Lunacy or worse?

Rahm Emanuel is quoted today as saying that "thwarting Iran's nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians." Thus the Obama administration has adopted the Arab position as its own. Saudi Arabia and Egypt and other Sunni Arabs do regard Shiite Iran as a serious threat against them, but they are betting that the fools in our Western governments either don't understand that or are willing to play along in order to stab Israel in the back and gain some advantage with the oil-rich Arabs. Apparently they are correct.

Newt Gingrich and other sane commentators have wasted no time in condemning this position.

However, Gingrich and the other critics are emphasizing the wrong thing. They say that Obama is blackmailing our ally Israel, which of course is true. However, this is not the most glaring aspect of Obama's position. Emanuel is saying here that despite the hostile actions of Iran over the decades, and despite the haste it is making to develop nuclear weapons, the Obama administration does not regard a nuclear armed Iran as being a serious threat to the United States. That is completely preposterous and extremely dangerous to both the United States and Israel.

I fully expected that these Chicago politicians would be prepared to betray everyone, including our closest allies and even our own country. However, it is amazing that they have announced this fact so blatantly and so soon.

We must now face the fact that the voters have elected as our president an enemy of the United States.

Jack

California needs leadership, not evasions

Typically in the wake of disasters there is a mess to clean up. California’s interminable budget crisis qualifies as an ongoing disaster. On the maxim that those who make messes should clean them up, the politicians in Sacramento have no business following up their failure to exercise budgetary discipline by throwing the alleged solution into the laps of voters in the May 19 special election. The package of propositions 1A through 1F imposes budgetary gimmicks, raises taxes, puts more money into education, borrows money from the lottery, transfers funds from some programs to fund others, and delays officials’ pay increases in order somehow to end the annual gap between expenditures and revenues. But it suffers from two major defects: it derives from the same politicians who largely got the State into its current fiscal mess and it attempts to make up for their lack of prudence with constitutional and statutory tinkering.

When public policy is bad, surely it should change. But the best way to ensure change is to change those who made the bad policy. What the Democrat-dominated State Legislature needs is tough love, not enabling. Therefore, voters should turn down all six propositions, whatever the specific merits of any of them.

The strongest proof of the questionable paternity of these "save the day" measures is the deception in the first and most critical of them: Proposition 1A. Its aims, as summarized by the Legislative analyst in the Voter Guide (pp. 10-15) are to

* increase the State’s "rainy day" fund from five to 12.5 percent of the General Fund;

* dedicate some annual deposits into that fund for future economic downturns and the rest to fund education, infrastructure and debt repayment, or for use in emergencies; and

* require additional revenues above historic trends to be deposited in the "rainy day" fund.

A careful reader might wonder just where the "additional revenues" will come from. No answer to this question can be found in the summary (or in that provided on the sample ballot, either), but near the bottom of page 10 we read: "If this measure is approved, several tax increases passed as part of the February 2009 budget package would be extended by one to two years. State revenues would increase by about $16 billion from 2010-11 to 2012-13."

At the bottom of the next page and following, voters are reminded that the sales tax was increased from eight to nine percent, the vehicle tax rate was raised from .65 percent to 1.15 percent of a vehicle’s value, and the personal income tax rate was raised by .25, ranging from increases of one to 10.3 percent, depending on income.

The political advertisements I have seen on television stations mention nothing whatever about this "additional revenue," speaking only in glittering generalities about how great it is that finally something is going to be done to restrain the politicians in Sacramento who got us into this mess.

Propositions 1A through 1C and IF are constitutional amendments and 1D and 1E are revised statutes. Once again, California’s already incredibly long Constitution is being burdened with still more specific provisions which are designed to particularize the judgments our elected officials make rather than holding them accountable to the voters for their decisions.

The massive defect of such a constitution is that it defies the efforts of all but the most sagacious and interested parties from understanding it and blurs the distinction between the supreme law, which establishes the government, and the statutes which are intended to be consistent with its limitations.

Thus, constitutionally, as well as fiscally, California's political leaders are attempting to fix bad or inadequate decisions of the past with decisions cut from the same cloth. Rather than exercising fiscal and budgetary prudence as a constitutional duty, they are lurching from one crisis to the next without owning up to the primary cause of the problem, which is themselves.

Denying the Legislature and the Governor the power once again to cobble together a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to put a brake on their own insatiable desires to tax, spend and elect will do far more to promote fiscal discipline than this clever package, which conceals the source of the problem.

Instead, we should look forward to the implementation of the redistricting plan Californians passed last November that will, for the first time in years, permit the design of state legislative districts with greater attention to geographic and demographic realities and less to assuring safe seats that keep incumbents in office. The real need is for open and competitive elections, not more evasions.

Upside of economic woes

Every morning when pouring my cereal and opening up my newspaper, or rather, my web browser, my mood is shattered by the doom and gloom of the American economic system. Just a few months ago hope and change reigned supreme. Not so much these days. It looks like housing meltdowns, credit crises, and our patriotic duty to spend willy-nilly have put a little bump on the yellow-brick road to prosperity. Let’s not drown ourselves in our bowl of generic, shredded wheat just yet though. We might actually get some of that sought after change— but don’t call it a comeback. It won’t be the type of change Presidential campaigns are won and lost on. It will be the kind of change you find under your couch cushions. Maybe it is just that the Bank of America “Keep the Change” savings marketing campaign is working, or more realistically, that the American people have been scared into saving. Because in the face of all chaos happening to the financial markets, layoffs, and pay cuts, Americans are actually saving more. In fact today, the Personal Savings Rate is the highest it has been in 14 years.

