So... we're doing this now I guess

Read Eagle Politics takes a look at the wonky NY Times' potential short list of Donald Trump's 2024 VP choices. I don't entirely agree with Red Eagle's take on every candidate, though he makes some good points.  The NY Times' assessment of pros and cons for each potential candidate is mostly laughable as you would expect. Frankly however, the idea of having an article about this shows me a couple of things because it is so early in the process.

Think about it, not one state has held a primary yet. Yes, president Trump holds a massive lead and no one else is going to win. Despite every laughable effort by the leftist political-media complex to discredit and disqualify him, the NY Times has basically admitted that president Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee for 2024. Maybe they are using this as a way to try to skewer potential running mates.  They mention Trump's age with more than just a hint of foreshadowing part of how they might go after Trump.  That in itself is an interesting takeaway.  If they are going after Trump for his age, does that mean the older, senile Let's Go Brandon is not going to be the Democratic nominee for 2024? It makes you wonder a bit.  Despite all the whispers, I've always suspected that Democrats would stick with Let's Go Brandon in 2024. Now I'm less sure. True it may be the leftist media and Democrats' desire Brandon steps down but was it ever going to materialize? Maybe so now.

Going back to the first point, it tells me the lawsuits against president Trump are expected, even on the left, to fail. The NY Times has basically admitted it with this article.  Reason to be cheerful. But it also shows the real reason they were doing it; to smear him.  The great thing about Donald Trump is that those smears only reverberate in their echo chamber.

Mortgage Foreclosures: Merely Delayed

Back in April I had meant to write a column about mortgage foreclosures and the effects of the Democrats not really solving the problem but merely delaying it.  But I didn't write it, so it's too late to say 'I told you so'.

Apples, Oranges and the NY Times on Terrorism

Rather than parroting Sarah Palin's brilliant takedown of Obama and the left on combatting terrorism, I thought I'd add my own two cents on the ridiculous NY Times position on the issue.

In the NY Times today, Michael Kinsley opines that judicial trials versus military tribunals and Miranda rights for terrorists are the way to go.

Actually he raises a legitimate question before answering it incorrectly.

Fool.

Republican critics like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich have raised these questions in the past few days. There’s a gruesome anomaly here, to be sure: the United States government will blow you to smithereens and consider it a good day’s work if you’re a Qaeda member dreaming of jihadist glory while residing somewhere outside the United States, but will pay for your lawyer if you get caught in the act within our borders. But this anomaly didn’t arise with the Obama administration. It is built into our dual role as a liberal democracy and as a legitimately aggrieved superpower.

The charms of liberal democracy sometimes need to be defended by war, and Mr. Obama’s critics are right that war can’t be conducted with a high level of concern for individual justice. A liberal democracy aspires to punish only the guilty. But war is inherently unfair — it distributes suffering arbitrarily among enemy combatants, civilians and one’s own soldiers. A line has to be drawn somewhere to determine which of these utterly different standards of government behavior is applied where — and the nation’s border is as good a line as any.

Is it really though?  I've often argued that simplicity works and the nation's borders is a pretty simple demarkation point.  But is it the best one?  Simple is good, the most simple isn't always.  Let me illustrate by way of offering a couple of alternatives.

Could the line not be drawn between foreigners and citizens of the United States?  Yes.  It's also simple.  Americans get the protection of the Constitution and foreigners do not.  It's equally arbitrary, though more harsh.  If a German citizen is in the United States and is accused of stealing a pair of pants from Sears, you can't just take him in the back room and have police officers beat him with rubber hoses for a confession.  Then again, no one suspects that would happen.  But it could.  So it can't be that simple either. 

Perhaps the line could be drawn on the basis of severity of the crime.  Non-American citizens committing misdemeanor crimes could be given the basic protections of the Constitution and for felonies those rights could be bypassed.  Or more specifically, violent felonies.  Of course if in our in German example the alleged perpetrator stabbed a clerk to get the pants, he would fall on the wrong side of the artificial line.  Should the defendant not be entitled to an attorney in this case?  Perhaps he was looking at the pants when he was assaulted by the clerk first.  Maybe that's still too simple.

