet-soda-kill-you

The linked article was written by a TB.  You can tell because they think that the problem with the FDA is it just isn't living up the ideals of a centralized government - more protection for those that need it.  In this case, he's worried about all us poor uninformed consumers who aren't being protected from the potential evils in a can of diet soda. 

In the article, the author laments the FDA's inability to stand up to the food industry.  But he's got it all backwards - it would be a massive surprise if the FDA WAS standing up to the food industry.  We've allowed the federal government to take control over massive sections of our economy and therefore our personal activities.  Businesses MUST struggle for influence in a system which is politicially, and therefore irrationally, controlled - or they will die. 

In short - political meddling by federal agencies with too much power isn't a surprise unless one is either:
1 - ignorant and naive
2 - a true believer in government, in which the facts will never be an obstacle to the faith

Let's face it, this is the least of the FDA's shortcomings.  It has yet to pronounce sugar a threat to health, despite a massive wave of diabetes in this country.  It has been the agent of perpetuating the statin scam, allowing even young, healthy women to be prescribed a drug which has never been shown to benefit women, and has only been shown to benefit men under age 65 with previously diagnosed heart disease.  It never asserted it's authority and has allowed the DoA to establish the food guidelines, not challenging them even thought their basis in science is tenuous at best. 

The entire concept is a joke.  The FDA serves predictable masters, politicians and monied interests, and there's no rational basis to believe it will ever do otherwise.

Political Darwinism

I always enjoy when Dr. Walter E. Williams guest hosts for Rush.  He often refers to a discussion he had with a former senator.  The discussion went like this:
Dr. Williams:  "Senator, you know as well as I do that farm subsidies are wrong in that they distort farm markets and prices, and end up being a hand out that in many ways hurts farmers in the long run, AND essentially destroy tax payer money by incentivising unproductive behavior in farmers."
Senator Survivor:  "Of course you are correct, but what do you expect me to do?  If I don't support these subsidies, I'll be dead meat next election and I'll be replaced by someone who's worse than I am.  If I don't compromise by supporting these subsidies, I won't be able to do any good at all."

Dr. Williams' point is:  we can't expect politicians to behave in ways that will result in loss of their elected position.  Thus, if we want government to no longer be the agent by which politicians take our tax dollars and auction them off to various constituencies in exchange for votes, we have to structurally reduce the power they hold.  If they don't have the power to give our tax dollars (and the loans made against our future tax dollars) away, they won't; but if they can, we know they will.  The caveat is - it is conceivable that we the people may become so suspect of politicians and their choices in government, that a generation of polticians might be created who believe they may only be re-elected if they are fiscally responsible and turn their backs on earmarks, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, etc.  It is possible in theory ...

Ultimately, politicians survive only when they behave according to the Darwinian observation summed up as "survival of the fittest."  Those who can't stand what they become, Dick Armey for example, will get out of the game.

"All (Peasants) Aboard!"

Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.

Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.

Criticism of this optional and irrational spending—meaning: borrowing —during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.

Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money. California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower. Between 2008 and 2009, the projected cost increased from $33 billion to $42.6 billion.

“The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.

So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.

The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.  To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/high-speed-to-insolvency.print.html

In this fun post, Will digresses to a Type M argument (speculating on the motives behind another's decision), and so should not be taken as more than an opinion of one person.  Nonetheless, aside from helping to exacerbate the significance of government via the elevation of government projects to world changing status, it hard to understand why people are so in love with high speed rail, and other mass transit projects, which have proven to be failures wherever add hoc'ed into an existing transportation market.

Examples:  America’s highest-profile monorail project, the expansion of Seattle’s line, was plagued by cost overruns and funding gaps, and was finally dissolved in 2005 (costing taxpayers $125 million). The Las Vegas monorail has filed for bankruptcy. http://lindberghlavista.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/streetcars-vs-monorails/

Of course, if mass transportation were really a priority, perhaps the President could have skipped health care, payoffs to states to keep them solvent, and other parts of the spending spree of the last two years so that the money to pay for this incredible mass transit upgrade that's going to win the war for the future could be paid for.  And that is of course exactly why all that money was not spend on high speed rail two years ago - it isn't really a priority, it's some fluff to throw to the government-spending-porn-freaks who can be bought off with the equivalent of a peep show.  As we approach the absolute limit of what our government will borrow in our names, we can see which politicians are willing to inch right up to the cliff in order to get just that last little bit of money in order to be able to spend it and claim they did something for posterity.  Nothing like using other peoples' money to burnish one's humanitarian resume!

State Death Spiral

Many of Michigan's local governments have made retirement promises to their employees that they probably can't keep. A new study from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan finds that counties, municipalities and schools have built up huge retiree health care liabilities, most of which are unfunded. Dealing with these costs can no longer be avoided or postponed.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110225/OPINION01/102250330/Editorial--Public-retiree-health-costs-must-be-confronted#ixzz1EzFwpGUZ

Why do folks continue to pen lines like that?  It can be avoided and postponed, and it will be; that is a fact.  The truth is, the damage that is being done to both parties, the citizenry and their employees, will worsen as the politicians play the Darwinian chicken that is part and parcel of being a politician.  But that won't stop them from avoiding and postponing the costs.

