California’s global warming plan, it turns out, is not “cost free” as its proponents insisted. You won’t be surprised that “greens readily cook the books” with phony economic studies that not even sympathetic economists and newspapers buy. The plan will cost a small fortune and further hobble California’s ailing economy. Perhaps the Obama administration should start paying attention to California (which also dumped its universal health care idea as too expensive even for liberal Democrats).
Noemie Emery traces the fall of the House of Kennedy. Princess Caroline and the rest of the dynasty made a cardinal error, mistaking iconic status for political viability: “Politicians seek, icons are sought after. Politicians covet approval, icons confer it. Politicians explain themselves, icons are beyond such indignity. Politicians do things to justify their existence, icons just are. What Caroline does has always been secondary to her simple existence, which, for most people, is more than sufficient.”
Christopher Caldwell on the stimulus bill: “It reflects the pre-existing wishes of the party’s most powerful interest groups more than the pre-existing wishes of the country. Democrats are now liable to be judged by the standard they created when they abandoned the Bush administration over the Iraq war: you break it, you own it.”
If you thought the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which erased any meaningful statute of limitations on employment discrimination claims, was a bad idea, get ready for the Paycheck Fairness Act: “The bill would, for example, expose an employer to liability for paying a woman less than a man in a similar job unless the employer can convince a jury that the differential is ‘job related’ and ‘consistent with business necessity’ — and also that no ‘alternative employment practice exists that would serve the same business purpose.’” Throw in unlimited compensatory and punitive damages and plaintiff-friendly class action rules and you have a trial lawyer’s dream and an employer’s nightmare. Aren’t we supposed to be making it easier to hire and employ American workers?
Minority Leader John Boehner points to the CBO analysis that only 22% of the “stimulus” bill is tax cuts — a far cry form the 40% the Obama administration advertised.
David Broder joins the pundit chorus pleading for the President to rework the stimulus plan: “Beyond these policy challenges, there are political considerations that make it really important for Obama to take the time to negotiate for more than token Republican support in the Senate. Nothing was more central to his victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington. He wants to be like Ronald Reagan, steering his first economic measures through a Democratic House in 1981, not Bill Clinton, passing his first budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote.”
And Amity Shlaes brings us back to the central issue: why repeat the New Deal if it didn’t work?
You know things aren’t going well when Maureen Dowd is back to being catty about the White House: “With the equally laconic Tim Geithner beside him, Mr. Obama called it ‘shameful’ and ‘the height of irresponsibility’ for Wall Street bankers to give themselves $18.4 billion worth of bonuses for last year.They should know better, he coolly chided. But big shots — even Mr. Obama’s — seem impervious to knowing better. (Following fast on Geithner’s tax lacunae, Tom Daschle’s nomination hit a pothole when he had to pay $140,000 in back taxes he owed mostly for three years’ use of a car and a driver provided by a private equity firm.)”
So. Ask them what precisely they think “force” will do in Darfur. What it did in Somalia in 1993?
They don’t want to “use force.” They want to send armed Americans to Darfur to be bullet sponges.
The sad thing is that, although Bush engaged in a lot of diplomacy over Darfur, encouraging the UN, and African nations, to strengthen peacekeeping efforts there (encouraging them with funding and advisory groups), the sum total of the international effort has served to give the Bashir government of Sudan — which is responsible for fostering the conditions that permit (even encourage) the genocide — a legitimacy it would not otherwise have. The international efforts there have a stake in the stability of the government in place — Bashir’s — which has ensured its continuation without reform. It could very well be better for many in Sudan for Bashir to be ejected by a coup. But the US State Department is, on principle, terrified of that possibility.
Elements of this sound an awful lot like on of those Palestinian Authority thingies, don’t they? Some things the human species just never seems to learn.
I have no hard data to back this up, but my casual conversations with people have led me to believe that the Jews who support the Darfurians are the same ones who support Israel. The ones who are always criticizing Israel seem to be unconcerned about the problems facing the Darfurians.
According to a news story in Haaretz a week or so ago, Israel has decided to let all Darfurians who manage to escape to Israel remain there. Nobody seems to know about this, except for the Darfurians in Israel.
JED:
Perceptive comment, great metaphor (“bullet sponges”).
There is a relatively easy and quick solution to Darfur. The problem is, it is in the hands of the Arabs, and they have no intention of applying this solution.
Sudan does not give a damn what the world says or thinks or does. The one exception, the only people Sudan cannot do without, with whom it is tied up, politically, economically, culturally, psychologically, and whom it would heed, are its fellow Arabs.
Sudan is a member of the Arab League. Its secretary general, Amr Moussa could bang the table in front of Bashir and say: stop your outrageous in Darfur, reverse yourself, let those people return to their lands, leave them in peace – or we expel you. You will be out of the League, our members will cut diplomatic and economic relations, we will not honor Sudanese passports, we will turn our backs on you and denounce you to the world as a disgrace to the Arabs and to Islam. The threat of such ostracism would bring Khartoum to heel. To be abandoned by its fellow Arabs is the one thing it could not accept.
The problem is, the League says, Darfur is not our business, not our table, there is nothing we can do about it. Qaddafi has even declared that everyone knows, and he has the evidence, that the real cause of this tragedy resides in Tel Aviv.
And the West lets them get away with it. Neither its chancelleries nor its media attempt to hold the feet of the Arab League to the fire and demand that it bring its member to heel. This is the double standard. When the Austrians elected Jurgen Heider and a neo fascist party they pilled on Vienna. But no one thinks it reasonable to expect the Arab League to discipline one of its own.
nacl,
The Arab League may say, “Darfur is not our business.” In all likelihood, what they feel is what Qaddafi said, that Darfur is certainly their business, since it is part of the world’s war against the Arabs, and therefore it “resides in Tel Aviv.” Although Nicholas D. Kristof, Darfur’s biggest ally, is neither Jewish nor pro-Israel, the cause of Darfur is generally supported by pro-Israel Jews.
Why is offshore drilling a Jewish issue?
#6, Israel P. – Jerusalem: “Why is offshore drilling a Jewish issue?”
America’s independence from the ME affects Jews
because many of them live in the ME, and many of them
live in America.
No one appointed or elected the named group to represent Jews in general. It’s one of many such impressively named groups representing a fraction of a fraction.
yeah lets go to another oil rich muslim country and throw our weight around. no way that could end up bad
lester,
Are you in favor of killing Darfurians?
10. no I would never kill a darfurians or any other -ian