No Enemies On the Left

The Honduran legislature, judiciary and military, acting in support of the rule of law, have removed President Manuel Zelaya from office, and US President Obama wants none of it. Obama and the media have mischaracterized the events as a “coup d’etat” when they were really a last-ditch attempt by the Honduran political establishment to block Zelaya — who is being aided by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — from holding an illegal referendum in an attempt to circumvent term limits on his office. The Obama administration is siding with Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Chavez against the democratic Honduran government in an attempt to get Zelaya reinstated. (Mary O’Grady’s excellent column is a good summary of the events and issues. Fausta and Gateway Pundit have much additional information and links.)

The best that can be said about our president’s involvement in this issue is that it risks transforming a difficult situation into a disaster. Absent US pressure (never mind US support) the Honduran political scene would likely return to something like normal, with popular and media focus shifting from the deposed Zelaya to the coming elections. By getting involved in support of Zelaya we probably make a drawn-out crisis inevitable, and we green light further subversion of Honduran democracy by Chavez and Ortega. In the worst case a military insurgency or civil war supported by the dictators is conceivable. That would be a catastrophe.

Honduras is small, poor, weak, generally pro-USA and depends heavily on our trade and goodwill. The Obama administration may figure that it can push the Honduran government around, and that may be true. But why should we get involved at all? Obama could say that he supports Hondurans’ right to representative government, and that we will help if asked, and leave it at that. That would be prudent. Why does he instead prefer to step into mud of unknown depth?

I think the likely answer to this question is either that the Obama people don’t know what they are doing or that they are acting out of ideological bias. Ordinarily I would assume incompetence, and I think that Obama is indeed incompetent. But as with Obama’s hostile treatment of Israel — another small, pro-American country — the Obama administration’s incompetence in Central America follows a clear ideological pattern. Anyone who does not see by now that Obama is a determined leftist radical with a transformative national agenda that most Americans don’t want is either blind or not paying attention.

Seablogger puts it well WRT Honduras:

The terrible precedent will in fact be set if this would-be dictator and ally of Hugo Chavez is returned to power through US meddling, just days after Obama spurned any meddling with Iran.
 
Obama’s true affinities are now exposed for all to see. Take a look, Obama voters. Do you really want the US aligned with Castro and Chavez — actually doing their bidding? Do you want the US siding with the blood-stained regime in Teheran, for the sake of imaginary future diplomacy?

(See the Seablogger post for full context of the above quote.)

We are on course for disaster, all because so many American voters have had it so good for so long that they thought it would always be so, and that they could afford to throw away their votes on an attractive cipher.

UPDATE: See also this post at Power Line, and Babalu is on fire with many excellent posts about Honduras.

UPDATE 2: Caroline Glick reaches similar conclusions:

The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama’s foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter’s tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.

UPDATE 3: Andy McCarthy on Obama and Iran:

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America’s history, but a “pragmatist” in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.
 
[…]
 
It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters’ side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

Feelies, Live, Millenium Park, Chicago

I did not even know the Feelies were playing in Chicago tonight. The boss was on the way out of the office, and said he was going to walk over and see them. I said, “tell me about it tomorrow”. I wanted to finish something up, and I was working away. The phone rings. The boss says, “you should come over here”. Groovy.

They were excellent. I never saw them play before, but I had their first album, Crazy Rhythms, which I probably got in 1981 or 1982. “Have”, actually. It must be in the basement with the rest of my vinyl.

They played mostly songs from later albums which I did not know. Then, for an encore they did “Boxcars” by REM, “Fa Cé-La” off of the first album, then a killer cover of What Goes On by the Velvet Underground. I was thinking, the only way they can top that is with a Stones cover. What a musical genius I am. The crowd shouted them back for a second encore and they did “Paint it, Black”.

I was hoping they would do Moscow Nights, but I cannot complain.

The crowd was sitting down in the seats. Then near the end of the set, this skinny, intense, young guy comes running down front and starts dancing frantically all by himself. The ice is broken, the space in front of the stage and the aisles fill up with people.

A beautiful, cool evening in Chicago, at the Pritzker Bandshell in the very lovely Millenium Park. It was a large, happy, well-behaved crowd. It is good to see a band like the Feelies getting that much love. They were never big “back in the day”. They are a great band and they deserve the affection and the big turnout.

UPDATE: Greg Kot’s review from the Trib.