Call me old fashioned, but saving money seems like the best way to deal with stagnant credit markets and irresponsible financial institutions. I know, it is trendy, and “new school” to be pro bailout; pro spending; and pro borrowing (so that you are able to spend more), but I’m an old school kind of guy.

Here are a few simple things to consider. If the savings deposits in banks are higher, banks have more money to invest and loan out. And if banks, on average, are loaning to people with bigger savings accounts than they were previously, they must generally be in a safer position. But this must be too simple to be true. After all, both former President Bush and current President Obama would disagree with such analysis. After 9/11 Bush told the American people the best thing they could do to help their country was to go shopping! And Obama’s priority has been to get the credit markets back on track as quickly as possible! What is the underlying message from both the former and sitting Commander-in-Chief? Spend now, spend more, spend again (and again)! And we thought that Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on anything.

From our political leaders to our next door neighbors, we are proud to be a credit card nation. That is to say, not only are we addicted to spending, but if Americans aren’t spending, the whole world feels it. As we’ve recently found out, spending at unsustainable levels and living far beyond our means causes a few problems. And now that the credit fairy has run out of gold pixie dust—and we can’t take a 2nd mortgage on our houses or get an equity line of credit—we have to cut back on our $8 cups of coffee, our designer sunglasses, and our favorite restaurants.

Talking about savings isn’t very sexy, but it is essential to economic recovery and personal financial well being. China, a chief foreign investor in the United States, has cited the relative low savings levels of Americans coupled with our excessive spending habit as dangerous to long-term sustainability. That’s right. China is tutoring us in fiscal discipline. And it should be common knowledge by now that Americans are near the bottom of the list in personal savings levels compared to other developed nations. Bailouts and policies making it much easier to get credit look good at first glance; but it seems like what we are really talking about is giving the American people two new rights: the right to spend unabashedly, and the right to maintain an inflated, unaffordable quality of life. Not to mention the right of financial institutions to make poor decisions and still live to loan another day.

Our spend-a-lot policies are sending a clear message to our children, our adults, and our major companies: “spend as much as you want, and if you run out, don’t worry, the government has got you covered.”

Washingtonian wisdom these days seems to be that we are going to spend our way out of these dark economic times—but in actuality we are once again using credit cards. Don’t worry though, congress and the Administration won’t have to pay back these loans, our prosperous future generations will. As if economic growth and prosperity is guaranteed ad infinitum. But what do I know about all of this murky, economic mumbo jumbo? I am just a twenty-something year old kid. While I don’t know much, I am sure about one thing: my friends and I will be the people paying off this debt. So we had better save up now.

If the economic rollercoaster is causing Americans to save more, I say bring it on! Savings must become part of the plan to overhaul out-of-control government expenditures and excessive personal spending—so that we can actually protect the potential for prosperity of our next generation. We need to reopen a policy debate about effective and responsible savings policies that help ensure economic stability and opportunity for American people today and tomorrow.

And best of all, when you save for yourself, you get to keep the change.

Brian Calle is the President of the Young Executives of America (YEA), a member of Gen-Next, a Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a Distinguished Speaker and the Milton Friedman Foundation School Choice Speakers Bureau.

Airborne arrogance

You've seen that frightful image: a 747 flying low across New York City tracked by Air Force fighter jets. Still-traumatized New Yorkers understandably fled. Then we learned that an Obama administration official authorized that costly, insensitive folly as an unnecessary Air Force One "photo op" despite the numberless archived images of the presidential airliner. Why be surprised? Did we trust that these ultra-liberals actually meant their campaign propaganda about compassion and fiscal responsibility?

Consider the underlying psychology of an ultra-liberal. Liberals are motivated by a profound, yet pathetic craving for kudos and control. Their professed concern for our needs, fears and hopes extends only to claiming our votes. Once in power, they reveal their true self-absorbed disregard for you and me.

The liberals' pose invokes a powerful allure, manipulating our emotions (and bypassing our reason). They call up our fears and propose to ease our anguish. But beneath their pretense of concern lies a hidden but massive insult.

Ultra-liberals strive to sell us the notion that we are victims. They cast us in the role of hapless, ineffectual schmucks. What greater insult could they invoke? Simultaneously, they gain the ego-boost of seeming superiority as our rescuers. And we get to pay the enormous bill!

Personally, I don't buy it not their designation as victim nor their stupendous vote-buying expenditures. Paying their debt would indeed make me THEIR victim.

That Air Force One incident illustrates their total lack of respect or regard for us. You might want to remember this illustrative incident the next time an ultra-liberal proclaims his/her dedication to our welfare.

Obama's harsh retribution

When the word retribution is talked about amongst friends, family, or co-workers, it does not have a positive connotation. According to Webster, retribution means something given or exacted in recompense. With all its harshness, this is the only word I can think of that does justice to what the Obama administration is doing by releasing very sensitive information from the CIA about interrogation techniques used on terrorists. I still have not heard a compelling reason as to why the Obama administration felt compelled to divulge this information.

To actually have the gumption to consider prosecuting former Bush administration officials is unprecedented. If this is such a forward looking administration why must they continue to look back on the “mistakes” of the past administration?

I wonder how Americans would feel if they knew these interrogation methods saved their lives from further attacks. Furthermore, what message does this send and what type of example does this set for future administrations?

But perhaps the most critical argument: how are people that are supposed to be working on keeping our country safe -- CIA agents, lawyers, etc. -- going to do their job effectively if they feel the constant threat of future retribution upon themselves?