How about we take it one step further.  Citizens and foreigners are entitled to Constitutional protection and due process - unless they are accused of acts of terror.  That could be defined as simply as any attempt to cause as many civilian casualties as possible in an indiscriminant fashion with respect to who the victims are (not necessarily indiscriminant with respect to time or place of the violent action).

Seems reasonably simple.  It's no less artificial than the nation's borders.  It would seem to be better from an intelligence gathering prospective.  And for those who blather on about how much of a terrorist recruiting tool Guantanamo was, how is a show trial for every failed terrorist going to play?

Where's Our Line, Michael Kinsley?  I like mine better than yours.

Being anti-New York Times is clearly racist

I'm reading an article in the New York Times right now. It's hard to get through two sentences without finding liberal opinion or self-delusion masquerading as fact.

It doesn't even deserve a link to the article. Even my modest readership that might bump the page's hits by a few or even one, would be too much. In fact it's not even worth the effort to dissect and correct the article line by line. But it does merit a mention.

The main problem that I have with it is that while the titular point of the article is that not all anti-Obama sentiment is racist, it goes out of its way to ascribe it to just that root.

Liberals persist in this belief that any view not theirs is not just flawed, not just inferior but coming from some evil place. Luckily, readership for the NYT is faltering - badly. If that were not the case, the paper might not have a lesson available to them that journalism does not mean the same thing as advocacy.

They haven't learned so far, and they continue to try to figure out a new business model suited to electronic media as the cure-all to their suffering. I can save them the trouble. Readership means business, and readership of a newspaper requires continued trust. Earn trust by being factual and you get readership. Then different methods of content delivery can be addressed. Advocacy - open or undeclared and subtle does not achieve trust.

Is every lost reader due to the paper's support of Obama? And if so, by extension, is that not racist too?

Come on NYT, how far are you going to carry this foolish ploy? You are only hurting yourself. Like me, more and more people are starting to realize that reading the New York Times is like drinking spoiled milk.

Obama's inevitable slide

Early public support doesn't mean Obama's in the clear. It seems there's an almost inevitable slide in popularity of Presidents. From a Gallup report, Obama's ratings seem pretty good right now.



But look what happened to Reagan and what happened to Carter.

Reagan:

As President Reagan prepares to leave office this week, two-thirds of the American people approve his performance over the last eight years, the highest rating given any President at the end of his term since World War II.

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that Mr. Reagan has maintained this extraordinary popularity by succeeding in the two areas that are central to any President: peace and prosperity.

While 68 percent approved of his overall job performance over eight years, 71 percent supported his handling of foreign relations, particularly with the Soviet Union, and 62 percent backed his handling of the economy. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Interestingly, the above results are from the New York times and rate Reagan higher than Gallup did. Gallup has Clinton as the highest final approval rating for a President. While his ratings were definitely decent, I find it odd that they would rank higher than Reagan's.

Carter, according to Gallup's highly reported closing numbers ended in Bush 43 territory.

So while Obama may be flying high now, and he may be reversing earlier trends and eclipsing Reagan's early results, it's what's happening 3 and 4 years in that count for re-election. Remember Obama is offering policy that is like Carter, only further left. 63% to 34% may seem like a long way to fall, but Carter did it. Bush did it too. In fact other than Clinton and Reagan, everyone went down. Obama will too. But by how much?

Going by the Gallup open and close numbers above, the changes look like this:

Clinton +11%
Reagan +3%
Bush 41 -1%
Bush 43 -24%
Carter -35%
Nixon -38%

The press holds out hope that Obama will enjoy Clintonesque numbers (again, the Clinton numbers seem wonky to me). But it is far more likely that popularity will decline rather than rise. Perhaps his fall, buoyed by the parachute of a partisan press, won't be as precipitous as Carter's, but a Bush 43 decline, particularly as his policies kick in, is very possible. That would put him in the high 30's or low 40's. Worse is possible. Given his supposed messianic image, any fall to earth could be hastened by the currently elevated expectations.

Is the fall inevitable? Reagan proved to conservatives it isn't. Clinton proved to liberals it isn't. Obama has the press pumping his ratings for him with it's cheer leading. So Obama could conceivably maintain a high rating. But once the reality of the stimulus package kicks in, with the expanded debt and the expanded money supply and the resulting inflation, it just doesn't seem possible.