Laughing At Politicians

Rush Limbaugh was lamenting the state of affairs today on his show, and part of his lament was something like "and we have a President whom people are laughing at."  I tried to remember a President who wasn't laughted at - Reagan for his reported memory issues and moments of confusion, Bush for his supposed lack of intellect, Clinton for the endless stream of females with whom he was reported to have behaved badly, Bush the elder for not knowing what a gallon of milk costs, Carter for generally not seeming up to the job and for wearing sweaters, etc, etc, etc.

But to the point - what better should we be doing with Presidents?  They are after all politicians, creatures which survive, by and large, by being comfortable with avoiding saying anything blatantly truthful - at all costs.  These are people who ask to be given other people's money so that they can run for office and extract all of our money with the government's monopoly on coercive force, which they then spend to burnish their reputations and/or to be re-elected, and then they retire with benefits that will be paid irrespective of the quality of "service" they provided.  I say keep laughing, but the jokes really on us.

What would cause me to give a politician, Presdient or otherwise, my respect?  Aside from the legal compulsion that I do so in my present occupation, I would happily extend my respect to a President who is successful in doing what government should be doing - defending my rights and rights of my fellow citizens, all day and all night.  Forget the pretty words and promises of great deeds to make the economy work better and make all of our lives a little better - those who still believe that kind of magic making is held in the hands of heads of state deserve what they get. 

Just defend my rights, perhaps even undertake to roll back legislation which infringes on my rights; that's a noble, worthy pursuit of any politician which would earn the respect of many.

Until then, I say keep laughing as they flounder around trying to be all things to all people while demonstrating that they are, after all, just human and not equipped in any way to do the things they must promise to do in order to get themselves elected.

I'm In The Wong Profession and State

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/12/highest-paid-high-school-teachers-vs.html
Unbelievable.

Barbour Political Profile

"Barbours have been in Yazoo for at least five generations. Haley’s mother LeFlore claimed descent from Greenwood LeFlore, the first elected chief of the Choctaw nation. The chief was a wily customer who managed to elude the forcible removal of his tribe in the 1830s and get himself elected state senator, accepting the demotion without complaint. Politics runs through both lines of Haley’s family. His great-great-great-great-grandfather was the first senator from Mississippi after statehood in 1817. His paternal grandfather was a judge, the leading stockholder in the town bank, and a prominent railroad lawyer, the Illinois Central’s man in Mississippi. He built a fine two-story stone house at the corner of Second Street and the optimistically named Grand Avenue; both the choice of building material and the second level made the house unusually magnificent in a town of clapboard bungalows.
Haley’s father built a house next door when he married LeFlore. He was a lawyer, too, remembered in the lore of Yazoo City as a hard-drinking charmer who could seduce a delta jury with theatrical flourishes and windy quotations from classical literature. He died of a heart attack when Haley was two. LeFlore worked odd jobs as she raised her three boys alone."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/boy-yazoo-city_523551.html

"And the remorseless expansion of the federal government into areas of commercial life that had once been off-limits opened up vast new mission fields for lobbyists. And they were no longer ashamed to be called lobbyists.
Perhaps this last change was the most profound. Today the word, and the business, are considered no more discreditable than “podiatrist” and “podiatry.” It’s just another way to make a ton of money in Washington. “You bet I was a lobbyist,” Barbour says, often. “And I was a damned good one.” His tone when he says this is peremptory and defensive but unabashed.
“Lobbying is just like being a lawyer arguing a case in a courtroom,” he told me. “It’s a form of advocacy.”"

Do The Right Thing

http://butwhatthehelldoiknow.com/?894bf9d8
"Given how much stuff was coming at us… we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular."

Fascinating quote.

Power Must Be Fought For

http://cafehayek.com/2010/11/one-reason-to-hate-conservatives.html
Do you hate your fellow countrymen?  When?

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12550
Is the Fed a failure?

http://cafehayek.com/2010/11/prancing-preaching-posing-pols.html
Who's 'qualified' to talk about economic policies?  Palin?  The President?  Either? 

Neither!!

Maybe He's Right?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/04/AR2010110406581.html
"Tuesday was the electorate's first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama's agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it - and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.
"This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. (Which is why he was the most popular, sought-after Democrat in the current cycle.) The lesson of Tuesday is that the American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don't repeat Obama's drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.
"Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.
"The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant."
"In his next-day news conference, (the President) had the right demeanor - subdued, his closest approximation of humility - but was uncomprehending about what just happened. The "folks" are apparently just "frustrated" that "progress" is just too slow. Asked three times whether popular rejection of his policy agenda might have had something to do with the shellacking he took, he looked as if he'd been asked whether the sun had risen in the West. Why, no, he said."

Hey, he might be right, right?

Harsanyi - "Bitter Clinger" Perspective

http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_16379830
"Many of my more enlightened friends like to ask me: How could someone as intellectually gifted, delightfully urbane, profoundly moral and breathlessly handsome [as you] not want to spit at these stupid Tea Party candidates with their stupid positions and their stupid stupidity?"

