Big Government

Cokie Roberts Blurts Out the Truth

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I watch the Sunday talk shows, usually flipping back and forth between them. I was struck today by a comment made by Cokie Roberts on ABC’s This Week. In the discussion of the downgrade of US Treasury bonds, she was arguing with a tea party affiliated Congressman from Utah named Chaffetz and she made the following statement: (The comment begins at 8:55)

The reason why they (S&P) like France and England is because they have parliamentary government,   because the majority gets what it wants. There is no divided government where both parties have to agree.

I thought that an astonishing but revealing statement. First, Britain and France have not been exemplars of fiscal probity the past 50 years, with the exception of Margaret Thatcher’s era. She even mentioned that England now has an austerity program. Also, she didn’t mention that Obama had undivided government for two years and spending increased 24%. In fact, there has been no national budget for two years, probably because the Democrats did not want to expose their plans prior to the 2010 election.

Her second comment was also revealing:

The problem is with the US Constitution.

There, in a nutshell, is the Democrats’ complaint. The Constitution restricts the ability of one political party to spend at will without regard of the consequences. God knows we have had excessive spending since 1965 in this country under both parties and with the Constitution intact. But, for Democrats, that has not been enough. I don’t think I have seen a more revealing comment.

We can stimulate the economy without extra debt or inflation

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How to stimulate the economy without inflating the currency or borrowing any more money.

Step 1:
Assemble all requests for federal permits.

Step 2:
Sign them for final approval (as in if they’re interim permits, they are approved for final status as if all other interim applications had been filed and been approved as well). Use auto pens if needed.

That’s it, no step 3 required.

There is now, and always is, a backlog of projects that have funding, are ready to go, and only wait the approval of the various administrative arms that they have complied with this or that regulation. If those projects go forward, the economy will be in better shape. So why not just sign the permits, let construction proceed, and mitigate the bad decisions on the back end when the economy has recovered?

Edit:
Just to make things clear, there are 51 executives in the USA who can do this. The President would likely have the biggest effect but certainly governors would be able to do this on their own as well.

Chicago Tea Party Meeting, August 3, 2011

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[As promised, here is my report.]

I was able to cram in two events. The first was a reception hosted by the Republican National Lawyers Association for Joe Birkett. It was a nice event, hosted by the same people who ran the election poll-watching project I wrote about previously. Judge Birkett gave an engaging talk. I was interested to see what he would say about current developments, but he said very little. He was carefully judicious in avoiding anything that could be construed as political in nature, as is appropriate and required by his new status as a judge. The gentleman who introduced him observed that he was “the captain of every football team he was ever on” which was believable, as was his youthful boxing championship. As a former prosecutor, he had the tough, cop-like demeanor you would expect. At one point he commented that the GOP needs to reach out to the Tea Party and work with them. It was rather vague. I mean nothing invidious about Judge Birkett when I observe that establishment GOP figures in Illinois seem puzzled by the Tea Party phenomenon. This perception would be reinforced later in the evening.

Also present at the Birkett event was conservative radio personality Dan Proft, who ran for governor last time, and recently got the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. slot on WLS in Chicago. Dan gave a nice talk about a project he is supporting, Operation Homefront, which provides assistance to Illinois families of deployed service members, or wounded service members returning to civilian life.

I was able to get into a cab and dash over to the monthly Tea Party meeting and only missed the first few minutes. I was eager to hear a talk by Otis McDonald, plaintiff in the gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago. Unfortunately, Mr. McDonald cancelled at the last minute.

The meeting turned out to be the best one I have been to yet, anyway.

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Chicago Tea Party Meeting Tonight

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Chicago Tea Party meeting tonight, 7:00 p.m., features Otis McDonald, plaintiff in the critically important case gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago.

I hope to see some of you there. I will be wearing a seersucker suit and a Gadsden Flag lapel pin — carefully positioned to cover the small splotch from a drop of spilled coffee.

UPDATE: Despite Mr. McDonald being a last-minute no-show, this was about the best Tea Party meeting I have been to yet. I hope to blog about it soon.


“The authoritative magazine for VIPs, delegates and diplomats”

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Wandering around a soon-to-be-closed Borders bookstore, I run across a glossy magazine dedicated to the G8 summit in Deauville-France (May 2011). The above is a cell phone photo of the cover. I have no idea who publishes the magazine. There are ads inside for airlines, hotels, cars, public policy institutes and various international businesses and governmental agencies. The US Chamber of Commerce and Eurochambers/The Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry are two such examples. Turns out that some of the articles are pretty interesting.

The cover makes me laugh, though. It’s an illustration of various national leaders and their relative small size contrasts with the large conference table. Individual nations, suboordinate yourselves to the glory of the international collective of business and governmental interests!

Maybe I’m getting a tiny bit carried away here. I’ve always had an active imagination thanks to the reading of novels and, well, an inherently busy mind. Yoga, music, meditation, book reading: all of it calms me down. Modern urban – or semi-urban – life is filled with irritating sounds and sirens and sitting in traffic and noisy trains with vaguely scary looking passengers….

So I am going to miss browsing Borders, getting a coffee, and shaking my head at the variety of periodicals. A magazine for everyone and everything. A Special Forces magazine sits right up front along with Mother Jones, Foreign Policy and the Hudson Review. Wait a minute, shouldn’t that one be in the back row?

What do you suppose the existence of a G8 magazine says about our society? Nothing remotely reassuring, I imagine. If debt ceiling drama seems incomprehensible, it’s likely because a certain percentage (not all, to be fair) of our politicos spend considerable amounts of time skimming vapid briefs and dopey position papers while flipping through G8 Magazines as they jet between constituent meetings, summits, conferences and hearings. And that’s their body of knowledge on a given subject.

Super.