UPDATE II: Thank you, mysterious gangly kid! — Agreed. (Lots of photos)

Iran and Prognosticators

One of my favorite quotes (I don’t even know if it’s true) is supposedly from Jack Welch and it is about how he got rid of his forecasting department:

We might be surprised, but we won’t be surprised we’re surprised

Businesses are often surprised by changes to the environment, even while they tout their ability to master the situation. One company I used to work with had a joint venture with CISCO in the dot.com era – at the time CISCO was touting their advanced financial capabilities, their ability to close the books a few days after quarter end, and most importantly their supply chain mastery that allowed them to accurately forecast demand. Almost immediately after that period of boasting, CISCO had a big inventory write down since they built too far ahead of demand and had to scrap the unsold goods and materials.

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State Tax Update – California

State Tax Review:

Given the recent financial events that have hit Wall Street, real estate, and the average American consumer, the purpose of this post is to look at how our largest states have responded to this fiscal crisis with regards to tax policy. Let’s start with California.

For some background – here is a high level overview of state income taxes (circa 2006, hasn’t changed much since then on a relative basis). If you go to this section at LITGM you can see all of the tax posts we have put up over the years that cover similar topics.

California:

California is governed by a solid Democratic majority with a Republican governor. The California situation is different than most states in that a 2/3 majority is needed for tax increases, meaning that tax increases are difficult to pass through the legislature. California also has a “proposition” culture, where items are put directly to the voters (such as the famous “Proposition 13” which limited growth in property taxes).

California has a very high “graduated” state income tax (meaning that it is tied to the Federal tax liability, with some exceptions) and this forms a significant portion of their total tax collections. Per this very helpful site, in 2008 47.5% of their total tax revenues came from the state income tax, above the average of 35.7% for all states as a whole. However, this percentage is lower than its total impact – some states (like Illinois) have an essentially “flat” 3% state income tax (at 32% of Illinois state tax burden), but California’s is graduated so that they are taking 9.3% on all “taxable income” > $47,000 and another 1% on all income > $1,000,000, making their total tax burden at 10.3% for the highest earners. California is proposing to increase this rate (highest in the US of major states) by an additional 0.25% with their latest budget proposals, to a high of 10.55% (the 0.25% increase was part of Proposition 1A, which was defeated).

Reliance on a high, graduated state income tax is a two-edged sword – during “boom” times (such as the latest economic expansion) high income payers contribute a disproportionate amount to the budget (relative to other states) – but when the stock option gains evaporated starting in 2008, this portion of the state receipts is hit harder than other sorts of taxes (sales taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes) because income and gains can fall rapidly which immediately reduces collections.

California immediate reached for the lever of increasing sales taxes as soon as the recession hit, raising the state portion from 7.25% to 8.25%, with local additions rising it up to 10.25% in some areas. Raising sales taxes is generally viewed as a “regressive” tax measure, because it hits the poorest hardest because they consume a higher percentage of their total earnings than the rich (the 1% increase was also defeated with proposition 1A).

California also has a very high corporate tax, at 8.84%, which makes up 10% of their total tax receipts. This rate is the highest in the nation, making it a dis-incentive for businesses to move into the state (unless they are able to reduce their Federal tax burden, which will result in tax relief, through various tax strategies).

The Tax Foundation (a non-profit group) wrote an excellent analysis of the California tax situation here. Per the Tax Foundation:

These tax increases are estimated to raise $10 billion, with the extensions from Proposition 1A generating a further $6 billion. California has been struggling to close a $40 billion budget gap between desired spending and expected revenues in its $92 billion 2009-10 budget.

Proposition 1A was defeated, leaving the state’s finances in a precarious state as far as balance of payments, although the state faced a huge budget gap in any case.

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My Solar-Powered Flashlight and My Wind-Powered Fan

While reading this story about changes in the water rights laws of western states, [h/t Instapundit] this bit at the end caught my eye.

Ms. Fitzgerald, an associate professor of sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, still lives the unwired life with her own family now, growing most of her own food and drinking and bathing in filtered rainwater.
 
Rain dependency has its ups and downs, Ms. Fitzgerald said. Her home is also completely solar-powered, which means that the pumps to push water from the rain tanks are solar-powered, too. A cloudy, rainy spring this year was good for tanks, bad for pumps.

*Sigh* Somebody actually designed a solar powered system to pump water out of a rain filled system. Somebody voted for Obama. 

The entire point of energy systems is to shift work in time and space to when and where we need it. Weather-dependent energy sources can’t shift work in time and space. Instead, the work happens when and where the weather wants it to happen. Weather-dependent energy systems cannot perform this most basic task of shifting work and that is why they are worthless for any large-scale use. 

I mean, if weather-dependent power can’t meet the needs of a hippy college professor, why do people think we can run factories, transportation and hospitals with it? 

[By the way, the water rights laws of the American West might seem bizarre but they do make sense in the context of the region’s historical development.]