"Do I wish that Colorado senatorial candidate Ken Buck hadn't declared that being gay was a choice (as if there's something wrong with choosing to be gay)? Yes. Do I wish he hadn't followed up by comparing a gay genetic predisposition with alcoholism? I do. If you were brainy enough to watch "Meet the Press" instead of wasting time in church last Sunday, no doubt you cringed at this primitive lunacy."

--Note from Apolloswabbie to aspiring politicians, if asked this question, answer with the obvious:  "Look I'm a politician.  What I believe about genetics is irrelevant.  Ask me what I think about the Constitution and individual rights.  Specifically, does the Constitution afford extra rights, or specify fewer individual rights, due to genetic variation?"
Harsanyi continues:  "After all, what's more consequential than a faux pas about nature and/or nurture? Who cares that Democrat Michael Bennet was busy moralizing about the cosmic benefits of dubious economic theory and science fiction environmentalism — ideas that have already cost us trillions with nothing to show for it?
"Just as long as we stay focused on what's important, right? We're so easily distracted.
"Those who believe being gay is a choice are Neanderthals. The enlightened trust science. That's why the president appointed a science czar, people. A science czar who co-authored a textbook arguing for mass sterilizing of Americans to prevent an imagined population bomb. You know, "science.""
--Government is to science what human fertility is to pure thought (Caveat - that's assuming you interpret lust as impurity, in the context of human reproduction, it could be considered with gluttony and thirst as the only pure thoughts)

Harsanyi:  "God has no place in this faith. That's not to say that Yahweh has anything on our president, who once claimed future generations would see his election — Goliath government — as the point in history where we finally started "healing the sick" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal . . . ."
"Now, that's the kind of faith-inflected lingo we slack-jawed yokels can comprehend. Otherwise, the left's plans are just too darn complex for us to appreciate."
--I can't figure out why anyone's disenchanted with the President, can you?  Certainly not because he built over-much expectation for his Presidency ... But on that topic, I could almost imagine how people would believe that he thought he could slow the rise of the oceans and 'heal' the planet, but how did they ever buy the one about changing fundamentally the way polics and government are done?!? 

Harsanyi:  ""Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now," Obama recently explained, "and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared.""
--The implication being that we WERE thinking clearly and using facts and science two years ago when we selected him ... holy patronization Batman. 
Mr. President, I think what a lot of people are scared of is more government intervention.

I think I can understand The President's frustration (and to be clear, I don't mean in this discussion to display any personal disrespect).  The Candidate told everyone what he was about - his candidacy was an advocacy of time honored liberal tenets which have all been advocated by liberals since at least FDR, if not before.  Certainly he espoused his support for the 'positive rights' which should be added to the Constitution (that is to say, making it a right of one person to have something which government takes from another person, such as medical care or a place to live).  He espoused an energy policy that was first articulated well by President Carter.  He espoused government intervention in virtually every arena under discussion.  He espoused consistent, across the board support of that Federal government supported entity ("unions") which allow one group (those in the union) a coercive government monopoly on employment with their employer.  And, he said he would fundamentally change politics, eliminating things like conflicts of interest, partisanship, earmarks, lobbiests employed by those elected to represent the People, etc.  He even added his intent to be fiscally responsible.  In his mind, everything he's done since then was something he said he would do. 
The problem, as best I can tell, is that many of the folks who voted for him heard something entirely different than what he was saying.  They didn't hear him saying "I'm going to do this like every liberal has wanted it done for 80 years."  They thought he was something that he was not.  They were confused, and I assume, heard what they wanted to hear because of the Candidate's considerable charm.  Now, they are not charmed.  They can see him for what he is, which is someone that believes in a lot more government intervention and power than they do.  They no longer support him.  The President cannot be blamed for that, but probably feels blamed for that.  If I were in his shoes and something like this happened to me, I would be very frustrated.  Perhaps I would blame it on something like a conditional irrationality and a sudden distaste for science amongst the masses. 
I wonder how good one would have to be as a politician to follow the advice of 'under promise and over deliver' but still get elected in the first place.

Making Sense of the Tea Partiers

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/opinion/18douthat.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
I think for those who can't sort these folk out, they can't quite get their hands around the idea that many Americans really don't trust the government.  The feeling amonst the liberal believers was they had finallly found the man who bring the centrists over to the liberal/big government side.  They thought the triumph of President Obama was in seducing the many to another perspective.  And why wouldn't they believe that - it would be easier to believe that than to believe the truth.  The truth is that most of the middle did not understand, could not or would not believe, how far to the left then candidate Obama was.  At the time, that's what puzzled me.  He was clearly proclaiming what now seems obvious, but folks ignored it.  Maybe they had to ignore it because the alternative was a candidate not even the GOP wanted. 

The Presidency is a job that would be so distasteful to any 'normal' person that I don't think anyone that we should want to vote for will ever be a realistic candidate. 

"Please elect me so that I can not have a personal life, I can be criticized soundly for those things completely out of my control, I can be presented with problems for which there is no solution (but I'm still supposed to act like I think there is a solution), and I can age 8-12 years years in the first four that I'm in office." 

Such a deal.