Maybe we're wrong on economics. Maybe Keynes was right. Maybe Marx was. Maybe capitalism is really dying and socialism is better. Or maybe, just maybe, like Obama's ratings, the press is high.

Disingenuous quotes

According to a report in the NY Times China spent much of the first quarter trying to diminish the risk of it's exposure to US Treasury Bonds (perhaps as part of an effort to destabilize the US further for it's own geo-political advantage, perhaps as an effort to limit it's own risk exposure, or perhaps both).

Asked about the balance of financial power between China and the United States, one of the Chinese government’s top monetary economists, Yu Yongding, replied that “I think it’s mainly in favor of the United States.”

He cited a saying attributed to John Maynard Keynes: “If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.”

Perhaps he's being disingenuous in his quoting of Keynes. After all, China would much rather be in a position of holding American debt than the reverse.

The other question you have to ask yourself, is that if communist China is quoting Keynes, shouldn't you reconsider holding him out as an economic theorist you want to base your own prosperity on? Next thing you know, China will be quoting Paul Krugman.

The NY Times vs. Reality

The NY Times in an article explaining why your taxes are going to rise, doesn't fail to get it's dig in against former President Bush and the Bush tax cuts, while managing to gloss over the fact that;

But the problem can’t be solved just by taxing the rich. That top 1 percent pays only about one-quarter of federal taxes. Once the recession ends, taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise, too.

Admitting in one short paragraph that the taxes on the middle class will have to rise and that the top 1% of income earners pay 25% of all taxes, the editor of the Times must have been asleep.

There's a couple of problems with the New York Times when compared to reality. Firstly there's this issue; as recently as October 31st, 2008 (just before the election), the New York Times had this to say;

Independent analyses of the presidential candidates’ tax proposals show that those who make less than $250,000 a year would not see their taxes raised under Senator Barack Obama’s plans. Further, Mr. Obama would generally cut taxes more than Senator John McCain would for households with incomes less than $100,000 a year.

Uh okay - you were lying then or covering for Obama now, NYT - take your pick. The reality is that your statements from 4 months ago are diametrically opposed to your statements today.

But the deception goes further. The article today (as shown in the graph below) points out that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP dropped as a result of the Bush Tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

But that is in direct contrast to the graph Nonsensible Shoes posted on February 23rd that shows the Bush tax cuts of 2003 led to the highest revenue ever recorded in 2005.

Are both of these graphs potentially true? Well, yes actually. Looking at tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is a bit of a red herring. If you lower taxes of course it's percentage of the domestic economy will fall. More economic activity is happening outside of the tax base, so as a percentage it will necessarily be smaller. It has to be. But look what happened to the tax revenue. It rose, and quite significantly too.

So while liberals would have you look at the impact on tax as a percentage of the economy, what they are doing is distracting you from the fact that reducing taxes decreased the government revenue. Extra money held by consumers and business created additional economic activity, clearly with a higher multiplier effect and grew the economy which made the tax percentage fall even further, even while the tax revenue for the government still managed to rise quite dramatically.

The graph below shows what the real issue is;

Revenue dipped in the early part of the decade with the recession and then the 9/11 attacks compounding the problem. But the tax cuts, particularly the 2003 tax cuts started to kick in over time and by 2005 the tax revenue was steamrolling past historical highs. But look at the spending line. In the last 14 years spending has doubled and the graph shows no sign of curtailing the spending. It's just a steady rise.

Looking back at the Times chart, the interest payments and the Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security burden are what's going to hurt. Getting the debt down is important, but most important is figuring out smarter ways to finance Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security has got to be priority #1 for the government. And by the way, in 2004 that's what President Bush wanted to spend his political capital on. Seems like not only was he right in warning about the impending mortgage crisis, he was also sounding another warning that wasn't being heeded under his watch.

Perhaps it's deliberate misdirection in support of Obama's tax plan, or perhaps it's too much to expect of the NY Times to understand basic economics (tax revenue growth is possible with tax reductions). In either case, don't let the Times, the Democrats or the President fool you into another crisis mentality with respect to government deficits and the national debt. Yes the deficit must be addressed, but the issues are on the spending side, not the revenue side. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.