“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel said, and he meant it.
The epic bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies, the credit crunch and dwindling consumer confidence, all compounded by the media’s hysterics have served to make despairing Americans uniquely pliant. Political leaders and financial giants are now rushing to parlay the nation’s panic into the easy passage of a massive government “stimulus” package.
The arguments most often employed in defense of the stimulus bill maintain that now is not the time for idle thinking but for bold action — any action. Tyler Cowen, a respectable economist, declares (without a hint of sarcasm) the following Warren Buffett rant to be “the best argument [he has] heard for the stimulus”:
The answer is nobody knows. The economists don’t know. All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it’s more effective if you’re fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You’re going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they’ve been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don’t know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don’t know how effective in the short run we don’t know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again.
Laissez faire is not even an option. The question, as Buffett and others would have it, is not whether anything at all ought to be done, but what must be done; not whether intervention is desirable, but how much intervention; not whether we need massive pork-barrel projects, but who gets the pork and how much do they get. The entire debate is now consumed by administrative details of little interest to a rattled public. Consider some of the preposterous and special-interest driven proposals in the “stimulus” bill:
• $726 million for an after-school snack program
• $650 million for coupons to help people switch old televisions to digital
• $209 million for maintenance work at the federal Agricultural Research Service’s research facilities across the country
• $200 million for fresh sod on the National Mall
• $150 for maintenance at the Smithsonian Institution
• $50 million for the NEA (Teachers’ Union)
• $50 million to make up for a lack of philanthropic support for the arts
• $6 million for broadband Internet access
At least the Bailout Bill was called by its correct name.
So far Americans have yet to receive a satisfactory explanation as to how redistributing nearly a trillion dollars of wealth from the pockets of individuals and businesses in the private sector into extravagant government waste is supposed to stimulate the economy. Buffett’s “throwing a trillion dollars into projects whose effects no economist can anticipate is better than doing nothing” just doesn’t cut it.
Well, I think when Freeman starts weighing in, we’ll see some real change . . .
Ah, that Commentary logic. Chas Freeman is evidence of Obama’s radical change toward Israel. Hillary Clinton is evidence that Obama offers no real change for Israel.
Hey, if I had Commentary’s track record of failed prognostication, I’d want to have it both ways too. That’s about their only chance at getting something right.
Settlements are not meant to be “helpful” to the “peace process.” Settlements are devoped on their own terms, without regard to the “peace process,” one way or the other.
There are many things going on around here that are not about our relations with our neighbors and building homes for Jews on Jewish-owned and state-owned land is one of them.
So Clinton’s calling this particular thing “unhelpful” is not a statement of significance.
#2–If you see a conflict between Tobin’s comments on Ms. Clinton’s remark, and other commentators’ observations about Freeman, you have a perception issue. Of course, you’d probably be better able to resolve what you apparently see as conflicting views were you to start by characterizing them correctly. Try again with Mr. Tobin’s entry, I know you can do it.
Why give the Palestinians $900 Million with which they will buy weapons from Iran? Wouldn’t it be better in this troubled economic time to give them credit toward purchase of U.S. made weapons? Let’s keep the manufacturing jobs here at home.
Hillary Clinton, Freeman, and Obama—whatever their respective styles—are on the same team and share the same personal objectives regarding Israel. Hillary’s digression as a Senator from New York who had to say nice things about Israel is over.
With Bush, it was often Israel on the altar of Iraq.
Israel has now been downgraded, and this admin will try to sacrifice her on the altar of measly and weasely Syria – if not the even the warped and beyond redemption ‘palestinians’.
Lots of conflict twixt Israel and the US ahead, I’m afraid.
Ha! Sully #5 – that’s great!
And that’s one of the major problems. Bush screwed the pooch by outsourcing most things to Rice. He was absent the last two years of his presidency and we’re paying the price for it. And so is Israel.
The US should say, for every day Gilad Shalit is not released a million dollars will be deducted from that $900 million, for every rocket fired out of Gaza into Israel, $10 million is deducted from the $900 million. And to make it sting even more that deducted money award that deducted money to the communities into which those rockets fall.
If the other donors were to put similar conditions on their bequests, Hamas will be in a pickle.
Bob Miller – Give Hillary credit. She’s just paying back a voting bloc that abandoned her for Obama. She’ll get around to paying back other blocs. As to her being on the same team as Obama, I suspect that the Secret Service frisks her thoroughly before allowing her into theOval Office.
Nacl, haven’t you caught on that the US may not care now about these rockets?
As a Jew, I could not be more grossed out by this column. Really? We’re allowed to bulldoze people’s houses? Really? And criticizing that is bad? Really?
Whatever.
So, who’s in charge for the Americans there, anyways?
Hillary or Mitchel?
Perhaps those two buffoons will occupy themselves with turf battles and not engage in any Jew killing diplomacy for a while . . . .
12
Andrew
Go back to sitting by ‘Rabbi’ Michael Lerner’s knee, please.
#12: Really? We’re allowed to bulldoze people’s houses? Really?
Not you, Andrew. Don’t get so excited.
Sully (#10). I believe Hillary does have some core convictions aside from looking out for herself. These all slant left.
I wonder if Andrew would have supported the Allies’ strategic bombing in WW2.
Jerusalem Post, 27 May 2008:
Guardian, 15 April 2008:
God forbid the country subsidizing Israel to the tune of $3 billion every year politely ask it to stop engaging in such blatantly discriminatory housing practices.
#18
Yeap, we should trust everything UN says about Israel or United States for that matter, as well as Peace Now idiots. They are almost as trustworthy as Obama when he promises not to hire lobbyists or get rid of earmarks or whatever else he promises.
The Arabs want to disallow Jews from living in their areas altogether.
Nice short (minute and a half) on Gaza blockade:
http://www.youtube.com/v/Hzqw7oBZT8k&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″>
So, are you going to point out any reasons why I should doubt these sources with reliable citations or anything? The burden of proof is on you to disprove these statistics (which are mostly likely based on official Israeli govt. sources). I’m sure the hacks at CAMERA or NGO Watch are much more reliable.
“The Arabs” are not a nefarious monolithic entity as you seem to think.
#22–I’m disappointed the Isros allowed any Arab construction in the West Bank; foolishly soft-hearted, don’t you think, given the indisposition of even Israeli Arabs to accept a multi-ethnic state? And if Arabs aren’t a “nefarious monolithic entity,” you might suggest their leaders stop blathering about “pan-Arabism” and start welcoming Jews, Christians, and atheists into Arab states.
Come on–you make yourself ridiculous.
I ask all you Arab apologists to name me one gesture of good will that the Arab Palistinians have ever done…just one…Israel has made many only to be slapped in the face in return…
““The Arabs” are not a nefarious monolithic entity as you seem to think.’
I never said monolithic. Nevertheless, their attitude towards Israel and towards Jewish settlement anywhere west of the Jordan is remarkably uniform and evil.
Where were you a year ago when condi rice used the same exact word “unhelpfu” concerning israels construction of new apartments to accomodate growth in givat zeev?
please.