Monthly Archives: December 2013

Free Speech, Progressive Style—Renewed

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The Wall Street Journal has the sordid tale.  A week and a half ago, Third Way Founder, Trustee, and Andrew Cuomo ex-aide Jon Cowan and Third Way Founder and Chuck Schumer ex-aide Jim Kessler wrote an opinion piece.  The Third Way is a think tank that thinks from the Left.

Maybe you remember the op-ed: Cowan and Kessler used it to suggest that Americans aren’t quite as liberal some might think based on New York City’s strong election of someone like Bill de Blasio as mayor, that Social Security is nearly bust, and that wealth redistribution actually is pretty unpopular with most of us.

Well.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, et al., demanded among other things, that Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (D, PA), walk away from Third Way.  She’s a Third Way Honorary Co-Chair (along with other Progressive luminaries like Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC), Senator Chris Coons (D, DE), and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius), and she also wants to be governor of Pennsylvania.  Responding to her instructions, she denounced the op-ed, in the WSJ‘s words, “faster than you can say Reeducation Camp.”  (Although she’s still listed by Third Way as an Honorary Co-Chair.)

Not to be outdone, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) sent letters to six large banks which she regulates from her perch on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and in those letters she demanded those banks disclose all their donations to think tanks.

Don’t talk, PCCC and Warren are saying to these miscreants.  Just read from the script we’ve given you.  When we want your opinions, we’ll give them to you.

Some Thoughts on the Ryan-Murray Budget Deal

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Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips has this one:

This budget compromise is not just bad policy, it is bad politics.  The American people remember hard-won bipartisan spending limits set by the sequester, and are not pleased to see their conservative representatives so easily go back on their word to rein in government over-spending.

The deal does, after all, increase spending to a skosh over $1 trillion (just about halfway to the Democrats’ spending call of $1.058 trillion from the current spending of $0.967 trillion), while increasing, slightly, defense spending (rather than the more draconian cut the sequester had scheduled for 2014) and increasing, slightly, discretionary spending—all paid for with spending cuts and fees elsewhere, with chump change left over for a net deficit reduction.  Yes, yes, this is a current increase in spending paid for with future cuts and fees.  See below.

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas has one, too:

The solution is not to walk away from progress and add over $60 billion in spending over the next two years.  We are not impressed by the cost cutting gimmicks and urge members of Congress to tell the budget conference to get back to work[.]

What’s your plan, guys on which the conference committee should “get back to work?”  With what votes, particularly in the Senate, do you claim your alternative (you do have something more intelligent than just “No,” yes?) can pass?

Certainly, there’s much to dislike in this compromise, but it’s good enough for the next year (albeit it covers the next two).  More importantly, blocking it is tactically stupid: it moves the focus in an election year to Republican intransigence, whether that’s a fair perception or not.

I have one, also.  Take the deal, lose the distraction.  Keep the election year focus on the failed Obamacare, on the anti-business Dodd-Frank, on the Democrats’ tax and spend demands, on the Democrats’ blowup of the Senate (picking any two (so long as one is Obamacare) in order to have that focus).  Win elections, then do the budgets that are necessary, repeal Obamacare (you do have a replacement plan ready to proffer, yes?), eliminate the CFPB, and so on with the votes to do so actually present in the House and in the Senate.

Quit being chuckleheads.  Quit being the Party of Stupid.

Mr Cohen Addresses the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

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…in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the week.  David Cohen is the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, and he admits that he is the principal in “crafting and enforcing our sanctions program” against Iran.

With this…interest…in mind, Cohen defended his sanctions program as they exist under this nuclear weapons deal [emphasis added].

[T]he relief package…lion’s share…comes from granting Iran access, in installments, to $4.2 billion of its own revenues currently trapped outside Iran.  In addition, US sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports and its auto industry will be temporarily suspended.

We estimate that this additional trade could generate about $1.5 billion in revenue over the next six months….
…
[T]he deal also allows Iran to transfer $400 million of restricted Iranian funds to defray tuition costs for Iranian students studying abroad.

If the Iranians comply with their obligations under the Joint Plan, over the next six months they will stand to receive $6 billion to $7 billion in relief, mostly by gaining access to their own money.  Not $1 comes from US taxpayers.

What a monumental failure of understanding.  The problem with this deal, in Cohen’s context, is not that none of the monies going to Iran are coming from us, it’s that these are monies going to Iran.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion to which Iran did not have access until we lifted eased the sanctions.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion which the Iranian government will not use to better the lot of the Iranian people.  No, this is money with which Iran will

reverse that neutralization [of its stockpile of near-Highly Enriched Uranium]; money with which to reconnect those centrifuge cascades and to generate additional ones; money with which actually to develop the engineering capacity to assemble a deliverable warhead (which, recall, requires no missiles—although Iran now will get a taste of money with which to continue that development—but only a train car or a collection of suitcases separately carried into the target zone); money with which to fund its terror operations, its support of its Syrian and Iraqi operations; etc; etc; etc.

Full stop.

Last Week’s Jobs Report

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The headline is that the jobless rate fell in November to 7.0% from October’s 7.3%, and the participation in the labor force (the number of Americans working at some capacity or looking for work) rose in November to 155,294,000 from October’s 154,839,000.

However, the headline ignores the fact that the Democrats’ government shutdown for much of October led to a large number of Federal employees being furloughed (some 450,000 were out of work for the duration), which both contributed to October’s rise in unemployment and that lowered number in labor force participation.  Comparing November’s data with September’s, the month immediately preceding that shutdown, provides a much more useful comparison.  In September, the unemployment number was 7.2%; the November still seems a significant drop.  However, September’s labor force participation was 155,559,000 Americans: that force had shrunk by 265 thousand Americans by the end of November.  The lower participation contributed significantly to the headline unemployment rate “drop.”

Who Lost?

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Dunstan Prial at Fox Business, noted that

The Treasury Department on Monday announced that the government has sold its remaining shares of General Motors, and that losses from the 2009 auto industry bailout total about $15 billion.

In a conference call, Treasury officials said the government has recovered about $39.9 billion of the $49.5 billion earmarked for GM under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) approved by Congress as the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy nearly five years ago.

And

Treasury has intermittently sold its shares of GM but always at a price below that which would have allowed the government to break even on the deal, which accounts for the nearly $10 billion in losses.

And

The government has lost an additional $1.3 billion on its bailout to Chrysler[.]

Leaving aside that the auto industry was not bailed out, nor was it ever at risk—only two failing car companies were at risk—there is another misunderstanding, and one that’s surprising from a business writer.  The government lost nothing on these bailouts.  The government has nothing of its own, and so it has nothing that it can lose.

We American taxpayers lost those $10 billion on GM, those $1.3 billion on that Italian car company, those $15 billion overall.